Policy doesn't work that way; it's specifically focused on use. It focuses on people and what they do. Policy makers can't create policy around a piece of techn

Policy doesn't work that way; it's specifically focused on use. It focuses on people and what they do. Policy makers can't create policy around a piece of technology without understanding how it is used -- how all of it's used This is an important point. It's the point pg misses in http://paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html http://paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html where he expresses certainty that if you're opposed to software patents, then you're opposed to software in general, since there's a technological equivalence between software and hardware. What's different, though, is the way people come up with new stuff. A more correct statement would be, if you're opposed to software patents, you're opposed to patents on things where people use a process much like software development when they create new stuff.