The Guardian On Intellectual Property

mykdavies writes "The Guardian has an excellent article giving lay readers an overview of some of the problems being caused by the concept of 'intellectual property', including references to stories familiar to Slashdot readers, such as DVD Jon, the Sony rootkit, Amazon and Google business patents." From the article: "Even facts about the world can, in some cases, become the property of commercial companies. It was the promise of gaining patents on the human genome that lured investors into the private consortium that attempted to sequence it in competition with the public effort. Laboratory animals have already been patented, starting with the OncoMouse, an animal whose genome has been manipulated to ensure that it develops cancer."

Comments

IP is evil

[martinultima]

Intellectual property stuff is purely evil. Don't quote me on this or I'll sue.

What's with all the mice?

[Mecdemort]

So now we have fearless, regenerating, and immortal mice with cancer! When will the madness end?

Re:What's with all the mice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new cancerous, patented rodent overlords.

How to use the Christian Right to fix IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to them that someone else is trying to patent God's work (and/or derivatives of), and set them loose.

At least...

[Skiron]

...OncoMouse will get a free trip to Disney world, new push bikes, RC helipcopter and the like for Xmas...

Re:Omissions

[Soko]

Maybe it was that RMS was hiding his RFID tag in 'tin foil', and so they just couldn't find him...

Soko

DVD jon?

[tomstdenis]

Is that the guy on the corner with the bin full of $2 DVDs?

Tom

No, no! You're doing it all wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

/ It looks like you're trying to get a brain! \
| Would you like me to automatically install  |
\ one from propaganda.microsoft.com for you?  /
      \     ____
       \   / __ \
        \  O|  |O|
           ||  | |         [Yes] [Help]
           ||  | |
           ||    |
            |___/

Re:Patenting animals?

[mrchaotica]

What do you mean, "this doesn't occur naturally?!" I guess your parents never gave you "The Talk." You know, the one that starts off "when a boy genetically-engineered-to-have-cancer mouse really really loves a girl genetically-engineered-to-have-cancer mouse...?"

Sheesh.

[David Rolfe]

So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine. (emphasis my own)

What's funny is this has worked so well in our War on Drugs that our prisons everywhere are bursting at the seams! What portion of society do you exclude before the rules have to change?