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Except that you can't steal ideas, and trying to monopolize them is backward, and not at all in the interest of humanity. We should all encourage the proliferation of good ideas; not only can we all share their benefit at no cost, but then the entire world can freely cooperate to improve the state of the art.

The problem isn't that the US "stole" ideas from Britain, but that they didn't discard the regressive concept of "Intellectual Property" after disrespecting it. In reality, new ideas don't spring forth from a vacuum, they are built upon a mountain of collective experience, and are as much a product of circumstance as ingenuity. Allowing a monopoly on any one can further impede progress by introducing artificial bottlenecks. Everything is a Remix illustrates the concept nicely.

To be fair, this specifically is about trade secrets, but corporate secrets don't stay that way, and it is hard to argue that US monopolists haven't already seen a fair benefit from anything China has "stolen". I'm more concerned about the snowballing monopolies in the US which certainly don't benefit the majority of citizens.

Also be aware of the attempts to turn computers into locked-down content rental/consumption devices. Support open hardware and software platforms where available, if you want to continue to own your own computing devices and software. The idea of ownership doesn't have to give way to rental, but too many people are ignorant and willingly chaining themselves within the walled gardens of large corporations. These entities desire to rent all works in perpetuity, and will continue to strip your rights until none remain. If you haven't already, please spend a few minutes to absorb The Right to Read.

We have choices. Support creators that use a donation model, or at least sell their works in DRM-free formats. Paying for works that strip or violate your rights should be avoided if possible. Violating copyright is the moral option in these cases, or avoiding such works entirely. Publisher's including Disney have effectively stolen the public domain, and people should resist, or it will only get much worse. Copyright should be reformed or preferably abolished, as "intellectual property" is a highly regressive concept. See Everything Is a Remix and Against Intellectual Monopoly.

The whole idea of there being an original idea is absurd. There simply is no such thing. Progress is the slow refinement of ideas past. One sharp engineer building upon the ideas of engineers past. And when such an engineer makes an advance, that advance is so obvious that simultaneous invention in different parts of the world is more common than you thought. The same can be said for art. This is coming from someone who has been accused of being "creative" by my parents, teachers, and bosses, without solicitation. See Everything Is a Remix. Abolish the whole system. Invalidate all patents ever granted.

I simply won't watch it, because I believe it's poaching on the intellectual work of Philip K. Dick.

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Everything is a remix. It will be a better world when we admit it. Though this is more likely a case of using name recognition as marketing than creating something new from something old. I'll wait for the reviews to decide whether to give them any money for their efforts.

How is this a new and interesting idea to people?

What a silly question. You might as well ask why well-understood science is still interesting to newcomers who have never seen it before. It's because they've never seen it, that's why!

Not everyone has read Neuromancer (in fact, shame on me, I haven't), but it, like everything else, is simply recombining ideas in new ways. Looking at it from the outside, I could easily see how someone who hadn't read it could dismiss it quite easily with a question like yours. After all, Blade Runner predated it with its cyberpunk themes (and Blade Runner was hardly the first, not to mention that the ideas that were combined to create cyberpunk existed prior to it for far longer), and the idea of the wealthy living in a place that's inaccessible to everyone else has been a staple of literature for centuries, if not millennia. We could go down the list of ideas that make up the world of Neuromancer and find other works that used them before it, but what made Neuromancer great was that it was well-written and combined those elements in a novel way to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Dismissing a work out-of-hand because it happens to borrow a single idea that has been done before is folly. Dismiss it because it's superficial in its treatment of the subject matter, does nothing new with the ideas it uses, or relies too heavily on an idea (I haven't seen the film or read anything about it, so I'm merely using these as examples), but don't dismiss it because it uses an idea that's been used before, since that argument applies to everything.

Mandatory link (and a really good series of videos to watch): Everything is a Remix

This has been covered extremely well by everything is a remix ( http://everythingisaremix.info/ ). I highly suggest people watching that if they want to realize how long ago creativity left everything that was original from Hollywood and simply became remixes of everything from Hollywood.

Which begs the question and/or makes it seem ridiculous when anyone tries to assert ownership of these ideas, when they don't even come up with it themselves.

Everything is a Remix is a series of short videos that illustrate how nearly all innovation is incremental and iterative. Far from encouraging it, intellectual property retards innovation in virtually all cases, and objectively isn't justified or justifiable. Its soul purpose is to protect entrenched interests from competition--no one else can even afford to defend their claims.

Agreed. Something has to be done. Censorship and wrongful take downs are just one aspect of the many problems with our copyright laws. My biggest issue with them is that they prevent young artists from remixing anything from their generation. This needs to be fixed by repealing the DCMA and reforming these draconian copyright laws.

Before Disney, copyright granted authors protection for 28 years. I’m fine with that. The problem is it’s pushing 100 years now. This stifles our culture and innovation.

For example, Star Wars was released in 1978, so it should have gone into the public domain by 2005. With existing laws, George Lucas retains exclusive rights to butcher the SW universe until 2072!!!! 95 YEARS! Imagine what new aspiring authors could do with his work, instead of the sterile Jar Jar crap that Lucas served us, recently? Thank you, copyright.

Do you think your favorite authors would not have created their material, if it was not protected for 70 years after their death? The copyright system is designed make companies, like Disney and RIAA, rich at the expense of our freedom.

The irony is Disney made its fortune by ripping off the great works of others. Walt Disney was a master of this. At its origins, Mickey Mouse was a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill Jr. And almost all of their great work since then has continued this tradition of copying. Just to name a few: Pinocchio, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Jungle Book, Sleep Hollow, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid,

With the RIAA, SOPA and Courtney Love’s excellent essay on how they screw over artists should give you an idea of how this industry works. http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

If you want to know more, Kirby Ferguson's series "Everything is a Remix" at
http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
is a great watch!

Everything is a remix

I don't know, or care, whether atheism "is a religion." In fact, I don't even know what that sentence means.

What I do know is that, like the religions, it is becoming a group identity -- an "-ism" -- as evidenced by the extremely defensive posts being made here. If it were just a collection of ideas relating to abstractions, if people didn't identify with those ideas, if people didn't see attacks on those ideas as attacks on themselves, then nobody would care enough to get angry.

Maybe that's ok. Maybe it's useful. Maybe, most atheists grew up in staunchly religious communities, and the politics of group identity, of belonging to an oppressed minority, are helpful to resist a more generally destructive culture of religious bigotry.

But for those of us who were lucky enough to grow up in a secular environment, it gets annoying. Me? I don't need to "fight back." I'm not so afraid of the concept of God that I need to destroy it. It's an abstraction. Asking whether it exists is meaningless. Do the integers exist? Mu. I like Spinoza. I'm cool with panpsychism (what makes your unfalsifiable worldview better than mine? Maybe contemplating my part in Infinity alters my outlook.). We can flirt with ideas without marrying them. Unitarian Universalists? Sometimes too New-Agey for my tastes (For me, "energy" is measured in Joules), but I think the basic idea is the right one. Jesus of Nazareth? He did say things worth hearing. The Beatitudes? The Golden Rule? I don't need to accept Old-Testament jingoism, or Paul's sexual issues, or the dogma of a politicized medieval Church, or the divinity of Christ, to recognize that they stand on their own merits (and probably predate Jesus, which is OK).

The other day, I saw a car, with two bumper stickers. One was the common "CoEXiSt" sticker. The other was a shot at Christians. They're at odds, no? Get along, I say.

This is one of the few widely-publicized patents in recent memory that I think is probably justified.

It's hard to remember back to before the iPhone existed, but devices like it weren't even on the radar of any major phone manufacturer until after Steve Jobs' announcement. Sure, the individual technologies had existed, but real progress comes from combining those technologies in completely unexpected ways. The iPhone was neither obvious nor derivative, and all the devices that have come since have benefited greatly from the research and development time and funds that Apple poured into the concept. This seems like exactly the sort of situation the patent system is meant for.

When it comes to multitouch, Apple didn't invent shit! Apple was just one of the first companies to use the multitouch technology developed by a German company called Balda AG. The only thing Apple did was create software that took advantage of the one intended purpose of Balda AG's technology. If this patent is as broad as the summary makes it out to be, then Apple's patent may cover almost any use of Balda AG's multitouch technology. That would mean that all of Balda AG's customers, and possibly customers of any other type of multitouch technology, could be at risk of violating Apple's broad patent.

Sure, the individual technologies had existed, but real progress comes from combining those technologies in completely unexpected ways.

If Apple had to create some new technologies in order to integrate this multitouch screen, then those specific technologies would be worthy of patents. However, the only thing Apple did was place the screen in the iPhone and write software that made use of its one intended purpose - multitouch. How can anyone argue that using a technology for its one intended purpose is worthy of a patent?

The iPhone was neither obvious nor derivative, and all the devices that have come since have benefited greatly from the research and development time and funds that Apple poured into the concept

Please explain what new technology Apple invented for the iPhone. I frequently hear claims such as yours, but no one can seem to provide specific technical details of why the iPhone was not derivative. Yes, it revolutionized the smartphone market, but it was far from a technological revolution. The best technological components of the phone were the multitouch capability (we already established that technology was not invented by Apple) and its nice glass screen surface (thought to be made possible also by Balda AG's touchscreen technology).

This seems like exactly the sort of situation the patent system is meant for.

Not even close! That is unless you can provide specific details of new technology that Apple invented in the iPhone. Otherwise, the iPhone was simply an integration of other company's technologies with a nice software interface. Yes, it was extremely popular, spurred incredible interest in the smartphone market, and is worthy of all of its success, but patents are not granted based on the results of popularity contests.

This is one of the few widely-publicized patents in recent memory that I think is probably justified.

It's hard to remember back to before the iPhone existed, but devices like it weren't even on the radar of any major phone manufacturer until after Steve Jobs' announcement. Sure, the individual technologies had existed, but real progress comes from combining those technologies in completely unexpected ways. The iPhone was neither obvious nor derivative, and all the devices that have come since have benefited greatly from the research and development time and funds that Apple poured into the concept. This seems like exactly the sort of situation the patent system is meant for.

Wasn't just in the 90's, dawg: http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/