RMS: «The EFF is fighting an attempt to twist copyright law to give the software developer total power over execution of the program. Victory in this case will not eliminate the practice of restricting how users run proprietary programs. It will only limit the developers to using contracts as the means. This will not make users free. If you want freedom, you must reject proprietary software and use free software. [...] The EFF ought to stop using that propaganda term, and teach other people to reject it too.»
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motters
16 years 21 weeks 6 days 16 hours ago
This sounds bad
Ok, this sounds bad, but what's being referred to specifically? The Pro-IP act, or something else? Does it mean that copyright can be enforced without a licence?
crimperman
16 years 21 weeks 3 days 15 hours ago
licencing has nothing to do with copyright
This is Stallman's point. Copyright is to do with ownership of the code/work itself, the licence is to do with the use (by others) of the complied binary and/or the code. The first is enshrined in law the second is a legal agreement which has to be agreed to by both parties.
I'm with RMS of this one. By utilising the term "intellectual property", the EFF are supporting the idea that such a thing exists. It doesn't and there is no definition of what can be classified as "IP". For this reason many people refer to it a "Imaginary Property".
At best it seems to be something between copyright, patents and the actual content itself but generally it means whatever the person (or company) using the term wants it to mean.
kiba
16 years 21 weeks 2 days 33 min ago
IP is not what you think it mean.
In actuality, "IP" laws are gross violations of natural property rights. They are government granted monopolies. "IP" is the term used to mask the true nature of these laws. They have nothing to do with protecting property rights.
Imaginary property would be an improper term because it implicate idea ownership are nonexistent, which is not. Instead, I prefer the term intellectual monopoly because these laws are referred as monopolies by the founding fathers and the fact that they "protect" ideas.
Don't be fooled by monopolists who masquerader themselves as promoters of property rights or the free market. They're not.
After all, monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.
-----Signature----
*"Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely"-- http://againstmonopoly.org
crimperman
16 years 21 weeks 1 day 15 hours ago
The point is nobody knows what it means
That's the problem. Companies that use this term do so in a variety of contexts and situations to refer to a host of different things.
Semantics aside I think we are in agreement about the fact that for the EFF to use the term Intellectual Property just reinforces the apparent existence of a non-existent thing.
BTW in my country there were no "founding fathers", just a series of invading hoardes. We have no IP laws. We have copyright law and we have patents, IP is this country is _entirely_ imaginary. AFAIK there are no specific IP laws in your country either, the ones like the DMCA refer to copyright not IP per se. I am prepared to be corrected on that though as I am not a US legal expert.
kiba
16 years 21 weeks 3 hours 41 min ago
We don't need any sort of
We don't need any sort of specific "IP" law to cover the ownership of ideas. The laws that allow the ownership of lands, cars, computers, etc will do enough.
-----Signature----
*"Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely"-- http://againstmonopoly.org
akf
16 years 21 weeks 6 days 13 hours ago
Link
The link on RMS' site seems to be broken.
Here is the (hopefully) right link:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/do-you-own-your-software-wow-glider...
Balzac
16 years 21 weeks 4 days 2 hours ago
I think it's bad to say "Intellectual Property".
The guys at EFF should read George Lakoff's book on framing issues. If you use the language your opposition invents to obfuscate the issues, you're doing their work for them. RMS is right about this.