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Copyright | 354 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Copyright
Authored by: soronlin on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 03:31 PM EST
It's different. No patent case that is being brought would work as a copyright
case, simply because the source code is in no way similar. The effect is the
same, but not the cause.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Copyright - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 05:03 PM EST
    • Copyright - Authored by: soronlin on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 05:39 PM EST
      • Copyright - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 06:04 PM EST
      • Copyright - Authored by: mbouckaert on Monday, November 26 2012 @ 02:31 PM EST
Copyright
Authored by: Tkilgore on Saturday, November 24 2012 @ 05:53 PM EST
> Excellent report, thanks Tkilgore.

And thank you for the nice words.

> About halfway thru I was going to just
skim the rest and come back later. Instead I did a search for the string
"copyright". It appears only once in the body of your report,
when Stallman points out that patents are different from copyright.
I'm a little dismayed that neither he, nor any of the other speakers
observed that software is already protected by copyright.

Stallman may have mentioned this, or maybe not. I don't have any recordings of
the talks, only hastily scribbled notes. The same may be true about some of the
other speakers, too. Someone may have brought this up, or maybe not.

But I do have two things to say about this.

First, the question of "double protection" of software has come up
before, too, and it is one of the standard arguments for saying that software is
a unique category. Perhaps Stallman should have brought it up, or if not him
then someone else.

Second, the conference was about patents, not about copyright. Stallman was
quite correct in saying that the two systems are quite different and should not
simply be lumped together under the heading of "intellectual
property." What he wanted to do at this conference was to get a point
across, within the time allotted to him, and most definitely he did. Would his
argument have been strengthened and would his point have been made even better
if he had mentioned "double protection"? Or would his point about
patents have been diluted and obscured by a detailed comparison of the
differences between patents and copyright? That is the question you are raising.
I do not know the answer.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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