Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--f9da94-Well, by 1800 there would have/en

Well, by 1800 there would have been thousands of these music idea patents. And then imagine that you are Beethoven and you want to write a symphony. To write a whole symphony, you are going to have to do lots of different things, and at any point you could be using an idea that somebody else has patented. Of course, if you do that he'll say: &ldquo;Oh! You are just a thief, why can't you write something original?&rdquo; Well, Beethoven had more than his share of new musical ideas, but he used a lot of existing musical ideas. He had to, because that's the only way to make it recognizable. If you don't do that, people won't listen at all. Pierre Boulez thought he was going to totally reinvent the language of music, and he tried, and nobody listens to it, because it doesn't use all the ideas that they're familiar with.