Would Larry Lessig Destroy The Software Industry
from the who-is-Charles-Cooper dept
I have no idea who Charles Cooper is, but I'm beginning to find it impossible to believe anything he has to say. My only guess is that he's writing incredibly stupid things on purpose, just to generate some controversy over on Slashdot. Two weeks ago this was the guy we pointed out had absolutely no grasp of economics in announcing that free content went against capitalism. Now, he's saying that Larry Lessig doesn't get it when he says that software copyrights should only be good for 10 years. Cooper does a terrible job backing up his argument. As far as I can tell, his argument is that if software copyright is only 10 years, then it would keep the current software giants in power because no one would create any new software (at least, I think that's what he's saying - it's tough to say for sure) because 10 years isn't nearly long enough. Huh? How many software products from 10 years ago are you still using? Software's shelf life (for the most part) is significantly shorter than that, and I would say there are very few 10 year old software products that are still even being supported, let alone sold. I don't see how taking the copyright protections off of them would really influence anyone to do anything differently. Lessig's point, which Cooper can't seem to grasp, is that by opening up the intellectual property independent software developers (and, actually, any software developers) will be able to learn and improve on past developments. I didn't think it was that hard to understand.
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