[d@DCC] Anti-creator Greg Aharonian seeks the extreme: software only under patent, not copyright.

[Russell McOrmond]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Wallace J.McLean wrote:

> You think copyright lawyers do?

  Copyright lawyers are largely not dealing with as dangerous a form of
exclusive right.  Copyright only protects the expression of a work,
allowing for independent expression of the same ideas and facts.  Patents
grant a monopoly on the underlying methods or compositions of matter which
are themselves "ideas and facts".

  The radical extension of patent law from manipulations of nature to
mental manipulations (specifically excluded from patentability for good
reason) that just happen to be implemented in software is far worse than
nearly everything that can happen in copyright law.  In copyright law the
closest is the extension of copyright law to interfaces which are then
used to create monopolies on compatible techniques to communicate,
something far away from anything the framers of copyright law could have
contemplated.


  Legal protection for DRM is simply the most insidious method to attempt
to extend copyright law to interfaces, and like software patents should
simply be eradicated.  While ensuring that DRM doesn't get legal
protection is one level of the battle, my hope is that adequately educated
government will support the public good and eradicate DRM entirely in the
long term through appropriate levels of regulation.

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Have you, your family, your friends (, your enemies) signed the
 Petition to the Canadian Parliament for Users' Rights in Copyright?
 http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/