I just read two fantastic pieces from the Free Software Foundation. The first, a guest post on TorrentFreak, addresses the question of Why the FSF cares about RIAA lawsuits and is a very insightful view into the dangers involved in the direction that copyright, patent and trademark laws seem to be headed. The second article, which was linked from the first, is an article by Richard M. Stallman on the term “intellectual property”, and the dangers of conflating copyrights, patents, trademarks and physical property. I find the article to be both interesting and insightful to a sufficient extent that I have decided to strike the term “intellectual property” from my lexicon. Henceforth, I will discuss such matters in the frame of what they are, not the frame that major rights holding organizations would like to phrase them in.
I feel that these articles are both extremely well written and make strong points on the nature of copyrights/patents/trademarks. I also feel that these articles give me a better vantage point from which to discuss the juxtaposition of copyrights and physical property rights. There are certainly some sharp people, doing some very important things at the FSF.
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