Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 23:01:15 -0600 From: "Victor R. Cardona" <vcardona@home.com> To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, "Victor R. Cardona" <vcardona@home.com> Subject: Re: Stallman stalls again Message-ID: <20010306230115.B25247@marx.marvic.chum> In-Reply-To: <20010306174618.N32515@lpt.ens.fr>; from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in on Tue, Mar 06, 2001 at 05:46:19PM %2B0100 References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010305114235.046da630@localhost> <20010305200017.D80474@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010305123951.04604b20@localhost> <20010305205030.G80474@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010305125259.00cfdae0@localhost> <20010305142108.A17269@marx.marvic.chum> <4.3.2.7.2.20010306011342.045fb360@localhost> <20010306081025.A22143@marx.marvic.chum> <4.3.2.7.2.20010306092612.00b79f00@localhost> <20010306174618.N32515@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Tue, Mar 06, 2001 at 05:46:19PM +0100, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> That's balls. I won't suggest you don't know what you're talking
> about, because you obviously do, it's just that you're willing to
> distort anything to suit your own hate-Richard-Stallman agenda.
>
> Richard Stallman woke up to all this in 1984 or so. The trends
> towards extending copyrights, patents, etc started much earlier -- I
> think by the middle of the 20th century copyright already lasted 50
> years, where it had started off as around 20. Today the upper limit is
> 95, and that will change before Mickey Mouse is due to come out of
> copyright again. The practice of companies purchasing copyrights from
> creators had been in existence for a long time. Patenting of ideas as
> opposed to inventions, in particular software patents, already existed
> in the US. I regard all of this as a severe distortion of the
> original ideas behind copyright/patent/any "intellectual property"
> protection. Stallman was not the cause of all this, but the
> consequence, and I wish there were more people sticking their necks
> out against it.
I couldn't agree more. Copyright protection was originally granted for
14 years, and was in certain circumstances extended for another 14. It
remained that way until the early 20th century when the length of time
was doubled. Since then, there has been a steady expansion of the length
of copyright protection. The 95 years mentioned above only applies to
software. Books are copyrighted for the life of the author plus 70
years.
Artists and scientists should be compensated for their work. There is no
question about that. The problem is that "intellectual property" laws
have been perverted by large corporations. Brett wants to believe that
there is a balance, but I don't see one.
- v
--
Victor R. Cardona
vcardona@home.com
"Behold the keyboard of Kahless, the greatest Klingon
code warrior that ever lived!"
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