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Why IP Laws Are Blocking Innovation
DrJimbo passes along this quote from Groklaw:
"The White House is asking us to give them ideas on what is blocking innovation in America. I thought I'd give them an honest answer. Here it is: Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation. President Obama just set a goal of wireless access for everyone in the US, saying it will spark innovation. But that's only true if people are allowed to actually do innovative things once they are online. You have to choose. You can prop up old business models with overbearing intellectual property laws that hit innovators on the head whenever they stick their heads up from the ground; or you can have innovation. You can't have both. And right now, the balance is away from innovation."
No IP was a contributing factor.
proud caffeine whore
Patents. Bloody software patents, and fat cats using patents to bludgeon little guys. IIRC, the intention was pretty much the opposite - patents were supposed to be a way to put the law on the side of the little guy. Where did it all go wrong?
As for copyright - no more damn extensions. Indeed, ratchet back.
Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate. Any suggestions? Clearly this debate belongs on a larger basis than the 1D, "stronger - weaker". How about a policy of "use it or lose it?"
examine western european history in the 300 years in between 300 AD and 600 AD. you will see that the feudalization of economy and politics in that period closely resembles the feudalization of economy, and now intellectual sphere in our modern times.
a concept is like a bridge. once you give the ownership of the bridge to someone, that someone has the control of that bridge, can use it to do anything, toll anyone, deny access to anyone. and buy more bridges. eventually, most of the bridges get concentrated in the hands of minority, which then end up controlling the social, political and economical aspects of life through their power. its the inevitable result of inheritance-supported, unlimited ownership.
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Orson Scott Card had a comment about the impossibility of expecting a bureaucrat (and presumably by extension, lawyer) to be able to understand the spirit of a law. Can't remember the quote offhand, but the gist of it is, if they understood enough about how the world works to be able to understand when to follow and when to ignore the letter of the law, they wouldn't be willing to be a bereaucrat.
You fail to patent, or file slowly? That's okay! We will patent for you, and then sue you for violating our patent!
As I understand first to file, prior art published outside a patent application can still invalidate a patent or application. It makes a difference only when two inventors have pending applications on the same thing (e.g. AG Bell and Elisha Gray).
Yeah, the good old days, when you needed a the support of the Church or a wealthy patron to make a living as an artist.
Thanks but no thanks.
Yep. Remember what happened the last time the President used the internet to ask the people what they wanted? The most popular response, by a long shot, was marijuana reform. The President came out and laughed, as if tens of thousands of people in jail were some sort of joke. I don't expect patent reform to be taken any more seriously.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The thesis "Current IP law stifles innovation" is a good one, however I don't agree with the examples provided in the paper. I think a more persuasive argument would have used company vs company lawsuits are are going crazy right now (between the like of Apple, RIM, and Sony) and the hoops that things like the GPL has to jump through to placate Novell selling out to M$ amongst other attacks on open source software. Comparing the situation to the aircraft industry pre-WWI and using other examples of stifled innovation would have given our current situation more context as well. /sighs
Anyway, I just think the sheer amount of licensing boondoggles and lawyers required to build any kind of useful tech device these days is completely out of control, and I don't know if the paper made that clear (it didn't to me anyway).
In the "good old days" artists needed a patron not because there was no IP law but because most artists' audience was incredibly small by today's standards. The Church and the aristocracy were about the only ones to commission artworks or have their buildings elaborately decorated. Not because everyone else got their art fix from ThePirateHorsecourier but because everyone else was too busy working their arse off to feed themselves or bashing in skulls. Given the circumstances I would still consider that era a prosperous time for the arts. I agree with GP's point that the ability to freely use whatever you got your hands on and create something new from it was a very good thing, and I would like to extend this to say it contributed considerably to the wealth of cultural legacy that has serves artists up until this very day as a solid foundation to build upon and a rich repertoire to draw inspiration from.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Assuming you think there's anything to libertarianism. I certainly think libertarians have started from a flawed position, and their logic goes off the rails because of their bad starting point.
No IP was a contributing factor.
I don't know what you people are talking about. There is considerable innovation in America today. The US is the leader in CDOs, derivatives, tax avoidance, and is always coming up with new and innovative schemes to part working people from their money.
No lack of innovation there, it's just misdirected.
Yes because this stuff is not patented!
TFA is built on the premise that crime would pay if there weren't patents on the crime methods.
Napster? Really?
Napster wasn't hit with a patent suit for its method of stealing music. It was busted up because it was stealing music.
I couldn't read the rest after it started with that. Someone tell me if it redeemed itself.
Well, there's no reasoning with pure authoritarianism. If the law is the law because it's the law, and breaking the law is bad because it's against the law, the law is always right, tautologically. Any sane individual (and most insane ones!) will realize that there are just and unjust laws. People imprisoned for possession of marijuana are victims of a repressive regime. There is absolutely no reason why that should happen, the punishment should fit the crime.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
You cannot 'steal' a digital bit. It simply exists and is copied or erased. But you cannot 'take' or 'steal' it in any way.
Napster is a bad example but for a different reason. Napster was busted for violating the copyrights of the music they were allowing to be traded.
How about Guitar Hero being killed because the copyright holders of the songs demanded ridiculous amounts when the game amounts to free advertising for them? They are certainly in the rights to do so, but it doesn't mean that 'innovation' isn't being stifled by it.
Patents are the bigger problem. Specifically software patents, but patents in general too. That Tivo can be sued because someone patented a completely vague idea without actually building their idea hurts everybody. Vonage also got sued over really technical things that Verizon (I think) purchased patents for and then sued Vonage. Worse, 'Patent Trolls' - companies that literally don't make anything purchase lots of patents solely for the purpose of suing companies who actually create things - *that* stifles innovation significantly.
I'm not advocating illegal sharing of copyrighted works. I am advocating that the current mindset of today's 'media' companies is very short sighted and backwards. Digital copies, instead of being a 'product' like a CD, are now the 'advertising' they should be using to drive people to buy things that aren't available in infinite supply. (This is not saying that because it's illegally available they should just give up).
Digital copies can be made in infinite numbers at just about zero cost. Say I'm selling apples and one day, someone comes and, without taking any apples, creates an apple tree next to my apple stand. Now apples are available for free right next to me. The value of my apples is lowered. I have not lost anything, nor been deprived of anything. There are simply more apples on the market and that causes value to go down. An infinite supply of apples puts the 'value' of any one apple at zero. I can complain that free apples exist - this is what 'media' is doing today. Or I can shift to having people come to my cart to by my 'worm free' apples. Instead of selling apples, I'm now providing a service of quality apples. I can certainly take apples from the tree too, I just spend time verifying they are worm free; that's the 'value' I am providing.
For the music industry, the 'value' is in live performances and merchandising. You simply can't produce a live performance infinitely, it can only be done at the concert with those musicians for a finite set of people.
But unfortunately we have billions of dollars fighting this basic fact of the digital world. Best description I've heard "Trying to make digital bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet".
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I wish I hadn't blown all my mod points to increase the visibility of a couple titty jokes. You should have got one.
Even the jokes need their patrons.
It's a bit sad, considering the amount of energy spent on Slashdot discussing IP and innovation, that a sweeping and incorrect generalization like "No IP protection in the Baroque" that is still considered "Insightful." You would have hoped that people would have spent a fraction of the time writing and ranting instead reading.
There were of course considerable legal efforts used to keep smart people in place and harvest their output. This was an era when monopoly rights were routinely granted to restrict competition and the wealthy were obsessively worried about secret knowledge.
If you were, say, a glassblower in Venice, it would be impossible to take that knowledge and use it elsewhere within Venice; risky to use it outside Venetian control; and downright fatal if you did use it outside Venice and then returned home. By comparison, a patent lawsuit where most of the time you split the profits is downright encouraging.
In the arts, Handel basically had to defect from Hannover to compose in England.
This is not to over-dramaticize; states were weaker and their understanding of what could be considered a "valuable innovation" much more limited. I don't know how you could reasonably compare "IP" restrictions and say one era was better or worse; they were just very different. It would depend what you were trying to do.
I'm afraid my own opinion is fairly bland--clearly IP laws hurt innovation and clearly IP laws help innovation. (I could give personal examples of both--projects killed because an invention was patented but not developed by a competitor; projects not considered because you couldn't establish exclusivity and thus saw no path for ROI.) They have different effects in different industries. The proper balance between freedom, basic fairness and innovation is tricky.