The copyright Red Scare!
According to a recent interview with Bill Gates anyone who advocates less copyright restriction and control is a communist. Here is the question from the interview and his answer:

In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, "We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights." What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of
communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

The irony of this comment is amazing. If someone advocates less government control and more laissez faire economics, then that means they are a communist? Copyright is a system which only exists by governmental decree. I fail to see where communism enters into it.

For more discussion see here, here, and here.


- posted by Dave @ 1:41 PM