What the [U.S.] Constitution says is that copyright law and patent law are optional. They need not exist. It says that if they do exist, their purpose is to provide a public benefit -- to promote progress by providing artificial incentives.
They are not rights that their holders are entitled to; they are artificial privileges that we might, or might not, want to hand out to encourage people to do what we find useful.
It's a wise policy. Too bad Congress -- which has to carry it out on our behalf -- takes its orders from Hollywood and Microsoft instead of from us.
10 June 2006
RMS on "IP"
As you would expect, Richard Stallman has some wise words on "intellectual property" and the trap that these words represent. He also puts things in a useful historical context:
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