Re: Some interesting economic facts

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 12:18 AM 4/22/98 -0400, mattd@shocking.com wrote:
 
>	I thought this group might find this interesting. The fact that our
>basic economic principles make the case against Microsoft having sole
>control and ownership of information. Non-disclosure agreements, patents,
>copyrights, if not completely removed(as a liberal reading of this might
>suggest), should be in fact limited severely. 
>	Matt Deatrick
>	Dept. Of Economics
>	CSU, Chico

You're describing a philosophy for which I've coined the term "Stallmanism" 
(after Richard Stallman): the notion that the entire concept of intellectual 
property is wrong and should be abolished.

I, personally, think that this is going too far. The Constitutional principle
that giving inventors and authors the exclusive right to creative work FOR A
LIMITED TIME will encourage creativity is sound and proven. The notion that one 
should be able to own raw information -- that is, that which is not the result of 
creativity -- is another matter. It's an extension that the Constitution does
not allow (though Congress, lobbied by database companies and sports leagues,
is trying to impose it anyway.) NDAs are yet another issue. NDAs are
specific performance contracts. It'd be a bad idea to eliminate them, as they
do serve useful purposes. But one might argue that their use for some specific
purposes should be declared illegal.

--Brett Glass