Re: Copyright issues re Debian website

On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 10:58:17AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> I assure you that I can find an significant majority of absurdity
>> regardless of the jurisdiction.
> Laws are just the structures we put together so that we can live with each
> other. At least in a democracy. I'd imagine that someone who /really
> /thought that a /majority /were absurd might have difficulty living with
> others. That's why I made the spectrum disorder crack. But we are getting
> far from the mission of this list.

Yes, but most of us don't live in a democracy. The US for example is
republican (small 'r', not big 'R') form of government, where elected
officials are subject to legalized bribery in the from (for example)
campaign contributions from lobbyists from the Disney corporation to
make sure that Micky Mouse never falls into the Public Domain. And I
assure you, I find that *most* absurd; in fact, given the vast amount
of lobbying that have perpetrated laws like the DMCA on us, it's more
likely that not that laws regarding copyright, patents, and trade
secret are more absurd that we would like.

So to presumptively say that of *course* the legal forms of
reassigning copyright would make sense and not be absurd seems to be
hopelessly niave. It's safer to assume that anything involving
intellectual property does not conform to common sense.

- Ted