Shoutout to Colin

[John Dixon]

Richard...

You are forgiven for feeling a bit 'miffed' this morning..:-) but, I think that we should leave this one alone as I think that you are just about to open a can of 'bad feeling'... 

I agree with you, but only to a very limited extent, that intellectual property should be protected... however, I disagree strongly with your view that not maintaining the protection of intellectual property would remove the motivation for creation... but I am going to stop right here as I would begin to 'rant' ...:-)

Dixie

> Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 10:29:59 -0800
> From: ambassador at fourthworld.com
> To: use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Subject: Re: Shoutout to Colin
> 
> Robert Sneidar wrote:
> 
>  > There ought to be some kind of clause in copyrights where if a
>  > producer who is not the author or developer of something sits
>  > on it and does not produce a product from it within a certain
>  > time frame, say 5 years, the author has the right to reproduce
>  > it themselves.
> 
> While I can appreciate the sentiment, I have to say I would disagree 
> with this in practice.
> 
> The most important element of intellectual property is the international 
> respect for the act of creation, the recognition that the creator of a 
> work has complete say over how it's distributed from the very moment of 
> creation through a period of at least several decades afterward.
> 
> This is essential to maintain the motivation for creation.  After all, 
> if there's no motivation to create, there's nothing to argue about 
> distribution over, since the work would never have existed to begin with.
> 
> For this reason I would tread with great caution into any area of 
> copyright law which might in any way inhibit the rights of creators.
> 
> Any creator can choose any terms they like for anything they create, no 
> matter how unreasonable they may seem.  If I write a trivial software 
> product and demand $500,000 for it, that's fully my right - and yours to 
> ignore and just go build your own.
> 
> And if I write a novel and choose to cease publication after a certain 
> number of years, or to never publish it at all, that's also my right. 
> And you still always retain the right to write your own novel as an 
> alternative to my seeming unreasonableness.
> 
> The remedy for what we might see as abuses is up to us as consumers.  If 
> a company like Adobe puts out great products like GoLive and LiveMotion, 
> and later abandons them and locks them away, we've come to learn what 
> sort of company they are and can make different choices going forward.
> 
> No matter what else we might consider, the rights of a creator are 
> paramount, since without them we risk having no creations at all.
> 
> 
> Forgive me if I sound pedantic this morning, but I've been reading some 
> arguments in the FOSS world and there's just a bit too much "gimme gimme 
> gimme!" going on in some circles for my temperament, too much emphasis 
> on what some users feel they should be able to demand from creators but 
> not enough about reciprocal considerations.
> 
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World
>   LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
>   Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
>   Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
> 
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