Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Buying the rights to proprietary programs to free them

[Fabio Pesari]

On 03/19/2016 04:29 AM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
> 
> I must also admit, that since I don't generally get paid for my academic 
> writing (*) that I don't really care if someone makes a derivative work and 
> makes some modest money from it. So long as they don't do so by trying to 
> restrict access to my work by me and others, I don't care if they manage to 
> find a way to make money from adding something to my work. But, it does seem 
> like lots of people a) do object and b) seem to think that there is some 
> serious possibility that their work might make someone else rich without them 
> getting in on the action. Of course those of us who've studied copyright and 
> copyleft understand that copyright often favours exactly this kind of 
> exploitation (see the Queen song: Death of Two Legs, for example) while 
> copyleft has a built in limiter.

There are people who profit off proprietary stuff too, for example
magazines sold with CDs which distribute freeware and shareware, or
sites like CNET.

Or ask the guy who played drums on the Amen Break heard in countless
electronic songs how much money he made out of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break#Royalties

I think that ultimately, I would like to see some real stats for people
explicitly claiming that their copylefted works were exploited
commercially. Any academics willing to take the challenge?

Otherwise it's just paranoia. But I would agree that right now, it's
more profitable to create proprietary works, simply because there is a
lot of ignorance and people assume that only because something costs a
lot of money it has to be better (as is the case with all Apple
products), or if something if free (as in money), there is always a
catch and/or they are the product.

To some people, it's simply unthinkable to pay money for something that
is also available at no cost. This affects proprietary works as well,
that's why there is a lot of piracy, but for libre works it's especially
bad because people aren't legally obliged to pay for them.