[GRLUG] Itunes and France

[proclus at gnu-darwin.org]

On  2 Jul, David Pembrook wrote:
> But are you saying that a company does not have a right to make
> something and own it? I love open source and thats a choice for me and
> many others. But if I make something the world wants, do they have a
> right to it by demanding it from me? Are intelectual rights obsolete?

What do you mean by intellectual right?  Copyright, patent, trade
secret?  The answer is different for each case, and such rights are
legally established, but also limited so that the public benefits.

I make the point in my FOSS and activism post that freedom and openness
are increasingly the correct choice for our human endeavors, and
that FOSS developers have shown the way.  I would say that 'demanding'
is the wrong word, as it would tend to limit speech, and people have a
right to ask you to do what they think is right.  The decision is
yours whether you will follow the advice, but there are now arenas where
we will be asking with increasing vociferousness.  It is necessary.

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/


> Ron Lauzon wrote:
> 
>>Bob Kline wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>I think France has this basically right in principle. Knowingly or not, it is fighting for standards, and we mostly know how important those are, and
>>>what the PC world was like just 15 years, when almost everything was proprietary, and expensive.
>>>  
>>>    
>>>
>>Many groups are (finally!) discovering what many of us have known for a 
>>long time: Proprietary is bad for the consumer.
>>And they are discovering what "proprietary" really means.
>>
>>For example, the big push to use the Open Document Format instead of 
>>Microsoft Word.
>>
>>Back in the '80s, the saying was "No one ever got fired for going with 
>>IBM."  By the mid 1990s, that was no longer said.  Now the saying is "No 
>>one ever got fired for going with Microsoft" but that is now just 
>>starting to be false.
>>
>>  
>>
>>>The only way to beat all this is with standards.  You
>>>either have standards or you get monopolies.
>>>    
>>>
>>And companies (like Microsoft and Apple) who have business models based 
>>not on providing the best value, but rather on DRM and customer lock-in, 
>>want to either own these "standards" or cry foul when their proprietary 
>>standards become de facto standards and they are called to open them up.
>>
>>  
>>
> 
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