Shoutout to Colin

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Thu Jan 3 14:18:27 EST 2013


On 01/03/2013 08:45 PM, John Dixon wrote:
> 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.

Just my 5000 Euros worth (as I cannot contain myself for just 2 cents).

Surely this argument is NOT about intellectual property rights, but 
about the rights
of the most parasitic lots of all; the middle men . . .

------------------------------

I went to buy one of my sons a laptop 2 years ago; and aksed in the shop 
for one WITHOUT Windows
preinstalled, and was told that was not possible.

So, I walked to the back of the store and through the door into their 
backshop where a little
man was merrily installing OEM Windows on laptops; and, grabbing a bare 
laptop asked to buy it,
and after some hot words with the manager, managed to buy the thing, 
take it home and
install MINT Linux on it.

------------------------

Now my example is valid in that it refers not to the producers of the 
computer sitting on its distribution, but the parasitic middleman.

------------------------

Somewhere in the Attic of my house in Scotland there is a voyager CD of 
something to do with music by Mozart, and as
far as I remember, it was rather good stuff; and, luckily, in the attic 
there are 5 Macs that can cope with it - the best being
a 5200 something; and, down the stairs there are 3 iMacs slot-loading 
all running Mac OS 9. I hope to get over there in the Summer
and arrange for quite a bit of that stuff to be transported to Bulgaria 
(especially my dear BBC Master).

Now, I don't know who produced the Mozart CD, but I would be quite 
prepared to buy a version that functioned on a contemporary OS,
say Debian derivative linux!

I really wonder if the chap who wrote the software and had the idea 
realises that with a small amount of effort s/he could
re-jig the thing for the current market. However s/he doesn't stand a 
chance if some middle-man (publisher) is sitting on the
thing and won't let her/him do that.

>> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> use-livecode mailing list
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>   		 	   		
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode





More information about the use-livecode mailing list