Comment Mis-aimed Crtique (Score 2) 393
If this is intended to be a critique of intellectual property, it is severely misaimed. While this is an interesting piece, it is really only making the case for how things already are.
The article is appropriately titled though, "Why ideas should not be property" - while "ideas" themselves are not considered property under current intellectual property laws.
IP laws such as copyright and patent do not attempt to reserve the "idea" to the creator, rather they reserve the right for the creator to have certain controls over physical manifestations of that idea (in the case of copyright, read duplication, distribution, derivative works) for some time period. IP applies only to the expression of an idea, not to the idea itself, or any facts underlying that idea.
We have intellectual property for reasons that are both related to the notion that someone has a certain ownership of something they create (philosophically this has a number of bases - including, but not exclusively Locke) as well as for utilitarian purposes (the US Constitution gives the Congress the right to make IP laws to "further the progress of the arts and sciences"). That is, the people who agreed upon those laws felt that for any number of reasons, including but not limited to profit - people would be more inclined to create intellectual property if there were protections provided for their rights.
IP laws do not attempt to control the flow of ideas - any law that tried to do such a thing would be foolish - but they do reserve rights concerning the manifestations of those ideas to the creators.
People here on /. seem to have a misaimed hatred for intellectual property. There is a big difference between the notion of intellectual property - and how particular IP laws are currently implemented. The GPL requires and supports the notion of intellectual property as much as any traditional copyright does - it's key difference lies only in how it views the distribution of the creators rights that come along with that intellectual property. Free software requires the notion of intellectual property.
The article is appropriately titled though, "Why ideas should not be property" - while "ideas" themselves are not considered property under current intellectual property laws.
IP laws such as copyright and patent do not attempt to reserve the "idea" to the creator, rather they reserve the right for the creator to have certain controls over physical manifestations of that idea (in the case of copyright, read duplication, distribution, derivative works) for some time period. IP applies only to the expression of an idea, not to the idea itself, or any facts underlying that idea.
We have intellectual property for reasons that are both related to the notion that someone has a certain ownership of something they create (philosophically this has a number of bases - including, but not exclusively Locke) as well as for utilitarian purposes (the US Constitution gives the Congress the right to make IP laws to "further the progress of the arts and sciences"). That is, the people who agreed upon those laws felt that for any number of reasons, including but not limited to profit - people would be more inclined to create intellectual property if there were protections provided for their rights.
IP laws do not attempt to control the flow of ideas - any law that tried to do such a thing would be foolish - but they do reserve rights concerning the manifestations of those ideas to the creators.
People here on
