Sigh. I did not say anything that Richard Stallman accuses me of. Not one
thing. What's the point of talking about the creation and dissemination of
knowledge if we do not read carefully?
Joseph Esposito
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Stallman" <rms_at_gnu.org>
To: <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Cc: <espositoj_at_att.net>; <american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org>;
<cni-copyright_at_cni.org>; <digital-copyright_at_lists.umuc.edu>;
<garfield_at_dsl.cis.upenn.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior
Publication"
> > Well, isn't this the whole point? I mean the ENTIRE point? The issue
of
> > intellectual property (or knowledge or whatever you want to call it)
> > dissemination has only a teeny weeny bit to do with its creation and
a huge
> > amount with actually calling things to people's attention. This is
what
> > publishers do.
>
> Amazing--he seriously claims we should all give up our freedom to
> copy, merely to help publishers practice hype. You can tell business
> has too much power when they assert that they are entitled to special
> priviledge just so they can convince us to make them successful.
>
>
> By the way, it is erroneous as well as harmful to refer to books or
> journal articles as "intellectual property". That term properly
> refers to copyrights, patents, trademark rights, and various other
> artificial monopolies, not to the works, ideas, names, etc., that are
> the subject of these monopolies.
>
> However, using the term even for its proper meaning is harmful,
> because people should not lump copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.
> together. If you do that, you will be led to choose among simplistic
> overgeneralizations and will not be able to see the real issues raised
> by copyright law, or the (different) real issues raised by patent law,
> or the (comparatively minor) real issues raised by trademark law, etc.
> Any opinion about "intellectual property" is invariably foolish.
> We need to encourage people not to try to form such broad opinions.
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more
> explanation.
>
Received on Tue Sep 10 2002 - 05:41:57 BST