Gates Elaborates on IP Communists 795
justin_w_hall writes "In part four of his interview with Gizmodo, big Bill Gates discusses his recent 'communist' labeling of supporters of free culture - and gets into detail about his rationale concerning Microsoft's position on DRM. Other parts of the interview: part 1, part 2, part 3."
grain of salt (Score:4, Informative)
Take, like, putting soundtracks onto movies using our movie editor thing. If you have unprotected music you can take slideshows, put music to it, encapsulate it in the file, mail it aroundit works perfectly.
Why he's a regular guy next door!
Is it just me or is there something a little fishy [nickdenton.org] about this interview?
Re:Wanting to get paid for work you did (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what is he? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wanting to get paid for work you did (Score:4, Informative)
And then Disney came along. Walt died a long time ago, and as per the old laws, Mickey, Goofy and Minnie would have been in the public domain in 1986 (20 years after Walt died). But the Disney company has gotten the laws extended time and again, so that they are death + 70years now.
Re:I for one... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Required response. (Score:3, Informative)
No. Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda. In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period. The states of Russia and China, which fit the model you describe, were never Communist. They were only "Communist"... ie, totalitarianism wrapped up with a prettier name.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
Not quite. As per the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the topic, Fascism typically engages in Corporatism, where the state and corporations work together to minimize the power of the working class. Thus, by that definition, the corporation and the state own your code.
Re:Gates' Incoherent Elaboration (Score:1, Informative)
Re:So what is he? (Score:4, Informative)
- Marx
A lovely bit of reasoning which can be used to extend the period of centrally-controlled everything for as long as the revolutionaries see fit. In the Communist states to date, this seems to have been a period that lasted decades, and thus far has only ended because folks found out just how bad central planning could screw up a state's economy (except in Cuba, where apparently the central authority still believes all the bullshit).
Re:Great quote from the article (Score:2, Informative)
Nope, it's about freedom, freedom only. Learn some GNU philosophy before you open your mouth.
Re:Just bits, huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that's not the law. The Fair Use doctrine (which is technically not a law, but a series of court precedents) allows for certain acceptable uses of copyrighted works. If I'm writing a review of a book, I can quote brief passages of that book. If I'm conducting a film class, I can use snippets of films to demonstrate my points. Derivitive works have certain rights... there's plenty more examples.
The original poster's point (as I understand it) was that in a DRM world, the content producer specifies something 'copies of this cannot be made. PERIOD.' This disregards the above mentioned situations with no regard to context (since computers cannot inherently understand context). While there are certainly more cases where it provents illegal use, it also prevents limited legal uses. It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Re:Open source is capitalist, DRM is a communist t (Score:2, Informative)
Not exactly. According to Marx, there would be no 'states' or governments. Communism would arrive when people had had enough of being exploited. They would spontaneously and without any leaders, overthrow their capitalist oppressors.
Of course, that is not how it worked under the Soviet Union. But Lenin justified it by saying having a state, like the USSR, was a temporary measure until they could establish a perfect communist world.
What you previously described is actually closer to Fascism. That's another word commonly misused by the general public to describe rascists and such.
Fascism was/is actually an economic theory whose chief proponent was Mussolini. Though it's come to be associated primarily with Hitler's National Socialists, it is actually primarily an economic theory.
-dj
Re:So what is he? (Score:5, Informative)
It has been demonstrated, in many different countries, that Capitalism and Totalitarianism/Fascism/Monarchies can go hand in hand.
Why then, is communism limited to only totalitarian regimes?
If the majority in a democracy vote for a communst-style economic plan, why is this less feasible than creating laws to respect capitalistic rights?
To go further: The USSR was not a communistic economy, it was a centrally-planned economy, under a totalitarian government.
The US, during WW2, was a centrally planned economy, under a democratic government.
I see no coupling of economic and political systems.
Re:Wanting to get paid for work you did (Score:3, Informative)
Try again. The original copyright terms in the United States were fourteen years, renewable once for an additional fourteen (but they had to be actively renewed).
They were not "death + x years".
See Creative Commons [creativecommons.org].
BILL GATES AND THE POLITICAL ARENA (Score:2, Informative)