Here is a weekend code writer who was hammered by a corporate correspondent who warned him not to release his free product because it would infringe on a legal monopoly. The whole thing is a disgrace. Just a disgrace. It further demonstrates how it would be possible to shut down the whole world using patent lawsuits. Folks, the criminals are in control of the law.
Second item sent to me by Lew Rockwell: a New York Times argument about the copyright of piano music. The print publishers are long gone, so enthusiasts have been circulating digital copies – essentially rescuing treasures of civilization from the trash. David Pogue says, oh but this might be depriving sheet music printers of revenue. My kneejerk responses include: maybe not, who cares, and tough luck guys. The “pirates” are doing far more for the world then the IP monopolists and their defenders.
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Unbelievable…
When is Mickey Mouse up for renewal?
Looks like he is Public Domain!
http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/publicdomain/Vanpelt-s99.html
Where’s Kinsella?
I am ambivalent on copyrights, but patents?
They’re a government-sponsored way for the big guys to stomp all over the little guys and squish them out of submission.
Exactly the opposite is true. Patents protect the little guy from being squashed by the megaliths who can just replicate innovations once the inventor proves it valuable. Watch the movie “Flash of Genius” for a great illustration.
Don your wrong in a way, as you are perpetuating the continued patents and copyright system. Why? Because you have to ask yourself how these ”Megaliths” came to be -because of copyrights and patents over many decades. The system is flawed, evil and handicaps innovation. No more future copyrights or patents and phase out the existing ones.
Don, good job presenting the “Flash of Genius” movie which was about the dude who invented that genius intermittent wiper system (that I think anyone in the world could think of eventually). He destroyed his family over lawsuits over that garbage (even got offered a huge settlement, which he refused on “principle”). He thought he was so special when the invention was so mundane. It’s exactly the kind of example that’s perfect for showing the insane stupidity of the patent system and the ideology it promotes.
What makes modern copyright law so intolerable is the outrageous duration of the monopoly. Even works that have been out of print for decades are left to languish in obscurity, forgotten by the public and off limits to would-be digitizers.
Regardless of whether or not sheet-music is readily available, what is to stop a gifted artist from recreating it by listening to it. I was never very good at reading sheet-music, but found it far more useful to have both the visual and audio at my disposal. Since most ‘classical’ works are fairly wide spread in audio version, having the print version is rather pointless to those who can perform it solely with the audio version. The print version can be recreated through the audible sense, but what is most important and makes them classics to begin with, is that they have transcended the ages and become universal and timeless. Is this not the aim of all true artists?
Wait. When you listen to music, do you remember it afterwards?
That sounds like piracy to me!
Arrr!!!
We need more Henry Shreves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller_Shreve
Last sentence should be ‘than the’?
Without patents, why should I, as a scientist, ever bother inventing anything? I’d barely get the first production run out from my struggling garage startup, then an older, larger and better capitalized competitor would copy the product and start making it en masse, and more cheaply due to economies of scale. I’d be out of business before I had a chance to produce lot #2; I’d never have a chance to grow big enough to compete at their level. So I’d derive zero benefit from my work. Why bother?
Patents protect the little guys. The US Constitution was right to authorize them.
Before the advent of international copyright, British authors actually made more money selling American publishers the chance to be first to market than by royalties – that same effect would come about when patents go the way of the dodo.
van Rooinek,
Does this story sound like the IP system is protecting the little guys to you? Or does it sound like the little guys are getting beaten into submission with just the threat of the costs of litigation. Not the threat that they might lose mind you, but that the fight would be too expensive for anyone but the big guys to bare.
Most “little guys” can’t afford patents and even if they had one and a better capitalized competitor could still copy it. Then the competitor could defend themselves and beat the little guy in court. As they could out lawyer the little guy in most cases.
The idea that you could just patent your brilliant invention and make millions of money on it is simply not true in today’s industrial world. Perhaps this was the case back in the 1890, when much of the technology was developed by individuals or small grounds. Today however, any sort of technology requires contributions from large corporate or government entities.
It is very difficult, almost impossible to conceive a patent without a patronage which demands its ownership in return. This stifles progress because you can’t innovate or distribute the patent without the permission of the “parent company”. You can’t offer your design to another enterprise. You can’t improve your design based on other similar developments in the field.
Say you got a brilliant engineering blueprint and you want to work with leading scientists in the field to improve it or find ways to implement it. There’s a lot of obstacles to that, because someone else owns your patent, or portions of it. All of this is because of patent laws. It does far more harm these days than benefit, because technology has grown too complex and multivariate to be monopolized by a single source.
You ask: “Without patents, why should I, as a scientist, ever bother inventing anything?”
And your answer: “[Without patents] I’d derive zero benefit from my work.”
You sir, are not only the problem with society today but your “Why should I make things better if I can’t personally profit from it” attitude sickens me.
Why invent new things? To invent new things, to make things better, to help others and to try to share some of the ingenuity that you would NOT have without the society that you grew up in. I’m sick of people pretending they did everything on their own and wanting to reap all the benefits for themselves. Everything you had, have had and will ever had was giving to you one way or another. What is so wrong with giving something back?
“You sir, are not only the problem with society today but your “Why should I make things better if I can’t personally profit from it” attitude sickens me…..Why invent new things? To invent new things, to make things better, to help others….”
May I ask, how do we know when what we do is helping others and when it is not? What criteria can I apply to an action to determine which it is?
Whose innovation are the patent laws protecting?
http://www.financialpost.com/news/takes+smartphone+makers+patent+dispute/3257806/story.html
NTP Inc., the same company that received more than US$600-million from Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) after suing over infringements on its wireless email patents, is setting its sights higher.
On Thursday, the Virginia-based company filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against virtually every other major smartphone manufacturer on the planet. Specifically, the claim alleges that Apple Inc., Google Inc., HTC Corp., LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Motorola Inc. all violated its patents by selling products that feature wireless email functionality.
“Use of NTP’s intellectual property without a licence is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees,” Donald E. Stout, NTP’s cofounder, said in a statement on Friday. “Unfortunately, litigation is our only means of ensuring the inventor of the fundamental technology on which wireless email is based, Tom Campana, and NTP shareholders are recognized, and are fairly and reasonably compensated for their innovative work and investment.”
May I point out that the elephant in the room is corporations, which are arms of the state and not free enterprise.
When you consider the “big guys” versus the “little guys” you are talking about corporations (and ultimately the state) versus human beings.
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