Re: Intellectual property & copyright

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

> :
>
> > 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.)
> >
>

Leslie Bialler wrote

> > 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.
>

"J. R. Fox" wrote:


>
> 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.

>

Obviously I agree with Jordan. It would seem quite probable to me that the people
who advocate the notion that intellectual property should be there for the taking
are precisely the people who possess little if any creativity, but are cunning
enough to demand that those who are creative share the fruits of their creativity
with them and receive nothing in return. (By this logic you would expect a farmer
to, say, give you some of his peaches free because you deserve a peach today.) I
am obviously not such a person. I do not for one second suppose that _I_ here,
have the right to take _your_ creation there, and do with it what I wish.


--
Leslie Bialler, Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx
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