[cc-community] Benjamin Mako Hill on Creative Commons
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Tue Aug 2 15:50:34 EDT 2005
> Benjamin Mako Hill
> Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
> far as society is free to use the results. --RMS
This would be rhetoric that is not accurate to reality,
but rather forwards an idealogy for the way the speaker
wants things to be.
the point of copyright and patent law is to promote
progress in the arts and sciences. As soon as Poe wrote
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue", the idea of a murder
mystery as a genre was immediately available to other
writers. As soon as Bell patented the transistor,
the idea of solid state electronics was available
to inventors. Both are "social contributions" in the
benefit the grant people in their immediate application,
and in the new ideas and knowledge that the make
available. This quote is little more than redefining
"social contribution" to exclude types of contributions
that someone doesn't like.
All this talk of "ethics" and yet no acknowledgement
that a balanced patent and copyright system is just
as "ethical" as a team working in a FOSS project.
--
Bounty Hunters: Metaphors for Fair IP laws
http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/
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