Re: MF Call for topics

From: Valence (
Date: Thu Jul 29 2004 - 04:49:51 BST

  • Next message: Sam Norton: "MF Call for votes"

    Hey all,
    Last month Horse suggested the question, "How does the MoQ see the open
    source software movement?' In a broader context, the issue in this question
    seems to be how the MoQ evaluates legal controls over the flow of ideas. In
    particular, copyright and patent laws. The Constitution itself calls for a
    system of copyrights and patents to encourage innovation and artistic
    achievement. It is generally believed that authors and inventors should
    have exclusive rights to their creations for at least a limited period time
    because if imitators were able to saturate the market with royalty-free
    copies, the creator would never be able to recoup the investment he made in
    the creative process, much less profit off of it. However, it also
    generally believed that ideas and inventions should eventually come into the
    public domain because the cash-free flow of ideas also promotes innovation
    (it's easier to stand on the shoulders of giants when the giants aren't
    collecting a fee for it). In LILA, Pirsig explicitly states that ideas are
    the highest form of evolution there is and given that, social-level legal
    controls over their availability would seem to be immoral. However, if
    those legal controls encourage the creation of newer and higher quality
    ideas, they would seem to be moral (I note that Pirsig has his own works

    With that as a background, I'd like to re-propose Horse's inquiry as....

    How does the MoQ evaluate the idea of "intellectual property"?

    take care

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