Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 09:16:21 +1000 (GMT+1000) From: Trent Waddington <s337240@student.uq.edu.au> To: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Stallman stalls again Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.30.0103070910310.18369-100000@student.uq.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <3AA56AC1.90486DEB@acuson.com>
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My point was the need to recognise the difference between the use of "Intellectual Property" in the literature and "Intellectual Property Law". The two are very different. The former being a philosophical argument that thoughts and ideas can be property, and the ramifications of that concept on society. The later being an attempt by publishers to gain rights over the work of artists, usually exclusive to the consumers of those works. The founding fathers of the US rejected the former. On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, David Johnson wrote: > Trent Waddington wrote: > > > > ok, you seem to just want to say "is not" in response to my quite valid > > claims, so I'll leave you now. I suggest that you read a little more > > about the ramifications of intellectual property, its distinction from > > intellectual property law and indeed copyright law. When you have a clear > > idea of how divergent intellectual property is from the purposes of > > copyright law, then perhaps we can have a civil conversation. > > I don't know what the specific legal definitions are, since I am not a > lawyer and cannot speak their obfuscated jargon. But the common thought > in the US at least is that copyright is one of the intellectual > properties, the others being patents, trademarks and trade secrets. That > might not be the origin of copyright, but that's how it viewed by the > common person. Looking over the old debates on copyright, I see that > they used the term "intellectual property" as well. > > One valid definition of property is that the owner gets to control > access to it. Thus a copyrighted work is property. "Intellectual" may be > the wrong adjective to use, but that's beside the point. > > It doesn't much matter to me if there are copyright laws or not. Both > Free/Open Software and proprietary/closed software can exist with or > without official government recognition. Indeed, through a quirk of > history, most proprietary software licenses are based on contract law > instead of copyright law. > > David > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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