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

[David Basskin]

"Our" goals? Sorry, I must have been out of the room when the Kool-Aid 
was being served.

What a startling exercise in thought-policing your glossary is! 
Songwriters and music publishers who depend on copyright to protect 
their right to control the use of their works, and to be compensated 
for such use, would find your point of view absurd and offensive ... 
but at least we don't try to say that you shouldn't hold such thoughts.

Yes, I'm aware that your interests tend more towards software than 
music, but the world is full of cheapjacks who believe that they 
shouldn't have to pay for the use of music. "You want to get paid? Why, 
I'm promoting you!" is the most common justification for such theft, 
but any excuse in a storm will do - particularly when it comes robed in 
the ephemera of academic discourse. You may be talking about software, 
but the "music wants to be free" crowd is just as happy to find what 
they're happy to hold out as justification for their mendicatory 
impulses in anti-copyright viewpoints such as yours.

Advocate, if it pleases you, for uncompensated authorship on behalf of 
those care to work gratis. But give some thought to the fact that views 
of creators (ooh! I've offended you! "Authors", then.) who face the 
challenge of the empty page with the expectation of being able to earn 
their living thereby are every bit as legitimate as your own.



On Aug 21, 2004, at 12:49 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

> Let's please avoid using the term "protection" to describe what
> copyrights or patents do.  The term has a bias that works against our
> goals.  See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
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