if the first someone still had the 'free' software they could just keep releasing their free software - and say i thought it up and im giving it away. no company could change that - or should ever be able to.

im not so sure about the stealing work claim. if i pay for content (to some living being) -- and distribute the result of the 'work' to another -- they may think the residual from the 'work' sucks -- and chastise me for sharing such garbage and experience a period if dismay -- on the other hand, they may say what a neato (variety of expression) where can i find out more?
then they may pay for additional content to the content provider.
if many decided to not give money for content then i guess much of the content people enjoy would diminish.
and they would turn to feeding squirrels or something.

when opera browser was in the 3.somethings i paid around 15 bucks or so for it. later versions had the ad banner which i downloaded for 'free' but paid for their webmail service. now..at least it seems its a free download -- i dont know how opera gets money.

-Karl

If Megacorp want to try to lock it up with DRM, that's cool too! So far, there have been very few examples of DRM effectively stopping anyone from doing what they want, and most of those examples are based on the DMCA. Since the "C" in "DMCA" is copyright, if we get rid of copyright, then we got rid of DMCA, and therefore we've hamstrung DRM.

So, in the end result, Megacorp has now produced some (presumably nice) extension to my work, which depending on how ineffective their DRM is I can either reverse-engineer into my own version, or I can just copy wholesale.

The only people who lose are companies who's business model is based on the idea that by having a monopoly position on some software, granted through copyright, they can make an 80% profit margin on that software, then use that monopoly and that disgusting profit margin to coerce their way into a monopoly position in other market segments.

Take away the monopoly, and they would have to instead compete on their merits, and earn what they get.

Also the point made has been demolished previously.

Now, the idea of abolishing copyright is an interesting one, and I'd like to continue about it in some better medium (not blog comments).

I personally am FOR abolishing copyright and making DRM forbiden, but that may be an too big of a jump, today.
But a copyright reform is surelly needed.

The ideal situation is copyright that lasts something like 5 years and then the author or his estate is required to register their intent to keep it copyrighted every 5 years. Fee - $1. Thus if he/she couldn't go through the trouble of re-registering for ONE DOLLAR, they must not care if it falls into Public Domain.

The fact that Disney and the other media companies were founded on PD and copyright infringement themselves makes this thing laughable - or it would if it weren't so tragic. For the full story read "Free Culture"

Richard Stallman himself has said that the GPL's intended effect is to reverse copyright, and thus its effect is aptly called copyleft. Period.

Whether you are a copyright abolitionist or not, is irrelevant to the fact that the contemporary copyright regime is actually hindering progress instead of encouraging it.

And, if copyright were abolished and a megacorporation elected to grab your work and repackage it for sale without freedoms... it still wouldn't be theft. Come to think of it, even if copyright WEREN'T abolished, it still isn't theft today. Theft is what happens when I take an object from you and you no longer have it, and as such can only arise from rivalrous goods, definition that excludes works of art.

I am not convinced by the vision of a world without copyright you give in this article. You say:
"some megacorporation comes along, removes all your claims of credit, adds 10% more code, compiles it, and distributes the executable binary locked up in DRM"

If there is no copyright anybody who saw the source code would be able to redistribut it perfecetly legally.

Your argument relies on them being able to keep secrete the source code of something they are distributing (remember that the GPL does not require you to distribute the source to modifications you do not distribute).

I don't believe this would be possible. Any of the employees who came across it would be able to share it.

If the source code is not secrete then anyone can share it and so the situation is essentially the same as if you had GPL'd it.

I also think the megacorporation's bussiness model of selling something people are free to share and relying on DRM is unworkable. This is essentially what the record industry is trying and it isn;t working for them. It is so easy for people to share music and so hard to catch people (only a tiny minority are caught) that copyright might as well not exist on music. I don't believe anyone buys CDs because they can't get the music.