Jeff Jarvis is absolutely right about the importance of protecting intellectual property rights in a free society, and the moral imperative of allowing creators to control and benefit from their creations.
Property is property -- all the more if I create it. If I own and exploit the property I create, it's capitalism. It's American. If you make me give up my creation, my grain, my property, to the collective, it's communism. Moscow, 1918. ...
I admire and appreciate those who hand their work over to the commons. Linux is spectacular; I run my business on it and we have added to the open-source movement there.
But note also that Linux is not a consumer product. I can't effectively run my own computer (or my kids' or my father's) on Linux. There are not nearly enough good consumer products to run on it. Why? Because the creators of such products cannot make enough money to make it worthwhile to create them.
Well said.
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