Copyright ban isn't the answer
Submitted by libervisco on Fri, 2007-05-11 00:49.
copyright reform
"There's been an interesting series of articles on SlashDot between Karl Fogel, who's a copyright abolitionist, and Greg Bulmash, who suggests abolitionists shouldn't be using Open Source as an example given Open Source requires copyright in order to enforce the license agreements. Greg suggests that the goal should be reform, not abolishing.
As a very vocal proponent of FLOSS and other modern methods of production, distribution and funding who is involved in copyright reform, I agree with Greg. Abolishing copyright wouldn't accomplish our goals. What we need to do is look much more closely at the parameters and decide what would best protect the interests of both authors and the general public." Further on, Russell McOrmond asks some interesting questions and offers his perspective on them. -- Read more
I agree with Karl
I've read Karl's article at http://www.questioncopyright.org/copyright_and_open_source and I agree with him. He's arguing that copyright law could be abolished, but replaced with a different law to allow the freedom-preserving restrictions used in free software licences, but not allow people to restrict the freedom of others. I think that's a good argument. Greg's article also makes some other mistakes as pointed out by Karl, such as implying copyright is a natural right rather than an artificial privilege, and confusing it with some kind of "creditright".
Also, Karl isn't necessarily a copyright abolistionist. I follow his QuestionCopyright site quite closely, and most of what he writes is pointing and myths and problems with the current coyright system, rather than advocating any specific changes. I've seen a few things he's written on there where he suggests reforming copyright would be better than abolishing it altogether, but it's definitely true that a lot of what he writes is exploring the consequences of completely abolishing copyright, or at least reforming it very radically.