On Sunday 15 October 2006 22:48, M Harris wrote:
No. I have completely bought into the concept that intellectual property does not exist. No one develops anything in a vacuum. All new information is derived from existing knowledge, and no information is useful to society unless it is "free" in the sense of "freedom," not price.
Well, you obviously don't write stuff for a living. Look, copyright law exists for a reason, and that is to protect the author's vested interest in his work. In principle it is very much like a patent. None of your high tech toys would exist if there were no way to insure that the cost of developing said toys could be recovered by the developers. Open source is a great concept - for some things - but it cannot support all aspects of business. Human nature won't allow it. You can bet your last nickel that I believe very strongly that if I write something, if I create something, then I certainly retain the rights to that 'intellectual property'. If I choose to give it away for free; i.e., make it available for all to see, then that is my choice. If I don't, then I expect that my rights should be respected and anyone that then takes it from me without my permission is engaged in theft. Pure and simple. For example, if Intel opened their chip development to the world, just how long would they stay in business? The Chinese and AMD would cut off a very sensitive part of their anatomy and hand it to them on a silver platter. "Intellectual property" is a very real, very necessary part of the brave new world that we inhabit. Without it, innovation and creativity withers. I guess that I just don't like communists and the points that I hear you make smack of that ilk. Fred Linux guru