Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
Gwern Branwen wrote:
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In a message dated 1/21/2009 9:17:31 PM Pacific Standard Time, larsen.thomas.h@gmail.com writes:
What evidence do you have that an encyclopedia must be free?
Society has existed for a few thousand years without a free encyclopedia.
A statement trivially true. Society has also existed for a few thousand years without copyright, period.
No, not period. There is much more to be said on this subject.
For instance that simian society has always had ways of restricting access to intellectual property, not limited to intentional obfuscation, initiatory methods of knowledge access, and going all the way to the level of intentionally making the information transmitted faulty, just so you would have to make the leap of intellectual discovery as to what precise way the mechanism in question worked. Copyright *did* in fact enable people to spell out in full detail what they had discovered, because they had a reasonable expectation that even if they didn't only pass on their knowledge to their apprentices, somebody would protect their ability to milk it for all it was worth...
Not arguing the ethics at all, but look at what you are doing at the moment. Are you willing to give all you have ...
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen