Who on earth should be against Intellectual Property rights? Even the whole open-source/Linux systems builds on top of that. Without IP rights, the GNU Public License would not work at all.
So no matter which camp you are in, Intellectual Property rights are necessary.
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The only problem that has come up lately is, that data containers/Media are no longer necessary. In the past, we used CDs, cassettes, tapes etc. for music, data, video. Today things flow freely on the internet without any containers. This makes it difficult to enforce IP rights if the licenses are restricting copying. Music industry will have a tough time to come, no doubt about that. The software business targets this differently: More and more commercial products are shipped in compiled form, free to copy, as an evaluation version (e.g. without a file/save possibility). If you pay for the product, you get a license file, that enables the software for the one user. This makes it possible to install all the software you want everywhere, it's just one user who can use it. This also makes it possible to sell software directly on the internet. |
