In Defense Of Patents and Copyright 283
Romer!can writes "C|Net Editor Michael Kanellos offers a potentially contentious opinion piece about patents and copyright on the CNet site. Highlights of the fairly biased piece include: a cheap shot dismissing open source projects as existing only to act as a foil for Microsoft, blatantly equating copyright infringement with stealing, and an embarrassing failure to even casually mention the current term lengths of patents and copyrights as a driving factor behind popular dissatisfaction. Instead, he wades through obscure humor and emotional appeals characterizing patent trolls as the guy next door. 'Nearly every so-called [patent] troll turned out to have a somewhat persuasive story. Intellectual Ventures, a patent firm started by former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, was staffed with fairly renowned scientists who didn't fit the profile of people trying to make a quick buck in court. Another man, criticized as one of the most litigious people in the U.S., had a great explanation for his behavior. He had only sued people who had signed--and then violated--nondisclosure agreements.'"
Why isn't it persuasive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't that a persuasive argument? Isn't that kind of argument used all the time around here? Don't believe me? Have you ever heard:
"Drug companies don't deserve patents/as-lengthy-patents because they spend more on advertising than research."
They're both rank appeals to one's sympathy (or lack thereof) with the patent holder.
Comparing 95 year Copyright with Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Would the binaries be useful at all?
If not, the the copyright duration is effectively infinite.
Now compare the Public domain Windows 2000 of 2095 with ReactOS or Linux in 2095. which is more useful?
But you don't need to wait 95 years to see this result.
How many years of development do you think it takes for ReactOS to surpass Windows2000?
How many years of development does it take for Linux to Surpass an abandoned UNIX, like IRIX?
If for some reason, you wanted to create a DOS system, would you use MSDOS 6, or FreeDOS?
Patent benefits (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for the prior (retention) is often equated to their lack of proprietary interest in intellectual property, and the reason for the latter (publicity) is adjoined by the consequences of divulging your technological advantages. While the incentive exists to invent gunpowder (for its usefulness), the incentive and mechanism to publicly retain a collective body of knowledge for such inventions in Chinese society did not exist. Thus, I believe the secret to gunpowder was lost to the Chinese on more than one occasion, only to be re-invented later. (Or perhaps that wasn't gunpowder, but some other set of inventions).
Patents help alleviate this loss of intellectual achievements to both antiquity and secrecy. However, in our society they have gone to an extreme, whereby we can rightly complain that they stifle innovation, undermine competition, and they may even be unnecessary in light of modern mechanisms for keeping tabs on new IP, notably the internet, and public collaborative projects like open source.
Nonetheless, patents are predictable, and having arisen out of hundreds of years of jurisprudence over the need to retain and publicize useful inventions. They appear to be econommically over-bearing nowadays, and may even be superfluous in light of modern technology for retention and dissemination of intellectual property (i.e. the internet), but they are integrated into our economy in ways that make it superbly difficult (not to mention prohibitively expensive, as in the USA the government may have to compensate patent holders by weakening their rights) to completely do away with the system. They also still serve the purpose for which they were intended, publishing and retaining useful innovations, but they have side effects which now make us question their value.
While we can and should criticize the patent system for its failures, we should also bear in mind the consequences of going too far in the opposite direction. Too few discussions of patent reform have an intelligent, informed and balanced basis in the purpose and benefits of the current patent system, with suggestions for either balanced reform across all arenas where patent law is applied (drugs, software, hardware, automobiles, etc.), or any sound alternative that is not subject to the same criticisms that are inherent to what we have now.
(That being said, I think the idea of patenting software strikes me as wholly inappropriate, the problems of publicity and retention long having been solved by the internet and open source projects, and the value software patents provide to the public is virtually nil in almost every way.)
Re:It never fails (Score:1, Interesting)
When it stops being a corporate right to clog every free inch of the world with pollution and commercials, essentially consuming the world beyond their means, is (in my view) when it will stop being my right to consume beyond my economic means.
That's no troll (Score:1, Interesting)
This [lastexitonly.com] will help you out on the matter.
Re:FUCK YOU AMERICA! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Re:It's easy to win an argument (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should someone own the exclusive right to make copies?
The only sensible reason you could possibly have for such an extreme position like that is that it is somehow to the benefit of every person in society to willingly refrain from copying these works. That's a pretty hard argument to make.
Of course, you don't have to make the argument.. cause the status quo is one of restriction.. which the majority of people just ignore anyway.
This reminds me of two things.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It also reminds me of the final scene in the Hitchhiker's Triology, where survivors of the B ark burned down all of the trees so they could use the few remaining leaves as currency. He tries to justify the same thing - trying to create an artificial scarcity on things which are plentiful and easy to reproduce.
Re:Oh boy (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not with you, though, that we'd only be left with guys running shopping carts into each other if Old Media fizzled and popped. Traditional television runs on an advertising model, and this translates to the web quite well; frankly I'd love to see the means of TV distribution become much more decentralized. And good music is going to come out whether or not it's sold by the millions for $20 a pop or through donations that just barely pay the rent for a band, because there really are that many people who love to make it. I know plenty of extremely talented musicians who have never seen a dime due to any copyright ownership, but make very happy livings playing gigs and selling CDs, mostly to people who could just copy their stuff anyways but don't because they prefer to support the artist. You might not have the megastars like Britney Spears, but trust me, people were creating and enjoying great music WAY before it ever became big business. Movies, I suppose, are the rub - these really do cost a tremendous amount of money to create, and should we decide to kill off that industry we probably won't see the gap filled for quite a while, at least if what you're interested in seeing is huge budget Spiderman type stuff (the indie scene will continue with business as usual, though, and would probably even thrive off of the market hole left behind). Personally I would not mourn any of these changes, as it seems like a little bit of a money drought in the entertainment business would lead to a fruitful starved-beast period, hopefully resulting in a more stable industry that relies on providing something of value to the consumer rather than threatening him with its lawyers.
Pretty much everything about the internet is devoted to the idea that attention == money. So I'm sorry, I have to dismiss the claim that nobody will put money behind something good if they can't sell it. We live in an age where companies with zero profits, large amounts of debt, and extremely precarious legal situations are sold for hundreds of millions of dollars just because a lot of people go to their website; it's no longer possible to seriously claim that the only motivation for creation is the opportunity to sell your IP in such an environment.
Re:Comparing 95 year Copyright with Open Source (Score:2, Interesting)
Are there any lawyers who could help me out here?