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[Ben Sizer]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Ben Sizer wrote:
> >
> > Imagine if you were the single-person developer of a small application
> > that did something quite innovative, and charged a small fee for your
> > product. Now imagine you were practically forced to make your algorithm
> > obvious - a couple of months later, Microsoft bring out a freeware
> > version and destroy your business in an instant. Sure, they and others
> > can (and have) done that with closed-source products, but you increase
> > your chances of survival 10-fold if the key algorithms are not obvious.
>
> This point is fairly comprehensively answered in the following article:
>
> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/apple_eats_whiners.html

I don't believe so. That talks about copying of ideas, which is quite
distinct from copying of implementations. The distinction may be
meaningless in your typical desktop app where implementation is usually
obvious from the interface. However in more high-tech systems such as
multimedia or AI, the same is far from true.

> I read an article where various aging popular musicians were
> lobbying the British government to extend the period of copyright
> beyond 50 years because their first works would soon fall into the
> public domain and that they'd no longer earn royalties on those works.
> But in what percentage of the many other jobs that exist do you still
> get paid for a day at work that happened over 50 years ago?

However, in most of those jobs you get paid properly at the time. Aside
from the 1% of musicians who are pop stars, musicians generally do not.
I'm not saying I agree with extending the copyright period, however I
do think you can't just compare it to 'a day at work'. It's a totally
different set of circumstances which requires a different set of rules
to both encourage artists to continue creating while benefitting
society in the long run too.

-- 
Ben Sizer