maker-control world is completely untenable. Sorry to be so blunt (and I don't mean to be disrespectful or personal), but I really believe your view is that far off. "I hope to never live in the insane world you advocate where the designers of chairs can stop me from making my own chairs whether they are similar or identical to existing ones." I advocate no such thing. Your comment departs from a discussion of copyright and crosses over into yet another murky world of patents, for which I have a remarkably different opinion. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. Patents protect the idea. I'm not a fan of patents. A great example of this might be a chair craftsman who made his living building and selling chairs of his own design. He retires and decides to write and sell a book about building chairs that imparts his wisdom of the last 40 years. You are free to make your own chairs and even write your own book about chair making. You can even borrow his book from the library and learn from his wisdom at no direct cost to you. Or perhaps find free online resources where other craftsmen have freely exchanged ideas about chair design and construction. Otherwise, you should not feel free to obtain a copy of his chair making book without paying for it. And if you copy and sell his chair design as you suggest in the excerpt above...well that's