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Copyright and Patent Laws Hurt the Economy
Norsefire writes "Two economists at Washington University in St. Louis are claiming that copyright and patent laws are 'killing innovation' and 'hurting [the] economy.' Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine state they would like to see copyright law abolished completely as there are other protections available to the creators of 'intellectual property' (a term they describe as 'propaganda,' and of recent origin). They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
www.againstmonopoly.org
This vile proposal threatens to sacrifice shareholder value on the altar of the progress of the useful arts! The founding fathers would never stand for it.
Copyrights should only be a limited amount of time, not the current infinity+ that it is now.
More than the authors life is excessive.
A picture I took today shouldn't expire in 75 (if I live to 100) + 70 years, or in 2154.
If I had a son, he might not be alive at that point.
That is just way too long.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Would it be irony if their book was copyrighted? ;)
Also, I'm glad to see the description of the term "Intellectual Property" called for precisely what it is : propaganda. It's time for this term to be thrown out, and not to let so-called self-professed "intellectual property owners" inject this horrible term into the collective mind-set any further - it muddies the water of the discussion.
They put their mouths where their money is, or something like that (too late in the day to be properly witty). Read it online for free.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
God, I hope that there is an eventual outbreak of common sense but I'm not holding my breath.
Regarding "common sense" I guess it depends on how literally you define it, but if it's common in the sense of majority held opinion then its adoption can't be pandemic can it? What we're talking about is more like a paradigm shift in moral values.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
This vile proposal threatens to sacrifice shareholder value on the altar of the progress of the useful arts!
Shareholders benefit because their money isn't going into lawyers pockets, and being lost to the invisible, incalculable cost of hindered progress.
(yes I know you were being sarcastic. Sadly, that is actually the majority sentiment on this issue.)
"They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value"
And of course, such a thing as "social value" can be easily determined before the product has the ability to hit the market...
... but copyright law is what gives the various FOSS licenses their bite. Lose that, and then MS or any other going concern can have a field day strip mining the stuff for closed-source use.
... or writing if someone else can come along and make money off your invention. Just imagine if Wal-Mart could print and sell and book they wanted without permission from the author or the publisher. What if they could take your program or product, have it made in China for a tenth of your cost and sell it for their own profit.
I don't create the products I create for 'social good.' I create them to make money. If I come up with a unique and new idea, it's mine (or at least it belongs to the company I created it for.)
Patents and copyright exist to ensure that the creator is protected. Sure there are problems with the way things are now, where patents are being given a little too freely, but to abolish copyrights and patents altogether is just absurd.
Those who can do... Those who can't get a certification from Cisco or Microsoft.
If it wasn't for patent and copyright protection, the large software companies never would have gotten large... and the open source movement would never have had anything to copy!
"Newswise â" Abolishing patent and copyright law sounds radical, but two economists at Washington University in St. Louis say it's an idea whose time has come. Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine see innovation as a key to reviving the economy. They believe the current patent/copyright system discourages and prevents inventions from entering the marketplace. The two professors have published their views in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, from Cambridge University Press."
The irony of two economists calling for copyright abolishment while releasing their book under the same is black hole extreme.
I'm not sure getting rid of either entirely would be the best option but I don't see much use of limits being longer than five years. Protection is supposed to give the original creator a short monopoly to give them, and others, incentive to create more. As it is now, someone can make something and sit on it for the rest of their lives; where's the incentive?
-SaNo
if you just said 15 years only for original owner and unextendable except by original founder(a person, no corporations) it would curb the problem.
use it or lose it. the iteration time of mass use or mass distribution is far less than historically. you should be able to, with any substantive effort, make your mark/dollars in that time.
i am hard pressed to see damage to society by shortening the feedback loop.
Furthermore I submit that royalties be amended to include BRAAAAAINS.
Your post starts with the assumption that simply because they are economists they are not worth listening to before suggesting critical thinking as a positive thing that most of the slashdot readership do not engage in. This is either an example of an American not understanding irony or a brilliant piece of irony.
You then use the term 'reds', an old propagandist word, as if 'reds' are inherently bad before highlighting "China's lack of respect for IP" as if IP has real meaning beyond your own mindset, as if it is a part of reality that exists outside of you political environment. In doing this you demonstrate that you are not flexible enough to think within the bounds defined in the fine article which has clearly stated that intellectual property is a modern propagandist word.
Even if you disagree with that premise, it is important to take that concept on, suspend disbelief if you will, in order to understand the whole point of what they are saying. You are unable to do this, apparantly incapable of critical thought, so you can only miss the point.
Oh, and the 1950's called. They'd like their bigotry back.
I don't therefore I'm not.
just keep that in mind when you're in a real jail cell getting fucked by a meth dealer.
you dirty faggots want everything for free. the only thing you deserve is AIDS so you die like a little faggot.
I went to ye olde library today to get copies of 2 Articles from the Journal of Applied Polymer Sciences, a Wiley Interscience Publication. Xeroxing the articles under fair use from the library was free for me.
The Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment came when I checked online to find out how much it would cost to subscribe to the journal. I thought someone misplaced a decimal point: $23,245 a year is the institutional subscription rate! That's about what I paid yearly in college tuition back when I was in college. Even worse, it's almost the value of the lab equipment I'm using in the work I've been doing on my own time.
Imagine having a copyright on the Bible.
The issue here isn't "intellectual property". The issue is the property paradigm itself. Whether or not the proprietary period has been lengthened ridiculously to benefit Disney, we all agree that intellectual property eventually returns to the public domain that nourished its creation. Newton wasn't the only one who has stood on the shoulders of giants.
Why then do we assume completely and utterly that "real" property never expires? Why assume that once Manhattan was stol...er...purchased, that it remains purchased - not for 14 years - not for 100 years - not for the lifetime of Peter Minuit plus 75 years - not even for as long as the original Dutch nation retained possession - but rather, for ever and ever and ever?
The concept behind inheritance taxes is that the wealthy got that way by receiving special benefits from the body politic. Thus there is an end to wealth of all types. At issue isn't how "intellectual property" differs from other types of property - perhaps to the extent of not even representing property - but how we have all bought into the absurd proposition that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are somehow entitled - could possibly be entitled - to squat on billions in filthy lucre.
All property is intellectual property. What is real estate but a deed? What is a car but its title?
Can we see an objective, non-ideological defintion?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
accuracy economist have been shown to ahve of the last couple of years, I can't see why they could be wrong~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The article starts with an argument from authority (citing the men as economists). They raised the issue of their qualifications.
It is reasonable to 'start skeptical' in all cases. This is especially true when dealing with economists. They simply don't have a good track record, particularly the leftest economists who have a 100 year record of being 100% wrong.
Your an idiot if you think the reds aren't still running lots of social science departments at universities though. Granted that the only two places you can find reds these days in theme parks in Poland and 'western' universities soft science and *studies departments.
You don't have to buy into an argument to take it apart. It helps not to. Companies always protected IP by keeping it secret, they are simply wrong about it being a new concept. Government protection of IP is at least as old as the USA (granting copyright is much too long now) but even before then companies and people protected their IP by simply keeping it secret.
The '60s called. They'd like their idiotic idealism back.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Where's a good -1 Pedantic mod when you need one?
Computer Software: 5 years
Books: 10 years
For the most part, computers goes "out of date" every 18 months, what insanity is it to give software indefinite length of protection? A lot of old 8 bit software we grew up with won't even run on most modern platform, but they're still "protected."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Who needs patents/copyrights, everybody will develop their ideas/gadgets/widgets/songs/movies and just give them all away for free.
With communism, if you were a land owner, you were preventing the serfs from planting crops on the land. Thus, the government took you land and distributed it out to all the workers. If you owned a company, you were living off the sweat of the workers. Thus, the government owns all the companies so everybody gets a piece of the profits.
BTW -- anybody ever find out how communism worked out? I heard they were doing something with that somewhere in Eastern Europe, but I kind of lost track of what happened.
Patents & Copyrights are about incentive. Few people would go to work if they don't get paid. I know there is a culture of wanting things for free, but "free" don't pay the bills.
If I spend 3 years of my life and $200K of my own money developing a great new widget, and these economists are telling me that anybody can make my widget? If so, why should I have wasted those 3 years and $200K. I'll just do what everybody else does and wait until a new idea comes along and copy it. Unfortunately, the more the copying happens, the less return on the investment because of the copying, the less investment. The less ideas are produced.
With communism, the incentive is not to work, but to let the other guy work and live off of his work because everybody gets the same thing. What happens is that there is a race to the bottom to see who can do the least amount of work, thereby maximizing their return on effort spent. The same thing happens with intellectual property communism, why produce the intellectua property when you can just copy it and reap the same rewards. Sure, there are always going to be some altruistic few that will invent, write songs, film movies, and labor in the fields and factories because they want to or feel obliged to, but most won't.
The "social value" is a nice amorphous concept that'll take a hundred lawyers several years to even begin to flesh out the meaning. If somebody is willing to pay money for it, then it has social value. If there nobody is willing to pay for it, then who really cares if there is a patent on it or not. If nobody wants to listen to the song, who cares if the copyright is for 2,000 years? However, it is the people who don't want to pay for the popular songs is what is driving the movement to ban copyrights. To me, it is selfish behaviour that will not spur ORIGINAL innovation or creativity.
The other side is that many companies refuse to pursue innovations unless they see parts that can be patented to lock in the monopoly returns. Lesser profits just aren't worth the trouble of pursing innovation as they see it these days.
Alternatively, they can let some small company take the risks and just snatch it up (along with its patents) AFTER the bugs have been worked out.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Ohh, is that whats been hurting the economy? And all along I've been thinking its the banks!
BULLSHIT
Because everyone would then run out to put a shitton of money into R&D and bring out a new product while another company comes up and releases the same product, cheaper because its shoddy, while having spent no $$$,$$$,$$$ on R&D? Right, hurts innovation.
Get your head out of your ass economists. While yes the patent and copyright system are flawed, they are not stifling innovation. Apple is doing QUITE well on innovating. The main problem with the Patent and Copyright systems is they are out of date for the tech advances that have been made.
Prior to computers it took time for products to get anywhere. Today, things are almost instant. I can write lines of code which do a specific function and patent it pretty damn quick, thank you internet. You can independently write the same code with no prior knowledge of the patented code and I can't do anything about it.
Yes patents and copyrights hurt products that are already available, they do not hurt innovation.
I'm not sure getting rid of either entirely would be the best option but I don't see much use of limits being longer than five years.
Here's a scenario for you and the rest of /.:
1. Individual author writes a very good, but not widely recognized book. Sales are mediocre, but this is mostly due to publicity issues.
2. Movie studio X bets that they can produce a blockbuster film based on this book. They go to the author to try and negotiate movie rights, but since copyright is only five years, they never offer more than a pittance. Negotiations fall through.
3. Movie studio X actually begins production of the film 3 years into the copyright of the book, and finishes just as the 5 year copyright is expiring. The movie becomes a blockbuster, and studio X sucks up all the profits, while not handing a penny to the author.
This is just something to think about.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Can we say disingenuous?
Intellectual Property is a broad term that's come into being to describe old ideas. Patents and copyright aren't new at all.
That said, the base idea sounds like not allowing abuses of the system, which is fine by me.
See above
BTW reds was a term used by the communists to describe themselves.
It represents a school of thought that IS inherently bad. Did you miss the twentieth century?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
While draconian intellectual property laws may hurt an economy in the long run, it could be argued that they are being used (particularly in the USA) as a protectionist device (as in trade barriers), protecting an economy where many people are not actually producing anything of value.
Given the size of corporate lobbies in Washington, D.C., and the assets any one of them -- whether pharmaceutical patents or music copyrights -- would stand to lose, I highly doubt any of Obama's economic recovery efforts will involve weakening the United States' IP regime.
I'm just sayin'...
... but there have been numerous smart articulate people (myself inclusive) who reached all those exact same conclusions many many years ago and have been suggesting precisely the same remedy to anyone and everyone who would listen... which, as it happens, wasn't a very large crowd. I wonder if that crowd has even grown faster than the birthrate in the last 20 years? Is there enough of a groundswell of people now to finally put a stop to centuries of wealth-concentrating madness?
First off, lets just start by saying that the whole left/right thing doesn't wash with me. It's an old fashioned concept that doesn't quite reconcile with modern politics as far as I can see.
Your using right and left as if they are concrete political groups, as if people are either one or the other, which makes all your arguments hard to fathom for someone who finds that whole world view quaint and primitive. Your also firmly for one side of this false duality and against the other, as if they are footy teams, as if anyone who identifies as being on the opposite team is an enemy and anyone who disagrees or argues with you must be on the opposite team. This is shown in your "idealist" comment. It really is quite odd.
So none of your arguments mean very much to me except has a fascinating museum piece. I therefore will not attempt to take them apart, because you really do have to take on board certain premises to understand an argument and I couldn't be bothered. It's all about context.
By the way, which part of my post was idiotic idealism? Perhaps you should read the post again. I thought I simply pointed out bigotry and inflexible thought on your part. I didn't really put forward much except to say that you won't understand others unless you at least attempt to see things from their perspective. I also showed that you really didn't offer any valid argument, just name calling and finger pointing.
Bigots who identify with any of the old left/right paradigm shit me to tears.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Oucha! Truth hurts, man, truth hurts! But geographically, MIT is somewhere around bean town, and these two people are from Washington state, clear across the country.
For everyone defending the existing patent system, just a heads up from someone who has actually tried to start a business selling a "new" product: anything you can think of, there is a patent on some aspect of it. For instance, consider mixing two substances together. For example, you want to make a hot ham and cheese sandwich? Hint: it's patented.
http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7226629.html
Obvious? Extremely. Anyone with a brain in their head could figure it out. But it's patented, and it's enough to shut down a small business should the owner of the patent decide to throw their legal weight at it. Your options are to pay royalties to the patent holder or to fight a legal battle you might not be able to afford. Now consider any other substances you could possibly want to mix together. That's probably patented too, as is every permutation of ways you might hypothetically mix them.
The point is that there are far more of these blatantly obvious patents that can at any time be used as ammunition against newcomers in the industry. That is the problem that we have to stop if we want to encourage competition in our economy.
How about you lazy bastards learn to program your own software?! What this stinks of to me is yet another attempt to rob people of the products of their "OWN" creation. Possession is 9 10ths of the law remember? That means that if company A manages to hack your machine and steal your idea for a "competing product X", and manages to take it to market before you do.....you didn't make it...it was ALWAYS OURS!!!!! Give up America, quit trying to innovate your way to a better life, we are going to steal it if it is worth anything.
Actually, China is fairly respectful of IP, so long as it is Chinese IP that is being protected. As far as the rest of TRIPS members goes, they are working on it and making progress.
Also, I don't know where this vitriol against the term intellectual property comes from. The first thing any IP lawyer learns is that IP is not property per se. IP is just an umbrella term to encompass copyright, trademark, and patents, which have certain attributes akin to property but important distinctions that separate them from traditional property. The term intellectual property may be a relatively recent creation, but most of the legal doctrines are not. The problems most IP opponents have are with the developing doctrine, I don't see why they waste breath on attacking the term itself. Calling it propaganda strikes me as a bit over the top.
I'm so sick of people posting this stupid, stupid, stupid argument over and over! Too bad the term copyleft seems to have dropped off in usage in the free software movement. The whole point of the GPL and copyleft in general is to turn copyright on itself. Saying "the GPL is effective because it is based on the protection of copyright" is like saying that vaccines made with killed or weakened virus wouldn't work if the virus didn't exist. Well duh! Way to miss the point. The GPL is about balancing the scales. We wouldn't need the GPL if there were no copyright. If copyright went away tomorrow, what would happen to GPLed works? People would use them and share them without paying? Oh noes! Sure, there would be the problem of proprietary software vendors rolling GPLed code into their own products without releasing source, but on the other hand, everyone would be able to use the proprietary vendors code without paying so the scales would be balanced again. In order to get people to pay, they would need to add value with support services, running servers, etc., just like the free software model and maybe jealously guarding the source code wouldn't be such a big deal anymore. The one big issue with abolishing copyright totally that I disagree with is the removal of some of the so called "moral rights" of the author. While I don't agree that the author should be able to retract the work and I definitely don't agree that the author should be able to prevent modifications, I do think that the author should have right of attribution, i.e. no-one should be able to claim the work as their own without permission and conversely, no-one should be allowed to claim that the modified work is the work of the original author. In other words, modifiers should have a free hand as long as they identify the original source and also lay claim to their own changes to protect the reputation of the original author. For example, I saw a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' at the bookstore today listed as being by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Let's imagine we're in a copyright free world and Jane Austen is still alive, then I think that it would be fine as is, even with the cover listing both authors or even if it just listed Austen or just listed Smith, as long as Seth Grahame-Smith doesn't actually try to maintain the claim that it's actually a collaboration between the authors, or that he alone wrote it, or that it's Jane Austen's original work. I'd think that it would need to be written somewhere on what is currently the copyright page. On works that don't have a copyright page, or anywhere else to put the disclaimer, then maybe there could be some sort of government registry where people could list it, or some sufficiently public and documented statement would do.
Oh, and the 1950's called. They'd like their bigotry back.
Let's see, in the 1950s, the United States was the undisputed leader in manufacturing, our managerial processes were widely acknowledged to be second to none, government spending was low and the able participants were prosperous.
Since then, American manufacturing in particular and the economy in general has gone on a long and slow decline relative to the rest of the world.
Bottom line is this... at some point, some people will wonder if it was worth trading the economic dominance and optimism of white male dominated sexist and racist America of ages yor, for the utterly bankrupt nation and shiftless people that we have today. Those ancient white men may have been racist and sexist, but at least they knew how to win wars, build things and make money. Today's Americans can't do anything, and we're still racist and sexist.
This is my sig.
YOU'RE. And that stands for the two of you. Nothing like a grammatical nitpicking bomb-drop in a good old internet argument.
It's kind of like the Anti-Chewbacca defense.
While I agree that the scope of copyrights and patents far exceeds that needed for the purpose described in the Constitution, and surely needs to be reduced, I don't think the authors have made a case for elimination of these types of IP. Their blog also makes some disparaging remarks regarding trademarks which are not backed up by any arguments whatsoever.
The arguments presented in their book are also often factually inaccurate. For example they make the comment that the pure sciences do not depend on patents to function (true) and that neither Newton, Einstein, or Darwin received government support. This is of course an important point, because if sciences are socialized there is no need of patents.
Unfortunately of course it is completely inaccurate. Both Darwin and Newton worked at Cambridge, which is a publicly funded university. The Beagle was a survey ship in the British Navy without which Darwin would have not been able to gather evidence for the Origin. Einstein was an employee of the German Patent Office, and his first academic position was at the University of Berne, also publicly funded. He also held other positions at publically funded universities like ETH.
Until they clean up their scholarship it is going to be hard to take their position seriously.
What is this "as if IP has real meaning beyond your own mindset, as if it is a part of reality that exists outside of you political environment" nonsense?
Of COURSE it has a real meaning. It's not a propaganda term! That phrase has been around for well over a century!!
And it absolutely has meaning in China. They're a member of WIPO! They've signed treaties! Do you know anything about the issue!?
But, of course, since you're raging against evil "imaginary" property (that one actually IS a propaganda term, btw), you will of course be modded up. This is /., after all.
Your 'exclusive' term expires in five years. If you do not produce 'exclusive', derivative, works within the term of 'copyright', the work passes into the public domain to be exploited by those who can and you lose all claims to said 'copyright'. If you do, then you get a five year extension. It's (almost) the same thing as 'publish or perish'. Be productive while you are at the most productive stage of your career -and reap the rewards- instead of sitting on your laurels and stifling the innovation of those who come after you who possess greater intellectual capacity.
Sig this!
Making any significant mark on the state of the art means not only figuring out the how part, but convincing zillions of already existing players in the field to do something radically different. This takes time, usually years, with zero remuneration.
Most of the innovation in the US of A does come from such circumstances, and not from those who derive their salaries from tax money or the monopoly income stream. Without patents it would stop happening. Whether you like it or not, those who "develop" for free and for the sheer love of the humanity are statistically orders of magnitude less capable than those who do it for the world domination or just for lots of cash. And corporate or government drones are mechanically incapable of doing it.
It is also true that perhaps 98% of patents are sleazy attempts to get royalties from the obvious, enrich shysters and put the competition out of business (and filed by the mentioned drones.)
But we can't do without the remaining 2%, and there is no alernative strategy to reward years of highly skilled risk. Anything can be abused, but that's not good enough reason in this case.
It does not hurt me. GPL is basicly a "hack" within the boundry's called Patent and Copyright law. It is those boundry's that make it "fail" So basicly, this means that GPL also shows that copyright and patent law is fundamentally wrong.
Below is a fitting quote from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Isaac McPherson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html )
Thomas Jefferson was originally against copyrights and patents but his beliefs evolved. In correspondence on 1790 June 27 to Benjamin Vaughan he wrote:
"An act of Congress authorising the issuing patents for new discoveries has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. Being an instrument in granting the patents, I am acquainted with their discoveries. Many of them indeed are trifling, but there are some of great consequence which have been proved by practice, and others which if they stand the same proof will produce great effect."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The problem with this debate is that it requires people to look at the issue from outside of the system we have today. This is hard to do without the ideas maturing over time, especially because we have been from childhood taught that "IP" laws are necessary to create innovation/art.
I have not read the book (I would like to), but here are a few general point I have about the issue after reading the comments:
-"IP" laws are not inherent rights in society. Rather they are laws that goes agaist the basic foundations of western society - freedom and capitalism (IP laws restrict both freedom of expression and free competition).
-"IP" laws are in place because some people think the benefits of the incentive they create are larger than the damage the restrictions represents.
-"IP" laws are not there for the sake of the "creators", but for the benefit of society. It is believed the incentives creates positive value for society.
-Our progress and culture are based on information sharing and "copying". All ideas, music, art and inventions are based on what we have learned in our life and what other people have made before us.
-Without this sharing of information there would be virtually no innovation or advanced culture.
-Claiming "ownership of an idea" is a matter of definition. Trying to restrict others from adapting the idea is absurd, since a plethora of other peoples ideas have certainly been used to form it.
The important aspect here is for people to see that there is a definitive cost to restricting information. Whether or not the cost is worth the benefit could be debated, but assuming it is necessary without understanding the negatives is ignorant. I would advice the people that try to parrot the old propaganda "IP laws are necessary for there to be innovation" to read the book before they comment.
There was a post here about how Sony was artificially expanding PS3's life by making it very hard to use all the features it has to offer as a developer. Everyone was flaming about it.
Now imagine a world where a big corporation can no longer have an everlasting patent (or copyright or whatever). For the sake of the milking of his products, corporations would start releasing crappy improvements (or half-finished inventions), getting protection for them and when that protection is over, the corporation (or perhaps someone else) would release just a bit more of it, just enough to patent it again and the process repeats itself.
What I mean is that once a company has the full product, it'll strip it of the more innovating features and release it, half-featured. Then, as time passes, the corporation would release more and more features. Instead of what happens now (or rather what we want to have), that a corporation releases the full-featured product and then is free to milk it forever.
To quote the Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
What does "limited Times" mean? We can agree that one day is insufficient to be an incentive. We can also agree that infinity is too long to promote progress.
Therefore, it stands to reason that there is some optimal duration, which both maximizes the rewards for both the inventors, and society at large.
Has any research been done to determine this optimum? Is current legislation based on anything other than what lobbyists can buy for their clients?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'd push more for 15 to 30 years. Not every idea can be rolled out at Web 3.0 speeds. Anything that requires physical manufacturing, quality control, and any kind of regulatory oversight can't hope to go from concept to consumer within less than 2 years.
This is close to the original copyright and patent terms. Using an actuarial table of life spans Thomas Jefferson calculated that they should last 14 years with 1 14 year extension possible.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
these two people are from Washington state, clear across the country
Nice job of not reading. They are from Washington university in St. Louis, not even halfway across the country from Beantown.
I bet that little truth hurts a bit more, eh?
Infuriate left and right
CR is the only form of IP that actually can give the little guy a chance. CR needs to be reformed. I certainly wish Eldred had prevailed in Eldred vs. Ashcroft; but dumping CR altogether would be a mistake. Also, CR violation penalties need to be brought under control, enforcement needs to be sane, etc. CR makes sense to just about everybody except anti-IP idealogues who want a free lunch to drop out of the sky.
Patents, OTOH, are just a royal mess. The only way to get one is to deal with a lawyer, and most patents are not the least bit "inventions". Patents in software in particular ought to just be totally abolish. They only create a minefield for developers. Maybe a handfull of things should be patented every year, instead of thousands. Also, if you own a patent you should not be allowed to suppress the use of your invention. In other words, compulsory licensing for all patents. Commercial infringers could pay into a pool from which claimants would receive payment. If nobody claims your product violates a patent, you file for a refund from the pool. If you don't pay into the pool, then you can just litigate like we do now. Or something like that; but if they abolished patents I don't think we'd miss them, whearas a lack of copyright would really suck for some people (Big Musico doesn't have to sign you anymore--they can just tape your show and market it).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I thought that undemocratic and oppressive regimes are bad. Communism is not inherently bad, it's a different economic system opposing capitalism.
Should I remind that there are religious communists in the heart of US - the Amish!!!!
Patents don't serve to keep things from public knowledge, quite the opposite. Patents force you to show everyone exactly how your invention works, and after you've cashed in on it for long enough, everyone can use it. If we didn't have patents, every invention ever would be cased in trade secrets. Think Coca-cola syrup on a global scale. You'd never know what's in the stuff you're drinking, or eating. Cars wouldn't be sold, they'd be leased, and you'd be prevented from "looking under the hood." Anything companies could do to prevent their inventions getting out would be done. Honestly, the patent system is fine the way it is.
Copyrights, OTOH, are a bit long. The current length is actually not due to corporate influence here in the US. It was extended back in the 80s to match the European copyright length as part of treaty negotiations. Not that this makes it better, but greed wasn't completely behind it.
The parent post hit upon the perfect balance. Really, I could live with 10 years from the date of "public availabilty" of any writing, design. or idea.
The key date is "public availabilty"
> "what should and should not be patentable"
The trouble is it is very hard to: "grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
How can some average patent examiner do that consistently and reliably enough? The temptation after a while would be to just rubberstamp everything.
To me what they should do is to award Prizes for Innovation, much like Nobel Prizes. Most people's hindsight is better than their foresight.
To qualify for the prize, inventors have to register their inventions and pay a registration fee that goes to the prize pool.
You could have one category of prize being awarded by "Experts in the Field", and another category awarded by members of the public (somewhat similar to the Hugo and Nebula prizes, except maybe we could allow a wider participation for members of the public?). Multiple prizes per category would be awarded. Prizes could be awarded every year.
Inventors could win a prize for something they did years or even decades ago.
So even if you are 30 years ahead of everyone and/or your stuff only gets declassified decades later, you can still win a prize.
In contrast patents don't reward the inventors who are really far ahead of their time. They instead reward people who somehow manage to sneak "Method of making omelettes by using contents of eggs while excluding shells and detritus" past overworked patent examiners deluged by similar garbage.
Also, punitive actions could be taken against people who falsely claim they were the first to invent something - at least based on the patent registration database.
What the "Patent Office people" would then do is: try to reduce dupes (you can't prevent dupes 100% but at least reduce them), organize and manage the data so that it is not too hard for people to find candidates for nomination - for instance you don't want to have people keep nominating an invention that has already won! That said an invention that has already won, could qualify for a "top winners amongst winners category".
The patent office workers could also help authoritatively link registered inventions with actual products out in the market.
They had some solid ideas on patent reform. Shifting the burden of proof to the soon-to-be patent holder seems like a sensible suggestion. However, their evidence, and their conclusions, are just rubbish.
Yeah, but none of the evidence shows that any of it is very good. Copyright, to this day, is still, by far and away the most popular business model, and despite the growing discontent with copyright amongst the ignorant and/or greedy, not one of them has managed to overtake the copyright business model.
Perhaps it's because people are having their cake and eating too. They have the protection of copyright, but they also have the option to subvert it at any time they feel like, at the expense of those who do pay for their entertainment. But, we'll never know, unless people stop pirating, and actually throw their support completely behind a competing business model. I suspect, if that happens, those business models won't be so popular over the next 5 years, but that's just my speculation.
Failures? Without copyright, would the students even have the choice whether or not to pirate that music (assuming the lawsuits are justified)? Without patents, would there even be a drug that African AIDS patients couldn't afford?
The article is rubbish. It completely glosses over the real issues with copyright/patent reform, and favours instead shouting PROPAGANDA in a crowded internet forum.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
A patent life should be similar to the exclusivity of medicines.
Ever notice that even though company X develops a given medicine, they have a limited lifetime on the exclusive distribution of a given medicine? Many of those companies have subsidized development and still expect to reap extensive profit from any new medicines they bring to market.
The same people who want to extend patents and grant Intelectual Property also would think that which ever company develops some life changing drug should have an eternal right to make a given drug that benefits humanity as a whole. I disagree.
Anyone who has a chronic disease apreciates the limited lifespan on the exclusive distribution of new medications because without having generics many people wouldn't be able to afford the medicine they need to continue living.
I'm certain that many will have fault with this sort of thinking, however I believe this sort of concept applies well to anything that has specific ingredients or perhaps to a manufacturing concept.
"everything I create has automatically my Copyright attached to it."
nope, it dozent. every idea that you create can immediately be copied by anyone who you disclose it to.
the only obstacles are a) you, not disclosing the idea (e.g. by going to live on a remote island by yourself) or b) a society, which lets you use its enforcement apparatus to restrict such copying.
and the society has only one reason to let you use that - to make you create more in the long term. as long as that doesn't happen, you have invalidated any reason the society has to give you such protection.
Isn't the whole point of Copyright and IP to protect the people? And if big corporations are using Copyright and IP against us to keep their "competitive edge" then doesn't that hurt the people?
It's funny, everyone wants fair competition until they have the advantage. If there was no IP or Copyright law, then the moment something was made, it would be reverse engineered and made better by someone else, therefor creating competition, forcing you to stay ahead of your self, and hence, ahead of everyone else. But no! I have a leg up, and instead of trying to keep doing better, I'll just sit at this position as long as I can - milking the product, keeping human progress stagnant - until someone works their way around, or comes up with a better idea...
The whole thing just pisses me off...
I'll begin simply by suggesting that companies strong in IP are looking pretty good now.
GM is the penny stock.
Not Microsoft. Not Pfizer.
They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
Now this scares me.
Because it means that "social value" would be defined by the legislator, the bureaucrat, and the courts.
--- and how this new measure of socially redeeming value - could be limited to the denial of a patent or copyright escapes me entirely.
The politician, after all, likes to be pro-active.
I am not sure what it takes to "stifle innovation." I don't even have a clear notion of what innovation really means.
A patent only implies only distinction - a measure of originality in concept and execution.
The examiner does not have a crystal ball.
He does not ask and can not know whether you have accomplished anything significant and lasting.
The geek who would give the politician - the bureaucrat - that crystal ball and demand that he play oracle does enormous harm, I think.
"Cost-Effectiveness" is a lovely phrase.
Damnation in two words.
Big Pharm gets the Malaria patent because Big Pharm can quickly and safely ramp up to full production.
The little guy will botch it.
Cost-Effectiveness is about economies of scale. Technical competence. Managerial competence. Financial resources.
Cost-Effectiveness is also about papering over the politically unpalatable choices you know you have to make.
I'll admit to having become very cynical about this sort of thing.
But it still surprises me sometimes how High Church the geek really is.
Improvement is a double edge sword. What might be an improvement to you, could be worthless to me. Improvements ONLY work when the current object has a flaw or problem it does not improve on or is not intended to improve on in large to the demographic in a positive attribute.
China, which is kind of like our Wild West(tm) right now, does whatever it wants. And it's going to completely leave us behind much as we did with Europe. Remember, Europe at the time had very restrictive guilds, laws, and regulations. The U.S. didn't. So we invented and invented. We built and didn't really care that much if it was someone else's idea.
Just like China now is doing.
And you wonder why they are going to put up their own space station modules next year and beat us to a habitat on the moon... We have to dismantle the idiocy or we'll never be able to move fast enough to keep up.
Honestly, if I was interested in space or technology or just making new things, I'd be making a beeline to China and doing it there without the millions of laws and tens of thousands of lawyers all suing everyone into oblivion over idiotic patents.
RCA demonstrated all-electronic TV at the NY World's Fair in 1939. RCA began work on all electronic color system about a year or so later.
It didn't have a product until 1954.
It would be ten years before color became mainstream and profitable.
Ten years in which RCA was the only significant manufacturer of color sets and NBC the only network with a regular schedule of color broadcasts.
As with many laws that have ballooned out of control in our country's short history, the so-called IP laws need to be rolled back to their original condition. There are too many crooks in the system and too much abuse. We all know these laws were created to give creative people an added incentive to create because such creations advance the cause of the country. The limited time allowed by the original laws made it possible to earn back the costs of the effort and then make a necessary profit. Yes, profit is a necessary component in the system. But when the terms of these IP laws extend into the next millennium, it serves not to advance the well being of the country but to make useful works disappear from existence as their creators no longer exist or no longer care to provide the product. At the very least, if the terms are not shortened back to sane values, there should be a clause for so-called orphaned works, which would state that if you're reasonably sure the creator of a work no longer exists or the creator does exist but is no longer interested in selling the product, the IP laws cease to apply and it enters the public domain. In other words, protect the stuff you're actually selling. If you're no longer trying to sell it, you no longer need the protection.
Well, I feel about the GPL the same way I feel about firearms... I'll gladly toss mine into the bonfire, as long as mine is the last one left after all others are in the pit. I won't need it then.
The assertion that copyright laws are essential for innovation and creative expression is patently (pun intended) false. According to that irrefutable source, Wikipedia, the Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act. We all know that prior to this time no writers and artists produced anything.
"Intellectual Property" is indeed a manipulative propaganda slogan right up there with "War on Terror". The "right" to be recognised as the originator of a work, to get the credit, is widely recognised: the "right" to be granted a monopoly by the state to make money is far more dubious. Where are all you small state, free market libertarians? Too busy making money from your "private property"? Hypocrites all.
This has been predicted for many years and the result is the same: If only we could get rid of Demon Patent Law, we would have the first steps towards Social Justice and etc. "This land is my land, that land is my land..." Another example of making the world safe for Fascism. What a bunch of dopes.
I have been saying this for years. It is about time some economists started backing me up! :)
Maybe my ideas are not so "radical" after all...
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Yeah. Then you go bankrupt and your patents are sold to a troll. Or your CEO changes and your patents are bine "monetised". Or the economy tanks and you need the money...
MS apologists ALWAYS said that MS patents were for defensive purposes. Look what they're doing to TomTom.
You will do the same. Even if you aren't doing it now by threatening new suppliers with needing patents to stop the market becoming as competitive as it could be.
There is NO copyright on their works if it expires on death.
So YOU have committed murder. This is quite a crime. And expensive to get a professional hitman to do. And all your COMPETITORS have equal access to what you killed for, yet haven't had to commit murder for it (and hence in no worry about being caught).
So, please, tell my why it has to be X years after death???
If you're writing it still, it isn't fixed. Copyright doesn't start yet.
For the one that IS fixed, it's a TRILOGY.
Write one, edit it, sell it. While money comes in from it, write the second, edit the second. If you're slow enough that copyright expires on the first work before finishing the second, the gain in viewership possible because your first is now out of copyright may drive sales of your second (if someone hasn't read the first, they are NOT going to read the second in a trilogy, are they).
After all, if the first is free, you're more likely to give it a shot than if it's £10.
Of course, if your first book is crap, this does kill your sales for the second. The "Gigli effect" I like to call it.
"for the progression of the ***useful** arts".
Patents "non obvious to those skilled in the arts".
Also consider that the EULA or ToS are being held copyighted. Why is that of ANY social use? Copyright already has "social value" in it:
de minimis: it isn't of social value if you take a small portion
fair use: it isn't of social value if it stops review or criticism. There is no social value to protecting personal copies (time/space shift) etc
so congress ALREADY HAS put "social value" in their patent/copyright rules. You didn't complain then.
All calculation set aside, what type of work gives us the most joy? I would say any type of work which we can do for the love of it.
The product of such a labor of love will by its nature invite other people to contribute to it or build upon it in their own labor of love.
This links all human beings as members of one human family laboring for the common good of all. There is no real conflict between the good of one individual and the good of the whole society. Because the good lies not in the product but in the process of creation.
Anything foreign to that process that seeks to impose limits upon that process, is a hindrance to society. The process of creation brings forth its own requirements of discipline and self-organizing structure.
Public policy should therefore focus on bringing about a society which can be governed by the laws of that process. One of the biggest impediments to creation is the worry for survival. If we have to think about the reward that we will get for our creation to secure our future survival, we cannot focus on the process of creation. As a consequence the products of such a handicapped process will be not in line with the common good.
I think that we should strive for a society where survival is a basic human right for all, just because one is alive, not because of merit. It is a misconception that we need competition to bring out the best. Competition usually tends to bring out the worst! So society should provide to all its members the basic rights for free. Food, shelter, health-care, education, ...
If we don't have to worry about these things, we can safely dedicate ourselves to the joyful process of creation for the love of it! We only need to get honest with ourselves and acknowledge the fact that striving for reward, security and money-making is NOT the real joy in our life. Most of us have settled to varying degrees with this false conception of life, to make life manageable.
I don't want to push any ideology here, but I want to point out that what made communism a failure, is not the lack of competition, but the rigid imposition of a system on people. That kills all entrepeneural spirit. Whereas the sense that we are all connected to each other and can take part in the whole of society in a meaningful way, is enabling instead of depressing.
So such a society as I depict here, can only come into being if its members are voluntary choosing and striving for it. Its coming into being, must be self-organized for it to be true. Exactly in the same way as such society will function once it is in place.
As a matter of fact, such a society is always open-ended and in evolution. So one can start where one is with oneself and ones immediate environment. And that is always the kind of process that is need now and in the future ...
I won't need it then.
You won't?
When someone comes at you with a knife, you won't wish you had it? You will be perfectly fine taking your chances knife-against-knife rather than giving yourself the advantage with gun-against-knife?
That doesn't sound very pragmatic to me.
Levine and Boldrin point to students being sued for 'pirating' music on the internet (sic) ...as examples of the failure of the current system.
I can only assume they consider the 'system' a failure because people are still downloading music illegally, even though some people are getting sued. Otherwise, this is a really annoying statement typical of the free-loader mentality. Just get rid of the rule against downloading copyrighted material and it no longer is illegal to download copyrighted material.
I just took a look at Chapter V of this book, just to see if this is a case of somebody presenting a well-researched argument or an economist spouting off about something they know nothing about (and economists do that more often than most people would think - I once saw an economist at a conference proudly present a model for revenge that flew in the face of the whole of human history). I'm afraid that when it comes to the matter of books, it was downright dishonest in places.
This is propaganda.
Some examples:
Page 111-112 - the authors ask the question of how well the American copyright extensions have worked, and judge it solely on number of works created. Then, they declare that it didn't help, because there isn't a massive increase. They DON'T mention that there wasn't a decrease either - in fact, there is a very slow increase. They also don't look at works that were not properly registered. Even more telling, they don't look at other factors - whether the quality of life of the authors was impacted positively or negatively, whether there were enough publishers to provide an increase in publications, etc. They base their conclusion on a single metric.
Page 115 - A clear case of apples and oranges. Having talked about the reasons given for the CTEA (without, I might add, actually examining them in any detail), they comment that 8 years later, the same corporations are trying to get the European copyrights extended from 50 years to 95 years to keep up with the United States, implying that these companies are essentially raising one, then using it as an excuse to raise another. Which would be evil, except that it's not what's happening - the CTEA involved books, and the recent lobbying is about music, which have entirely different copyright terms. So, it would be more accurate to say that having harmonized one section of the creative arts, they're attempting to harmonize another - which is far less evil.
Page 115-116 - Here the argument turns absolutely dishonest. The authors want to demonstrate that books out of copyright are more available than books in copyright. So, here is what they do - they take Edgar Rice Burroughs, and compare the books that are in copyright to the ones that are out of copyright, and show that indeed, the ones in copyright have fewer editions available. This is a trick, though - Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the most famous writers of his day. Conspicuously, they don't provide any data for number of books published in total that are out of copyright compared to availability - they just take the case of a single, famous author, and extend that to be the case for the whole. If they extended it, it's fairly certain that they'd find that the majority of books that have entered the public domain are no longer available in print or online, undermining their argument. Most people would not claim that the exception is the rule, but they have made precisely that claim.
Pages 117-118 - The authors now demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how the book market works, as they claim that having classic spy novels in print would devalue new spy novels. To channel Morbo from Futurama, "Publishers do not work that way!" In fact, the decision of whether a book gets published or not is entirely based on how well it is likely to sell, and having a classic spy novel that is consistently selling well is more likely to reinforce the sales of new ones, not devalue them.
These are selected errors, both factual and methodological. It would be nice if there was actual research here, rather than taking a few surface facts and drawing ignorant conclusions.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, not Washington State.
Still a long way from MIT though.
Do as I say, not as I do. No, wait. Do as I do, not as I say. No, wait. You can't have your cake and eat it too. No wait. You can have your cake and eat it too. No wait. OK, copyright is good for GPL, but for everything else, it's bad. There, got it right.
There should be a system in place that allows for innovation regarding previous intellectual property, while still giving credit (and profit) to the original owner. Information Age Bottleneck: http://bit.ly/CL7KM
The parent is wrong but not offtopic. Please fight mod abuse and censorship and mod him back to +2 with, for example, Underrated.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"They are calling on Congress to grant patents only where an invention has social value, where the patent would not stifle innovation, and where the absence of a patent would damage cost-effectiveness."
... to the people who own them. Congratulations, you've solved nothing.
Ok, fine! All existing patents are cost-effective
Here's a question for you: How do you prove a patent is stifling innovation? How do you define social value as a metric?
It's very nice of you to tell congress to change something. How about you do real work and come up with specific wording?
What's the acronym for an article that's the opposite of FUD, but just as useless? PITS (Pie in the Sky)?
I think it's counterproductive for these two to be lumping copyright and patents in the same complaint as hurting innovation. It makes what should be a very reasonable argument read 'lunatic fringe'.
Copyright violation is theft pure and simple (well, maybe not so pure or so simple - fair use, and all). Patents are another thing altogether, in the worst case, granting monopolies on basic ideas. These patents can cover completely separate implementations of those ideas with no theft of the original work.
Sure, there's some kind of mental work involved in thinking up a novel idea, but it's so hard to draw a reasonable line around what's truly an innovation and non-obvious, etc. And there's so much potential for abuse that harms innovation that the benefits of intellectual property patents are really hard to see. The benefits of copyright are much more obvious. And the protection is much more specific and so much more limited.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
obviously an open-source society of innovators would thrive... as long as people can change their focus from earning dollars to encouraging social growth and sustainability.... oh wait, they are, en mass... don't worry about the gov, they can be subverted through action... put your energy to better use: invent something and use the GPL--or the like--to distribute the idea and encourage it's use and further development.
intellectual property is fraud, and should be illegal.
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
Communism is inherently bad as a political system because it invariably leads to unhealthy concentration of power which invariably leads to oppressive regimes. (One counter example? There are none.)
Religious 'communists' are not running a compulsory system, individuals can opt out at any time.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Granting the left/right paradigm is not enough to completely describe a persons political views its indisputable that there is an objective left and an objective right in politics.
Yes Max there are leftists in the world as well a right wingers.
BTW accusing someone of being an '1950's bigot' because I recognize that there are still reds in the world is a perfect example of '1960s idiotic idealism'. It's been 40 years sense the 60s. We now know that those accused of being 'reds' then were in fact mostly 'reds' despite their repeated claims at the time that there is no such thing as a red and that those calling them 'reds' are bigots...starting to sound familiar?
The hippies typically called anybody who disagreed with them a 'bigot' or a 'Racist'. It's gotten to the point that the words have almost no meaning beyond hyperbole as they are so overused.
In other words if you don't want to be identified as a idiot stop using the words of idiots ('Bigot' != 'disagreeing with you').
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This promotes cheap medicines. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0D7113AF932A0575BC0A961948260 No patent term extension can extend the term of a patent for a pharmaceutical beyond 14 years from the receipt of Food and Drug Administration approval to commence marketing. ...
The bottom line is that the period of marketing exclusivity provided by a patent for a pharmaceutical can never exceed 17 years
RTFM is not a radio station.
I'll be standing right there with a machete, crossbow a spear and some bolas, waiting for the flames to engulf your protection.
You can't handle the truth.
People who think creative work is easy and the road to riches should go do it for a living. Then come back and tell us how "easy" it is compared to a "real job".
And you'd be put down like the viscous animal you're professing to be.
I'm not worried about power tripping chumps who think they are tough, I've handled the very few dumb enough to think I can be bullied very efficiently, thank you.
vicious
sorry.
The proposals that started this flame war came from a couple of economists in a small university somewhere. Why am I not surprised? They remind me of Jacque Derrida, the french post-modernist critic whacko. These economists never invented anything themselves, but they sure like drawing attention to themselves by tearing down people who actually create.
So, I'm amused, but not surprised by anti-patent comments like this one about infringers: "Good for them. If there's enough volume for them to do this profitably, then I've probably already made enough money and can move on to something else."
Same for so many of the posters here who are critical of patents: jealous types who have never actually invented anything of worth themselves.
I have. I have issued patents, I have started a small business and invested years of starving before it was profitable. I am hiring people and pay them well (including profit sharing and full medical) and I can tell you this: I could NEVER have done it without patent protection. Why go through all the sweat and strain and risk if some lazy type can come in and knock you off? I've fought off huge companies that infringed on my patents, I'm still in business and still paying my employees because patents provide a way for me to have a limited time of protection.
Are there patent trolls out there? Sure. Are there huge companies out there manipulating the patent system? Sure. But posts like, "This protection comes at the public expense. And since it appears that this expense is greater than the benefits resulting from the protection, not abolishing copyright and patents is what is absurd" sound like they come from a leech-wannabe who has himself never invented anything of worth or written a piece of music.
Oh, and to the poster who threatened to "(make) a beeline to China and (do) it there without the millions of laws and tens of thousands of lawyers all suing everyone into oblivion over idiotic patents" Good luck with the uncontrolled pollution, exploitation of workers and repression that seem to go along with a state that also believes individuals should not have rights to their intellectual ideas.
Boldrin and Levine have posted the bulk of their book Against Intellectual Monopoly on the Web. So, if you don't want to purchase a dead-tree version of the work, you can download what amounts to an e-book (free of charge, but minus the front and back matter) from Mssr. Boldrin's website.
Last time I checked, there was a copyright regime in place for published works. I call these authors enlightened, not hypocritical, for finding a middle ground. Their publisher, Cambridge University Press, probably requires a copyright on any works that they distribute, if for no other reason than to protect their investment. The publisher also shows a degree of enlightenment, in allowing the simultaneous posting in digital form without DRM, unlike most publishers these days. By the way, Lawrence Lessig has followed a similar approach with his book Free Culture. (That work is also copyrighted, but the PDF version on the Web is released under a Creative Commons license.)
I'm not against the idea of patents and copyrights, but for no more than 20 years. This 100+ years bulls**t has to stop. Nobody should live off of royalties and nobody's children should live off of royalties once they're dead.