What I Believe  ## Metadata - Author: [[Andrew Copson]] | [[3. Resources/Authors/Andrew Copson|Andrew Copson]] - Full Title: What I Believe - Category: #books - Kindle: [Open in Kindle](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CSSGWG1W) - Document Tags: [[Faith]] ## Document Notes ## Highlights - almost a cooperative evolution of a product? It is absolutely, which is what’s really odd in this technical world that we live in. ([Location 3717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3717)) - One of the interesting things about one of the definitions of the open-source licences in particular is one that describes itself as free as in freedom, not free as in beer. In actual fact, microbreweries have been open-sourcing beer recipes. BrewDog actually open-source all their beer recipes as well, which I think is a clever play on that concept. ([Location 3723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3723)) - When you think about your own motivations to get involved in that, would you say it was more about your own support for freedom – as in your freedom to operate in this way on the internet – or was it more altruistic? I think it was more the altruistic side of it, because it just really gelled with me that this was the right way to behave. ([Location 3731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3731)) - Science is the example that a lot of people think of: the whole idea of sharing your results, sharing your research, so that future scientists can benefit from that and enhance science for the greater good. ([Location 3740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3740)) - It sounds like you think that there’s a fundamental difference between this cooperative sharing, developing for the benefit of others and passing it on, and the approach of marketing something, holding it firmly to yourself for the benefit of yourself and your own profitability. It also sounds as though you think that those two things can coexist. Is that right? Yeah, I think that’s key. They can coexist. I know that we live in a capitalist society, in mostly a capitalist world, and we can’t get away from that right now. Maybe in the far future, things might change, but right now that’s how we operate. That’s how we have to earn money to put food on the table and a roof over our heads, and so on. But when you create an artificial scarcity, that starts to feel morally wrong – in particular, when you do so purely in order to make money. If you think about an artist creating paintings, for example, that’s automatically scarce: a single painting. Even if they might do a different version of the same one. When you are manufacturing goods and you create those artificial scarcities, whether that’s through reducing the number that you create, pulling the price out of the reach of the majority, or, as is the normal case, just not letting anyone else create the same thing that you’ve done through so-called intellectual property laws, it feels morally wrong to me. ([Location 3747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3747)) - That has changed over the years to the horrendous state that we’re in now, driven by Disney amongst others, where copyright now exists for seventy-five years after the death of the author. It’s just crazy to me, because it is restricting the value of that creation being shared with the world for purely financial reasons. That’s the issue. I don’t mind that people have to recover the cost of manufacture. I don’t mind that people want to gain some advantage from their creativity, from their prowess, the skill that they have. It’s when it goes to an extreme, when you restrict people’s access to things almost in perpetuity, as some companies would like to do – that’s where it feels unjust. To me, it feels that you’re sacrificing the world for your own personal benefit, and that’s hard for me to reconcile. ([Location 3763](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CSSGWG1W&location=3763))