Re: Another vote for the death of copyright

On Sun, 15 Aug 1999, John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> An almost lyrical, if confusing, suggestion that the foundation of
> copyright is inapplicable to software:
>
> http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html

While the article is very interesting to read, the term "free" in the article is used in an Orwellian way. None of the products as described in the article is free as in the sense of freedom. All of them are still owned by someone or an entity. In case of GNU, it is owned by Free Software Foundation. In case of music, they are still owned by the creators. But, what set them apart from other copyrighted works is that they are more open than the most of the copyrighted works. Open is not the same as free. In order for an item to be free, it has to be ownerless, just like a slave is freed when he or she is no longer owned by his master.

In other words, the expression "Death of Copyright" in the title only gets your attention and is not supported by the article.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> Received on Wed Aug 18 1999 - 09:41:59 GMT