Amazon Patents 'Maintaining Scarcity' of Goods

theodp writes "Back in Biblical times, creating abundance was considered innovative. That was then. Last Tuesday, GeekWire reports, the USPTO awarded Amazon.com a broad patent on reselling and lending 'used' digital goods for an invention that Amazon boasts can be used to 'maintain scarcity' of digital objects, including audio files, eBooks, movies, apps, and pretty much anything else."

Comments

To promote the progress of

[Rogerborg]

science and useful arts.

USPTO, please read the Goddamn Constitution.

Physical objects wear out, digital objects don't

[markdj]

This has to do more with the fact that physical objects wear out and digital objects don't. Publishers have complained that when a library lends a physical book, it can only do so for a limited number of times before it has to buy another copy because the first wore out. When libraries lend digital objects, they never have to buy another again. So publishers want a limit to the number of times that a digital object can be lent before requiring a repurchase. The same goes for CDs/DVDs.

Re:And of course ...

[TarPitt]

Any form of private property is a government enforced monopoly

The owner of the property has exclusive rights to it backup up by government

Private property is the core of "free enterprise"

The birth of industrial capitalism was formed by the "privatization" of traditional agricultural commons, impoverishing the peasant class and creating a cheap workforce for the factories of free enterprise.

The privatization of innovation eliminates the intellectual commons in a similar way