[A2k] Re: Copyright Should Encourage Derivative Works

[Richard Stallman]

    Only if you regard the terms as exclusive and defining of individuals. A
    farmer has to eat. Does it make him less of a producer when he becomes a
    consumer? Of course not.

    At the same time, there are people that will only consume, lacking the
    impulse to create. "User" is still not a pejorative label - it is merely
    a description of activity.

Food gets produced and consumed, but not so works of authorship,
because using them does not consume them.

I see no problem with the term "user".  If you run a program or read a
book, calling you its "user" just states the fact.  But the term
"consumer" is different.  It frames the issue in economistic terms,
thus downplaying other issues.

The FSF urges software users to think of themselves as citizens
rather than as consumers.

    Yes. I agree with you. However, these rhetorical framings need to be
    acceptable to all

I don't think we ought to give the RIAA a veto over how we frame these
issues.  We may be compelled to coexist with them, but we do not have
to grant any legitimacy to their ideas.

    This is why I (and, I think, RMS, but I don't claim to speak for him)
    denounce the use of "intellectual property" as a term of art - by it's
    existence, it promotes the concept that creative works can be owned by
    an individual entity and inherently accedes to the maximalist view. So,
    you lose the argument before you start.

I agree with you, so you're right that this is one of my two
objections, when the term is applied to copyright law.  My other
objection is that the term encourages people to try to generalize
about a dozen different laws, whose similarities are only abstract,
and which in practice are different issues.