4 ms·

Intellectual property and patents are not the problem, the problem is the broken system around them that allows these types of abuses.

• Jach 15y ago
  Did you even read some of the book before responding?
• waterhouse 15y ago
  The book would disagree with you there. (I could close with that bald assertion, but I won't.) Its basic thrust is that the patent system is "broken" to the extent that it does what it's designed to do: grant to an inventor a time-limited privilege to restrict his competitors so that he can earn monopoly profits that will reward him for his invention. The book opens with the story of James Watt. Watt made a series of improvements to the design of a steam engine and obtained a patent, which he used to interfere with his competition. In particular, he used the legal system to crush Jonathan Hornblower and his superior engine design; the rest of his competitors had made further improvements, but simply waited for Watt's patent to expire (which had been extended to a 32-year period) before putting them into production. Watt himself was forced to use a technically inferior design element in his engines for some years to avoid infringing on someone else's patent. When Watt's patents finally expired and his competitors could freely enter the market, the number of steam engines being produced and the rate at which their efficiency improved both exploded; furthermore, Watt's company continued to increase production and make a profit for years despite the disappearance of the patent protection. It seems clear that the overall effect of Watt's patent protection was to greatly slow down both the development and the wide-scale adoption of improved steam engines--and, as a footnote, that it may not even have been necessary to ensure that Watt made a profit. Note that Watt was using the patent system exactly as it had been intended. In the book, we see this happening over and over in detail and across a wide range of industries.
• wnight 15y ago
  Nope. The problem is granting monopolies and expecting to encourage growth. It's nonsensical. Even if our courts were up to it, and we see time and hand again that they are not, you simply cannot consistently enforce incoherent laws. All IP laws other than trademark are harmful to society and the economy and need to be abolished.
  • adestefan 15y ago
    You think that if I were to write a song and post a recording of it on YouTube, then it would be perfectly acceptable for anyone, from the grandmother down the street to the ultra-mega business in the big city, to take my lyrics and melody and make mounds of money from it without compensating me in the least?
    • wnight 15y ago
      Absolutely. You got your compensation already when you learned about music from everyone else. And even if not, it's just morally wrong and nigh impossible to contain ideas. How do you think the ultra-mega-corp is going to get unreasonably huge without monopoly control of creation or distribution though? And with tiny profit margins because their competitors can just copy them. I also don't think you should get government help in keeping secret the method you use to do anything. It's possible to look at you and see what you're doing - if you do it where people can see you they'll just naturally be able to copy you. We'd have to lobotomize them or set up some ridiculous bureau of ideas to check everything for originality. Both nonsensical. A society can't afford to handicap its creators.