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  • From: "Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>
  • To: "Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts" <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Van Helsing and the Public Domain
  • Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 12:04:36 -0400 (EDT)

At issue is the phrase
"contribute their work to the PD"
(which is verbatim from the original post, btw)

This phrase implies
(1) that copyright is a natural right,
that works naturally are the property of
the Authors, and
(2) that it takes a "contribution"
to place the work in the public domain.

That is SO far from reality.

Intellectual ideas are naturally PUBLIC PROPERTY.
It takes a legal structure, such as Section 8
of the US Constitution, to take what naturally
occurs as public property and treat it as a
private monopoly.

When someone on this list speaks of the expiration
of this private monopoly as a "contribution" to the
Public Domain, it reflects just how effective the
Jack Valenti's of the world have been in changing
the world's perception of intellectual property
as being an author's natural right.

Several decades of Intellectual Property propaganda
have gone so far as to warp the speaking of open
content pundits.

intellectual entities are NOT naturally private property.
intellectual property is a legally created monopoly,
allowed by the Constitution only to the extent that
it serves the public good. At the end of copyright term,
the author does not contribute the work to the public domain.
Instead, the legally created monopoly expires because it
no longer serves the public good.

If open content is going to make any real progress,
it must first speak clearly to undo all the
damage done by IP holder's "Ministry of Dis-Information".

As long as Intellectual Property is spoken of as a natural right,
and as long as we keep using language that reinforces that,
then open content will always occur as a bunch of
wacked-out, fringe-element, bunch of loons.

We are what we speak.



Per I. Mathisen said:
> On Mon, 10 May 2004, Greg London wrote:
>> J.B. Nicholson-Owens said:
>> > And yet Disney refuses to contribute their work to the PD from which they
>> > continue to draw so much value.
>>
>> It's that sort of naive pseudo-argument that gives
>> Free/Libre/Open/Public groups the image of being
>> some sort of fringe-element community-property
>> bunch of loons.
>
> Desperately looking for a reason to rant? You deliberately misquote the
> previous poster to make him your strawman which you then tear down with
> rather harsh language.
>
> What he actually said was...
>
>> And yet Disney (and probably every other MPAA and RIAA client, if Disney
>> weren't the corporation to be so vocal about supporting the latest
>> copyright term extension) refuses to contribute their work to the PD
>> from which they continue to draw so much value.
>
> ...which suggests that it is about the refusing to contribute to PD by
> passing copyright term extensions, not what you made it out to be by
> misquoting. I think you owe him an apology.
>
> - Per
>
> _______________________________________________
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> cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
>
>


--
Draft the Gift Domain:
Put Free/Libre/Open/Public licensing
concepts directly into Copyright Law.
http://www.greglondon.com/dtgd/html/draftingthegiftdomain.html





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