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It's the aftermath from inventing intellectual property. Patents were once called monopolies. What I find amusing is, you get this staunchly anti-government/lib

by cmurf 10y ago

It's the aftermath from inventing intellectual property. Patents were once called monopolies. What I find amusing is, you get this staunchly anti-government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP. And yet IP is all based on governments granting monopoly power over ideas, with violations enabling the owner to engage in all kinds of punative behavior with the government as the strong arm. Ironic. I think there's something valid about a government protected temporary monopoly. But in the case of copyright, for example, it's life plus 70 or more years. It is ridiculous, as in, worthy of ridicule. Medical patents are 20 years, which itself is too long, but it's made worse by rather permissive ways in which they can be effectively renewed by barely changing the medicine. You know what it is? It's a way to get white collar work to continue to pay out more than, and longer than, the actual amount and duration of work on a thing takes. It's an incentive to do that kind of work. But I agree that it's grossly lopsided when you can't do repair or research on that same material - that's one of the original points of patent and copyright law. Put your ideas on paper so that you not only get protection for a while, but others can create derivatives that are better, and thereby we learn more about it all.

tiglionabbit 10y ago
I thought patents were an incentive to invest in research and development. Without patents, anyone who invests in research is at a disadvantage because when they come up with something good, their competitors can copy them at no cost.
- fnj 10y ago
  No, both they and their competitors are equally advantaged once the invention has been made. What paents give them is not freedom from disadvantage; it is an artificial advantage to justify making the investment. Society/the government is ostensibly afraid nobody will invent if they are not artificially advantaged. Those with working intellect consider that trade secrets are enough of a protection against competition.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    It's a good thing too, because as we all know, nobody ever invented anything before patents existed.
    - type0 10y ago
      Of course not, that's why Einstein worked at the patent office.
  - didibus 10y ago
    I remember reading that the idea behind patents was to improve the knowledge transfer that trade secrets didn't offer. In exchange for a temporary exclusivity right, you are required to make public your discoveries and advancements. The article went further into how trade secrets allowed a company to have its employees sign non disclosures and actually sue the employee and whoever else used the employer's "stolen" knowledge in criminal court, while patents changed this to be only civil and prevented employees from being sued at all. As everything in life, a balance between the two is probably the most optimal. So I agree patents might have started going too far one way, but I doubt trade secrets would be any better in addressing OP's complaint that patents prevent the free transfer of knowledge and limits innovation. While I never lived when trade secrets were the norm, I believe most people supporting it in favor of patents suffer from the same problem a lot of younger programmers suffer from. We keep reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes over and over. It's all a cycle, we'll go back to trade secrets and then their issues will become more "apparent", people will have forgotten the inherent issues with patents and we'll move back to patents again, repeating the cycle. So I personally disagree with both, you rarely solve issues by reverting back to older ways which the people before us had already tried in vain. We have to try something else, maybe a hybrid, maybe something totally different.
- nercht12 10y ago
  Once upon a time, they did serve a purpose for people such as Edison who got ripped off right and left, or so I'm told. These days, it's more about putting money in lawyers' pockets because that alleged "protection" technically isn't free: you have to pay someone to defend it. That's why the little guy still goes under. Not to mention his patent might overlap with someone else's just enough for them to try to sue him for stepping over his bounds, supposing he tries making an "improvement". Patents and copyrights are nothing more than a legal minefield. There's nothing intellectually aiding about them, at least not in this era.
  - posterboy 10y ago
    >[Patents] did serve a purpose for people such as Edison who got ripped off right and left, or so I'm told He didn't work alone, did he? I think he had a company, but you can bet he got a sweet deal with his employees on those patents.
kybernetyk 10y ago
>you get this staunchly anti-government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP. Actually most libertarian are strictly against any form of IP and patents. They prefer trade secrets over state regulation. But then again I don't know if you mean real libertarians or just crypto-statists calling themselves libertarian because they don't know better...
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  Granting that the Venn diagram of "libertarian" and "Objectivist" is a contentious matter, Ayn Rand was very outspoken in her support of copyrights and patents, and one of the plots of the villainous collectivists in Atlas Shrugged was to nationalize all patents.
  - Hyperborian 10y ago
    That Venn diagram has little to no actual overlap at all. The objectivists just find it to be to their advantage, these days, to make it appear that they might. The controversy that you suggest is as manufactured as the controversy about anthropomorphic climate change.
    - ncote 10y ago
      Anthropogenic. And also, idiot.
      - johncolanduoni 10y ago
        CLIMATE CHANGE ANGRY
  - syshum 10y ago
    Ayn Rand was also very outspoken about not being called a Libertarian, she create Objectivism to be separate and apart from Libertarianism, one of the differences between Objectivism and Libertarianism is copyright/patents
- cmurf 10y ago
alasdair_ 10y ago
To be fair, most forms of property come from government-granted rights. The very idea that you can own land is kind of weird when you think about it.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  It's not really weird when you think about ownership just being a bunch of people agreeing to mess up anyone that tries to take something you've claimed. It takes a lot of work to maintain such an agreement, so people have to be compensated for it. If they aren't compensated to their liking, they'll take that thing and maybe other things you've claimed and maybe ruff you up for good measure.
  - e12e 10y ago
    "A bunch of people agreeing" is what a government is?
    - Fargren 10y ago
      Almost. A governments is a bunch of people agreeing plus the power of those people to punish those who do not agree, without being punished back.
      - e12e 10y ago
        I'd argue the "power to punish without being punished back" stems from "being a bunch of people that agree" - ie: a bigger bunch of people than any one sub-group they might want to punish for being in disagreement. Then there's the shift in power that comes from control over weapons and infrastructure ... but AFAIK the coordinated masses still have power on their side - partly from the assumption that given enough "external" disagreement, some people on the inside are likely to cross over. Indeed, one could argue that the most terrifying part about the Snowden disclosures on mass surveillance, is that the current government is poised to deploy counter-measures long before any opposition consolidates and organizes. This might take the form of buying out individuals - or "dissappearing" or taking out individuals that are perceived to be in the process of becoming important.

by cmurf 10y ago

tiglionabbit 10y ago

I thought patents were an incentive to invest in research and development. Without patents, anyone who invests in research is at a disadvantage because when they come up with something good, their competitors can copy them at no cost.

fnj 10y ago
No, both they and their competitors are equally advantaged once the invention has been made. What paents give them is not freedom from disadvantage; it is an artificial advantage to justify making the investment. Society/the government is ostensibly afraid nobody will invent if they are not artificially advantaged. Those with working intellect consider that trade secrets are enough of a protection against competition.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  It's a good thing too, because as we all know, nobody ever invented anything before patents existed.
  - type0 10y ago
    Of course not, that's why Einstein worked at the patent office.
- didibus 10y ago
  I remember reading that the idea behind patents was to improve the knowledge transfer that trade secrets didn't offer. In exchange for a temporary exclusivity right, you are required to make public your discoveries and advancements. The article went further into how trade secrets allowed a company to have its employees sign non disclosures and actually sue the employee and whoever else used the employer's "stolen" knowledge in criminal court, while patents changed this to be only civil and prevented employees from being sued at all. As everything in life, a balance between the two is probably the most optimal. So I agree patents might have started going too far one way, but I doubt trade secrets would be any better in addressing OP's complaint that patents prevent the free transfer of knowledge and limits innovation. While I never lived when trade secrets were the norm, I believe most people supporting it in favor of patents suffer from the same problem a lot of younger programmers suffer from. We keep reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes over and over. It's all a cycle, we'll go back to trade secrets and then their issues will become more "apparent", people will have forgotten the inherent issues with patents and we'll move back to patents again, repeating the cycle. So I personally disagree with both, you rarely solve issues by reverting back to older ways which the people before us had already tried in vain. We have to try something else, maybe a hybrid, maybe something totally different.
nercht12 10y ago
Once upon a time, they did serve a purpose for people such as Edison who got ripped off right and left, or so I'm told. These days, it's more about putting money in lawyers' pockets because that alleged "protection" technically isn't free: you have to pay someone to defend it. That's why the little guy still goes under. Not to mention his patent might overlap with someone else's just enough for them to try to sue him for stepping over his bounds, supposing he tries making an "improvement". Patents and copyrights are nothing more than a legal minefield. There's nothing intellectually aiding about them, at least not in this era.
- posterboy 10y ago
  >[Patents] did serve a purpose for people such as Edison who got ripped off right and left, or so I'm told He didn't work alone, did he? I think he had a company, but you can bet he got a sweet deal with his employees on those patents.

kybernetyk 10y ago

>you get this staunchly anti-government/libertarians who are also incredibly pro-IP. Actually most libertarian are strictly against any form of IP and patents. They prefer trade secrets over state regulation. But then again I don't know if you mean real libertarians or just crypto-statists calling themselves libertarian because they don't know better...

0xcde4c3db 10y ago
Granting that the Venn diagram of "libertarian" and "Objectivist" is a contentious matter, Ayn Rand was very outspoken in her support of copyrights and patents, and one of the plots of the villainous collectivists in Atlas Shrugged was to nationalize all patents.
- Hyperborian 10y ago
  That Venn diagram has little to no actual overlap at all. The objectivists just find it to be to their advantage, these days, to make it appear that they might. The controversy that you suggest is as manufactured as the controversy about anthropomorphic climate change.
  - ncote 10y ago
    Anthropogenic. And also, idiot.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      CLIMATE CHANGE ANGRY
- syshum 10y ago
  Ayn Rand was also very outspoken about not being called a Libertarian, she create Objectivism to be separate and apart from Libertarianism, one of the differences between Objectivism and Libertarianism is copyright/patents
cmurf 10y ago

alasdair_ 10y ago

To be fair, most forms of property come from government-granted rights. The very idea that you can own land is kind of weird when you think about it.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
It's not really weird when you think about ownership just being a bunch of people agreeing to mess up anyone that tries to take something you've claimed. It takes a lot of work to maintain such an agreement, so people have to be compensated for it. If they aren't compensated to their liking, they'll take that thing and maybe other things you've claimed and maybe ruff you up for good measure.
- e12e 10y ago
  "A bunch of people agreeing" is what a government is?
  - Fargren 10y ago
    Almost. A governments is a bunch of people agreeing plus the power of those people to punish those who do not agree, without being punished back.
    - e12e 10y ago
      I'd argue the "power to punish without being punished back" stems from "being a bunch of people that agree" - ie: a bigger bunch of people than any one sub-group they might want to punish for being in disagreement. Then there's the shift in power that comes from control over weapons and infrastructure ... but AFAIK the coordinated masses still have power on their side - partly from the assumption that given enough "external" disagreement, some people on the inside are likely to cross over. Indeed, one could argue that the most terrifying part about the Snowden disclosures on mass surveillance, is that the current government is poised to deploy counter-measures long before any opposition consolidates and organizes. This might take the form of buying out individuals - or "dissappearing" or taking out individuals that are perceived to be in the process of becoming important.