Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 07:58:05 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Copyright law, again... Message-ID: <15117.1373.65006.684938@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10105240511440.83023-100000@moo.sysabend.org> References: <20010524111622.A52234@lpt.ens.fr> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10105240511440.83023-100000@moo.sysabend.org>
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Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> types: > On Thu, 24 May 2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > :So? So her essential point, which you will not understand since you > :refuse to read the thing except what I quote at you (and only > :selectively at that -- you ignored the next quote I supplied), is that > :the "general public" has not benefited for over 100 years from the > :modifications to copyright law. They do not sit at committees; their > :interests are not represented. It is a monopoly of content producers, > The point of copyright and patent law is not to benefit the general public > directly, but to spur art and science in the interest of long term > progress. Of course, the point of long term progress is to benefit the general public. The laws that she is indicting were - and are - being created by a process in which the general public has no say. While they technically have a say via their representatives in the government, those representatives generally just rubber-stamp proposals from the people providing them with campaign funds. The result is easy to predict, and has been repeated in a number of areas of law: those writing the laws rip off the public until some members of the public gets offended and start complaining. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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