Free Information vs Information Protectionism

[Craig Brozefsky]

Paul Foley <mycroft@actrix.gen.nz> writes:

> It seems logical to me that we only implement laws that protect us
> from violence, theft and fraud; benefit to society be damned.
> Simply copying (as opposed to reimplementing) the work of another
> without permission is a form of theft.  Patents are a different
> thing altogether; the problem they're meant to solve can be better
> dealt with by contract.

What's remarkable about this thread, and the others like it, is that
there may be reams of rhetoric about the ethics of copying, the rights
of society to enforce law, the status of property, the relation of
intellectual property to more conventional properties, and systems of
morals and ethics, but in the end it all comes down to the same thing:
a theorizing circle-jerk that at it's core revolves around who can
repeat their position more times than the other.

-- 
Craig Brozefsky                             <craig@red-bean.com>
                                  http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
"Indifference is the dead weight of history." -- Antonio Gramsci