Very good article!

[Doctor V]

I think this is the best article I have read since Anderson's TCPA FAQ:

Society, Technology, and Law:  A Balanced View of "Intellectual Property"

V

[cahult]

I think it was a good article too, mainly because of the historical references to the bible and the torah. This reminds me of a lease signed in the 19th century in Ireland. It expires in 10 (10,000,000) million years!  :eek:  

Are treaties like that really needful? Are copyrights really something we should care about other than the creator getting his/her money for what he/she made? Isn

[Doctor V]

I don't think we'd really be that much worse if copyright were eliminated.  Look at OSS.  It is exists in a copyrightless state, and it has taken off.  The same method could be applied in many different areas.

Still, I think a degree of copyright is necessary for artistic works.  As for technology, I think society might be best off with copyrights and patents being limited to 5 years, maybe 2 years for software source code, and no patents for processes.

My big gripe is that copyright is no longer about promoting science and arts, it has been perverted into nothing more than a business tool, and a restrictive one that hurts the public at that.

V

[Calum]

actually they had to make a new copyright agreement so that nobody could slap a real copyright on GPL software. Sad, but if it was truly copyrightless, anybody could just copyright it and then sue.

Even Berkeley Unix had a copyright (even though it was just a few placekeeping lines of text, hah!).