[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"

[Per von Zweigbergk]

11 jan 2009 kl. 20.12 skrev Richard M Stallman:

> Why do you think that it makes a difference what country their
> operations are in?  That suggests we are talking about very different
> conceptions.  The legal change I am thinking of would apply to
> _copies_ in the country that adopts the change.  Where the company is
> located would have no effect.


Say we have a software house in the United States - let's take  
Microsoft as an example, which produces proprietary software. For the  
sake of argument, let's say they have no business presence in Sweden  
at all, and employ no Swedish contractors or use no Swedish products  
in any way in their business. They have a potential customer in Sweden.

Sweden adopts a law like the one you suggest - all software sold in  
Sweden must have source code released five years after publication.

Now, Microsoft has two choices. Either they have their lawyers work  
out a deal to make the entire code base of their software Free, or  
they simply don't sell to that country and prohibit all their  
distributors to sell to that country.

This would include all their OEM partners who sell computers pre- 
loaded with Windows, in effect making it illegal to sell their  
computers pre-loaded with *any* proprietary software that is not  
cleared for source release in five years. This also includes machines  
that are preloaded with GNU bundled with proprietary hardware drivers  
or media codecs (DVD playing software, etc.). This also includes  
hardware (scanners, printers, network cards, wireless access points,  
or even USB memory sticks, etc) bundled with proprietary drivers or  
software, or in the case of something like a Wireless Access Point,  
running proprietary software, or a mixture of Free Software and  
proprietary software.

I'm suggesting that it is this impact of practically making it more  
difficult to sell and therefore to obtain proprietary software which  
may have unintended negative consequences on the rest of the economy.  
Sure, non-commercial users could legally make pirate copies, but  
commercial users don't have that option. Commercial users might try  
grey-importing software for their own usage from abroad, but that may  
open *them* up to liability in five years time depending on how the  
law is written.

I'm sure some software companies would make an effort to comply with  
Swedish law and thus pledge to release their source code after five  
years time. But I think it's unreasonable to think that such a small  
market for computer software that Sweden is, relative to the rest of  
the world. In addition, it might not even have the positive effect  
that the Free Software movement wants -- more released source code,  
since companies would likely avoid publishing software in that country  
altogether.

Making proprietary software more inaccessible might not be a bad thing  
for the Free Software movement, but it is not, and should not be a  
goal of the pirate movement.

As such, if one believes that the problem of Free Software being  
incorporated in proprietary software after five years is a problem -  
and I'm not at all convinced that is the case - a sliding copyright  
scale like the one described in Valentin's post, depending on  
voluntary release of copyright restrictions, would be a much better  
solution.
-- 
Per von Zweigbergk

VARNING: E-post till och från Sverige, eller som passerar servrar i  
Sverige, avlyssnas av Försvarets Radioanstalt, FRA.
WARNING: E-mail to and from Sweden, or via servers in Sweden, is  
intercepted by the Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment.