Re: Intellectual property & copyright

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Leslie Bialler wrote:

> Patricia M Godfrey wrote:
>
> > Another man wrote to the Linux Journal,
> > maintaining that someday people will be as horrified at the idea of
> > intellectual property as we now are at the idea of slavery. (That seems
> > extreme to me.)
>
> Yes, quite so. To compare something lovingly created by the human mind with
> the baseness that allowed slavery to flourish is more than extreme. It is a
> demonstration of intellectual bankruptcy at best and sociopathology at
> worst.

Exactly. Go try and make a living in the arts (at almost _anything_ in the
arts), and see how incredibly hard it is, how few of the people who try are
able to pull this off, and how many of the ones who _do_ get by with a pretty
marginal income. (And, for example, you can dismiss the handful of superstar
actors from this calculation: 90 % of the Actor's Guild is unemployed for
*long* stretches of time, and in most years do not make their principal living
from acting.) Anyone who creates their own material -- written, sung,
performed or whatever -- and is able to derive a livelihood from it deserves
all the protection the law can give them, if you're asking me.

Jordan