Verily I say unto thee, that The Lost Packet spake thusly:
> Phil Da Lick! wrote:
>> The Lost Packet wrote:
>>>>> So let me get this straight, the /inventor/ does not "own"
>>>>> his own idea?
>>>
>>> Not when he's technically employed by a university and inventing
>>> on /their/ time.
>>
>> Employed by a university? That's a novel interpretation of the
>> learning process.
>
> it's part of the student contract, and it's perfectly legal.
Well, in this corrupt society in which we live, /many/ things are
"legal", that doesn't make them all /right/.
Take software patents, for example, or that insidious "DMCA", which
prohibits people from merely examining the products they /buy/. Yes,
there are laws, then there is morality - the two are not necessarily
synonymous.
> If you're researching then your research belongs to the institution
I'm sure they claim as much, but if it should be "owned" by anyone at
all, then it should be the actual researcher, not a tax-funded
institution. Indeed the "rights" to that research should be "owned" by
all society (i.e. the taxpayers), whilst still recognising the work of
the researcher through attribution. Not that /money/ should need to be
the justification for such claims of "ownership" in the first place,
since knowledge should not be seen as any kind of exclusive property, it
is the sum of mankind's achievements.
> (which works for most students who don't have the financial backing
> to file patent applications).
I don't need a patent to motivate me to think or be creative.
I don't need the promise of exclusivity (legalised racketeering) to
encourage me to spend money on a business opportunity facilitated by
that creative thought.
I don't need to prohibit the dissemination of my published thoughts, to
prevent others from benefiting from them, even if they benefit more than
I do.
But apparently some people do ... or at least they /claim/ to "need"
those things.
The entire premise that this racketeering is somehow /necessary/ is
nothing but a fallacy, built upon something profoundly unethical which
somehow passed unchallenged into law - a self-fulfilling prophesy
justified by circular argument and immoral premises. Since this
racketeering is now the de facto condition, it is defended as necessary
to maintain the status quo, and some people blindly accept this circular
logic, when what they should be doing is challenging its morality.
> Your name still goes on the credit roll at the end.
That's very generous of them, I'm sure.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
14:41:50 up 60 days, 22:24, 4 users, load average: 0.04, 0.03, 0.01
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