The easy way to undo the injustice of non free software is to undo state protection for it and that protection has always been on shaky ground. One of the cases that established copyright protection for binary files was Lotus vrs someone who claimed to be a Soviet agent cracking and distributing non free software with explicit goal of ruining the business. As copyright is supposed to protect human expressions, it can be argued that only the source code should enjoy copyright protection. The binaries are limited and can’t be understood, much less trusted, and will never enter the public domain. Enlarging the public domain is the reason copyright exists. The establishment of patent protection for software is even more absurd and thankfully it is being dismantled. In the mean time, all of us lose our natural right to copy and share files as well as to make our computers do what we want them to. This is to great a price to pay simply to make Bill Gates the richest man in the world and employ a few hundred thousand poorly treated employees. The exercise is unjust from concept to result. Governments should stop purchasing, using and protecting non free software. Only human expressions that can be shared deserve the protections copyright has to offer.

You should not be so defeatist about changing laws to liberate people. The power companies have over you is reason to resist, not to give up.

Taxes are necessary to lubricate an efficient society – without them you are left with an inefficient and barely functioning one. Just look at any developing country you care to think of, or to be blunt – the USA. They might be wasted and misspent but things are completely rooted without them. For one extant example, Greece is mostly in its current mess because taxes weren’t collected properly on those wealthy enough to get away with it.

The pernicious private rent extraction you and many others always call a ‘tax’ is merely a form of wealth distribution – from the many to the few. It has no benefit to society whatsoever, nor can it ever by definition.

And unfortunately the courts would disagree with your final statement. Corporations clearly have rights that exceed those of citizens. About the only ‘right’ a citizen of a western country has is to refuse to purchase a given companies products, but even that has been diluted – in some cases you can’t even be a functioning member of society without paying some foreign or local self-proclaimed supra-citizen their tribute (e.g. to access the media required to be an informed citizen). And in any event is a very weak right when the media is playing for `the other side’, and against the ever-increasing concentration of ownership. How can you boycott a company that owns everything or gets a cut of everything, and you don’t even know it?

I would also like to address another issue you raise. The term “free market” itself has become hijacked. It has become hijacked by people who equate it with everything from neo-colonialism to bank bailouts to – , yes, support for intellectual property. None of these are present in a true free market system. In a true free market the government simply gets out of the way of any voluntary interaction between or among individuals. A growing number of free market thinkers are rejecting the idea of intellectual property – including software patents.

Sincerely,

rpgray