That is a great analysis of the problem. What we need now is a solution. I
hope you or someone can come up with one soon.
Jim Johnston
Teacher
Mac Smacker
Newton User
> From: Michael_Manthey@magicvillage.de (Michael Manthey)
> Reply-To: newtontalk@planetnewton.com
> Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:29:27 +0200
> To: newtontalk@planetnewton.com
> Subject: NTLK Software Licences
>
> I know the subject has been thouroughly discussed on this forum before,
> and I appreciate Ed's and Frank's opinions. Behind the debate, I see a
> more fundamental question, though, one concerning the future development
> of our legal systems and of our societies.
> We probably all of us agree that we are dealing with an issue of ownership
> (intellectual property) and that there is the additional question, how the
> interests of the purchaser of a product relate to the original owner's
> interests. What makes this so complicated is the fact that a purchaser
> only buys a license, not the original software as such.
> If you buy a book, to use an analogy, you acquire a product that you will
> not gain intellectual property of through the purchase; it rather is a
> copy of the original idea as put down by the author. The original
> manuscript may have been published in thousands or millions of copies, all
> of which will be sold. The right of ownership remains with the publisher
> or the author and the revenue from marketing the book will go to both or
> either one of them based on a contract which specifies their respective
> shares. Whoever buys a copy can do with it, whatever he likes, except for
> republishing it or trying to sell it as his or her intellectual property.
> I.e., you cannot start the cycle of publication afresh. Otherwise you are
> free to do with the book as you like: put it on a shelf, read it now or in
> ten years, give it away to a friend, give it away as a present, copy it
> for your private use, burn it, distort it, analyze it, quote it and so on.
> Interestingly enough, you don't buy the book in a sealed wrapper
> containing a legal agreement on what your rights are. The nature of
> contracts that demand your acceptance prior to your even being able to
> read them is highly problematic. A contract in principle is an agreement
> that can be altered by mutual consent and what is missing here is the
> possibility of knowing about the clauses of the agreement in advance.
> Another issue is that the same type of contract is offered not just to you
> but to every potential customer. Contracts ot this nature underlie special
> legal norms at least in Germany (I know next to nothing about jurisdiction
> in England or the States, whereas the differences should not be so great
> in Europe, as there is a common source to all continental legal systems).
> Even if you lost your book and the finder was unable to restore it to its
> rightful owner, he would have the same right to do with that copy what you
> did as the original owner. Or if you bought a legal compendium, no one
> would object to its being used by several attorneys in the same office.
> A problem with software is, however, that it is also a complementary good
> (this is an economic definition). The use of software is dependent on the
> use of hardware. (Analogies are gas and cars, or tobacco and pipe.) In
> addition, although software is an intellectual product in one repect, it
> is also an industrial one with respect to its use. Now, how do you define
> the interdependence and mutual relationship of the software product and
> the hardware platform?
> What happens, if as the producer of software you push this too far in the
> direction of your own economic interests, we can all see now in the legal
> proceedings and jurisdiction against Microsoft. Microsoft is not the only
> culprit, to be sure, they are simply the most successful one. (And guess,
> why all major software companies want you so much to be connected
> permanently to the web and download your software on demand? That would be
> the same as never giving you a physical copy of a book but rather charging
> you whenever you read a single page.)
> I personally favour the open source approach and am very much in favour of
> a concept, which in combination gives the software author (or publisher)
> his due reward in the form of revenue per copy per purchaser (the same as
> with the traditional author of a book).
> Thus, if a person or company bought a license of an office-application,
> they should have the right to use it on every hardware-platform they own.
> They should not be able, however, to copy it for someone else to use it
> for his purposes.
> Heinrich Heine once said: "There is no property of ideas". Just imagine
> what will happen in the future - and is already happening right now, under
> our very eyes -, if portions and elements of software are protected and
> patented. In the long run this would turn out to be a hindrance to
> progress and development and would make us pay for everything we do on a
> computer, without ever giving us any right of ownership. I don't like this
> new form of economic slavery to a few large software companies. (And
> please bear in mind, that we are facing very much the same problem with
> regard to all those investigating our genetic code.) So: protect
> individual developers of software, but please bear in mind that legal
> norms apply to all alike, the big ones just as much as the
> one-person-enterprise.
> Forgive me for rambling on so long, but I am convincend that this is and
> will be one of the fundamental issues of the near future, with a direct
> and dramatic bearing on our personal freedom.
>
> Michael
>
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