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When Ben Franklin got started with patents, he was happy to share the idea. Nowadays, patents are used to create scarcity. I've been reading an alternative analysis of patents and copyrights in a book called "Intellectual Monopoly." Of course, the book is making a case against intellectual property, but it is one of the easiest to read.

I find this book very interesting, especially the parts about James Watt and genetically modified organism patents. After reading just half the book, I've reached the conclusion that patents require at the least, very close parental supervision. Or we could just eliminate them, once and for all. We won't know for sure if competition is a sin until patents are gone.

This whole patent business, while entertaining, is sort of depressing.

Care to elaborate?

Yes:

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521879280
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/

Hugo G.

This book might be an interesting read.

Intellectual Monopoly is not Property.

I'm a libertarian too, and I don't see that I could endorse any law which restricts someone else what he does with his property.

To quote http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/coffee.htm
"Intellectual property law is not about your right to control your copy of your idea. What intellectual property law is really about is about your right to control my copy of your idea"

You're in luck, because the economists highlighted in TFA happen to have written a book on the very subject of the article! You might want to read chapter 9, The Pharmaceutical Industry.

You're in luck, because the economists highlighted in TFA happen to have written a book on the very subject of the article! You might want to read chapter 9, The Pharmaceutical Industry.

Better yet, you can read it online.

It's freely available on their web site.

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

They put their mouths where their money is, or something like that (too late in the day to be properly witty). Read it online for free.

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

Jarnal. It's a bit obtuse (you'll need to remove the default lined background, then open the PDF you're annotating as a background image – which does mean you can't edit the text, unfortunately), but then, it is free. It's done what I wanted, more or less.

If all you want to do is highlight (there are several pen tools which can be used to highlight or draw) or annotate (there's also a text tool, which as I mentioned can't edit the existing text in the PDF), it'll probably be adequate.

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Enjoy.

As tablet support is still primarily Windows-based for note-taking, this does kind of lack. For basic work Jarnal does work, and there are a couple other note-like takers out there. Most of them don't have the nice integration with audio that OneNote has, though, which is killer for lectures.

In principle you're right. What you describe is how the concept behind patents is supposed to work.

In reality, there's only pharmaceutics where the patent system works for the patent-owners remotely like your description. Everywhere else, patents have become a tool for mercantile suppression and corporate warfare; from which the economy as whole only suffers (with the exception of lawyers).

Read http://researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/ and http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm on how the patent system really works (as opposed to theory).

You should keep pushing back, too, but regardless, the RIAA has lost the war. Online music is bigger and better than they are, they're hosed. Their only hope for staying alive is by making their own stores and actually competing with other websites and private artists. They'll actually have to face their competition instead of trying to help craft and have enforced laws which aren't right, nor enforceable, and perpetuate this concept that ideas are to be owned and controlled instead of shared, which is an idea that I believe has set many countries in this world back a few decades in technological advancements. There is some proof of it. Read Against Intellectual Monopoly sometime, a good read. :)

...is on Against Monopoly. That is where said patent attorney regularly blogs, together with several others, including the economists who authored Against Intellectual Monopoly . Worth reading.

No, all patents are bad because patents are bad. Yes, read some history, like about the Industrial Revolution and it's progress in regards to the patent on the steam engine: Against Intellectual Monopoly

Economic discussions are always difficult, hence why economic advisers and theorists abound. It's fairly hard to tell if things would be better or worse, I agree. However in this instance, I believe that several things prove that a society that shares information would be a better society. Look at science. Look at open source software. Those things are traditionally sharing-based and a lot of progress has come because of them. Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept that certain things may get no attention unless a monopoly on the concept was present, but I simply disagree with it and believe where there is a need, there will be a solution. If it's several companies joining together to work on making it, or simply someone with an idea, or a company wanting to be first to market with a new idea, I believe it would get done, and get done faster, and would definitely help everyone much more quickly than a system that is based on withholding information. The only thing you can really do is give examples of things in which this is the case, and I gave two examples that I believe show it.

Regardless of the outcome of such an argument though, of course the current system is horribly corrupt and needs to be redone, at the very least.

1. No more lifetime-plus copyrights. You get a couple decades and that's it. If it doesn't become popular until 40 years after the fact, well that's just rough luck.

That might work, it might not. I agree that in most countries, durations are now excessively long, but if they became too short there is a genuine risk of stifling innovation. If all copyright worldwide was 40 years from publication, the market would now be saturated with free public domain material. You think TVs full of repeats now? It would be ten times worse. Broadcast the free or the expensive? Star Trek: TOS or Enterprise? It's a no-brainer.

We're on the cusp of a creative crunch: copyright protection in the 20th century has created unprecedented growth in creative output, but as the fruits of that growth fall into the public domain, economics will cease to favour such innovation. The industry can't even prepare for this: the cost of star actors and directors is just getting more and more stupid, and further and further from competitive.

What's the problem with reruns, anyway? In any case, if TV stations broadcast unpopular material, they'll feel it in their ratings. Copyright's supposed to provide an incentive to create (whether it does is another matter); it's not supposed to permanently lock out competition. As for the cost of star actors and directors: either they take a pay cut, or people find ways around it (use lesser known actors who are just as good).

4. No right to control distribution. You can choose the cost per copy but after than anyone has a right to make copies so long as they pay you for them.

Plus I still don't want the KKK to be able to use my works in their propaganda, paid for or not.

They can make certain uses of it anyway, under fair use.

5. No exclusive right to make derivative works. If I want to write a story in your world setting, I can do it and sell it as much as I want, as long as it accompanies a legally acquired copy of your work as well.

Third-party derivative works risk my ability to profit from sequels. It allows another party to change the public perception of my world, diluting my vision and damaging my work. Imagine you're writing a series of books, and in between the publication of parts 2 and 3 an incredibly popular fan-fiction scene starts up and kills off my characters. Three books are released by different authors furthering the world in an opposite direction from which I intended -- including the two aforementioned characters saving the world in episode 9. A stupendously large chunk of my readership are now disengaged from my reality and are no longer interested. I'm left selling less books, and most of the books I am selling are just more reprints of the first book that'll never be read. Probably on a CD licensed under your proposal 4.

Again, copyright is supposed to provide an incentive to create to benefit society, not to achieve maximum revenue potential for the creator. Fan fiction also expands the market for the entire setting.

See Against Intellectual Monopoly for another take on the whole issue.

patents, copyrights, and trademarks are founded upon a hypothesis (usually confused for fact) of the free rider problem; this "problem" is a myth, however.

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763

There's No Such Thing As a Free Patent
By Stephan Kinsella
Posted on 3/7/2005

The conventional defense of the patent system is that it is essential in order to stimulate creativity.[1] For example, in "Don't Believe the Hype" (Feb. 2005, IP Law & Business), patent attorneys John Benassi & Noel Gillespie conclude that our patent laws continue to "foster innovation." This is so even though many observers believe our patent system is "out of control and that overworked patent examiners are issuing overly broad patents."

Costs Must Be Considered

But the benefits that flow from the patent system are only half the story, since the system also comes with costs. Even if we are going to adopt a wealth-maximization criterion (which is, admittedly, problematic),[2] we must compare the costs to the benefits to know whether the system is worth having at all.
If costs are not taken into account, there are no limits to what could be done to encourage innovation. Some, for example, suggest replacing the patent system with a federal commission that gives taxpayer-funded rewards to inventors deemed worthy. "Under a reward system, innovators are paid for innovations directly by the government (possibly on the basis of sales), and innovations pass immediately into the public domain. Thus, reward systems engender incentives to innovate without creating the monopoly power of intellectual property rights."[3] ...

If the patent system is to be a net benefit to society, the gains it provides (the extra wealth and innovations the system stimulates) should be greater than its costs, according to standard law and economics "wealth-maximization" reasoning. As Landes and Posner--deans of the law and economics approach--point out, innovators themselves engage in a similar calculus: "For a new work to be created the expected return . . . must exceed the expected costs."[6]
In other words, the theory is that the innovator will engage in innovating activity only when he believes he can reap a profit. And the very point of a patent system is to make it easier for inventors to earn a profit, so that more of them will invest time and resources trying to innovate.
Likewise, the entire patent system's "gains"--the extra wealth or innovation it stimulates--needs to be clearly greater than the costs of the system if the patent system is to be a net benefit to society. How we are to go about measuring such costs against the benefits, and include the opportunity costs of time, is a crucially important issue. But if one is going to advocate a system on the grounds that it is beneficial, one must attempt to account for costs as well.

What Costs Are There?

And there are clearly costs to the system. Indeed, some of the purported "benefits" cited by Benassi and Gillespie may really be costs. They note, for example, that venture capitalists insist on a strong patent portfolio when evaluating whether to invest in a company. But this is because, in part, patent portfolios are necessary to defend against other companies' portfolios. If there were no patent system, one would not need to defensively spend money building up a mountain of patents to use in counterclaims or cross-licensing negotiations.
The authors also acknowledge that, "Unfortunately, there are companies that make no products and whose only business is to acquire patents in order to enforc

The whole point of a patents system is limited monopolies to help the market.

Without such a system, there's nothing stopping me from spending 10 years in a shed developing a revolutionary new vacuum cleaner, bringing it to market - and then you waltzing into a shop, buying one, copying it and selling it for half the price I do.

The point of a capitalist society is that the "10 years in a shed" bit gets rewarded with a time-limited monopoly...

Where monopolies do harm the market is where the system is abused. The obvious solution to that is a system which isn't terribly open to abuse.

OK, so that wasn't really fair. :-)

Here's the executive summary: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm

Some more references:
http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

"Within the past five or six years, economists in particular have started to question the USPTO's practices, finding little correlation, if any, between patent proliferation and invention. Economists have identified many situations in which patents actually retard the introduction of new products. "
http://members.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

This confusion about tangible and intellectual property is typical among apologists for intellectual monopoly. The claim that intellectual property is like real property is spurious, since property rights concern the right of the owner to exclusive use, and intellectual property is a government grant to create a legal monopoly over all copies of an idea.

For a careful critique of the conventional notion of intellectual property, see Against Intellectual Monopoly by economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

There is no such thing as a defensive patent; that just does not make any sense at all. The whole point of a patent is offensive; it is a restriction placed upon the rest of humanity that they may not do something. It does not matter whether anybody gets sued, the mere existence of the patent has already done the most harm. Suing someone is just looting the body after you've already killed them.

And it is not just a software-only issue, patents are just as dangerous in many other fields. For a much deeper understanding of how patents are harmful, please read Against Intellectual Monopoly by by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again stnew.htm

This is quite a long read, but it is very important.

Instead of grandstanding to curry favor with a few movie and recording industry executives, so that he'll have a place to work after he resigns, Gonzales ought to read Against Intellectual Monopoly, by economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. And then he should resign.

The previous poster writes, "Take just 10 minutes to get educated."

A judicious selection of readings from "Against Intellectual Monopoly" is ideal for educating oneself about intellectual property, in the ten minutes generously alloted for this purpose by the previous poster.

For example, Boldrin and Levine demolish the conventional claim of intellectual property apologists that intellectual property is just like real property. Boldrin and Levine point out that property rights have to do with the right of the owner to exclusive use, whereas intellectual property is a government grant to create a legal monopoly over all copies of an idea.

The use of patents by monied intellectual monopolists to impede innovation for their own profit is ancient. Microsoft belongs to a long line of rent seeking intellectual monopolists, which includes such historical figures as James Watt, who spent more time protecting his monopoly on the steam engine and prosecuting inventors with superior designs than he spent on development; and Marconi, whose contribution to the development of radio was the introduction of the ground wire.

The original poster is unwittingly correct: if /.-ers were to follow his advice, they would be only "marginally more intelligent." But why should they settle for that, when they could read Against Intellectial Monopoly, and be brilliant?

Here are a few: the authors of Against Intellectual Monopoly , and some folks at TechDirt.

The entire point of granting a patent is to give someone a monopoly. It would be odd for the US government to both grant monopoly privileges to Verizon and prosecute them for exercising those privileges.

So you think that if I'm not reselling it, I should be able to take whatever I want, from anyone, for free? You just put every software, movie, pharmaceutical and music company out of business. prepare to enter a new dark ages.

Unbiased research, however, suggests the opposite will be true.

Note further the modern day example of fashion, where despite a complete lack of copyright or patent new designs are continually made...they have to, to compete! And to give complete lie to your statement: there are many many many fashion companies, and many are very profitable.

As I said, this is communism.

To argue for such a system is to say you are unhappy with capitalism, and would prefer a communist system instead.

Here are some links for the interested:

Music and books
http://questioncopyright.com/

Patents
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

Network economy
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.ph p/Main_Page

Collection p2p politics
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/

Software
http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/20 07/computer-2007-article.html

IP economics
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/

Recommendation: The committee suggests exploring whether or not the notion of copy is an appropriate foundation for copyright law, and whether a new foundation can be constructed for copyright, based on the goal set forth in the Constitution ("promote the progress of science and the useful arts") and a tactic by which it is achieved, namely, providing incentive to authors and publishers. In this framework, the question would not be whether a copy had been made, but whether a use of a work was consistent with the goal and tactic (i.e., did it contribute to the desired "progress" and was it destructive, when taken alone or aggregated with other similar copies, of an author's incentive?). This concept is similar to fair use but broader in scope, as it requires considering the range of factors by which to measure the impact of the activity on authors, publishers, and others.

Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. Its sole purpose was to encourage the circulation of ideas by giving creators and publishers a short-term incentive to disseminate their work. Over the past 50 years, as a result of heavy lobbying by content industries, copyright has grown to such ludicrous proportions that it now often inhibits rather than promotes the circulation of ideas, leaving thousands of old movies, records and books languishing behind a legal barrier.

• flpsed
• PDF Edit
• KWord
• Scribus
• Inkscape
• GIMP
• pdftk
• Jarnal
• Multivalent

The your understanding of free markes is flawed. Price has nothing to do with value. The function of the free market is to have profit margin between costs, and what the market is prepared to pay: prise. By competition prise is driven towards costs until the market actors are forced to derive their profit from oppertunity rents by pressing their costs below their competition. Thus wealth is created by lowering the costs to deliver value to the market.

The practice of deriving profit from state enforced monopolies (patents and copyright f.ex.) is nothing but rent seeking.

It is true that some economists believe that the static inefficiency of state enforced monopolies is justifiable by arguments similar to yours. But it's not a holy truth, take a look at the critisism and see who you think has the better understanding.

http://www.againstmonopoly.org/
http://questioncopyright.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Network s
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

When somebody can give me a sound, scalable, generic and implementable economic design for goods that cost money to build the first time but are free to copy from then on, I might start to protest against DRM, because I'd actually have an answer to the question of "If not DRM then what?". Until then I'll continue to argue the case for it, use it despite the inconvenience and who knows, maybe even implement it in future.

If the market can't handle this problem. Do you really need the kinds of goods that DRM "enables"? Do you really value this production higher than the production that is suppressed by these systems?

Is it possible that a the costs of producing this cultural and technological goods can be lower if the cost of reusing that which is allready produced is, as the maginal costs suggest, zero?

Is it possible that the costs are low enought to enable the commons-based peer production that Benkler suggests?

But if you really must have a system. What do you think of the street performer protocol?

Economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine detail the rent-seeking behavior of those frightful miscreants, the RIAA, in their book Against Intellectual Monopoly. Slash-dotters should be pleased to see economic and game theoretical arguments levelled against copyright and intellectual property.

I was going to elaborate on this in some detail, but on consideration of the chutzpah of this legal action by the RIAA, I find myself agreeing with posters that the RIAA should sip a Polonium spiked tea.

Weird Al Yankovic's Don't Download This Song is amusing, though he understates the social and economic evil of the RIAA. These people are the scum of the earth.

Here's a link to a study that supports the OP: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm (PDF-warning)

i am basically for stronger enforcement of copyright laws.. does this make me 'anti-tech' or 'pro-tech' in this survey view?

anti-tech, you douche.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=01 97

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.dklevine.com/
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://www.cambia.org/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.fsf.org/

But if we take this strawman situation as given, we actually end up in a situation that has been fairly extensively studied by economists. The orthodox answer to the question posed is, as you suggets, "Well, you don't" and the the typical economist will go on to make the case for e.g. intellectual property, or some other typ of limited right of monopoly being granted to the inventor. (Yes, from an economist's perspective a piece of music is an invention.)

Anyway, what is interesting in this debate is a view that challengenges the received one. This dissenting opinion was presented by researchers Michele Boldrin och David K. Levine in a paper suggestively titled "Perfectly Competetive Innovation" (I believe a version of this paper is available at the website of one of the authors: http://www.dklevine.com./ If I remember their argument correctly, they argue that the very first copy of an invention is essentially it's blueprint. So at this point, the inventor has a monopoly over her invention, and is thus able to charge a price greater than the cost of producing an additional copy. If the number of copies sold is limited, then the buyers will also be able to charge a surplus in selling copies of the product. By reasoning like this, the authors show that there is, in fact, an incentive to innovate in the absence of intellectual property.

Now, in the case of digital music the cost for distributing an additional copy is essentially nil. If it is actually exactly equal to zero, the argument may break down. I am to sufficiently familiar with the details to say this with certainty, even though I would assume that this be the case. Never the less, I find this a stimulating idea, since it poses the following question: is distributing an additional copy absolutely without cost, and if so, should we impose some cost on doing so? Obviously, absence of DRM excludes many ways of imposing such a cost. But there may be other ways, such as ISP:s charging a small per-megabyte cost. This suggestion will probably cause an aoutcry among a lot of you. But if it is a price we would have to pay for a DRM-less music and movie industry, would it be worth it?

My comment was horribly mangled and half of it dissappeared that's why I told you to ignore it. I was referring to this report, chapter nine: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm The point was that patent protection did not increase the ammount of drugs created. It also leads to patenting of redundant drugs and redundant drugs are bad from a utilitarian perspective. Note that I nor the report are talking not talking about redundant drugs per se. Read the report if you want to. I don't have the time to write a decent reply.

sure that they would be able to recover thoses costs by haveing the right to control how and by whom it is produced
This is a fallacy. Revenue is not magically generated by having control over production, nor is control over production a guarantee of profit.

Explain to me how even the current patent system hurts the inventor.

In many ways, but mainly because the patent system has become a game for the Big Guys who can afford the law suits or defend themselves by using their own patents. Small inventors with one or two patents don't stand a chance. This article is but one example of this scenario. The way the multi-nationals use cross-licensing as a legal way of creating cartels is also pretty sickening (I recommend the excellent book Information Feudalism by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite for more on that).

For a more general discussion around the patent system and some of it's problems, I direct you to a few references on the topic:

http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.cepr.net/publications/intellectual_prop erty_2004_09.htm

What does echonomic theory say about incentive versus competition?
There is empiric data that suggests that patents are directly harmful to innovation and implementation of innovation. _Especially_ in medicinal drugs.

Read this and reconsider theory. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm/

I had the first Tivo of anyone I knew -- the day I first heard about it I picked one up. It was a great device for its time, but the recent Tivos I've experienced have no shown much improvement. It is my belief that patents stifle innovation, and they allow the patents holders to stick with the status quo longer than open competition would allow. There can be innovation without patents (PDF warning).

For Tivo to say that their livelihood is in a delicate position because of this patent is ridiculous. If they had protected this patent and EchoStar was never able to compete, all it would mean is that Tivo would have left their prices higher than the market would expect, and they'd still not do much to innovate and invent.

In order to bring a product to market, one must look at all sorts of requirements. Marketing, fast competition, consumer need, consumer affordability, and longevity. Not every product will succeed, and many will fail. The great part about failure is that, on a whole, consumers win out in the long run as other people innovate on top of the failure and release a product or service that is financially viable. Nowhere in the system is a patent system necessary, because there will always be people who want to make a product at a lower cost, even at no cost. Look at MythTV for proof, there, as well as any open source success story.

How many times must it be said that patents don't foster creation, they disrupt it. A monopoly is a monopoly, and the worst examples of monopoly are those that exist solely by using the force of government to back them up. In fact, I truly believe that no monopoly can exist without the myriad of government favoritistic laws and regulations that prevent the open competition that is created when restrictions are removed.

Think not of Tivo, think of the consumer that wins out in the end. This is all that matters in a market -- you should not enter a market without having an understanding of what it takes to survive, succeed and surpass your competition. If you think you can win by removing competition from the picture, you're ignoring the basic ideals of freedom that we're supposed to hold so close to our hearts.

I truly believe it is time for Tivo to close up shop. In the next 10 years, the DVR/PVR idea will be gone -- integrated into every bit of electronics we use, up to even cell phones. As bandwidth increases and costs decrease, the need to use a DVR/PVR will be reduced to those who just want to have the data in their home. Tivo (and EchoStar) will find themselves useless fast enough if they think this is a growing market.

See "China, present day".

The industrial revolution occurred immediately after the institution of a patent system in the UK.

Looking at the Wikipedia article about the Industrial Revolution, one can not but notice this part about the causes of it:

Transmission of innovation: Knowledge of new innovation was spread by several means. Workers who were trained in the technique might move to another employer, or might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study tour, gathering information where he could.

Prior to the start of Watt's commercial production in 1776, there were 510 steam engines in the U.K., most using the inefficient Newcomen design. These engines generated about 5,000 horsepower. By 1800, when Watt's patents expired, there were still only 2,250 steam engines used in the U.K., of which only 449 were the superior Boulton and Watt engines, the rest being old Newcomen engines. The total horsepower of these engines was 35,000 at best. In 1815, fifteen years after the expiration of the Watt patents, it is estimated that nearly 100,000 horsepower was installed in the U.K., while by 1830 the horsepower coming from steam engines reached 160,000. The fuel efficiency of steam engines is not thought to have changed at all during the period of Watt's patent; while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a factor of five. After the expiration of the patents in 1800, not only was there an explosion in the production of engines, but steam power finally came into its own as the driving force of the industrial revolution. In the next 30 years steam engines were modified and improved, and such crucial innovations as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny all came into wide usage.
Against Intellectual Monopoly

All through history it has been the strongest economies that have had sound patent systems

Ah, but what is cause and what is effect? And what is a "sound patent system"? Does it really exist? You didn't read the links in the post you quoted, did you? Strong economies are created by strong market forces, the very same market forces who then seek to consolidate their own power by... waitforit... ..."protecting their IP".

You need to do some reading about patents and their apparent negative consequences on innovation. Even (maybe especially) in the pharmaceutical industry.

Check out this report in particular chapter one and nice. Unfortunately it's in PDF format.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

Maybe artists shouldn't rely on copyrights and patents in order to make their money, and perhaps we shouldn't feel bad either when we infringe on their copyrights. Someone here on Slashdot posted a link to the following book which attempts to imagine what life would be like without copyrights and patents:

Against Intellectual Monopoly http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

Jarnal is what you seek, a Java ap that does very good handwriting recog. in Linux. All you have to do is setup the screen digitizer to be an input device (wacom), and then properly calibrate it to get the mouse pointer in the right place.

The screen can be rotated to portrait orientation via rotate button (not dynamic, no xrandr on i915 yet, so 2 Xconfigs). It has special "BlueKeys" support when folded into tablet configuration: scroll Up, scroll Down, Enter, and Toolbox keys. The Toolbox Key (plugin to "EmpTool" tools to access LCD brightness up/down, volume up/down, backlight, wifi kill, etc)

That is, if we had no patent system and anyone could produce anything they wanted without restriction you may not have been able to buy either product.

Innovative firms naturally gain monopoly power for some period of time, and it is argued without the prospect of monopoly power in the form of "intellectual property" would have insufficient incentive to innovate. In fact intellectual monopoly is costly, dangerous, and neither needed for, nor a necessary consequence of, innovation.

Because some people have figured out that intellectual property is not property. It is non-rivalrous, can be reproduced at negligible cost, and it cannot be stolen (ie. you cannot be criminally convicted for theft of IP). In other words it has none of the characteristics of real property.

IP is a legal monopoly on ideas, which is enforced through contracts and civil law (ie. license agreements). Only businessmen attempting to invent a market by means of a false scarcity call it "property".

See here if you're really trying to figure this out.

And let me give you another thought to chew on: the real _waste_ is in the re-implementation. Do we need 100,000 different re-implementations of a simple e-commerce web site? Not really. One would be enough. Hundreds of billions yearly are _wasted_ on reimplementing the same things, again and again, the only difference being a new crop of bugs.

It's not a benefit to society, it's a _drain_ of useful resources. Those hundreds of billions would be better invested in either creating something new for a change, or just building a few new factories. Wasting them on reimplementing the same tired crap is _not_ a benefit.

Seams like you are advocating that we move towards a centralised communist system. I for one, believe in a capitalist system. What you call "waste of resources", I call competition. Competition breeds innovation. Innovation breeds technological superiority. Ever wonder why "cyberterriorism" has not eventuated in America? Its because of the technological superiority of America especially in IT, which has occurred because of key court decisions that have encouraged a free market in terms of the Information Technology industry.

So if you want to support a centralised communistic system then go right ahead. But I believe in a capitalist anti-monopolistic free market system that is based on sound economic theory. Balance in intellectual property laws has lead to the western world technological superiority, this balance in intellectual property laws has undermined by the way that software patents are being used.

• Slackware 9.1
• Kernel 2.4.22 gcc 3.2.3
• XFCE4 (but have KDE and GNOME installed)
• jarnal ( http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/ja rnal.htm )
• xvkbd ( http://member.nifty.ne.jp/tsato/ )
• mplayer ( http://www.mplayerhq.hu )

Overall, it isn't bad. I think the keyboard is a little dainty, but since it has USB, I can attach a(n) USB keyboard to it. I also get about 3 hours from the battery, this is while compiling kernels, so I know that it is a good test of battery life.

I got lucky, I didn't have to buy this, I got it via work. My wife feels that it is OK, but it is a bit pricy for a small(ish) computer.

Honestly speaking, if I had to go out and buy one today, I would get a thin notebook that had a wider screen. Oh yeah, and had a built-in DVD drive!

Thanks,

Mage...

Boldrin and Levine's, Intellecutal Property Page. Sorry for the mis-type.

Boldrin and Levine's original paper is available here (pdf).