Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     Always a possibility, but let me put it this way: If that's not the 
> reason, then I don't see a single good reason for having copyright.

To let people develop information products at all?  If copying is trivial, 
you either have to charge your entire development cost for the first copy, 
or you have to only produce works where the buyers are willing to fund you 
before you finish it (i.e., pre-production sales).

Note too that the whole "free software" movement goes belly-up if there 
aren't copyrights that let the authors control what happens with their works.

>     Your analogy is not good. The person physically owns the factory. He 
> does not, however, prevent others from building factories to produce 
> similar products,

Neither does copyright. Your Pheonix BIOS proves the point. Copyright only 
prevents copying, not independent invention.

> pretend to be the same brand (copyright kicks in here).

That would actually be trademarks in the USA.  And trademarks expire if you 
don't continuously trade under them, so that satisfies me. :-)

>     When it comes to something like a book, having copyright over the 
> characters and story indefinitely is preventing others from producing 
> anything similar.

There's definitely a gray area there.

>     For the creator of a piece of art, copyright serves *only* for 
> profit motives (from _his_ perspective). That's why few people really 
> care that much about intellectual property as opposed to physical, and 
> that's also probably why copyright is a recent phenomenon.

Copyright is a recent phenomenon because copying is a recent phenomenon. 
When it takes almost as much work to make a copy as it does to create it 
fresh, there's not a whole lot of need for copyright.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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