"Alfred M. Szmidt" ams@gnu.org wrote:
Software, music and documentation, articles, ..., are all different kind of works, and need different kind of protections. [...]
*Programs*, music and documentation, articles are different kinds of work. Software is a representation. It can be a representation of programs, music, documentation or whatever. Arguing that it is different is rather like arguing that paper and music are different kinds of work: it's not very illuminating.
The argument that novels are fine as verbatim copying is rather unfortunate. For example, see the problems with works like "the Wind Done Gone" which I think might also exist for verbatim-copy works. Basically, the freedoms to use, study, adapt and copy are still desirable and "verbatim copying only" isn't that. The author of a verbatim-copy opinion piece is cutting their own nose off to spite their face, too: if I need to adapt an idea to my audience and I can't adapt their expression, then I don't use their expression and I'll probably only cite the primary sources. If their article isn't a primary source (which most opinion pieces aren't), they lost a credit.
There may be other copyrights not addressed by the GPL which are interesting for some software. I'm not that familiar with them and no-one in this thread has yet given useful references (the aforementioned volumes of legislation are, er, voluminous). I'm interested in the claim that CC doesn't address them either: if that's true, what are projects like Free Culture and Remix doing about performances?
I may also be attending FAVE/3avc this weekend in Bristol, where we might find people who know more. Anyone got a good list of questions I could take? http://www.fave.org.uk/