[pp.int.general] Purpose of copyright

[Richard M. Stallman]

      If the US "copyright" model is the right one and the "author's rights" =
    -nevertheless, the UDHR standard- the wicked one, why do all these =
    things happen in USA?

Because the US government is the tool of big business.
It caved in completely around 1980 or so.

The ideals on which the US was based are very wise, but the US
government today is their worst enemy.  Sad to say, the European Union
is following the same path.  One indication of this is its tendency to
use the term "intellectual property".

It is biased: it suggests a bad basis for thinking about copyright
law, or whatever law one is talking about.  It is also confused: it
encourges people to treat copyright law, patent law, trademark law,
and other laws as a single issue, and that leads people to be "for
intellectual property" or "against intellectual property", which are
both simplistic.

I would therefore like to make a suggestion for Pirate Parties'
program:

To explicitly reject and denounce the term "intellectual property",
and propose to undo recent government reorganizations motivated by
that term that with the goal of grouping unrelated laws together
under that term, with a view towards discouraging the public confusion
that this grouping causes.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation
of these issues.