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Bob Young On Intellectual Property
Posted by
michael
on Thu Jun 21, 2001 09:00 PM
from the raising-awareness dept.
from the raising-awareness dept.
Michael Manoochehri writes: "Slashdot readers might be interested in this interview I did with Center for the Public Domain and Red Hat Chairman Bob Young. Bob talks about the goals of the center, the future of Public Domain, and the state of the world's IP. In this time of constant ideological attack on open-source software by Microsoft, it is refreshing to hear a contrasting (and well spoken) viewpoint." Slashdot also interviewed Bob Young a few months ago.
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Bob Young On Intellectual Property
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Bob, you are wrong about our lawmakers (Score:5)
I live in Virginia's 6th district and have to be "represented" by Bob Goodlatte. He claims to be a great champion of technology, yet he proves his ignorance time and again especially on copyright and patent law. He understands exactly what the problems are with the DMCA and he flat out doesn't see them as problems at all. He openly attacks critics of the DMCA as thieves and pirates (literally). I once tried to talk to him about it and he jumped me right then and there with accusations that the DMCA's critics were dishonest people that advocate the theft of the hard work of creators.
The worst part about this is that this mindset is symptomatic of the majority of the baby boomer generation from what I've seen. My parents felt almost the same way that Goodlatte feels for some time. It was only when I started showing them how I could be thrown into debt and my life utterly ruined for doing university research and stuff like that on copyright systems that they began to see the light. Yet like most baby boomers they still don't see the DMCA as being all that bad. It is only my generation, the generation in high school and college now, that sees the DMCA for what it is. The DMCA helped push me away from being a leftist to being a libertarian. In fact Harry Browne's denunciations of our current IP laws convinced me that despite the areas where I disagree with the LP, it is the only party with a sane political platform. That is why when I turn 18 in less than a month I'm registering with the VA-LP.
It has taken the imprisonment of over 1,000,000 Americans for the public to begin questioning the mindless war on drugs (I still think buying foreign drugs should be illegal, especially drugs made in columbia... but not domestic drugs). The only way for Americans to see that the mindless war on "pirates" and "thieves" (IP "thieves that is") must be ended. Many Americans will have to have their lives, liberty and property ruined by the cartels (RIAA, MPAA, to name a few) and bear witness to the rantings and ravings of the IP-authoritarians before the public will call for its end. Civil disobedience is all we have left. Buy as many cds as you want, but when secure formats come out refuse to buy them. Send a message: "hey hey, ho ho protection schemes have gotta go!!!" to the companies and they will finally get the idea. When they are stuck between a rock (distributing in unprotected formats) and a hard place (distributing in secure formats, but having only
Posted anonymously because I may enter ROTC then the US Army and don't wish to bring possible reprisal on myself, family or friends.
Re:Free Market vs Free "Intellectual Property" (Score:5)
The purpose of IP laws was to provide the 'small' entrepreneur a way to succeed against the large ones. If I invent a remarkable (simple) product in my basement, and it becomes fabulously successful, without copyright or IP, what prevents MegaCorp X from cloning my product, selling it cheaper (since they can afford to) and wiping me out of business?
I mean, the real goal was to keep small inventors and artists from turning into free R&D labs for big companies.
(Of course, this point has been spectacularly missed in the US with corp-favouring laws like the DCMA being passed.)
Great interviewee, lousy interviewer (Score:5)
On the whole, it's a very interesting article, but I kept cringing at the the interviewer. It's not so much the fact that he's clearly biased that bothers me, it's the way the bias degrades the quality of the interview
Of course, there's one of my personal pet peeves, "Micro$oft." I suppose I can understand the desire to call names in private discourse, chatrooms, or wherever, but let's not mince words- it's still name-calling, plain and simple. It's what we did in preschool when we couldn't think of anything else to say, and yet because we're talking about the Great Satan, it's somehow supposed to be reasonable, even witty. Guess what? You still sound like a 4-year-old, and trying to incorporate "Micro$oft" into a serious, intelligent discussion (much less a journalistic interview) is about as effective as saying "Bill Gates is a poo-poo head." Ditto for "Demopublicans" and "Republicrats."
And then we have Mr. Young (quite rightly) arguing that we should consider the merits of openness as it applies to a particular situation, rather than blindly applying Open Source as the cure for all ills. In other words, he is arguing in favor of intelligent thought, as opposed to knee-jerking, and our esteemed interviewer unbelievably goes out of his way to disagree, citing the South African AIDS issue. Is this man seriously claiming that some issues are so morally objectionable that we must abandon discretion, stop thinking, and just blindly shout "Open Source"? Either he's doing frighteningly little thinking himself, or he's just not listening to his interviewee. Neither possibility reflects very well on the quality of this interview.
On the other hand, kudos to Mr. Young for an intelligent, coherent, and eminently reasonable interview.
Re:Difference between Public Domain and Free autho (Score:4)
Sorry, you're going to have to explain that one to me, because I really don't understand.
If I write a piece of software and release it under the GPL, in what way am I hijacking other's efforts? All I'm doing is saying "here you go, hope it's useful, feel free to give it to your friends, make modifications, etc - oh, if you do, though, you have to let people have the source, just like I did you, and crediting me as original author would be nice too".
I'm not forcing anyone to make modifications and give away their hard work, I'm just giving them the opportunity to do so, whilst at the same time preventing them from taking my hard work and profiting from it. The GPL and similar licences do exactly the opposite of wht you claim - they prevent the hard work of people from being hijacked by others.
Yes, RMS has argued that all software should be free. However, whilst the majority of it is not, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to create a licence that provides people with more freedom than others, whilst denying them the right to abuse that freedom. (Note that I express no opinion as to whether or not all software should be Free.)
I really am getting tired of saying this, but no-one is forcing anyone to release their code under the GPL. If you think of a great feature that, say, gcc should have but hasn't, then you are free to implement it and distribute your version, complete with source. If, however, you want to charge for it and withold the source, that's fine too. All you have to do is rewrite gcc from scratch, just like you would have to if it was a commercial compiler.
You know, the more I read your comment, the more you sound like someone who really wants to take other people's work and profit from it, and is pissed that the GPL is preventing you from doing that.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Great interviewee, lousy interviewer (Score:4)
But I digress. That comment came totally out of left field. As did the recent article in Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] that, while touching, seemed to lack either a central, well-defined thesis, or relevance in a technical magazine.
Give people a little credit (Score:4)
The "Common Computer User" as Slashdot readers are so quick to cite does not believe everything Microsoft feeds them.
In fact the common user:
Free Market vs Free "Intellectual Property" (Score:4)
[...]
Without patents the drug companies would not have done the research to create the aids drugs in the first place so the whole issue would be moot. But clearly it is not in anyone's interest including the drug companies to charge so much for their product that their consumers (patients) cannot afford them. So they need to figure out how to charge less (in Africa - a lot less) in markets where the consumers cannot afford the regular price.
With all due respect to Mr. Young, there really is no such thing as free market coexisting with IP laws. IP laws are not designed to free the market but to restrict its freedom. So we are left in a quandary: how does a free society finance scientific research without IP restrictions on its freedom? How do programmers, artists, etc.. make a living if they cannot live off their work?
The way I see it, there is no such thing as intellectual property. If you can't lock it up or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you.Once you release it to the world it belongs to nobody and to everybody. The only property worthy of the name is tangible property. A economic system based on human labor will not survive, whether it is communism or capitalism. What will happen to a slave economy when AI and advanced automation replaces everybody? It will collapse, that's what.
So now the IP owners can only rely on powerful police states to enforce their "property." And it will get worse. The only way to truly enforce IP laws in the age of the internet and file sharing technologies is by instituting increasingly Orwellian governing bodies that continually spy on its citizens. When that happens, I hope the people of the world rise up against it.
We will not be truly free until we are all guaranteed an inheritance in the land and its wealth, a piece of the pie. What we do with our piece should be up to us. The wealth of the earth is the earth and it should not be divided for a price so that it ultimately ends up under the control of the few while everyone else is forced to be slave. It should be divided up and given to the people. Only then will we have a free market where nobody is forced to suck up to those who would enslave us. Knowledge should only serve as a mechanism for increasing the wealth of the earth.
Once we have a society based of giving rather than taking, we will openly share our knowledge with one another. We will cooperate and freely share our knowledge so that society as a whole benefits. Someone recently emailed me this delightful quote by Benjamin Franklin: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
This can only happen in truly free society. Slaves cannot be expected to give freely to others when their livelihood depends on competing against other slaves. The system forces us to exploit our fellow human beings. It must be changed or we will soon face disaster.
Re:100% bullshit. Redhat has intellectual property (Score:4)
If they are against intellectual property, why do they have those and will they sue if someone use this name?.....I would really want to get an answer from Bob on this.
Well, if you actually read what he says....
In other words, Bob isn't saying that *all* intellectual property is bad, rather he is saying...
He also mentions in the article that each case in IP has to be dealt differently. You can't just imply the same rules to genetics, software, trademarks and ideas. You have to look at each individually. He points out that the Center of Public Domain is about raising awareness about these issues and these issues have to be re-examined. So, Bob has already answered your question.
Re:Give people a little credit (Score:3)
Is curious about or has tried linux, but probably doesn't see it as a viable alternative to MS
Unfortunately, I dont think this is true at all. A vast majority of "common users" dont know what Linux is. Most probably have heard it, in one setting or another, but could not tell you what it is or where to find it. You're equating, I assume, your friends and acquantences with the "common user", and this is probably flawed. Go into an AOL or Yahoo! chat room, and ask what Linux is. Most wont know. It's a shame, but it's life.
I agree with everything else, though.
Naive? (Score:5)
As far as I can tell, a recent slashdot feature on the history of copyright law showed the opposite. For every revision of copyright laws, they slash away more and more of the fair use, and they take more and more away from public domain.
So if it's been moving the wrong way for 200 years, we should have a decent law by 2400 or so, assuming that things start swinging the right way from now on?
Re:consumer preference (Score:5)
Ah, but you're wrong. If you look at the consumers really hard, they don't care what OS they get. If they have a preference at all, it is to have the same OS as last time, so they won't have to learn all the stuff all over again. They buy a PC, with standard features (such as CDROM, mouse, keyboard, and operating system).
What you're forgetting about, is another market, where the operating system is less visible. Linux is widely used for embedded devices. Your next VCR is more likely to run linux than windows. The next generation car stereos might be linux devices. Your home climate control might be operated by a linux device. See how popular TIVO is. You can get java phones.
These things are built with free (as in beer) software, because it saves the manufacturer money, and they also get other benefits (as in sharing). They get to tweak the software to do exactly what they want it to, and if they're lucky, the next release might even include their patches, so they can be up and running out of the box.
Consumers love their new devices, and with a "Powered by Gnu/Linux" sticker on them, they might even consider it for their PC. Getting users to switch operating systems is not easy, but MS has made the job easy for Linux. Make buggy software, charge a lot of money, bully other companies and get a tainted public image. As a result MS customers are not as religious as for example Apple customers, and they'd be very happy to jump ship.