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From code war to Cold War (BBC)From code war to Cold War (BBC)Posted Mar 9, 2004 13:04 UTC (Tue) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)Parent article: From code war to Cold War (BBC) There is a genuine public interest here, and a need to balance this against the private property rights inherent in the copyright. The public interest arises from the benefits of a competitive marketplace and the need for incentives to innovate. There is also the important issue of historical archiving of all significant cultural information, including software. Closed source software is inherently monopolistic, and network effects can make it exceptionally so, particularly when a closed source software product becomes an essential service. The monopoly problem can partly be met by requiring software funded by the taxpayer to be purchased on an open source basis. I think the need to incentivise innovation would be more than adequately met by balancing the inherent monopoly obtained by allowing the sale of closed-source software, by requiring escrow of source code of any product sold without full source access, and for this code to be released into the public domain after no more than 10 years or on the bankruptcy of the copyright holder if sooner. For an escrow system to work, the contractor undertaking to keep the escrow copy would need to be supplied with a full build environment such that use of this to replicate every marketed version of the binary product could be demonstrated.
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From code war to Cold War (BBC) Posted Mar 10, 2004 4:35 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] There is a genuine public interest here, and a need to balance this against the private property rights inherent in the copyright.First of all, what property rights? Despite the misleading term "Intellectual Property", ideas are not like property. They are not a commodity that someone can lose once they have it, and sharing them does not deprive the sharer of the original. Second, what balance? The idea of "balancing" the interests of the general public and those who desire copyrights, patents, or other controls over ideas is a fundamental misinterpretation of the justification for copyright. To quote Misinterpreting Copyright from the GNU project: The consequences of this alteration are far-reaching, because the great protection for the public in the copyright bargain -- the idea that copyright privileges can be justified only in the name of the readers, never in the name of the publishers -- is discarded by the "balance" interpretation. Since the interest of the publishers is regarded as an end in itself, it can justify copyright privileges; in other words, the "balance" concept says that privileges can be justified in the name of someone other than the public.In other words, the only valid reason to have copyrights and other idea control mechanisms is for the benefit of the general public, through the generation of more works for their use. If the general public wants to give up fewer or none of their rights over works and accept the possibility that fewer works will be created, that is their choice alone, and not the choice of prospective copyright holders. (Note that none of this is intended to advocate (what is currently) illegal file-sharing, just to say that if the general public wants it to be legal, it should be, period. That's the way government should work, although not the way it currently does.)
From code war to Cold War (BBC) Posted Mar 10, 2004 13:52 UTC (Wed) by imres (guest, #12) [Link] > In other words, the only valid reason to have copyrights and> other idea control mechanisms is for the benefit of the general > public, through the generation of more works for their use. If > the general public wants to give up fewer or none of their rights > over works and accept the possibility that fewer works will be > created, that is their choice alone, and not the choice of > prospective copyright holders. The safest way of guaranteeing the benefit of the general public, Unfortunately this point is being little addressed in the current I would also like to add that I have my doubts about the escrow What is needed is a genuine wish to cooperate and to form a
From code war to Cold War (BBC) Posted Mar 11, 2004 0:44 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] I would also like to add that I have my doubts about the escrow schemes being proposed. If someone wants to hide his source code he can transform it into something only slightly more intelligible than binary code but which can be happily compiled by a compiler.Just include a "preferred form for modifications" requirement like the GPL's: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.This prohibits obfusticated source, unless that is the form used by the original authors.
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