the Design Experience Weblog Archive

Ted Shelton comments on Lawrence Lessig's talk. He argues that Lessig is wrong about copyright holders having to divulge the method of creation, that is, disclose source code for software after the copyright limit expires. Shelton says that Coca-Cola has never been required to release the "source" or recipe of the popular beverage. This is wrong because copyright is only granted for published works. The recipe itself is the product, not the beverage. If the recipe were published, they could not stop you from producing the drink. Software is instructions for a computer just as a recipe is instructions for a chef.

Also I am still annoyed at everyone who says that there are viable software products over ten years old. Sure, the original Microsoft Word may have been released over ten years ago, but every time a new version of the source code is made, there is a new copyright. In fact you could copyright every code check in seperately if you really wanted to. So yes the copyright on Word 1.0 might expire after ten years under a revised copyright rule, but so what? Who would that really hurt? Microsoft would be ten years ahead by then. The purpose of copyright is to establish a rich public domain of knowledge. All I know is I would never have learned to program except for reading source code. It wasn't the only thing I have done, but without that little extra, I could never have made the progress I have in the last yaer.