Automatic GPL termination

[Alexander Terekhov]

On 9/18/07, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting dlw (danw6144 at insightbb.com):
>
> > How can present day Free Software believers wallow in the tripe that
> > Moglen spews? His goal is the destruction of "intellectual property"
> > in commerce.
>
> Not to mention threatening our precious bodily fluids!

Well,

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/research-agenda.html

------
Free Software, Not the Other Thing

Eben Moglen*

I am a historian and a computer programmer, but primarily I am a
lawyer. My research, ongoing for a decade, follows a purely
experimental paradigm:

Try to create freedom by destroying illegitimate power sheltered
behind intellectual property law.

See what happens.

Early results are encouraging.

Current research proceeds by facilitating high-energy collisions
between widely-dispersed non-homogeneous randomly-motivated
incremental acts of individual creativity and large masses of
ill-gotten wealth. The primary collision domain is the thin layer of
executable software that enables production and distribution of all
zero marginal-cost goods (bitstreams) in a globally transformed
economy.[1] Ongoing complete destruction of monopoly control in this
layer triggers secondary fission in adjacent layers (music; video;
literary as well as scientific, technical and medical publishing;
higher education policy; criminal prosecution vel non of scientists
and scholars; etc.) Observation is complicated because collisions
occur in an atmosphere heavily contaminated by wide-scale political
bribery.[2] Despite observational difficulties, multiple independent
observers report increased likelihood of basic transformative shifts
in loci of political control and social authority. This phenomenon is
conventionally described in the relevant literature as
``revolution.''[3]

[...]

*   Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. Founding Director, Software
Freedom Law Center.

1  See Moglen, Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of
Copyright, First Monday (1999) (mult. repr.) (mult. trans.).

2  See Moglen, The Invisible Barbecue, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 945 (1997).

3  See Moglen, The DotCommunist Manifesto (2003). See and hear Moglen,
The DotCommunist Manifesto: How Culture Became Property and What We're
Going to Do About It (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
November 8, 2001). See also Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution
(New York, Prentice-Hall: 1952) (mult. repr.) (unfree); Barrington
Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Beacon Press: 1966)
(mult. repr.) (unfree); Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the
Communist Party, (English ed. London, 1888) (Engels ed.) (mult. repr.)
(mult. trans.).
-------

(Someone must tell Eben that he got a broken link to Manifesto of the
Communist Party.)

See also:

http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/04/08/intellectual_property_is_so_last_year.php
(Intellectual Property Is So Last Year)

regards,
alexander.

--
"PJ points out that lawyers seem to have difficulty understanding the
GPL. My main concern with GPLv3 is that - unlike v2 - non-lawyers can't
understand it either."
                                   -- Anonymous Groklaw Visitor