Oligarchy’s Gates
February 10th, 2005This post serves to memorialize a comment that I made, in the case that it disappears. The comment is still up here.
It was posted in the comments section of Joi Ito’s site, January 07, 2005, which was titled: “Bill Gates calls free culture advocates communists.”
27- Robert @ January 24, 2005 07:03 PM
I believe that the intent of the movement to reform copyright and patent law is to maintain a free society — one in which capitalism is possible. The irony of Bill Gates’ remarks in the interview Joi Ito cites is that Microsoft’s activities have stunted innovation through illegal monopoly.
Microsoft’s impetus has been towards control of markets, which is a perfectly predictable outcome, given the mandate of its constitutive documents. Nevertheless, Microsoft has more in common with Soviet-style ministries than Bill the propagandist would have us believe.
And this is why we have legislatures and courts: because some values cannot be represented fairly by truck in money alone.
One of those values is that for capitalism and “the useful arts” to flourish there must be some limit on their ownership. The progenitors of ideas must be rewarded, but so too must the benefit of their labor be dispersed to society as a whole.
It is precisely the belief of those who argue against irrational patent law and excessively lengthy copyrights that these benefits are not devolving to society in a reasonable period of time.
And, of course, there is nothing in the legal instantiation of property that forbids gifting, and volunteerism. The GPL and Creative Commons licenses are quite supportable legally, at least as supportable under international copyright law as any other.
I would argue that we are all the richer for the efforts of voluntary organizations; indeed, a good deal of liberty and civil society can be attributed to those who have given freely of their time, property — and ideas.