Bill Gates is just like George Bush: they should not let the man talk. Mr. Gates seems to have learned how to shoot his mouth off from M$ CEO Steve Ballmer. First I’m a music thief, now I’m a communist. In a recent interview with c|net’s News.com Mr Gates had the following to say:
“No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”
He is referring to people, such as myself, who believe in Free Culture, Open Source, and Creative Commons. He is rather inacurrate in his statement that we are communists. I myself am far from a communist. My political stance is that of a libertarian; I believe first and foremost in individual liberties. And I believe that it is important to keep a careful balance between intellectual property rights and individual fair use rights. This is far from the standpoint of the communist nations that exist today. None of them are interested in consumer freedoms.
The problem with IP extremists like Mr. Gates is that they believe that every idea must be strictly controled. And in the digital world this kind of control becomes possible. But just because it is possible does not make it moral, ethical, or right. The founders of our nation were very careful when writing the original copyright and patent laws. They specifically designed them to contain the balance between intellectual property protections and fair use. This balance has slowly been eroded away by IP Extremists. I simply believe we should put that balance back in. I do not believe we should completely get rid of IP protections. These thoughts do not make me, or anyone who shares my opinions, a communist. And I think Thomas Jefferson would agree:
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
Funny, I don’t hear anyone calling Thomas Jefferson a communist…
Here’s a few of the things I think could be changed to return balance to intellectual property law.
- Require registration for copyright protection, just like the original copyright law did.
- Do not allow copyright terms to go any longer than the authors lifetime. Currently, copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. Copyright law was originally intended to encourage new works by offering a temporary monopoly on the author’s work to the author. A dead author no longer requires an incentive to create new works.
- Do away with software patents, or lower the time allowed for a software patent to 1-2 years. Current patents currently exist for 20 years. Computers and computer software changes far to quickly for this to be a reasonable time limit. Software changes quickly, with new innovations happening every couple of years. Software patents are dangerous to both proprietary and open source software.
These are just a few of the ideas that I agree with. They hardly sound like communist ideas. Mr Gates seems to show his lack of intelligence by calling people such as myself communists. How disappointing…
