[free-sklyarov] Counter-Terminology

[Bob Smart]

On Monday 30 July 2001 08:52, you wrote:

> I really do not understand what is the difference between copy and other
> use
>
> If you think you have the right to restict copying then logically
> you have the right to apply many other kinds of restriction
> (long long list of what users of your property can think of)

Logically, perhaps--but historically, no.  There has traditionally been a 
distinction between copying and use, and now with DMCA that distinction has 
been erased.  That's a pretty major shift in approach, and it appears that AT 
BEST the shift was done without carefully thinking it through.  Upending 
well-established, longstanding legal tradition is not something to be 
undertaken on a whim and certainly not without careful analysis of the 
implications of the change--but that's exactly what has happened here.

And speaking of the consequences of tampering with longstanding historical 
tradition, I can't help noticing that the whole CONCEPT of "intellectual 
property" is, in the overall scale of history, quite a recent one.  For 
thousands of years, if you heard a song and then sang it yourself the next 
day, or if you heard a joke and then repeated it to someone else, you didn't 
owe anybody any payment for the material (maybe you had to buy dinner for the 
original performer, but there was no concept of "royalties" or "residuals" 
involved).  Great stories were told and retold by generations of bards, and 
that period of human history gave us the Golden Age classics of ancient 
Greece, Beowulf and Gilgamesh and the Mabinogion and the Song of 
Roland...some of the most magnificent art and music that has ever been 
produced, and a flowering of intellectual and creative effort that led 
DIRECTLY to the Renaissance and all the artistic and creative glory of the 
modern world.

Now that we have strict "intellectual property" regulations, we have...what?  
Baywatch?  Boy bands?  It's not at all clear to me that this modern 
innovation of "copyright" is at all beneficial or desirable, other than to 
parasites who think they're entitled to make a living by selling other 
people's work while reserving the greater share of the proceeds for 
themselves and only dribbling out the bare minimum to the people who actually 
wrote and painted and composed the material.

But hey, maybe that's just me and my personal inability to accept change.  
I'm still not quite ready to accept the Norman Invasion, either.

-- 

What I wrote above is hereby dedicated to the public domain and may be freely 
used, in whole or in part, with or without attribution.