GPL depends on copyright?

There are a lot of things that I want to write about the open-source movement, and the favorite software license of its advocates: the GPL. I don’t have a lot of time to write right now, so I’ll try to sum it up in a few sentences.

There is a movement of people who are against the concept of copyright, patents, and other intellectual property. They believe that the creator of a work does not have the right to tell another individual not to copy his music, writing, software, or any other creation that is not physical property. Their favorite software license is the GPL, which allows users to copy and distribute code freely with only one stipulation: Any works you create that are derived from the GPL’d code must have the same GPL “protections.” What type of protections? Protections from distributing the code in any form that does not allow full copying and editing. Applying the GPL to software essentially protects that software from being owned by any individual. (And when I say “owned,” I mean the ability of an individual to control what is done with that software.)

So why am I bringing this up? Well, there was a recent debate that started on Slashdot between two individuals on the question of whether the GPL depends on copyright in order to oppose copyright. The debate started with with a post arguing that the GPL depends on copyright. Someone wrote a response disagreeing with that position, and the original poster responded to that. The debate is interesting, mostly because it’s one issue that I actually find myself in agreement with the GPL advocate!

He wrote:

The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply. The GPL simply uses copyright law in a jiujitsu-like manner to enforce this principle, in a legal environment where sharing is prohibited by default and must be explicitly permitted to be legal. All the GPL does is create a space where permission to share is enforced.

I agree that the GPL does not depend on copyright law. Those who don’t believe in copyright think that everybody should be able to copy and distribute other people’s works without permission. Of course, they can’t make anybody do that because it goes contrary to current law. So, in a clever move, they convince people to give up their rights to their intellectual property voluntarily, and then use copyright law to enforce that decision. What’s important to note here is not that they are using copyright law to enforce the GPL, but that they want the government to enforce the GPL. They would be even happier if they could achieve their goals with laws that specifically forbid copyright, but they haven’t gotten the government to go along with that. Yet.

I think that most people tend to dismiss or ignore the ideas behind the GPL and the open-source movement, and the GPL-uses-copyright argument is one of the reasons. They look at the GPL text and say, “Nothing here violates anybody’s rights.” And they’re right, so long as developers have the choice to use the GPL or not. If you look at the ideas behind the GPL, especially on the GNU’s philosophy page, you’ll see that GPL advocates are not fighting for the rights of developers to make that choice. The GPL is not just another software license.