RE: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

Am Don, 2002-06-13 um 16.06 schrieb Patrik Stridvall:

> First of all it is important to note that copyright is not at all
> treated as normal property. There are such things as fair use
> and first sale that limits copyright. Futhermore copyright doesn't
> extend to fact, ideas, methods etc at all.

You are talking a lot about copyright, and seem to think you have
understood it into the last detail ... I would like to remind you that
copyright is vastly different among different countries.

Furthermore the copyright legislation(s) that are in force now have
their origin in a world without copy machines, CD burners, and the
internet. 

The big players have realized this and are trying to react by enforcing
a more restrictive copyright legislation. They are pursuing this in
their very own interest. Consumers will not benefit from these changes
in legislation at all; rather, they'll suffer substantial losses.

The consequence is hypocrisy. On the one hand, you still can't legally
play a DVD you have legally purchased on a Linux box. On the other hand
(at least here in Germany), the PC magazines, except for the 2 or 3 most
serious ones, come with headlines like "The best tools against copy
protection in the Internet" or "How you can copy every DVD" almost every
week - these headlines seem to boost their sales. Politicians and
businessmen lament about copyright violations in public. In private
life, I sometimes find it difficult to explain to people that I _don't_
want them to burn me that CD of theirs that I also like. Interestingly,
people who are grown up with free software often seem to have more
respect for proprietary licenses than Windows-only people, many of whom
are "warez" collectors - not only kids, also very serious family
fathers.

IMHO, this shows that the big players are moving in the wrong direction.
In a world with almost unlimited resources for information sharing, the
copyright legislation must be changed drastically to _allow_ that
sharing. Everything else is fighting against reality. If you so wish,
the GPL was a very early attempt to bend the existing copyright in a way
that acknowledges that. Perhaps not the ideal solution, but very modern
in asserting that "copyright" and "intellectual property" are
essentially terms of the past that provide benefit only to small group
of companies who are powerful enough to enforce these rights against
others.

Martin

** Personal opinion !! **

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Martin Wilck                Phone: +49 5251 8 15113
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