5 ms·

> fails to meet up with the reality that plants have plantable seeds. This is a terrible argument. Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy because CDs are ea

by bduerst 11y ago

> fails to meet up with the reality that plants have plantable seeds. This is a terrible argument. Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy because CDs are easy to copy? These cases aren't accidental - the farmer was very clearly copying the technology and using it to their benefit without contributing to the IP costs.

livingparadox 11y ago
Its more akin to a company using torrent as their distribution platform, requiring a licensing fee to re-seed the content, and then suing someone for re-seeding or torrenting the file they originally seeded.
- bduerst 11y ago
  No, it's akin to someone paying to license software for a year and then continuing to intentionally use it after the contract has expired. Farmers almost never grow seed crop. You're making generalizations about an industry you don't know much about.
  - livingparadox 11y ago
    No, its not. From the original comment in this thread >sues farmers for re-planting seeds that blew onto their land The farmers being sued never purchased or sought out the seeds in question. They blew into their land by natural processes (wind) and grew of their own course. The farmers in question then replanted the seeds that were growing in their fields. At no point did they do anything equivalent to paying or licensing the software. Nor did they intentionally plant the first generation of plants. Edit: In regards to the generalization comment, I was making my analogy based on the description given by the original comment. I fail to see how I extrapolated beyond the clear meaning of the description.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      From the link: >Fact: Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means. ... The misperception that Monsanto would sue a farmer if GM seed was accidentally in his field likely began with Percy Schmeiser, who was brought to court in Canada by Monsanto for illegally saving Roundup Ready® canola seed. That's analogous to continuing to use a software license after your agreed-upon contract is up, not torrenting.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
It's a terrible argument that one should be able to copyright a plant's genome.
- bduerst 11y ago
  No one can patent a plant's genome. Patents (and copyrights) are on new genetic stacks, because the development, testing, and field trials put into it involves resources (costs).
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Patents (and copyrights) are on new genetic stacks, because the development, testing, and field trials put into it involves resources (costs). Because your business has costs does not justify enacting artificial restrictions.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users. If you're going to generalize patents and copyrights as just "a business having costs" then you're grossly oversimplifying it.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users It could also be looked at, "The USPTO, and Congress, have allowed patent and copyright holders the ability to rent seek far beyond what was ever intended when the USPTO, copyright, and patents were first conceived."
        bduerst 11y ago
        That's why the roundup ready tech patent expired in 2015. IP creators are given a set timeframe to recooperate costs. You can now replant your roundup ready seeds, toomuchtodo, as much as you want.
pdkl95 11y ago
> Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy That isn't a comparable claim. Microsoft is responsible for their choice of business model. > because CDs are easy to copy? You shouldn't expect profit when your business model relies on scarcity that doesn't exist in nature. Attempting to impose artificial scarcity doesn't work, for the same reason you cannot make a law that changes gravity. Trying to change laws of nature by fiat only makes you look foolish. Note that Microsoft can still run a profitable business even when their CDs are easy to copy. They did this for decades. For most of that time, they didn't spend much effort trying to stop piracy; unpaid copies helped maintain their desktop monopoly. If they were successful in stopping piracy, people might have learned about an alternative OS.
- adrianN 11y ago
  It is my understanding that copyright and patents exist exactly to create artificial scarcity so that the owners can extract money. I'm not sure whether it's a good idea, but it seems to work reasonably well for what it was designed to do.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > work reasonably well for what it was designed to do An argument can be made that copyright and patent worked before the digital era. The trick that Claude Shannon introduced may have been intended to remove noise, but that's not all it did. Digital encoding allowed data to be repeated indefinitely. Put another way, data was scarce when it gains noise (lower s/n) each time it is re-amplified; Shannon's encoding schemes allowed perfect copies, and thus data was no longer scarce. > copyright and patents exist exactly to create artificial scarcity Copyright and patent cannot create scarcity, nor were they intended to. They rebalanced existing scarcity.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Just because the cost to copy IP today is near nothing doesn't mean that there are not fixed costs into the generation of IP. Also you're right, patents and copyrights are not there to create scarcity - an IP owner can use a license that allows absolutely everyone to use it. They exist to give the owner a timeframe with which to recooperate costs of IP generation (and yes, the copyright timeframe is too long but patents are reasonable).

by bduerst 11y ago

livingparadox 11y ago

Its more akin to a company using torrent as their distribution platform, requiring a licensing fee to re-seed the content, and then suing someone for re-seeding or torrenting the file they originally seeded.

bduerst 11y ago
No, it's akin to someone paying to license software for a year and then continuing to intentionally use it after the contract has expired. Farmers almost never grow seed crop. You're making generalizations about an industry you don't know much about.
- livingparadox 11y ago
  No, its not. From the original comment in this thread >sues farmers for re-planting seeds that blew onto their land The farmers being sued never purchased or sought out the seeds in question. They blew into their land by natural processes (wind) and grew of their own course. The farmers in question then replanted the seeds that were growing in their fields. At no point did they do anything equivalent to paying or licensing the software. Nor did they intentionally plant the first generation of plants. Edit: In regards to the generalization comment, I was making my analogy based on the description given by the original comment. I fail to see how I extrapolated beyond the clear meaning of the description.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    From the link: >Fact: Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means. ... The misperception that Monsanto would sue a farmer if GM seed was accidentally in his field likely began with Percy Schmeiser, who was brought to court in Canada by Monsanto for illegally saving Roundup Ready® canola seed. That's analogous to continuing to use a software license after your agreed-upon contract is up, not torrenting.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

It's a terrible argument that one should be able to copyright a plant's genome.

bduerst 11y ago
No one can patent a plant's genome. Patents (and copyrights) are on new genetic stacks, because the development, testing, and field trials put into it involves resources (costs).
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Patents (and copyrights) are on new genetic stacks, because the development, testing, and field trials put into it involves resources (costs). Because your business has costs does not justify enacting artificial restrictions.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users. If you're going to generalize patents and copyrights as just "a business having costs" then you're grossly oversimplifying it.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users It could also be looked at, "The USPTO, and Congress, have allowed patent and copyright holders the ability to rent seek far beyond what was ever intended when the USPTO, copyright, and patents were first conceived."
      - bduerst 11y ago
        That's why the roundup ready tech patent expired in 2015. IP creators are given a set timeframe to recooperate costs. You can now replant your roundup ready seeds, toomuchtodo, as much as you want.

pdkl95 11y ago

> Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy That isn't a comparable claim. Microsoft is responsible for their choice of business model. > because CDs are easy to copy? You shouldn't expect profit when your business model relies on scarcity that doesn't exist in nature. Attempting to impose artificial scarcity doesn't work, for the same reason you cannot make a law that changes gravity. Trying to change laws of nature by fiat only makes you look foolish. Note that Microsoft can still run a profitable business even when their CDs are easy to copy. They did this for decades. For most of that time, they didn't spend much effort trying to stop piracy; unpaid copies helped maintain their desktop monopoly. If they were successful in stopping piracy, people might have learned about an alternative OS.

adrianN 11y ago
It is my understanding that copyright and patents exist exactly to create artificial scarcity so that the owners can extract money. I'm not sure whether it's a good idea, but it seems to work reasonably well for what it was designed to do.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > work reasonably well for what it was designed to do An argument can be made that copyright and patent worked before the digital era. The trick that Claude Shannon introduced may have been intended to remove noise, but that's not all it did. Digital encoding allowed data to be repeated indefinitely. Put another way, data was scarce when it gains noise (lower s/n) each time it is re-amplified; Shannon's encoding schemes allowed perfect copies, and thus data was no longer scarce. > copyright and patents exist exactly to create artificial scarcity Copyright and patent cannot create scarcity, nor were they intended to. They rebalanced existing scarcity.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Just because the cost to copy IP today is near nothing doesn't mean that there are not fixed costs into the generation of IP. Also you're right, patents and copyrights are not there to create scarcity - an IP owner can use a license that allows absolutely everyone to use it. They exist to give the owner a timeframe with which to recooperate costs of IP generation (and yes, the copyright timeframe is too long but patents are reasonable).