Re: [OS:N:] Who should control which IP, was: Questionaire about ...

On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 03:09:43 at 03:09:43AM -0400, [email protected] ([email protected]) wrote:
> I don't see that being the first one to register an idea or even the 
> first one to think of it, should give somebody "control." Nor am I 
> convinced that society gets a net benefit from such arrangements.

Society doesn't get a net benefit from monopolies able to control who
had the ideas, and wrestle them away from him.

Society does get a net benefit if those with talent in a certain field
are directly rewarded in a reasonable way: by that I mean able to make
ends meet and have a nice vacation once or two a year, not a 50 room
manor with pool and golf course. And if it is a real good and original
work, be it a novel which saves to one million people some hours of
boredom, a manual which makes them able to find a job in half the
time, or a working teletransport method which saves money and
pollution to everybody, yes, I'm damn convinced that they should have
enough control to be rewarded enough to live an hassless life.

When my kids were newborn they would scream for whole days. Except
when we put them on a rocking, battery powered, cradle. That day I was
seriously meaning to go back to the store and give them more money, or
to trace the inventor and send him a check. Really.

> 
> I find it interesting how you classify your power to control others 
> actions as a "freedom." Perhaps it depends upon your point of view. I 
> wonder, if someone wanted the power to control what you did, would you 
> champion that as a "freedom," too, with the same level of enthusiasm?

If it were the same kind of control which I find it right to exert on
others, of course. Are you serious about this? For that matter, I also
want the power (through the proper structures of course, not in a
vigilantes way) to control other peoples so they are punished if they
assault or rob me. And I find it just plain right that they are given
the same powers in the same way.

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it
Red Hat for low memory         http://www.rule-project.org/en/

Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to
topple his world.  To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims
rather than against them is to attain literacy.
       Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, Sep. 1984


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