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Re:Stallman’s Law by loup-vaillant on Sunday November 27, 2016 @08:38PM (#13052833)
I just DuckDuckWent "richard stallman predictions", and found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3418340 It enumerates a number of predictions Richard Stallman made, that turned out to be true.

Do not dismiss him too quickly.

By the way, the concept of IP is obviously dysfunctional: ideas and expressions are non rival goods. They are not moved, borrowed, nor stolen; they are only copied from substrate to substrate (be it a mind, a piece of paper, or a computer). Property rules simply don't work there.

What does work is monopoly rules, such as copyright, patents, and trademarks. The use of "property" to describe such limited state granted monopolies is an obvious piece of newspeak, an Orwellian ploy to make those laws look better than they are, and frame the discussion: if you're against monopoly, you're a normal person. If you're against property, you must be a thief of sorts.

Re:Stallman’s Law by discreditable on Monday November 28, 2016 @07:22AM (#13054936)
There's also the StallmanWasRight subreddit. It can be tongue-in-cheek a lot of the time, but a lot of the topics are relevant.

https://reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright

Re:Stallman’s Law by JurgenJugglar on Sunday November 27, 2016 @10:46PM (#13053277)
Thank you for your post. I've never thought of the concept of "non rival goods" nor how the notions of property and monopoly can be abused by people (in the way you describe).
Re:Stallman’s Law by scalio on Monday November 28, 2016 @05:50AM (#13054639)
http://blog.ninapaley.com/2011/07/09/culture-is-anti-rivalro... is a nice text about the rival/non-rival nature of things.
Re:Stallman’s Law by gilopll on Monday November 28, 2016 @01:08AM (#13053719)
Intellectual property is as real as real property. A Native American would make the same argumentyou do, but levy it against the notion of real eatate: owning a plot of the earth is ridiculous.

Your argument against "nonrival" would imply that if a manufacturer creates surplus product, its ok to steal the surplus because no one else needa it.. even if they go bankrupt because no one then buys the non surplus.

And a Marxist would say that labor ia property, and its rheft to deprive a laborer of ownership of their labor. All property is a legal fiction, you cant arbitrarily decide that one kind ia legitimate and the others aren't. Rivalry is just one factor.

Re:Stallman’s Law by loup-vaillant on Monday November 28, 2016 @05:06AM (#13054487)
> […] "owning a plot of the earth is ridiculous."

I may side with the Native Americans on that one.

There is this idea of a Land Value Tax, where most or all taxes would be taken on naked soil. Such a tax would effectively abolish land ownership, because everyone would effectively rent it from the state. Long story short, it looks like it might work.

Re:Stallman’s Law by SixSigma on Monday November 28, 2016 @08:01AM (#13055105)
> owning a plot of the earth is ridiculous

you'll think differently once you've planted your crops in it