3 ms·

It surely is and always was to protect a return on investment?

iso1631 5y ago
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously" Benjamin Franklin.
- quantified 5y ago
  Nowadays that’s called “socialism” and highly denigrated.
derekp7 5y ago
Yes, but that return on investment was simply a mechanism, not a goal in itself.
- quantified 5y ago
  It also was limited. The continuum between self-interest and greed was marked off quite differently then.
rtkwe 5y ago
I think that's getting things backwards. The goal in the Constitution is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" so IMO the goal has always been the advancement of culture and sciences by allowing a brief period of protected money making followed by releasing the idea to be used by other people. Imagine how much slower we would advance if patents were given the same Life + 70 years. No invention that comes out in your lifetime would be accessible to be iterated on without paying the inventor in your or your kids lifetimes! That's where we are with copyrights and there were decades where no new works entered the public domain because of how long extensions were granted. 1925 works are just now entering the public domain. > [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Peasants were an investment back when peoole were poperty
xbar 5y ago
It was surely to design a system of continual innovation that ensures the public domain received its due benefit from providing the environment in which the idea was created, while guaranteeing sufficient incentive to innovate by providing a reasonable but modest term for individuals to profit from their ideas. Selecting a subset of its mechanisms and declaring that it is the goal misses the entire point of the policy. Why did things go so off the rails after WWII? I do not think Disney did this alone.

"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously" Benjamin Franklin.

quantified 5y ago
Nowadays that’s called “socialism” and highly denigrated.

derekp7 5y ago

Yes, but that return on investment was simply a mechanism, not a goal in itself.

quantified 5y ago
It also was limited. The continuum between self-interest and greed was marked off quite differently then.

rtkwe 5y ago

I think that's getting things backwards. The goal in the Constitution is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" so IMO the goal has always been the advancement of culture and sciences by allowing a brief period of protected money making followed by releasing the idea to be used by other people. Imagine how much slower we would advance if patents were given the same Life + 70 years. No invention that comes out in your lifetime would be accessible to be iterated on without paying the inventor in your or your kids lifetimes! That's where we are with copyrights and there were decades where no new works entered the public domain because of how long extensions were granted. 1925 works are just now entering the public domain. > [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Peasants were an investment back when peoole were poperty

xbar 5y ago

It was surely to design a system of continual innovation that ensures the public domain received its due benefit from providing the environment in which the idea was created, while guaranteeing sufficient incentive to innovate by providing a reasonable but modest term for individuals to profit from their ideas. Selecting a subset of its mechanisms and declaring that it is the goal misses the entire point of the policy. Why did things go so off the rails after WWII? I do not think Disney did this alone.