Law

How does the DMCA apply to this?

3:38:25 PM #
categories: Law

The Architect

This started as an unreasonable discussion of copyright and its term.

After David Weinberger oddly echoed my comment on Sifry's post about what length would be appropriate, Dave Winer revealed that he's coming at this topic from a completely different philosophical perspective.

For crying out loud David, it's super simple. If I build a house I can live in it as long as I want. If I want to rent out rooms I can do that too, as long as I want.

The argument is about copyright on the surface, but underneath it's about property. Specifically, are thought and it's expressions property?

It might help to read this. In it, Tom Palmer explores the arguments for and against intellectual property rights, quoting, among others, Ayn Rand:

patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind.

With that, I think, given his analogy above, Dave will concur.

However, Rand further states

If [intellectual property] were held in perpetuity, it would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based: it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the unearned support of parasitism. It would become a cumulative lien on the production of unborn generations, which would immediately paralyze them.

Regardless of whether one agrees with intellectual property being held in perpetuity, it is not the perspective held by the Constitution.

Is the house that Dave built real property, or the expression of his creative mind? Or, both?

12:21:05 PM # Google It!
categories: Law