[jekub]

The problem here is that when you want to use a photo, you either take it yourself, or you take one made by someone else and ask him what are his conditions.

When you take a photo and put it one your web site, this doesn't mean that anyone can grab it and use it.

The problem here is that people think that they can do what they want on the web and if you just send them a mail they will do nothing. DMCA is globally a bad thing but but its at this time the only way to make people respect copyright. It should go away but for a better law.

You can transpose this to software easily. If you put some of your code on your blog, you expect people to respect the law and so your copyright. If your code is under GPL for example, you don't want other peoples to take it and include it in their commercial product without respecting the GPL.

Look at all the work done by GPL violation and how its hard to make people correct their behavior when your are a now know organization. This men is alone trying to protect its right and the only thing that he can do which is effective is to fill a DMCA.

And remember that the copyright law is what make GPL possible...

[slowpoke]

>And remember that the copyright law is what make GPL possible...

It's funny you say that, because RMS has cited the creation of a post-scarcity society has one of the explicit goals of free software. In such a society, copyright would not exist, because everything would be free (as in both speech and beer). The GPL is but a means to an end, not an end unto itself, and it just so happens to use the current system of copyright to progress towards that end.

So yes, without copyright, there would be no GPL. But without copyright, we would not have most of the problems the GPL is trying to solve.

[jekub]

> So yes, without copyright, there would be no GPL. But without copyright, we would not have most of the problems the GPL is trying to solve.

The main problem GPL is trying to solve is to keep code free and this problem wasn't created by copyright. In a society without copyright it would be even more difficult to keep code free.

Copyright just allow you to claim some right over the code you produce. In a society without copyright you would not be able to make this claim so, if you publish your code it will be free, but : - nothing force you to publish your code, you can keep it for yourself and just distribute binary ; - nothing force other people to distribute there modifications of some free code.

Copyright is what allow you to say "this code should be and remain free", the only alternative in the view of the GPL and FSF should be a law who say "all code should be free and remain free" or something like this.

(just to be clear, I'm not a partisan of the GPL but this is my understanding of it)

[slowpoke]

The GPL is trying to keep code free in an environment where it's unfree by default. You are conflating what free software is doing right now with what it is trying to eventually accomplish - being a step towards a post-scarcity society. Yes, you could modify code and never share back etc without copyright, but it would at the same time be pointless to do so. Nobody, including yourself, would gain anything from it.