Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Erax:
I still see a problem with corporate-produced content which does not 'belong' to the people who did the real creative work, but I like your idea.

Yeah, that's another one I hadn't thought of. Perhaps we make that illegal. *Geo whips out his magic law making pen*

Corporations were not designed to produce knowledge anyway. They are designed to give the business owner some limited protection of his personal assets in case of a business failure. They are not supposed to function as virtual persons in every way, and allowing them to do so is dangerous for a lot of reasons.

So if a corporate employee produces some marketable information, ie software, the employee should retain the copyright. But some equitable arangment should be created which compensates the copropration. Since the work itself would not have been possible without the support the author received while creating the work. But the rights should be retain by the person or persons mostly responsible with the act of creation. For something like windows I guess that would be the team of writers involved in the process.

Originally posted by Erax:

Edit : Aaaron gives SE4 away for free, then makes you his partner and charges a subscription to access PBW.

Yeah, unfortunatly that's just not a realistic business model. Only a very small percentage of people who bought SE4 use PBW. Not enough to support Aaron, certainly not enough to support both of us.

[ July 16, 2003, 16:55: Message edited by: geoschmo ]