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The dude attacking Mojang isn't looking good. > Its amazing to see so many people loyal to this game maker. Good on him. Eh, didn't take the time to consider

• shasta 14y ago
  Patents are there to stop people stealing a technology you invented Actually, that's exactly the purpose of patents. Patent legislation casts a wider net only because there's no effective way to assess the validity of someone's claim that "I invented this independently and was uninfluenced by your invention." You and notch are in the technically wrong column on this one. Compare to: "Life jackets are there to prevent drowning". "No, they also prevent swimming under water".
  • chimi 14y ago
    I don't understand why people keep saying it isn't stealing. According to Merriam-Webster: Definition of STEAL transitive verb 1a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully and Definition of APPROPRIATE transitive verb 3 : to take or make use of without authority or right Why do opponents of IP rights keep saying it isn't stealing? There's nothing in the definition of stealing that says you have to physically remove something from the possession of the owner/creator of the thing being stolen. You just have to make use of it without the authority or right to do so.
    • shasta 14y ago
      The most general interpretation of that definition doesn't seem to match common usage of "steal". If I use your pen without permission, but without taking it, you're going to confuse a lot of people if you claim I stole it. Secondly, there's a difference between what's being argued here and the common "copying isn't theft". Notch is pointing out that patent infringement doesn't even always involve copying. Sometimes it's just rediscovery.
      • evincarofautumn 14y ago
        Another example: if an “identity thief” appropriates your personal information, you’re still the same person—your identity wasn’t stolen, it was infringed.
        • ThJ 14y ago
          This prompts an interesting question: Is identity theft the act of procuring personal information without permission, or is it the act of using this information to misrepresent your identity? Is it both, necessarily? What if you don't harm the victim in any way? And what part of this constitutes actual theft? To the person, it certainly _feels_ like a part of him was stolen and used without permission. Having published creative works on the Internet myself, I certainly understand why so many content creators try to prevent unauthorized copying. You really do feel vulnerable. Something you're very proud of has been shared with the world, and now it's in some seedy part of the Internet, with forum dwellers making fun of it. I've noticed that as social creatures, we're unable to have empathy for corporations. There's nobody to feel guilty towards when you download that copy of Autodesk Maya. I don't think our brains are designed for it. We like individuals and small businesses because we can fit a picture of the actual people inside our heads. We feel guilty when we infringe upon their copyrights, because we know it might actually hurt them personally. Most illegal acts can be boiled down to emotional damage. As pointed out elsewhere in this post, the right to property is an abstract concept. You _decided_ to hold onto that object, and you're unwilling to part with it. It doesn't seem abstract, because it's something our brains instinctively do, but it has no root in physical reality. Why is murder a crime? Supernatural beliefs aside, the victim most certainly doesn't care anymore, because he's dead. As we all know, the problem is the emotional and financial damage to the people left behind. Prison sentences serve to control this damage. Can a large corporation feel emotional damage? Should these laws apply if there is no emotional hurt? Everyone can see that a large company like Adobe is nowhere near going bankrupt, and their employees are most certainly not hurting because of piracy. Adobe has money coming out of its rear end. Perhaps our laws should offer less protection if you're big and strong. Vast swaths of the world's population are happily breaking copyright law, and _not_ feeling guilty about it. Some shades of gray are clearly missing here.
  • npsimons 14y ago
    Actually, that's exactly the purpose of patents. From the US constitution, section 8: 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; Note how it doesn't say anything about "intellectual property" or "theft" or "moral rights", or even third parties. I'm not in favor of abolition of copyright, patents and trademarks, but this is exactly the kind of muddled, framing[1] language that the blog post linked to is trying to correct. The laws have been pushed so far in the direction of "protecting" intellectual "property", and language has become so twisted by those who have the most to gain from the results that you can argue it's how things stand today, but it obviously wasn't the original intent, and it doesn't necessarily make it right. It's also not necessarily good economic policy (you want to see startups killed off in this country? Just continue to let copyright, patent and trademark law continue to expand). [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28social_sciences%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28social_sciences%29
    • shasta 14y ago
      The word "steal" was in the original quote that Notch attributed to whoever that other guy was. This question of whether that word "steal" is used correctly is total non sequitur. The primary purpose of patents is to disallow use of an idea without permission (that's what "stealing" was intended to mean in the quote, whether you like that word or not) in order to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
  • chc 14y ago
    Ignoring the "stealing" vs. "infringement" red herring, you're still misrepresenting patents. The motivation behind patents was to get inventors to reveal their inventions. Prior to patent law, inventors just kept everything a secret. This meant that inventions would get lost and had to be rediscovered later on. So in exchange for revealing their "secret sauce" to the state, inventors get a temporary monopoly on their invention. As for the idea that you could never, ever tell whether somebody invented the same thing independently from another, I don't understand why you'd think so. In the extreme case, if it's the 16th century and two people living on different continents invent the same thing days apart, you can be pretty darn sure that neither copied the other. Information didn't travel that fast. But this doesn't matter in patent law, because its purpose it not to prevent the "stealing" of inventions. Its purpose is to encourage disclosure by awarding a temporary monopoly on an invention. This is in contrast to copyright, where it is a valid defense to say you created your work independently.
    • shasta 14y ago
      After researching this briefly, it seems that the earliest "patents" in England weren't awarded to systematically encourage anything in particular, but were merely monopoly grants given by the monarch for whatever reason (e.g. as reward for X, I'll give you a monopoly on Y for 20 years). The French apparently developed a system that treated inventions as property. Regardless of the historical motivation for patents, the reason for the inclusion of patents and copyrights into the US constitution and law was clearly to encourage new invention, not just to get inventors to disclose what they would have invented anyway. The US constitution was crafted in the middle of the industrial revolution, as we moved away from master craftsmen to big industry where it's hard to keep secrets. As for the idea that you could never, ever tell whether somebody invented the same thing independently from another Of course you might occasionally be able to prove convincingly that you came to an invention independently, but in general you can't. What's your point? Why do you think the US adopted a first to invent rule rather than a first to file rule? If the goal is just to encourage disclosure, then we'd have the latter right? First one to tell us how it's done wins! But that's not the rule we have, and the reason is that primary purpose of patents is to encourage new invention.
  • charonn0 14y ago
    The purpose of patents has nothing to do with theft or personal property rights. They are a voluntary grant of special protection to the inventor by rest of society; society promises to grant the inventor exclusionary protections for a period of time, after which the idea ceases to be exclusive. That is the reward that society is willing to pay for those of us who use the advantages which society provides to create new things. At no time does the patented idea become property, and therefore, by definition, it cannot be stolen; every patent holder owes his/her/their patent to society, not the other way around.
• Ryan_Shmotkin 14y ago
  By this reasoning, copyright infringement is not theft and should be tolerated. Who said we didn't think of using "scrolls" or "apple" as our company name independently ?
  • drewwwwww 14y ago
    you mean 'trademark'.
  • dllthomas 14y ago
    Trademark isn't there to prevent theft of brilliant brand names; it's there to prevent confusion. That's an entirely different endeavor than either patent (protecting ideas) or copyright (protecting creative expression).
    • belorn 14y ago
      This is a lost truth on most people. If something trademarked can be used in a context that does not result in the consumer being confused, then the owner automatically loose the trademark. Its a consumer protection law, not an anti-competition law.
      • anthonyb 14y ago
        They don't lose their trademark, they're just not allowed to sue where the use isn't confusing.
        • dllthomas 14y ago
          This depends, I think. My understanding is there are some caveats when something gets really well known, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Trademark law isn't always executed perfectly (see some of the behavior of the Olympic Committee, for instance). The fundamental purpose, however, remains to avoid confusion.
  • ben0x539 14y ago
    No, by this reasoning, copyright infringement is not theft and should be discussed using precise and honest terminology.