| | In post 7, Shayne Wissler wrote: "Adam I think your argument is confused. UNIX may be "out of the bag", but a software company in principle ought to be able to copyright ... "open source" movements whose sole existence is made possible by cloning ... companies should have retained rights such that no cloning would have been possible."
This is all very complicated on many levels. A long time ago, I learned in a Basic Principles of Objectivism lecture that any discussion eventually comes down to metaphysics. So, let's start there. I have a sandwich here now. I am eating it. If you take it from me, then I cannot have it. On the other hand, a computer program can be replicated.
A book can also be copied. However, the copiablitiy of a book is separable from its existence. Copyability is inherent in the essential nature of software. That term, "software" must include both "code" and "data." There is no essential difference between them.
You and are I reading and posting to two different "copies" of SOLO. We do click on the IP address or URL, but we also have instantiations of code on our own machines. SOLO is not a place or a thing or a person. SOLO is a set of processes which by their nature coexist with other processes that are in all ways undifferentiable except for locale: you have yours and I have mine. Neither of us can prevent the other from enjoying the benefit. And in fact, differentiations are possible -- and not clearly important. Suppose you are running Netscape and I have Internet Explorer. We have two different presentations of the same thing. Exclusivity of use is impossible to argue.
However, exclusivity is the sine qua non of property. Rights associated with property derive from the fact that two people cannot occupy the same place at the same time. In essence, all property rights derive from considerations of real estate.
However, real estate law was inadequate for the industrial revolution. Capitalism was not "non-manorial farming." It was a new way of creating wealth. We do have titles for our cars, mostly because the state taxes them. Do you have any other titles besides your home and car? Did you get a title with your computer? We have elaborate mechanisms for title searches when land is sold, but no such thing for machinery. Laws for land do not apply to the nature of machinery. You can take a machine from one place to another and create wealth with it wherever it is. Land stays. So, capitalism required new understandings of ownership, rights, and property apart from medieval or primitive concepts about land and rights to it. If someone took your computer (or your car), the police would not ask you if you had title to it. However, if you came home and found someone farming your land, title would be the totality of the problem.
In fact, we say that your "title" to the computer or car defines your ownership and defines the fact of theft. My point is that your title is not registered with the government, as it is with land. With land, if you do not register your title you are exposed to serious risk.
When we translated real estate law to industrial society, failures happened. We have copyrights and patents that are impossible to define unambiguously. Copyrights and patents were not defined from metaphysical principles as applied to commercial societies based on individual rights for the protections of which governments are established. Instead, kings granted patents and copyrights to people who paid for them. And here we are, confused about software.
It is 1885. You are walking down a country lane and you hear an odd mechanical sound and over the hill comes Karl Benz. Wow! A horseless carriage. Of course, you have seen railroad trains. You have seen windmills and sailing ships and steam ships. As interesting as this contraption is, it is obviously a compact machine of some sort. "Hmmmm....." you say. "I think I can build something like that." However, you cannot do that. The government has granted a patent to Karl Benz. Fortunately, the local government does not extend to America. After gaining an American patent, Samuel Morse went to the U.K. to sue for a patent there. He lost. The telegraph was considered "prior art" there. Nicola Tesla sued Guglielmo Marconi. Tesla never built a broadcast radio for carrying voice transmissions, but he did broadcast oscillating magnetic waves. The point of those examples is that these problems in copyrights and patents come from attempting to understand capitalism in feudalist terms.
By extension, cybernetics is different from machinery. Attempting to fit software to the procrustean bed of industrial law will only make everyone suffer.
Objectivism teaches that there can be no contradictions between metaphysics and commercial law. If contradictions seem to exist, check your premises. One of them, at least, will be wrong.
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