Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnRTroy" data-source="post: 5100750" data-attributes="member: 2732">You miss my point.  Some societies don't even have the concept of private property, and thus you can't steal land.  Gold as a standard of trade value wouldn't exist in some cultures, they might barter.  The concept of money is an artificial law, yet we have laws against counterfeiting, stealing, virtual transactions, etc.But the key point is, you are trying to argue (based not just on your immediate prior posts but other posts) that IP can't be compared to property because there's no physical objects involved, and I'm not certain that's the case.  The terminology "Intellectual Property" came about because most elements of society feel there is real value involved and it must be protected.  Despite people like Stallman saying that the term is bogus and should be rejected, I think it's an apt term (and Stallman is something of a radical--he LOVE to play word games and engage in memetic warfare).  The US has the NET act (NO ELECTRONIC THEFT), which technically doesn't deal with theft, but with copyright violation, yet congress considers it an apt term.    Well, turning it around, does making D&D, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and other books and items public domain assist the common good?  The implication is that entertainment = advancements of the science and arts.  And if what you say is true, if there's a huge commerce around these creations, they should be protected as well as any other industry.I mean, I can understand limits to exclusive rights to inventions that help society, like a new drug, you don't want unlimited patents on those.  And you don't want copyright law to be abused and applied to all ideas and prevent competition.  I also saw recently the documentary "Food, Inc.", and it talked about the patents on DNA, something I think goes too far.  (And especially blaming seed cleaners for violating something that can't be helped due to the nature of cross-pollination).  But over the last 100 years, large economic interests have sprung up, industries that have a lot of workers and a whole subset.  We never had audio/visual recordings during the constitutional days.  I don't believe many of these works going into the public domain is going to help our society, rather, I believe it would hurt it.  I think, for instance, the Disney company is a great caretaker of its creations and should remain so as long as the law allows.  I'm not sure the copyright extensions can just be attributed to the so called "Evil MAFFIA" (the term for RIAA/MPAA used).  I've seen a lot more, especially when the OGL is discussed.  I've seen dozens of posts saying copyright should be limited to something like 15-20 years, it's outdated, etc., people getting mad when WoTC chooses to sue pirates, etc.  Even if this thread one person talked about setting up "creative commons" for trademarks (something that is not possible), etc.  I don't really want to go into the whole IP thing since this was basically about Trademarks, and I'd like to stick to that.</blockquote>

Verification