The concept of inalienable rights, rights that you cannot cede because
everyone should always have them, is a fundamental part of the legal
system of the US and many other countries.
For example, selling oneself into slavery used to be permitted in most
parts of the world. But people eventually recognized that this led to
less freedom for a large number of people--and eventually slavery was
abolished. This is one example of an inalienable right. There are
many others. For example, in the US a noncompetition agreement
lasting many years is legally void--because it conflicts with the
inalienable right to practice one's profession.
Of course, being a slave is much worse than using a proprietary
program. So am I not exaggerating by making an analogy between them?
No, because it is not just an analogy--it is a counterexample. The
"truly free" argument against copyleft applies just the same against
prohibition of slavery, or any other inalienable right.
That argument rest on an extremely general assumption: that *any*
inalienable right is intolerable; that as long as you have any rights
you cannot give up, you are not truly free. They reject copyleft as a
special case of this general assumption. To disagree with copyleft is
not an extremist view, but the general premise is one.
People have a right to disapprove of copyleft; they even have a right
to advocate legalization of selling oneself into slavery. But the
people who use this argument against copyleft typically do not admit
the extremist nature of their premise. They usually try to pass it
off as uncontroversial, rather than a fundamental rejection of much of
our legal system. At that point, their argument becomes disingenuous.
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