Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)

Gerry Quinn wrote:

> In article <YDUQe.4688$R5.946@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> david.golden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
>> I wrote:
>> >> Free markets for things notionally property do...
>> >> If we don't consider software to be property in
>> >> the first place, that's irrelevant.
>>
>> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> > But we do, apart from the software communists.
>>
>> Actually, I think you might be persistently confusing
>> "collective ownership" [1] and "no ownership"
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
>> "Communism is a movement based on the principle of communal ownership
>> of all property."
>
> And when everyone owns something, nobody owns it.

Poppy***.

If we both jointly own something, it is "mine too". Thus comments about
being able to stroll across land without fear of no-trespassing signs
in the communist system, or the "the air belongs to us all" slogans of
some anti-pollution protesters.

But if neither of us can own fields ior fences, I'm perfectly free to
build a fence on a field we both have access to - and you're perfectly
free to try to tear it down or just hop over it. (Or, hey, just copy the
field and fence if you want, assuming it's possible, and then we'd
both have fields with fences)

So... if copyrights exist, and if it is valid to consider them
"property" (your use of the propaganda term "IP" throughout this thread
deliberately glosses over that far from settled debate) and if they
were administered communistically i.e. everyone was "joint owner" of
every copyright, everyone would have a potential say in whether or not
you could pass on information to someone else. If anyone objected to
the passing on of some information, you'd have to refrain from doing so
or come to some agreement with everyone, because everyone's consent
would be necessary.

(Like communism as a means for allocating real property, this is
susceptible to the corruptions of humanity- no doubt people wouldn't
want to be bothered with every little decision, and/or would require a
"trusted" higher authority to exist to decide disputes one way or
another or allocate share proportions, and would thus hand authority to
some subset of people considered to be representatives acting for the
good of "The People"- said subset would rapidly become an elite corrupt
with power, in this case immense and potentially near-invisible power,
seeing as they'd effectively control the flow of information)

If you still can't tell the difference between information freedom
and information communism/capitalism (which are much more like eachother
than like intellectual freedom), then that's your problem.





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