4 ms·

First a note: I'm certainly of the opinion that the system as it stands is excessively in favour of intellectual monopolies - particularly when it comes to soft

First a note: I'm certainly of the opinion that the system as it stands is excessively in favour of intellectual monopolies - particularly when it comes to software patents. I just don't hold the opinion that taking the other extreme is productive. There's the obvious prime example: drugs manufacture. The cost to research drugs and then test them is astronomical, while the cost of producing them is often very low. Much of the cost of the drug then, pays for the original research. It takes quite some time for the drugs to pay back the research cost. What, then, is the solution to making money in this sector without intellectual monopolies? Personally, I'm in favour of no intellectual monopolies in areas where the cost of creation is high. Where the cost is lower (new, fast moving industries, for example), IP terms would be reduced or eliminated.

kiba 16y ago
The cost of creation is alway high relative to manufacture. It may not be measured in dollars, but it can be measured in time. The cost of writing books, the cost of fact-checking, and the cost of marketing, all add up. Think about the plant growers who must breed generations and generations of plant? Take my website for example, the opportunity cost in creating the content is enormous. Duplicating only takes a few hundred dollars and maybe 3 hours. RedHat almost certainly spend millions of dollars investing developer man hours in their distro and the linux kernel. The pharmaceutical industry costs' is surely higher than usual. However, the original drugs can sell for very high price, even when generic versions introduce market pressure. The high cost of creation is not unique, and not limited to pharmaceutical industry. It is only relatively speaking that pharmaceutical industry's creation cost is much higher.(Don't forget that some of the cost are certainly inflated by an overly risk averse regulatory agency.) In any case, introducing intellectual monopolies is a dicey game. Not only you must balance the incentives, you must also manage the bureaucracy, take into account wasted cost opportunity that could have went into research and marketing. If somebody exploit a loophole, it would take forever to change the law because congress is slow, or because of huge opposition pressure. People can be brought to favor certain corporations. So you want to support a system of intellectual monopoly? Good luck balancing all the incentives, disincentives, and things that come up that you didn't know about. To underestimate the difficulty of managing a regulatory system is to fall prey to the planning fallacy.
- AlisdairO 16y ago
  I agree that the cost of writing books is high, which is why we have copyright. Your website is a poor example: you wrote something which was popular for maybe a few days/weeks. Your investment was (I assume) repaid over that time. To any viewer of your site, there is no cost to visiting you over visiting any other site, so there is no incentive to find/use an alternative source. I completely agree that, in such a scenario, being the first to market is a sufficient benefit, and that such content doesn't need much in the way of protection. Some drugs are expensive to manufacture, yes. A great many aren't, too. Regardless of that, the company that doesn't have to invest in researching the drug will always be able to turn out a cheaper product, and thus reap the large majority of the profit: there being an incentive in this case for consumers to find cheaper companies. There is no reasonable likelihood of the company doing the research covering its costs in this scenario. If drugs had a life span of a few months, this wouldn't be the case, but they are used for much longer periods of time. I don't underestimate the difficulty of running a regulatory agency: so much is plain from the mess that the US' system is currently in. I just think that the alternative of making research in many industries a waste of time is even worse. While I favour a more radical overhaul, a few simple changes, such as eliminating software patents, would make the US system much more reasonable.
  - kiba 16y ago
    I agree that the cost of writing books is high, which is why we have copyright. Your website is a poor example: you wrote something which was popular for maybe a few days/weeks. Your investment was (I assume) repaid over that time. To any viewer of your site, there is no cost to visiting you over visiting any other site, so there is no incentive to find/use an alternative source. I completely agree that, in such a scenario, being the first to market is a sufficient benefit, and that such content doesn't need much in the way of protection. Now, are you simply just glossing over what I have told you about books and British authors? Do I have to point to you to an example of a public domain video game that actually made money? Since when my website stop being visible to the world after digg has made it through? I still get thousands of visitors each month. such as eliminating software patents, would make the US system much more reasonable. Do you have any sense of history whatsoever? When is at any point in history that the US patent system actually function the way it supposed to? I can points to you horror stories about patents gone bad in the 19th century and the music sheet wars as well various submarine patents. It's not some problem that suddenly pop up in some modern time that only impact the last 30 years or so. It's a problem that exists throughout economic history.

kiba 16y ago

The cost of creation is alway high relative to manufacture. It may not be measured in dollars, but it can be measured in time. The cost of writing books, the cost of fact-checking, and the cost of marketing, all add up. Think about the plant growers who must breed generations and generations of plant? Take my website for example, the opportunity cost in creating the content is enormous. Duplicating only takes a few hundred dollars and maybe 3 hours. RedHat almost certainly spend millions of dollars investing developer man hours in their distro and the linux kernel. The pharmaceutical industry costs' is surely higher than usual. However, the original drugs can sell for very high price, even when generic versions introduce market pressure. The high cost of creation is not unique, and not limited to pharmaceutical industry. It is only relatively speaking that pharmaceutical industry's creation cost is much higher.(Don't forget that some of the cost are certainly inflated by an overly risk averse regulatory agency.) In any case, introducing intellectual monopolies is a dicey game. Not only you must balance the incentives, you must also manage the bureaucracy, take into account wasted cost opportunity that could have went into research and marketing. If somebody exploit a loophole, it would take forever to change the law because congress is slow, or because of huge opposition pressure. People can be brought to favor certain corporations. So you want to support a system of intellectual monopoly? Good luck balancing all the incentives, disincentives, and things that come up that you didn't know about. To underestimate the difficulty of managing a regulatory system is to fall prey to the planning fallacy.

AlisdairO 16y ago
I agree that the cost of writing books is high, which is why we have copyright. Your website is a poor example: you wrote something which was popular for maybe a few days/weeks. Your investment was (I assume) repaid over that time. To any viewer of your site, there is no cost to visiting you over visiting any other site, so there is no incentive to find/use an alternative source. I completely agree that, in such a scenario, being the first to market is a sufficient benefit, and that such content doesn't need much in the way of protection. Some drugs are expensive to manufacture, yes. A great many aren't, too. Regardless of that, the company that doesn't have to invest in researching the drug will always be able to turn out a cheaper product, and thus reap the large majority of the profit: there being an incentive in this case for consumers to find cheaper companies. There is no reasonable likelihood of the company doing the research covering its costs in this scenario. If drugs had a life span of a few months, this wouldn't be the case, but they are used for much longer periods of time. I don't underestimate the difficulty of running a regulatory agency: so much is plain from the mess that the US' system is currently in. I just think that the alternative of making research in many industries a waste of time is even worse. While I favour a more radical overhaul, a few simple changes, such as eliminating software patents, would make the US system much more reasonable.
- kiba 16y ago
  I agree that the cost of writing books is high, which is why we have copyright. Your website is a poor example: you wrote something which was popular for maybe a few days/weeks. Your investment was (I assume) repaid over that time. To any viewer of your site, there is no cost to visiting you over visiting any other site, so there is no incentive to find/use an alternative source. I completely agree that, in such a scenario, being the first to market is a sufficient benefit, and that such content doesn't need much in the way of protection. Now, are you simply just glossing over what I have told you about books and British authors? Do I have to point to you to an example of a public domain video game that actually made money? Since when my website stop being visible to the world after digg has made it through? I still get thousands of visitors each month. such as eliminating software patents, would make the US system much more reasonable. Do you have any sense of history whatsoever? When is at any point in history that the US patent system actually function the way it supposed to? I can points to you horror stories about patents gone bad in the 19th century and the music sheet wars as well various submarine patents. It's not some problem that suddenly pop up in some modern time that only impact the last 30 years or so. It's a problem that exists throughout economic history.