The Demise of IP?

meetmeonaholiday writes "CNet has an interesting article on why intellectual property owners should worry. Melanie Wyne explains how open source and open standards will lead to the downfall of IP and hurt competition rather than aid it." From the article: "As part of the discussion between Massachusetts and software developers who would be affected by the state's mandate, the designer of the OpenDocument Format policy, Eric Kriss, flippantly stated: 'Here we have a true conflict between the notion of intellectual property and the notion of sovereignty, and I'd say that 100 percent of the time in a democracy, sovereignty trumps intellectual property.' This sounds positively pre-Boston Tea Party to me ... It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further 'develop' it."

Comments

Backed By Microsoft Shill

[Kope]

The Initiative for Software Choice is backed by Microsoft.

Yet another shill decrying the evil of sharing information.

Re:Backed By Microsoft Shill

[NickFortune]

Nice trick: imply that your opposition is Evil/mean/cruel/selfish/etc by restating their position with inflamatory language, then attack their position based on that language that you used to restate it.

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "Straw Man".