Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

Jeroen Hellingman writes,

<< ...copyright is not a material object...When you copy a novel, or whatever...you still have full use of your original. >>

Jeroen writes this in objecting to the comparison by Linda Gruber of copyright to tangible property such as a car. While they may not be directly parallel, I believe that Gruber has a point: Like copyright, a vehicle is legally under the control of its owner, who may grant use of it, for various periods of time and for agreed-upon terms, to others IF the owner wishes to do so--but others may not legally appropriate it without the owner's permission.

And no, when a novel or other expression is illicitly copied, the author does NOT any longer have full use of that work. Part of the income due to that author has been appropriated by someone else. This notion that competing copying has no effect on the author so long as the author retains use as well is employed by some periodicals to attempt to persuade naive writers that granting free "nonexclusive" reuse rights to publishers will have no effect on the writers' own ability to market their material to reusers. In fact, it will have an immense effect, since the marketing prowess of a worldwide media conglomerate such as Bertelsmann, Time Warner, or Reed Elsevier vastly exceeds that of any individual author.

Joroen also writes,

<< I am very much in favour of an abandonment clause in copyright, as there exists for real estate. If you don't use it for say ten or thirty years, you lose it. >>

I have been under the impression that I continue to own any property on which I continue to pay the required taxes, whether or not I occupy or otherwise use it. Where is this "loss through non-use" law in effect?

--Dodi Schultz Received on Mon Aug 07 2000 - 18:19:17 GMT