Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!datlog!dlhpedg!cl
From: cl@datlog.co.uk (Charles Lambert)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Back to Intellectual Property (was: Re: Free Free Flow)
Message-ID: <826@dlhpedg.co.uk>
Date: 14 Jul 88 19:13:37 GMT
References: <9160@cisunx.UUCP> <1801@uhccux.UUCP> <807@netxcom.UUCP> <1804@looking.UUCP>  <1812@looking.UUCP>
Sender: news@dlhpedg.co.uk
Reply-To: cl@datlog.co.uk (Charles Lambert)
Organization: FSD@Data Logic Ltd, Queens House, Greenhill Way, Harrow, London.
Lines: 42

In article <1812@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>Actually, I view this as a more fundamental debate, namely the one about
>whether I.P. should exist, and how it should exist.

I agree.  And the amount of circular argument in this debate,  not to mention
the sheer impracticality of enforcing current legal ideas of software rights,
drives this contributor to conclude that we are fundamentally misguided in
our current view of intellectual property (IP).

Let me ask a naive question (not rhetorical,  I don't know the answer):
how does the right of patent differ from the right of copyright?

It seems to me that patent is far more appropriate to software than is
copyright,  because software is more machine than artistic conception.
Copyright seeks to protect the whole product,  whereas patent seeks to
protect the original inventions within a product.  Audi Motor Company
doesn't copyright a car,  it patents the steering geometry.  If you want
to use that geometry, they'll sell you a license that still allows you
to build an economic product around it.  If you build a production line
that turns out Audi clones they can't (can they?) sue you for the whole
thing,  just the bits they've established as definable, original invention.
I suspect they can't get you for building an engine of identical dimensions
because they don't own the patent on the Otto Cycle.

This seems to place value in the intellectual creation rather than in the
commercial manoeuvring that Brad (wrongly, I believe) drew into the debate.

Now...  I can't conclude this by carrying forward my opening remark (sign
of a wooly argument) because my idea of patent seems as difficult to
enforce as copyright presently is.  But, anyway...

>The answer to
>"is it ok to copy software" falls out of this, but it is at a different
>level.

To which BOB said something like "if it's illegal, it's not OK."  But that's
inverting the question, BOB.  The question was "is is *moral* to copy
software,"  and the law should embody morality, not dictate it.

------------
Charles Lambert