junglelord wrote:lizzie wrote:
Tesla chose to share his knowledge.
alton wrote
Did he choose to share it with you specifically? Or JL? Or me? He published works and wrote things down. No particular person had a right to them.
WOW, Alton, History Lesson DUDE.
Tesla gave his work to the world and sold back his profits, he got nothing.
You got the entire century of electric power, due to his free will offering.
We all have a right to it....
Man I got to question your ethics...sorry, but WOW.
You would have people have nothing.
Yes, we got the benefits of his inventions, I'm talking about his thoughts. Everything he wrote down, thought of, etc. The trunks of papers he left behind etc. He did not confer these upon anyone specifically. Nobody had a right to them, including the US gov't. The US gov't used force and authority to take them, acting as if they had a right to them. The only "right" course of action is to either A) Burn it all or B) Make it freely available. Even (B) is tricky, because what exactly is "freely available"? Do we have to translate it into every language on earth and distribute it to every individual in every city and country?
My point is that no individual has a right to the mental achievements of another. Knowledge is conferred by the originator, period. If I discover something, you do not have a "right" to what's in my head. The seizing and holding of Tesla's work is wrong not because you, personally, have a right to everything he left behind. It's wrong because nobody has a right to it (unless Tesla had a will that I'm unaware of). So what if the US gov't releases his papers, what about all the people in the world who can't read that language? Who can't read? Tesla's work will be "freely available" to a privileged set of people, which is fundamentally no different than the gov't keeping it locked up.
No, might does not make right. But there is no such thing as "perfect fairness" either.
