[Host's Note: This may be a little removed from "learning organizations"
but... I decided to distribute it anyway..]
> Finally, I question your statement that:
>
> >The present situation is that property rights in a text *for printing
> >or some extended physical form* reside in copyright law. The
> >marketplace principles embodied there is something like "without
> >protection of physical reproduction rights the author can't make
> >money in making (text) available and therefore won't unless these
> >rights are granted." There are other possible principles but this
> >one seems close enough to the marketplace formulation distinct, say,
> >from controlled, adminstered or bureacratic ones.
>
> Anyone whose livelihood depends on the production of "intellectual
> property" can tell you that copyright law is designed to protect property
> rights independent of the creator.
It's true. However, I have wondered about the effects it has
on creativity that more and more of our common cultural vocabulary
is (c) Time-Warner-Disney-Harper-CBS. I'm sure that this was an
effect of the system unforseen at the time of its creation. What might
be the effects if copyright protection could not be transferred
from the creator of the work?
> Authors, songwriters, filmakers, etc.
> are not "market makers" and those who are - that is, those whose
> livelihood depends on the buying and selling of copyright and copyrighted
> material - are interested not in the protection of the rights of creators,
> but in protection of the marketplace. Software, as you know, occupies a
> special place in the world of intellectual property because its value
> extends far beyond its reproduction. Your view that without compensation
> creators will not create has received stiff and eloquent opposition from
> Richard Stallman and others who maintain that software should be free and
> argue that people will create it whether it can be protected by copyright
> or not.
Well, I am sure I cannot be as eloquent as Richard Stallman, however
strongly I disagree with him. Without compensation, I don't believe
that creators will create what markets require -- they will create what
they need for their own work, their own communities, and their own
visions. That still leaves a large missing piece, IMHO, of the existing
software total. I'm sure that market opportunities would exist without
copyright protection, but would we be well served, on balance, by
making the people who serve those market take higher risks to do it? I
have not been convinced.
-- "Rachel Silber" <rachel@atlas.ontos.com>