[lbo-talk] Dumb QOTD: What kind of labor produces intellectual property?

Tayssir John Gabbour tjg at pentaside.org
Sat Sep 3 20:07:02 PDT 2011


(Not that I support piracy without supporting producers' right to make a decent living. I've spent an alarming amount of my income on books, even though I know it's kind of a sucker's game.)

Tj

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 5:02 AM, Tayssir John Gabbour <tjg at pentaside.org> wrote:
> Yes, and most people don't realize how important piracy is to their
> lives. When the US was developing, it did the sensible thing and
> pirated whatever it could get its hands on. Refused to subject itself
> to copyright, until sufficiently powerful content interests developed.
> (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/business/new-economy-intellectual-property-debate-takes-page-19th-century-america.html)
>
> The tech helping power much of people's lives — Unix — benefitted from
> piracy too. There was a book of its sourcecode which spread through
> samizdat. And of course it's now popular because of a conspicuous lack
> of copyright. (Linux's license comes from an aggressively
> anti-copyright movement.)
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions'_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code)
>
> Were the most fundamental tech advances (like computing) developed
> through copyright? Or through massive government funding and support?
>
>
> All the best,
>  Tj
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 2:20 AM, michael perelman
> <michael.perelman3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Exactly.  In my book Steal this Idea, I emphasize how intellectual
>> property hinders both science & technical change.  Much of he cost
>> goes to litigation rather than rewarding creativity.
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 5:12 PM,  <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Really? I oppose both. For the same reason that Jonas Salk gave away the polio vaccine.
>



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