TBook

Richard Stallman An extract of the GNU philosophy. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html “The copyright system grew up with printing—a technology for mass production copying. Copyright fit in well with this technology because it restricted only the mass producers of copies. It did not take freedom away from readers of books. An ordinary reader, who did not own a […]

So far, A.I. has failed to deliver the practical proof. Instead, outside of its stated goal it has produced interesting technological and cultural by-products for fifty years, such as the programming language Lisp, or the GNU project that was initiated in the MIT artificial intelligence lab. (Florian Cramer) GNU laws for Free Softwares: 1. The […]

In a broad historical and cultural view, copyright is a recent and by no means universal concept. Copyright laws originated in Western society in the Eighteenth century. During the Renaissance, printers throughout Europe would reprint popular books without obtaining permissions or paying royalties and copyright was created as a way to regulate the printing industry. […]

A little reminder about legal ownerships and public domain: For music, rights become public domain: – 75 years after creators death. – 50 years after interpreter death. For books, a text becomes public domain – 70 years after writters death. – 70 years after the book/text is published. But in 1998, the legal term have […]

Those 2 movements are patented by Apple Macintosh Company. The related article. After DRM, we can threat another ambush for E-ink future devices (lybris, Reader). It seems the run for having patent on everything is getting further. 4 years ago, there was this dance affair, in Belgium, where 2 choregraphers sued each other for stealing […]

Letter to the Patent Office From Professor Donald Knuth February 1994 Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Box 4 Patent and Trademark Office Washington, DC 20231 Dear Commissioner: Along with many other computer scientists, I would like to ask you to reconsider the current policy of giving patents for computational processes. I find a considerable anxiety […]