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

Re:I don't understand

[SilverspurG]

I was hoping not to get trolled but you win that aspect.

It should be immediately obvious "what's fair". If one person stands up and starts debating red herrings that should not qualify them to suddenly become a politician in charge of authority and capable of spending everyone elses money.

Yes, there are cases where a community has been completely unfair to an outsider for no better reason than prejudice, but the way the system is running now most often the law is used to enforce people's right to be completely unfair simply because they have a financial or political upper hand.

How about you cite an example and I'll rip your ass to shreds on it?

Re:Tea Party?

[east coast]

Oh, I don't know. Not having to pay the $40,000,000,000+ per year M$tax simply to maintain interoperability and standardisation would be a good start.

Why not come up with some real numbers? Oh, cos it's MS and that doesn't fit into the /. way of doing things. Had this been about how much Linux saves and someone offset your "facts" with such a stupid number you'd be the first one crying "bullshit" and demanding a source be quoted. Stop fucking around and looking like an ass.