From owner-freebsd-chat Thu May 24 5:58: 8 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0039137B422 for ; Thu, 24 May 2001 05:58:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 18429 invoked by uid 100); 24 May 2001 12:58:05 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15117.1373.65006.684938@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 07:58:05 -0500 To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Copyright law, again... In-Reply-To: References: <20010524111622.A52234@lpt.ens.fr> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Jamie Bowden 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. 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