[h2o-discuss] Open-code related essay, and other info. sources

["Robert S. Thau" <rst@ai.mit.edu>]

I'm kind of curious what people on this list think of Columbia law
prof Eben Moglen's recently posted (draft) essay, mildly entitled
"Anarchism Triumphant:  Free Software and the Death of Copyright" (on
the web at

  http://old.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

--- it is a draft, but the URL has been on Slashdot, so it's hardly
private).  I'm particularly curious about what people think of the
contention that Moglen makes early on that legal systems which subject
similar objects (bitstreams) to enormously different regulatory
regimes (copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, etc.) tend, over
time, to break down.  

The essay has a lot to say besides that, of course.  As someone who
wrote a lot of code for a free software project (Apache), I find
Moglen's take on the motiviations of contributors to those projects to
be at least as persuasive as, say, Eric Raymond's, particularly when
he's quoting Microsoft's Vinod Vallopillil on how he was personally
tempted, on brief exposure to free DHCPD source code, to start
extending it.  And Moglen also gets style points for making a physics
analogy to human behavior which doesn't slaughter the physics.

But, ironically, I'm not sure that I'm persuaded as much on the legal
points; it's not obvious to me, for instance, that copyright really
has "broken down" in the free software community --- the example, that
Moglen spends much of his essay on --- as opposed to going to, say, a
steady state in which free and properitary software coexist.  Just
look at all the arguments about licensing, many of which are, in fact,
directly about the right to make and maintain proprietary derivative
works.

In fact, some of the examples Moglen cites of "ownership free" IP in
software fields, other than, well, software point more to its
coexistence with more strongly protected IP than to anything "fading
away".  The Grateful Dead, for instance, have indeed been allowing
taping of their concerts for ages.  But only under some restrictions
that Moglen doesn't mention.   Distribution must be not for profit;
they've actually clamped down on web sites that were distributing
concert MP3s and selling advertising:

  http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/18/138256_F.shtml
  http://slashdot.org/articles/99/05/12/1353237.shtml

and when they were touring with Bob Dylan, recording during Dylan's
sets was prohibited --- which didn't stop people from doing it anyway,
but does limit their effectiveness as poster boys for IP anarchy.

BTW, as a possible assist to people who are interested in the open
source world, and looking for more info, here are some of the daily
and weekly headling services that I look at on a regular basis:

  http://slashdot.org 
    --- news of all sorts of interest to the hacker community.  Mostly
        pointers to press releases, announcements, and new stories in
        other publications, with *extensive* reader commentary.  Does
        open-source politics (e.g., licensing disputes), real-world
        politics (e.g., crypto and "child protective" legislation),
        entertainment, book reviews, interesting new science,
        write-ups of new toys (new disk drives, computer cases), etc.,
        etc., etc.

  http://freshmeat.net
    --- dozens of announcements of new software, or new versions of
        software, daily.  Also, occasionally, an editorial of some
        sort, on either technical or licensing issues of general
        relevance to the developer community.

  http://linuxtoday.com
    --- announcements of interest to developers of Linux-based systems
        in particular, mostly trade press articles and press releases
        for new hardware and software packages (including proprietary
        apps running on Linux).  Also, an occasional editorial.

  http://lwn.net
    --- a weekly, comprehensive summary of goings-on in the community.
        Daily updates at http://lwn.net/daily

Also, I can't help adding;

  http://userfriendly.org/static
    --- daily comic strip, which is kind of like what Dilbert would
        look like if it was set at a small ISP, and was still funny.  

Robert S. Thau
rst@alum.mit.edu