MESSAGE
| DATE | 2001-10-11 |
| FROM | Jon Bober
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] more PHP Copyright dribbl
|
On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 23:53:20 -0400
Brooklyn Linux Solutions CEO wrote:
>
>
>
> <>
>
>
> This is quite humerous for Eric Berg to tell David Sugar this, but
stepping
> back for a minute from my astounishment of this crass and incredibly
> ridicules statements....
[snip]
>
> <> sustain
> an information-based economy. Does my exchanging my thoughts (and,
granted
> my
> time to express them) fall into the same category, nullifying all
> copyrights to
> the written word?>>
>
> Make a point on the topic Eric....
>
> Ruben
> --
The answer to Eric Berg's question is yes.
The way I see things, copyrights to written word are as artificial as
copyrights to written software. In fact, when people complain about the
price of books, bookstores love to point out that the reason that prices
are so high is because of publishing costs. (The NYU bookstore distrites
a flyer to this purpose every time you buy a textbook.) That is, the
reason that people are willing to pay high prices for books is not that
they are difficult to produce, but that they are difficult to REproduce.
Essentially, that is also the reason that fair use has been fought against
so strongly recently. In the past, mass reproduction - i.e "mass
fairuse," was more difficult, and prohibitively expensive. No one ever
bothered to prevent someone from copying a few pages from the
encyclopaedia, or to prevent a teacher from showing a video to his class.
Now fair use is cheap. REproduction costs have fallen to virtually to
zero.
Ifproduction costs fall to zero, it is only logical that prices should
fall to zero. It the world of the written word, publishing costs are the
costs paid by the end user, not "license" costs. The other issue that
copyright addresses is to protect author's from having their work
"stolen," ie plagerized. This is a reasonable idea - people should not
claim that other work is their own. It is a noble purpose to enforce this
idea in software, but it cannot work in practice - it would require the
attaching of thousands of names to some software programs. Thus, it is
not enforced.
In the world of software, vendors suddenly decided "We can't charge for
reproduction costs anymore - instead lets just to lend them our ideas."
This is what paying for a Ebook is and this is what paying for a copy of
Windows is - it is not buying a thing, it is buying an idea. Telling us
not to communicate that idea to someone else is like telling us something
and then telling us to pretend to never have heard it.
When photocopying an Encyclopaedia in your local library, have you ever
been forced by the librarian to pay licensing costs to the publisher?
Why should not the same situation apply to digital-copying your
E-encyclopaedia?
jon bober.
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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