[Upd-discuss] a longer term strategy for promoting the publicdomain?

[Becky Hogge]

I've heard both Larry Lessig and Brewster Kahle use the argument that
patents (on innovations) and copyrights (on artistic works) are similar
legal mechanisms which allow people a limited monopoly over their ideas
to give them an incentive to come up with them in the first place. This
leads on to the attractive argument that therefore, why are patent terms
14 years and copyright terms life plus 70?

So the patent/copyright similarity works well when we are discussing
over-extended copyright terms and trying to protect the public domain in
general.

However, in a his lecture in Edinburgh on Free Software, RMS stressed
the importance of keeping the ideas of patents and copyrights seperate
because of the impending vote on software patents at the European
Parliament. This is because the Free Software Foundation's GPL trumps
copyright with "copyleft", but is powerless against patent law because
of this idea of "technical innovation" the legislation attempts to
embody.

Can anyone tell me if I'm understanding things wrong? It looks like
we've got two pieces of legislation hurtling towards the EU - copyright
extension on the one hand and software patents on the other - where the
approach to the relationship between copyright and patent laws should
ideally be different in order to ensure effective communication of each
issue.

Again, new poster here, so if I've violated any etiquette, please let me
know.

Becky Hogge
www.machine-envy.com




On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 12:36, at wrote:
> For me it is a single issue. You can call me radical if you want. I have
> the "N(C)!" sign tatooed on my arm, and I wouldn't like to have to tatoo
> "N(P)!" and "N(TM)!" as well...

> On the other hand, I wouldn't be so sure that calling it "IP" biases on in
> 
> talking about the issue. When I lecture about it, I always oppose IP to IF
> 
> (Intellectual Freedom) and the bias works the other way round. But, of
> course, this might not work with conservative audiences.
> 
> Anki Toner (from Barcelona, Spain, new to the list)
> 
> En/Na Richard Stallman ha escrit:
> 
> >     Do you think that that talking about 'IP' inevitably biases one in
> >     talking about the issue.
> >
> > Talking about 'IP' naturally leads people to think that this is one
> > single unified issue.  For instance, you said "about the issue", which
> > indicates you are treating it as one unified issue, something it
> > makes sense to choose as a topic.
> >
> >      If so in what terms would you prefer the debate to be conducted?
> >
> > We should discuss copyrights separately, discuss patents separately,
> > discuss trademarks separately, and not be led into treating them as a
> > single issue.
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