Lessig always has interesting things to say in this area. Depending on one's vantage point, he is either slightly ahead of his time or an ego-maniacal academic gadfly. Either way, he clearly seeks to convince the judicial and legislative branches to scale back copyright dramatically. Many of his arguments are mostly convincing, but he's not an economist
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Most of the FOSS movement doesn't oppose copyrights (although FSF comes close), in fact it's copyright law that can be used to keep free software free (via the GPL &c
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Overall, I think your views are quite close to mine. I just think Lessig is oversimplifying and faux-utopian in this article, and this sensibility is also evident in some arguments made by the more radical FSF types. While some would scoff at the notion of having any interest in anything commercial, it's also naive to assume (and I've heard this argument made adamantly) that a gradual collaborative effort by the free software community would result in a better software application of any use to a non-programmer in any commercially useful timeframe. It might get there eventually, but that's hardly the same thing
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The article is for Technology Review ... so, I would expect some simplification :-)
While it is true that most free software projects don't get anywhere, I think the FOSS community has already proven that the open source process can produce software of equal or better quality than proprietary products, and in a reasonable timeframe (or, at minimum a *comparable* timeframe to closed-source proprietary products).
The FOSS community does not mean unpaid hackers in a basement or dorm room. Big corporations (IBM, for example) have paid employees working on software that they modify as part of the open source community! Their interests are profit-driven, and, in their cases, the collaborative model produces usable software with the features their customers want faster and cheaper than they could if they were working with another company or their own closed-source product (this is something along the lines of an Eric Raymond/OSI type argument).
As for the Supreme Court, I think that the case undermines the Constitutional argument,
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There's no bright line answer to your question. As you suggest, context and overall implementation are key -- the example of the "I Agree" button was intended to be illustrative (and has been approved by courts), although I understand it does not work for code in most instances
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I don't think that, in the end, the SCO case will have anything to say about the GPL. Aside from David Boies' public posturing, the actual arguments seem to be about the details of contracts and cross-licensing agreements that IBM signed with SCO, SCO signed with oldSCO, oldSCO signed with Novell, and so on. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence that any currently BSD'd or GPL'd code is even involved
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1. You're right about SCO; it's simply the highest profile case that's even in the ballpark. I look forward to seeing how the first real (US) GPL case will play out some day.
2. Copyright notices on books serve precisely the same function as on source code -- to give notice of a copyright claim and to provide for a potentially larger damages award for willful infringement. As is the case with source code, the inclusion of a copyright notice on a book does not amount to the formation of a contract.
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While it is true that most free software projects don't get anywhere, I think the FOSS community has already proven that the open source process can produce software of equal or better quality than proprietary products, and in a reasonable timeframe (or, at minimum a *comparable* timeframe to closed-source proprietary products).
The FOSS community does not mean unpaid hackers in a basement or dorm room. Big corporations (IBM, for example) have paid employees working on software that they modify as part of the open source community! Their interests are profit-driven, and, in their cases, the collaborative model produces usable software with the features their customers want faster and cheaper than they could if they were working with another company or their own closed-source product (this is something along the lines of an Eric Raymond/OSI type argument).
As for the Supreme Court, I think that the case undermines the Constitutional argument, ( ... )
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2. Copyright notices on books serve precisely the same function as on source code -- to give notice of a copyright claim and to provide for a potentially larger damages award for willful infringement. As is the case with source code, the inclusion of a copyright notice on a book does not amount to the formation of a contract.
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