[PLUG-TALK] Software Patents
Jeme A Brelin
jeme at brelin.net
Mon Feb 14 10:12:31 UTC 2005
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Jeme A Brelin wrote:
>> Trade secret law is nothing more than the abuse of state power on
>> behalf of monied interests. There is no public benefit whatsoever.
>> Patent gives the public full disclosure in exchange for the restriction
>> of natural rights (free implementation of ideas). Trade secret has no
>> such barter. The rights of the people are restricted for the benefit of
>> a few.
>
> In plain english, I'd like to know why, if I know something, you have a
> "right" to the information.
I didn't write that I had any such right to your knowledge. That's pretty
absurd.
Trade secret law typically allows a company to sue those who disseminate
information that the company would prefer to be kept secret. Consider
DVDCCA v. Brunner et al. in California. This was a case the DVDCCA
brought against several people (most of them not California residents with
no significant business contact to California) who shared information
about the DVD CSS algorithm in articles on websites. The algorithm was
not patented because a patent would have required the organization to
disclose the algorithm to the public and the sham would have been unveiled
(the sham involved convincing folks that the thing actually controlled
access, which it does not). Instead, they claimed it was a trade secret
and tried to use the law to silence those who would share the information.
People's rights were impinged upon through force of law for the benefit of
a private company and the public got nothing in return. That's wrong to
my way of thinking.
I believe that if a person knows something, they should be free to share
that information with whomever they choose and the impact of that
knowledge on the profitability of a particular industry should have no
bearing whatsoever. In fact, I believe that sharing information is a
natural right of all people and exactly the freedom Jefferson intended to
be protected when he drafted the Amendment I.
[This gets to the crux of another issue I ignored in my longer message on
the Constitutional basis of copyright and patent law -- namely, that the
Bill of Rights were never properly treated as amendments to the
Constitution. Amendments change that which came before. Every amendment
after number 10 is handled that way. But the first ten amendments are
somehow weaker than the others in that they must be balanced against that
which is written in the main body of the Constitution instead of simply
rendering the prior null and void. For instance, I think a strong
argument could have been made that the first amendment makes the Copyright
Act unconstitutional. Of course, such a legal argument would be shot down
today not because it lacks merit as a legal argument, but because
tradition has sanctified the status quo.]
Leaving aside all discussion of rights and the law, I also believe that a
person has a moral and ethical obligation to share generally useful
information with mankind. All information is synthesis of input and
nearly all of the important input a person receives comes from other
people. In a sense, we all have a kind of "information debt" to the whole
of humanity which we can never adequately repay. The least we can do is
share our potentially unique synthesis with those who gave us everything
we ever learned.
> Why should you benefit from my time and effort to gain said knowledge?
I can't parse that sentence.
How would I benefit to gain it? Wouldn't I have to sacrifice to gain it?
There's a wrong word in there somewhere or you put them in the wrong
order.
J.
--
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Jeme A Brelin
jeme at brelin.net
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[cc] counter-copyright
http://www.openlaw.org
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