I like the irony of this info. Championing IP rights but not even having the decency to acknowledge authorship. It made me think of a book I am currently reading about openness, secrecy and authorship. The author looks at those issues from the Greek and Roman times to nowadays and tries to understand who information and knowledge were transferred. So far I read only the first two chapters (out of 9) and more or less, there is no secrecy, no willingness to restrict the flow of information. the only evolution has been to acknowledge authorship. Secrecy exists only for magical formulas and what we would consider nowadays as religious writings. But for example military writings (about weapons...) were open to all even though the audience was obviously restricted by lack of education of the masses. The reason was that war was seen as the skill, personal characters of men, of generals, rather than the result of good weapons. Exactly, good weapons were acknowledged as a factor to win a war, but the skills of a leader were seen as more important to use those weapons at their best (and to improve them).
also originality was not key: what was important was the possibility for knowledge to be available with acknowledgments of sources
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment