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http://old.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

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Co)pyleft Eben Moglen, 1999.    |    Mail: moglen@columbia.edu 

                            Anarchism Triumphant: 
            Free Software and the Death of Copyright

                                   Eben Moglen *

I. Software as Property: The Theoretical Paradox 

SOFTWARE: no other word so thoroughly connotes the practical and
social effects of the digital revolution. Originally, the term was
purely technical, and denoted the parts of a computer system that,
unlike ``hardware,'' which was unchangeably manufactured in system
electronics, could be altered freely. The first software amounted to
the plug configuration of cables or switches on the outside panels of
an electronic device, but as soon as linguistic means of altering
computer behavior had been developed, ``software'' mostly denoted the
expressions in more or less human-readable language that both
described and controlled machine behavior.1 

[...]

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