Re: [OS:N:] DRM and Open Source

"M. Fioretti" wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 11:09:17 at 11:09:17AM -0400, Seth Johnson ([email protected]) wrote:
> 
> > Exclusive rights don't cover information.  Only the original way you express
> > it.  Letting people bottle up so-called "content" so it can't be parsed and
> > used in a flexible fashion eliminates the advantages we gain from exclusive
> > rights policy.
> >
> > We only give authors and inventors exclusive rights so that they will
> > provide us with information.  Giving them the power to control whether we
> > can parse "published" information is taking away fundamental rights to use
> > information freely.
> 
> Please elaborate on this. What do you mean by parsing? Copying as is
> and redistributing? Or something like "summarize, separate good from
> bad, rephrase only what is left in better language, correlate the
> concept here with those in other documents and draw some new
> conclusion"?


Huh?  Please use your head.  Parsing as in parsing.  As in using
information.  As in using your computer.

It also eliminates the ability to process said information.

Process as in process.  As in using a logic device to make use of
information.


> In the first case, please call it copy, not parsing. Not because it
> is necessarily bad, just to avoid confusion.


No.  Absolutely not.

Eliminating parsing is exactly what is wrong with "content control, and with
the false notion of exclusive rights embodied in the idiotic notion of
digital "rights managem ent."  Eliminating copying is bad enough all by
itself, but no way do you or anybody else get away with harping on
unauthorized redistribution as if we want to talk about what you want to
talk about.

It's my computer.  Cut it out.


> The second case is something that has always been done since the
> beginning of time, is perfectly legal now and, AFAIK, even DRM
> would just make it slower, purely manual instead of cut&paste, but not
> illegal. Parsing by itself is not under discussion, is it?


Yeah, right.

It's my computer.  Period.

See Feist Publications
(http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/feist.html#IIA), which
explicitly describes the purpose of copyright in a way that sets the free
use of information as having priority over rewarding the labor of authors:

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors,
but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Art. I, s 8, cl.
8. Accord, Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156, 95
S.Ct. 2040, 2044, 45 L.Ed.2d 84 (1975). To this end, copyright assures
authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to
build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. Harper &
Row, supra, 471 U.S., at 556-557, 105 S.Ct., at 2228- 2229. This principle,
known as the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy, applies to all
works of authorship.

[. . .] "sweat of the brow" courts [. . .] handed out proprietary interests
in facts and declared that authors are absolutely precluded from saving time
and effort by relying upon the facts contained in prior works. In truth,
"[i]t is just such wasted effort that the proscription against the copyright
of ideas and facts ... [is] designed to prevent." Rosemont Enterprises, Inc.
v. Random House, Inc., 366 F.2d 303, 310 (CA2 1966), cert. denied 385 U.S.
1009, 87 S.Ct. 714, 17 L.Ed.2d 546 (1967).


-- Seth Johnson


-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://www.boson2x.org/article.php3?id_article=21

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.


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