Free software by getting rid of copyrights entirely. Just a thought.

[Leland Best]

Hi All,

A recent post by Dean Baker at The Center for Economics and Policy Research
(https://www.cepr.net/ ) has once again made me think that goals of the Free
Software movement in general, and the FSF specifically, might be better served
by fighting/lobbying/whatever for doing away with copyrights and patents
entirely (and replacing them with other mechanisms), rather than trying to work
within the existing system.

The post I'm referring to is:

https://www.cepr.net/quick-thoughts-on-ai-and-intellectual-property/

Admittedly, this post only directly addresses copyrights and "creative works"
but it _does_ tie in with the issue of "AI" systems plagiarizing people's work.
Since this has been discussed in various contexts on this list recently, I
thought I'd share the above post and see what thoughts people might have.

Just to be clear, within the existing system of copyrights, etc., The Copyleft
is absolutely brilliant (IMO).  But it seems to me that ever since the digital
revolution has made making copies of so many things virtually cost free (books,
music, movies/videos, software, and on and on), that the basic idea of the
copyright (and patents) is now something that is fundamentally flawed and needs
to go the way of the dinosaurs.  Just my $0.02.

Cheers
Leland
-- 
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Leland C. Best      | Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
lcbpublic@gmail.com | something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
                    | -- Isaac Asimov
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