Is Free Science really just intellectual theft?

  • Thread starter Thread starter kevinmorais
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Science watch
AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers around the concept of "Free Science," which is perceived as intellectual theft when ideas are shared without publication. The original poster reflects on a physics project involving a Dry Ice Puck, emphasizing the importance of publishing ideas to protect them from being claimed by others. While some participants debate the nuances of copyright and intellectual property, the consensus is that unprotected ideas can be appropriated legally, though it raises moral concerns. The conversation also touches on the peculiar capitalization of terms, leading to confusion about the original poster's intent. Ultimately, the dialogue highlights the tension between sharing knowledge and protecting intellectual contributions in the scientific community.
kevinmorais
Messages
7
Reaction score
2
When I was studying Physics we had a contest where we had to build a Cart that would travel the Furthest Distance. I Figured a Dry Ice Puck would do the trick as everyone was putting wheels on their design. So I asked my Instructor if I could use a Dry Ice Puck, He told the Class about the Dry Ice Puck...teaching me about what is known as Free Science. If Your Idea isn't Published anyone can just put their name on it...he taught me a valuable lesson. Free Science is Theft in my eyes but Science is a Business and it is what it is. Publish before you share. It is called Free Science and like I said it is Intillectual Theft. Legally it is ok but Morally it is Wrong to steal someone else's findings. He was a Great teacher...
 
Physics news on Phys.org
You write Free Science with capital letters. Is that the name of some organization that you believe steals intellectual property?

Btw, not all scientific ideas qualify as intellectual property, and if you haven’t published then there is no way to cite you so it isn’t even plagiarism.
 
  • Like
Likes symbolipoint
kevinmorais said:
I asked my Instructor if I could use a Dry Ice Puck, He told the Class about the Dry Ice Puck...teaching me about what is known as Free Science. If Your Idea isn't Published anyone can just put their name on it..
And when it came time to grade the projects... do you seriously imagine that he didn't know who had come up with the idea on their own and who learned about it in class?
 
You can hardly copyright numbers, or even commonly known algorithms. And RSA has (or had, I don't know if it's still protected) a copyright!
 
Dale said:
You write Free Science with capital letters

He wrote pretty much everything with capital letters. I don't think this is significant.
 
Vanadium 50 said:
He wrote pretty much everything with capital letters. I don't think this is significant.
Yes, it is odd and confusing to me. I assume that Dry Ice Puck is a small disk of frozen CO2 rather than a brand name of hockey equipment, but I have never heard of “free science” in another context so capitalizing it feels particularly strange.

I think that German capitalizes all nouns, but if he/she is a native German speaker then why are “theft”, “great”, and “morally” capitalized?
 
Dale said:
I think that German capitalizes all nouns, but if he/she is a native German speaker then why are “theft”, “great”, and “morally” capitalized?
Theft is a noun. However, Intillectual and Morally are not.

And the noun rule is easier than to decide when American, English etc. are written with caps or not.
 
  • Like
Likes Dale
fresh_42 said:
You can hardly copyright numbers, or even commonly known algorithms. And RSA has (or had, I don't know if it's still protected) a copyright!
You can copyright some numbers in some contexts; every digital copyrighted work is expressible as a number. While algorithms as abstractions cannot be copyrighted, they can in many cases be patented, and their implementations or descriptions can be copyrighted.
 
Dale said:
but if he/she is a native German speaker then why are “theft”, “great”, and “morally” capitalized?

Or Dry? Or Furthest?

Like you, I am still strugglinmg to figure out what the OP is saying.
 
  • #10
sysprog said:
You can copyright some numbers in some contexts; every digital copyrighted work is expressible as a number.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean a digitized song can be expressed as a series of concatenated numbers, and the result copyrighted as a number? In that case a 15 bit rendition would not violate the 16 bit resolution copyright.
 
  • #11
Since the question is so confusing we will close it for now.
 
Back
Top