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The Demise of IP?

Posted by Zonk on from the unlikely dept.

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."

1 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. IP = Taxation Without Representation by gabble-blotchit · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Speaking as a Brit: AFAIK the British tax on paper was a major instigator in the war of independence, because it represented a tax on free speech. IP protected file formats is the exact equivalent today.

    IP protect file formats means MS is taxing us for the right to communicate. Every email containing a word document I receive is tantamount to saying I can't communicate unless I pay MS (and by that token, contribute to the US economy :-) ) for the privilage. Every JPG copied to a FAT formatted solid-state drive which is taxed by MS represents a limitation on Free speech etc.

    That's why OpenStandards are the opposite of pre-Boston tea party, in fact they are the Boston tea party.

    Chuck the tea in the river, let's brew our own!