Re: [OS:N:] IP - Was: Questionaire about ...

"[email protected]" wrote:

>>
You mentioned law, indirectly, Les, when you mentioned IP rights.
<<

To be perfectly frank, I'm not particularly concerned with law, I'm
concerned with ethics. Animals don't have those, either. What animals do or
do not do is completely irrelevant. It's the fact that humans have evolved
civil society, technology, etc. that has made abstractions like law and
ethics necessary. I find that as long as I am guided by my ethical
gyroscope, it keeps me well within the bounds of the law.

The term "intellectual property" is actually a fairly recent fashion. The
underlying notions have existed for hundreds of years, under a variety of
labels such as copyright, registered design, patent, and so on. It's not a
new thing, enacted at the behest of mega-corporations - when we stopped
hunting mammoths and started printing books, it was pretty obvious to
anyone thinking ethically that the right of an author to payment for his
work needed protection.

So show me a species that has invented the printing press and *hasn't* come
up with the notion of copyright, and your argument might carry a little
weight.

If law is not in accord with ethics, the result is bad law. IP law seems -
at base - to be in accord with ethical principles, and regrettably
necessary in order to ensure that people are able to unethically profit
from other people's work. To be honest, I'm glad of it; I've had someone -
well, a corporation - try to rip off my work, once, and was happy that The
Law was on my side.

If someone takes my work for free and then resells it or otherwise reuses
it, they are, it seems to me, in breach of the ethical Principle of Human
Dignity, which would have us respect the autonomy and dignity of other
people.

 *********** We cannot simply use people as a means to our self-interested
                            ends. ************

(Was it Hegel or Kant who came up with that one, or someone else? I
forget).

And that is what you apparently want to do. Personally, I'd call it theft.

>>
Does the motivation for working determine what someone is? If somebody
worked for the mafia to put food on the table for his family, would that
make him any less of a criminal?
<<

No, and no. Committing a crime makes one a criminal. I understand the mafia
operates many legitimate businesses, and I have no reason to believe that
the employees of those businesses are anything other than decent,
law-abiding people who probably don't even know who who their employers
are.

>>
I believe that the current system does not respect the work and abiliies
of those who do not make it to the copyright or patent office first.
Their works and abilities are severely disrespected and restricted once
the person who makes it to the copyright or patent office first is given
his monopoly.
<<

It's called "competition". It exists in the animal world, so it must be
good, right? I'm glad we've got that settled.

Your understanding of copyright seems naive, though, on a couple of counts
- most importantly, once one person has written an article or book on some
topic, that in no way restricts anyone else from writing an article or book
on the same topic. Monopoly? Huh?

Enough of this silliness. I have work to do. I am - regrettably - both
ethically and legally unable to steal other people's work, so I have to do
my own. Woe is me. Life's a bitch, but I guess I'm a big enough boy to deal
with it.

No further correspondence, etc. I wonder what Hitler would say?

Best,

--- Les Bell, RHCE, CISSP
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]



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