Copyright [was Re: Python obfuscation]

[Mike Meyer]

"The Eternal Squire" <eternalsquire at comcast.net> writes:
>>Copyright is a gift granted by the government, not the natural state of
>>the world. When kings and emperors and presidents give commercial and
>>economic gifts, like monopolies, they rarely are for the benefit of the
>>majority.
> Last I knew, we had government by, for, and of the people.

As far as I know, only one country ever claimed to have that, so your
"we" only applies to citizens of that country, and not to everyone who
may be reading the letter - and the status of the person you quoted
but did not attribute is unclear.

Further, recent evidence is that this is no longer true in that
country, assuming it ever was.

>>and what
>>evidence there is suggests strongly that over-strong copyright laws (like
>>we have now) are bad for *everyone*, and that weaker copyright (as in the
>>early 20th century) would be better.
> And here is the crux of the debate.  If good, how strong should it be?
> Strong enough so that the creator pay his rent and his food and put his
> children through college.  No so strong that a new creator can't derive
> a worthwhile new work from the old.

Neither of your two stated goals are being met by the current
copyright system. One of them is simply absurd as stated - presumably
because your statement is incomplete. Copyright by itself does not pay
the rent, put food on the table or put people through college. It's
strong enough to be do that *if* the public values what you create
enough and *if* you work hard enough at marketing it and *if* you
produce enough. Those are some mighty big ifs.

On the other hand, we're liable to never see creative work derived
from any Disney property newer than the Mouse, with certain narrow
exceptions. It seems that the government "by, for and of the people"
has reliably extended the lifetime of copyrights - retroactively, even
- every time the Mouse is about to slip into the public domain. Maybe
"the people" you're talking about above are "the rich corporations
with the congresscritters in their pockets." But that's hardly "the
majority".

>> It churns my stomach to see
>>thieves and con artists like the RIAA trying to take the moral high ground
>>with talk of "copying is theft".
> Copying is theft of opportunity for the creator to be rewarded for his
> efforts.  The RIAA serves an important role in attempting to introduce
> this idea as part of our social norms and courtesies.

You apparently think that taking the opportunity for the creator to be
rewarded for their efforts is ok if you deride other people who do
that very thing. So what's the difference between the RIAA and a
pirate who publicly points out that what the RIAA is up to?

       <mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.