@Feral Feline
LOVE the questions.
Keep in mind that I joke about stealing. Sorta. Not really.
I don't consider myself a scholar of left-wing thought: I'm only an individual that has become somewhat radicalized in my own critiques of capitalism. I do my best to understand what those who came before me thought, though, and keep in mind that while "radical" may have turned into a bit of a dirty word in modern discourse, the actual definition has become muddied.
I think Angela Davis said it best:
"Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root'"
So in terms of something like intellectual property rights:
Property rights is a central theme of the left-wing critique of Capitalism. Marx in particular was extremely skeptical of private property as a foundational building block of society. The way things currently work is that Intellectual property rights are a commodity. It is reserved only for those who obtain necessary documentation to prove their ownership of said IP, and it allows those individuals to sell their intellectual property to another individual.
The price paid for said IP at the time of sale is not necessarily tied to its value: all kinds of things can impact the prices at which things are exchanged for. One party may be desperate for cash. One party may have more information about the value of said thing than the other, or may have leverage over the other individual in terms of...say...if one party employs that individual.
Think about the Nike Swoosh. It's an iconic symbol that has worldwide recognition. It represents $26 billion in value to the Nike corporation, and it was bought for a grand total of $35 dollars from the artist in 1971. Now...nobody could have known, back then, what that symbol would grow to become. But it's an undeniable element of the marketing strategy that contributed to the growth of the corporation, and those who most directly profited from it *had no hand in its creation*. Its an odd arrangement that represents how individuals are able to utilize private property ownership to, basically, underpay individuals for services rendered.
And just to be totally upfront: I don't particularly have any fully fleshed out theories on how something like intellectual property can be better handled. All I can say is that...if you look at what's happening there...it hardly seems like a fair arrangement to the individual that created the logo.
I cant deny that Private Property has a certain kind of appeal. Shoot, I'm a homeowner. But it's also the sort of thing that comes into conflict with something that I feel far more passionately about: Human Rights.
Little extremely personal digression...to illustrate part of why I feel the way I do here.
I had a friend that I met in elementary school. We grew up together. He was Japanese, with deep roots in the local community. He regularly attended at his Buddhist Temple. His grandmother was interned in WWII. His family was relatively wealthy...not extremely so, but they had benefitted from the rise in property values here in the Bay Area over the past few decades, and his father worked in a field that was high in demand. He was an only child...something of a free spirit, good natured, never forgot where he came from and the folks that helped him along the way. In his younger life he was an eagle scout, after he graduated from UC Riverside he went on to become a relatively successful DJ. He loved music, lived a completely sober life in the last decade of his life, and would often drive folks home from the places that he was DJing at if they were too inebriated to drive.
You might have caught that he's no longer with us. He was shot on Christmas day, 2022, in the early hours of the morning. He was unarmed. He was also not a particularly imposing figure: we used to tease him when we were growing up about how short he was. He was *maybe 5'3". He was on somebody's front lawn in Cupertino, California. The home of apple computer...our shared home town where we grew up together.
I don't know what happened that day. Knowing what I know about him: he had no reason to be there for nefarious purposes. He had a house a few miles away that he was living in that his family had inherited from his grandmother: the same one we used to play nintendo and watch star wars in on the days I spent with him after school as a boy. I haven't been able to find any additional information on what happened. He didn't have any history of addiction, or mental health disorders, or anything along those lines. And we were in the sort of friends where I would have noticed: I *had* experienced those things.
The homeowner was never charged with a crime. I do not know why. I can only guess. But something that undoubtedly played into the homeowner's defense against the police is that my friend was standing on his property. And property, in Cupertino, is now *extremely* expensive. Its an incident that has stayed with me and altered the way I think about things like private property. His life was very dear to me. The ways in which our society can prioritize the property rights of individuals over the lives of individuals on that property...there is an injustice there that I can't shake.
/extremely personal digression.
Anywho, I'm an open minded cat. Curiosity is part of why I started building pedals: I like to learn what makes things tick. How they work. With that in mind: I would say that, in terms of using that schematic for personal use, there are absolutely no ethical qualms here.
I wouldn't endorse just copying it and claiming that it's your own design and re-selling it. I wouldn't even endorse re-selling it and claiming that it's a Teese design, because A) it wouldn't be, it's a tweaked version of an existing circuit that was designed in the 1960's, B) you would need to be able to recreate the inductor and potentiometer that Mr. Teese uses, which is a difficult feat in and of itself...not to mention the exact model of the transistors remains unknown, and C) courtesy.
While I find issue with some of the man's explanations for why he finds such ire with those who reverse-engineer his designs...it is true that he makes his living off of selling these pedals, and the man has done a lot for the community in terms of sharing some of his knowledge about the history of wah pedals and their functionality. I would not want to infringe on his direct space, because we all swim in this ocean and need to be able to co-exist without squabbling amongst ourselves over the few resources that we have access to. Dude's gotta eat.
Whoo. Why do i write essays? I write really long posts. I guess I've got a lot on my mind.
. My belated but heartfelt condolences.
