This is largely incoherant and what little isn't, is incorrect. Patents on pharmaceuticals are no broader as a rule than microchips. In fact, empirically speaking, it's quite rare for any company to truely monopolize a market for an extended period. The combination of later emerging legal generics and superior alternatives means makes the patent much less valuable as time goes on. In fact, given the average useful length of the patent in the field, the company is obligated to charge a lot for it at the outset, because if they don't, the competitors will come along and steal their only chance.
. No product Intel produces could save lives with minimum cost to the producer. The HIV drugs could save many people who would otherwise die pretty horribly. There's no risk to the company and they save thousands and gain great PR.
It cost Brazil more than 440 million dollars just to rip off the drug companies in the year 2000. What's more, that figure doesn't even include the unquantifiable support from the community. Most places in the world where this is a problem have neither the training, the infrastructure, nor the resources that Brazil has. It may be a "poor" country, but it's not spineless like so many of these other countries.
Furthermore, there is a risk. There was a popular bill just recently in the United States that proposed "reimporting" drugs that US drug companies make and export to Canada, Mexico, etc for significantly lower prices. What the proponents fail to realize is that the US is THE market that they depend on to make a profit; the drug companies sell to other nations just barely above cost because it can help _supplement_ their earnings. The problem is that people, like all too many on slashdot, will and have jumped to conclusions. (Hello, Al Gore? Nader?)
Finally, many drug companies have offered free and/or greatly reduced price drugs to South Africa and others. But these nations have either rejected it, ignored it, tried and failed, etc. There is another side to this story...the NYT author doesn't tell you how many have failed. The countries that are most ravaged by diseases like AIDS are, almost by definition, ravaged by other problems as well. AIDS continues to spread in these countries, due to no fault of the drug companies. I'd argue at least that until a country can begin to stem infection (rather basic) they don't have a chance with these very expensive and complex treatments for existing patients.
I'd also like to add that people can do just as much, if not more, than the drug companies can do. Can the drug companies do more to help? Sure, but it's hypocritical for 99% of the people on slashdot to complain about it when they themselves do next to nothing. Companies realistically can't do a great deal more until both people here agree to do more and the countries themselves (probably most importantly) get their acts together.
I agree that some sort of IP laws are necessary. however, I think that the current protection is too long. also, I think in a situation like this, where lives are at stake, and corporate profits aren't(even if they were I wouldn't care much), you have to make an exception. I realize that many people here value a corporation's right to make a profit over thousands or millions of human being's right to be alive, but I find that concept morally revolting.
I don't care for the rest of the stuff, but allow me to make two points:
First, it's not that most people care for the corporation itself. It's just that ignoring the corporation's legally established IP rights is short sighted and, in the long run, can hurt everyone.
Second, the medicine simply would not exist without that corporation, let alone the western world. It's not as if the Brazillions would be better off if the corporation did not exist.
Third, this experiment in Brazil is rare and noteworthy. If I remember correctly, it cost them 442 million to even RIP off the drug makers and provide these medications for ONE year. If the drug companies were to provide similar services to all in need, it'd be billions of dollars and it'd probably put them out of business. Even that alone is well beyond what most poor countries can raise. Not to mention the intangible good will of its citizens, which is often not found in others.
Fourth, where were you when Brazil needed medicine? Just how much of your income have YOU sacrified for the good of the world? For all the ranting and raving about the "evil" corporation, the corporation is really just an agent that represents us as humans. If it suddenly becomes better than us, it's no longer an investment, it's a charity. So I reiterate, how much have you given to charity? Nothing? A few dollars? 5% of your income? 10%? I bet you still have plenty of excess material goods. Then don't act so high and mighty.
I don't think your primary point was ever, merely, that "some" innovation will still occur. What we're all interested is what system will produce the most (or will even be remotely acceptable). It's quite clear to me at least, that IP is necessary for this level of innovation.
Now perhaps it might still be arguable that "some" innovation can still occur without IP, but that depends on how "innovation" is defined and it's still rather nominal in any event. I regard it as largely extraneous to the underlying question. I may have stated my case a little too strongly, but, by and large, it's true.
Wine is a physical asset. It is not the
same as research
Which is totally irrelevant to the point of corporate investment horizons.
And a patent grants a monopoly. Giving the
drug company little incentive to innovate.
So if I patent an automatic nose picking machine that does not work does that make me rich? No. The only way that happens is if my innovation is useful and productive. Merck's patent is only as good as what they innovate. If competitors work around their patents, as they often do, that patent then becomes a worthless monopoly.
That is why it still costs Merck $10-15/k
to produce the drugs and India can do it for
$700.
Where are you getting these numbers from? Anyways, India doesn't invent drugs, they copy them. If they are manufacturing their drugs for less (which you would have a hard time knowing), it could be for any number of reasons. Such as, cheap labor, lack of quality control, lack of regulation, etc. Anyways, the manufacturing costs tend to be a very small component of the sales cost from a legitimate manufacturer. An illegal generic, on the other hand, simply has manufacuring costs to worry about, so that's where they'll spend their money.
He made it possible for people to make
'practical' inventions though didn't he?
Aren't all 'practical' inventions the result
of what was once a fanciful theory?
Maybe so, maybe not. But this doesn't mean IP isn't unnecessary for that final, most expensive, step or two.
BTW, how do you explain the innovations of
the open source community that have occured
without the use of IP?
I don't consider the vast majority of Open Source development to be innovation, but rather free loading. I don't have time to enumerate the typical stuff that is proffered, but perhaps if you offer what you consider to be significant innovation, i'll take them on individually when I get a chance.
Yes, I made a goof/typo. I'm not appealing to authority, read the thread. He said that economists say that the free market is good, therefor patents must be bad because they're not purely "free market". I simply, matter of factly, pointed out that most economists agree with patents.
I feel a distinction must be made between innovation and pure research. Research can, and often does, come for free because people simply like to know. However, I'd argue that the mere desire to know is not sufficient to power a product into viability. There's a world of difference between spending countless hours making a product viable and wondering about greater truths. Innovation generally requires resources, tremendous and focused effort, risk, etc; pure research often does not. Granted, you have some exceptions in both cases, but by and large there is a difference.
Speaking of penicilin, there is A LOT more to the story. (It can even be used to help illustrate my point.) Contrary to popular belief, penicillin was not an instant cure. Flemming essentially published his discovery once to the academic community in 1929, but it hardly interested anyone. Flemming worked a little bit on it, and then basically abandoned it. It wasn't until 1938 (9 years later) that it was picked up again by a group of researchers in England. Over the period of a couple years, they reproduced Flemmings experiments, worked on it a little more, then began injecting it into mice, then humans. The results were good, but not so good that it was an instant success. It wasn't until 1941 when the ball really began to roll. It was still very difficult and expensive to produce. It took a couple years, millions of dollars, and the involvement of industry to actually make it viable.
The point is that it is very rare for chance and mere curiosity to create usable innovation, there is generally a lot of work that happens in between. If you want to come up with a good counter-example, then show me where millions of dollars worth of resources, countless hours, risk, etc was incurred by individuals to produce a single product out of goodness of their hearts. There may be a few, but they are quite rare, especially in comparison. Can you honestly tell me who you expect to produce the next significantly faster CPU? Intel (or some other company in the semiconductor industry) or a bunch of volunteers? That may be a bit extreme of an example given the capital intensiveness, but think over all the industries and pursuits that directly effect your life. By and large, it's industry through IP, not the loaner individual (differs from an individual that starts a company, of course), a non-profit, etc.
I'm saying I'm not wrong in the assertion that main stream economists generally accept IP as necessary (though some may modify that, as a necessary evil) to modern innovation. [read the comment above mine]. It's not an appeal to authority, rather it's a matter of fact statement of what the vast majority of the "authority" advocates.
That being said, I agree with you that appealing to authority can be dangerous when it leads to intellectual apathy. I really don't feel that I'm doing that though. I'm giving a relatively well reasoned argument for it [about as good as can be expected on this sort of forum], that explains why this person's over-simplified free market/libertarian view is dangerous.
thats not research. the wine is collecting
value. it is an asset.
Huh, says who? Intellectual property is an asset, even if it's written off towards goodwill. Partially developed intectually property is often sold and can have tremendous value. I'm not sure if you can even say the value of wine is any more predictable. Wine can go bad. Wine, even from the finest vinyards, can have good years and bad years. Wine, like real estate, depends on the whims of consumers. [Speaking of which, there is a suprising amount of technology being used by modern day vintners].
even microsoft's research
only focuses a few years down
the road.
MS is a monopoly. They have little incentive to innovate, unless they can somehow expand their market. The software industry however has extremely short lifespans and is difficult to predict. It's a poor example.
Can you provide
me with specific examples of
30+ years research payoffs?
I already told you. Merck, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, AT&T (remember Bell Labs?), etc. I am not a walking bag of links. You can do your own research.
Did Einstein ever turn a profit?
No, but he also didn't ever make a practical invention that people could use. He consumed little capital and hence didn't incur risk. There is a world of difference between theoretical research for learning and applied research for the development of useful things. While it is certainly true that theoretical research has ultimately benefited today's innovations, this does not make the case for IP any weaker. The most you can say is that some things that have benefited us did not require IP. However, they also generally didn't require tremendous resources and IP is primarily about efficient allocation of resources.
I majored in business at business school. As part of that major, one is required to take a number of courses in economics. Though there is debate as to how long a patent should last, and how much waste, if any, actually occurs, very few mainstream economists doubt the need for IP. Thus, I'm not "wrong". The possibility of waste and the necessity for patents are not mutually exclusive, even from a particular author.
Even this introductory book of yours (btw, you go to drexel?), acknowledges that patents solve a real problem. It does not say that patents should not exist. Quite the contrary, because it suggests that there is an optimal length for patent life, it implies very strongly that patents are more optimal. For example,
"The term should be long enough to make the design work to create the invention a profitable investment, and no longer. If the term is too short, then the invention will not be created, and the consumers will not have any benefit from it at all. On the other hand, if the term is too long, consumers will suffer high prices and monopoly waste just to provide a windfall profit to the monopolist. The patent should continue just long enough for the monopoly profits to repay the cost of development of the invention, and no longer."
This book, however, being an introductory level book, oversimplifies the matter. The innovator must also be compensated for taking risk and for the lost opportunity cost/cost of capital. For instance, if I spend 20m dollars developing a product, a return of 20 million real dollars (accounting for inflation and like measures) is not enough. Because I could have plowed that money into a much less risky and low tech investment that yields 10% a year over the course of 10 years. The only way a rational and self-centered investor will invest, is if that risky investment offers a net present expected value significantly greater than the low tech investment. Hint: More than 51m dollars. Likewise, if a particular investment merely returns its cost of development in real dollars, when that particular class of innovation is highly risky, say 9 in 10 fail, the only way that you'll encourage investment is to offer expected returns well in excess of 10x the development costs.
Maybe. However, I am backing it up with an argument (besides the fact that it's a well accepted fact). What's more, just because MS has used it doesn't mean it's worth any less.
After all, criminals have used their rights to privacy to hide evidence of their crimes, but that doesn't mean the arguments for privacy are fundamentally less valid.
It's also well excepted by most mainstream economists that intellectual property is absolutely necessary to innovation. You're simply overgeneralizing. If you wish to defer to the experts, you better know where they actually stand.
No, by practical I mean a product or idea that can actually be used by a real human being in a cost effective manner. The administration and marketing are simply necessary for sales, which are necessary to support on going development.
Maybe I am mistaken. Please show me where
research is being conducted by a corporation
that has a 30+ year expected payoff time.
Well it's a well known fact in the industry that the vast majority of new drugs take have a time horizon greater than 10 years. Long term in the drug industry is considered to be 20 and 30 years out and does happen at the larger drug companies like Merck, Glaxo, etc. Also there are other industries such as the rirline industry, logging, communication systems, etc where this takes place. Or here's one you should know, the wine industry. Where do you think those 40+ year old wine bottles come from? Or how about loans?
From a debating stand point, the onus is not on me, it's on you coming from the lesser accepted point of view. However, there is all kinds of "proof": theories, empirical evidence, etc. They are certainly better than anything you can, or have, proffered.
Its called catch up. The advantage is that your are ahead of the competition. This gives you advantage. What you are in effect saying is "With IP I could make a billion dollars, but without it, I can only make 1/4 billion. Its just not worth it"
This catchup factor that you describe is rarely significant. If we're talking about software, that's about 5 seconds. Medicine, brazil managed to do it with next to nothing in the space of a month or two. A book can essentially be photocopied. An idea, simply passed around. Etc etc etc. What's more, if the innovator is small or has less resources, he could actually be at a disadvantage in terms of implimentation. If we're talking about a manufacturable product, there is a significant amount of resources and expertise involved. Knowing the ins and outs of the R&D on that particular product may pale in competitive comparison to owning 500 million dollars in manufacturing facilities, staff, cash, etc.
Do you see how ridiculous that statement is?
Even if we accept your position that the innovator will make 1/4 of what they would have made, who is to say that that is enough, let alone better than the full amount. For all you know, the full amount tends to be absolutely necessary. From a financial point of view, the correlation between risk and expected return is VERY sensitive. Cutting return by 10% can easily mean that the innovation will simply never happen. I have personally been involved with a number of such companies/innovators.
That is exactly what I am arguing. Competition
fosters progress. Look at any monopoly market and
compare it to a highly competitive market and
tell me which one is better. Where is _your_
proof?
There difference though is that the innovator only gets a monopoly on his innovation. If the competitors are copying the innovation, they're freeriding and not contributing to the advancement of technology. If the competitors wish to compete in the market place, they can do their OWN innovation. The difference is that with these market monopolies, we're talking about the ENDS, not the MEANS. You're mostly incorrectly assuming that there is only one means to an end. Even with the relatively strong IP of today, innovators often find tough competion on their product a mere year or two after they patent it, well before the patent actually expires.
In fact, I dare you to quantify this and prove to me that patent expiration is more often the limiting factor, not alternative MEANS. I can speak with confidence for a number of well known industries and show you just how true this is.
First off, you confuse "research" with practical research and development. It's very rare for an academic or non-profit instution to make a product that is ready for the prime time. If making that product is so easy, you can be sure that the universities themselves would manufacture it or at least license it for a lot more money (as it would have a much higher marketable value)
Corporations do, as a matter of fact, focus on the long term quite often. The drug industry regularly makes investments that are 10, 20, 30+ years off. Perhaps you can argue that the nature of corporate management today, having to focus on short term excessively, is a force against long term development. However, it's simply not fundamental to the corporation. There is no rule in finance that says "the short term is all the matters". Rather, there are principles such as the time value of money, cost of capital, etc. These, however, don't say the long term is worth less, they simply discount future revenues based on how far out in the future they are. Put simply, this means that if a company has a choice between 20m today or 25m in 5 years, they'll most likely choose 20m. But if there is an AIDS vaccine that has an expected value of 1 billion dollars in 10 years versus other allocations that would net a mere 20m using the same amount of a capital, then you can be quite confident that the company will invest, if they have the resources.
Whether intellectual property is pro or anti free market is largely a semantic argument. IP is simply necessary in order to secure future innovation. Without IP the innovator simply gains no advantage on his competitors for spending resources and incuring risk, hence progress halts. When the innovator can gain advantage (e.g., a monopoly on his or her invention) by innovating, then innovation has a chance.
With the current IP system, we've made a great deal of progress and trillions of dollars have been spent towards R&D. Although you might argue, as ridiculous as that would be, that we would experience even more without it, there is NO significant evidence that points to this, quite the opposite in fact.
We do. The NIH, NSF, various universities, etc routinely give out grants. Unfortunately, a great deal of it is wasted on academics and such that live off of grant money. The end result is a great deal of waste. It's been my experience that industry is far more productive and efficient than these grants are, even when you factor in these apparent "marketing and administration" costs.
What you are in essence trying to create is a mini-planned economy. Unfortunately, government is no more capable of producing medical products than it is microchips.
The statement that, because they spend twice as much on marketing and administration as they do on R&D, they don't need patents is totally ridiculous. This is simply the way the economics of the biotech, medical devices, and drug industry work, both big companies and small companies alike. R&D is expensive and risky. In order to secure resources for R&D you need a large number of sales. Believe it or not, very few products sell themselves, even potentially life saving medicine. What's more, the medical industry is complex. Sales often involves going to the doctor's office, convincing them of the merits, educating them, etc. Administration will involve stuff, depending on the specific industry, like fighting with the HMOs. Anyways, to make a long story short, the way you generate those sales is with marketing and administration, which, of course, costs money.
This is a well known truth in the industry, it's not as if the shareholders of all these companies woke up one day and said "gee, I want to reduce my earnings by 2/3rds by spending money needlessly". If you think you can do R&D and produce a product for less, do it. I dare you.
The GPL requires you to publish your source if you use GPL code. This by no means comes automatically with the abolition of copyright. In fact, there is every reason to think that if copyright were abolished, that software developers would keep their source very private, not to mention throwing in a zillion trapdoors, obfuscation, etc. Abolishing copyright may make pirates happy, but it's quite clear from the letter and the intent of GPL, not to mention RMS's own words, that its chief concern is the source, not the ability to copy or modify the binary.
What's more, I suggest to you that if copyright were abolished, a great deal of commercial software development would be devastated. This would result in a reduction of paying programming jobs. The reduction in jobs would, in turn, force the would-be OSS developers of today into non-programming jobs, resulting in a loss to GPL software. In short, it'd be a loose-loose situation.
A hypothetical example: Let's say someone writes a book which outlines a conspiracy on how to take over the government; it identifies phrasewords by which the elite conspirators will identify each other. Now, as the conspiracy based on this book progresses in real life, then clearly if I am prevented from reading or using this material, it detracts from my life. Ideas can be powerful, not merely entertainment.
The same can be said for freedom itself, but we don't say freedom is the problem. There are times, however, when we choose to, when we need to, ignore freedom for the common good. With my freedom of speech I can startup a group of thugs to rob little old ladies, or what have you. Likewise, I can use my physical property, a cardboard box, to carry a bomb. There are always exceptions, I admit of exceptions, but let us be clear here, there is a difference. The author is arguing that the flaw is integral to the feature of IP, whereas you're arguing that some instances of IP can be bad.
I think this situation is broadly analagous to genetic ownership of plants which supersede and potentially replace "natural" crop strains. Or, the case of the Church of Scientology in the way they jealously guard their institutional writings. Or, generalized issues about access to information technology and the power differential across the "digital divide". A product/idea which causes older ideas to no longer be supported will harm me if I don't have access to it.
I simply think these are unreasonable stretches. If ADM, Monsanto, or whomever create a super seed (disclaimer: I'm not too familiar with agriculture), it's not as if the farmer is directly harmed. Their own little plot of soil will, in all likelyhood, continue to produce just as it always did. The only difference is that the competition can do it more cost effectively. You can argue that the competition may then hurt that farmer, but that's extraneous to the argument that intellectual property itself is robbing the farmer of his rights. The same goes for so many of these other ideas. What's more, I'd assert that that is the nature of capitalism, as unpleasant as it can be at times. If the idea is so powerful as to make the competitors significantly more cost effective, that's a good thing. If the only way to secure that progress is with intellectual property, that's still a good thing on the aggregate. If that farmer is unwilling or unable pay, he's probably not equipped to compete in today's world with vastly lower production costs. Making exceptions for the farmer is just delaying the inevitable and will ultimately cost the consumer more.
The same goes for many of these other arguments, however, I don't feel like getting into them at the moment. Perhaps later...
I'm not an Ayn Rand fan. Nor am I a libertarian, I find 90% of their positions simply ridiculous. If I'm anything, I'm am Republican, but even there I differ with certain views. I don't tow anyone's flag. If you're going to make ad hominem arguments, then you should at least be pretty sure that you're correct.
nor is that most people's idea of a "free market".
It is ironic though that you choose to criticize me for making assumptions about the rest of the population, when you purport yourself to know what their ideas are. I, in fact, implied nothing of the sort, whereas you clearly just did. What I did was imply that I know the accepted arguments reasonably well. Having studied business. Having known numerous inventors/innovators/entreprenuers, I am quite qualified to comment as to what are the common arguments. The author's definition as to what is or is not property is simply not pertinent to the arguments that you'll hear from academia, business, or most inventors, by and large. [If you want to demonstrate otherwise, then please do so.]
What's more, I suggest to you that most people in this country are far more reasonable and moderate than those on slashdot or in the Open Source community. Those that don't know or aren't concerned simply aren't party to this argument.
Sure, IP law conflicts with the idea that the law should only protect physical instances of property. But the law is not written on that assumption, nor is that most people's idea of a "free market".
Where are you going with this? What is your point?
Instances of an idea may not be scarce but the ideas themselves certainly are. It's that scarcity that creates the value the law protects.
Still unclear.
Incidentally, what I find irritating is that I don't for a second imagine that Hemos and CmdrTaco actually believe any of this crap they endorse. Over the last few years, this anti-IP bandwagon has gelled around them and they're unwilling to disavow it. Maybe someday they'll explain why copyrights are bad but the GPL is sacred. No, calling it a "copyleft" isn't a valid explanation.
I agree with you here and I've called them and others on slashdot on it a number of times.
You know this. I know this. Napster knows this. The industry knows this. Artists know this. Pirates know this. In short, everyone knows this (well anyone who is concerned). It's simply not convenient for people to admit when they're making the small artist "use" argument.
Speaking of which, I strongly suspect that Napster could employ archiving more cost effectively than running these massive databases, 99% of which contains pirated material.
First, the author wastes a good part of his time on Napster. Napster is not intellectual property itself, it's secondary to intellectual property. What's more, he glances over the legal minutia, while ignoring the bigger picture. The legal minutia may be important in the lawsuit, but it's not to napster's morality and, especially, not to the relative cost and benefits of intellectual property. He ignores the fact that, while napster may not be able to discern users (though that is debatable itself), there is little doubt that the vast majority of its use is for copyright infringment. On the balance, I'd say the current design and actual use of napster has far greater costs for society than any benefit it presumably brings about.
Presumably, according to Napster, lesser known artists will use Napster to get an audience. Though I have serious doubts about this (in terms of numbers), the fact is that it could design a system in such a way that the artists ENUMERATES what songs they want to share and submits it via some checksum (or what have you)--rather than rely on some algorithm to divine the artist. Alternatively, they could solve this problem entirely and simply create a massive server where artists can upload their songs, complete with web pages and the like. In reality, this offers virtually all the benefits of their purported "use" [ sometimes even more (e.g., a web page, faster downloads, assured quality, etc) ] without the costs.
Second, (back on point) the author attacks a few specific instances of IP and one or two of the minor (but poorly accepted) arguments for IP, but completely or mostly ignores the well accepted arguments for it. The first argument is that innovation is risky and expensive; the only way you secure difficult innovation is by granting the innovator the exclusive right to the innovation. The second argument is that one should be entitled to the product of their own mind. When those "products" might be indepedently reinvented, then there might be cause for complaint. But when we're talking about a recording or a book in its entirity, it's simply not going to be indepedently reinvented. My creating that product or idea and restricting its usage does NOT detract from your life, unless you take the fact that I generated that product or idea for granted.
With Linux in its current state, Linus is unquestionably at the helm. The concern for me is not that he (or any individual) is at the helm, but rather WHERE and HOW he is steering it. It's not that I question the man's integrity, rather I question his motivations. Although there's nothing wrong with a singular hobbyist perspective (or even a grouping of divergent hobbyists), it's difficult to argue that the output of such an effort is equivelent to that of a company that needs to sell to consumers. Issues like ease of use may not be sexy to someone like Linus, but it can make or break a company.
On the other hand, I'm highly skeptical of the ability of a large panel of "experts" to lead a complex development process. Trying to fit all the different opinions and demands under roof can strain the final product, not to mention slow it down with endless talks. Furthermore, even where the group would all benefit, they don't necessarily all know it at the moment it would be proposed. There is a certain value to breaking away from the rest of the flock at times, striking out on your own, and coming back when you have a finished product.
In other words, I feel most current Open Source projects are, or will be, ultimately limited by their leadership and developers. However, the recent events with IBM, et. al, putting in millions of dollars into the Open Source Labs looks like the one shining prospect--sort of hybrid between traditional capitalist methods and the new open source model. 24m can do a lot of good, initially. I just wonder if the economics of Open Source will encourage sustained contribution to the continued development of technology that, in all likelyhood, will not give any company an edge over its competitors.
that you NEED one individual at the helm. However, the question is, WHAT does Linus consider the greater good? He may think the greatest good is to produce something that he and his cohorts consider fun, educational, neat, etc. While that may be just swell for him, you must also remember that there are hundreds of thousands of people in IT that are looking for something that makes their job easier, cheaper, faster, etc. By this I mean ease of use, high stability, scalability, low maintanence, etc. For all the complaints about business, they are ultimately accountable to whomever will consume their product, whereas Linus need not be at all.
Slashdot Mirror
It cost Brazil more than 440 million dollars just to rip off the drug companies in the year 2000. What's more, that figure doesn't even include the unquantifiable support from the community. Most places in the world where this is a problem have neither the training, the infrastructure, nor the resources that Brazil has. It may be a "poor" country, but it's not spineless like so many of these other countries.
Furthermore, there is a risk. There was a popular bill just recently in the United States that proposed "reimporting" drugs that US drug companies make and export to Canada, Mexico, etc for significantly lower prices. What the proponents fail to realize is that the US is THE market that they depend on to make a profit; the drug companies sell to other nations just barely above cost because it can help _supplement_ their earnings. The problem is that people, like all too many on slashdot, will and have jumped to conclusions. (Hello, Al Gore? Nader?)
Finally, many drug companies have offered free and/or greatly reduced price drugs to South Africa and others. But these nations have either rejected it, ignored it, tried and failed, etc. There is another side to this story...the NYT author doesn't tell you how many have failed. The countries that are most ravaged by diseases like AIDS are, almost by definition, ravaged by other problems as well. AIDS continues to spread in these countries, due to no fault of the drug companies. I'd argue at least that until a country can begin to stem infection (rather basic) they don't have a chance with these very expensive and complex treatments for existing patients.
I'd also like to add that people can do just as much, if not more, than the drug companies can do. Can the drug companies do more to help? Sure, but it's hypocritical for 99% of the people on slashdot to complain about it when they themselves do next to nothing. Companies realistically can't do a great deal more until both people here agree to do more and the countries themselves (probably most importantly) get their acts together.
First, it's not that most people care for the corporation itself. It's just that ignoring the corporation's legally established IP rights is short sighted and, in the long run, can hurt everyone.
Second, the medicine simply would not exist without that corporation, let alone the western world. It's not as if the Brazillions would be better off if the corporation did not exist.
Third, this experiment in Brazil is rare and noteworthy. If I remember correctly, it cost them 442 million to even RIP off the drug makers and provide these medications for ONE year. If the drug companies were to provide similar services to all in need, it'd be billions of dollars and it'd probably put them out of business. Even that alone is well beyond what most poor countries can raise. Not to mention the intangible good will of its citizens, which is often not found in others.
Fourth, where were you when Brazil needed medicine? Just how much of your income have YOU sacrified for the good of the world? For all the ranting and raving about the "evil" corporation, the corporation is really just an agent that represents us as humans. If it suddenly becomes better than us, it's no longer an investment, it's a charity. So I reiterate, how much have you given to charity? Nothing? A few dollars? 5% of your income? 10%? I bet you still have plenty of excess material goods. Then don't act so high and mighty.
I don't think your primary point was ever, merely, that "some" innovation will still occur. What we're all interested is what system will produce the most (or will even be remotely acceptable). It's quite clear to me at least, that IP is necessary for this level of innovation.
Now perhaps it might still be arguable that "some" innovation can still occur without IP, but that depends on how "innovation" is defined and it's still rather nominal in any event. I regard it as largely extraneous to the underlying question. I may have stated my case a little too strongly, but, by and large, it's true.
Later
So if I patent an automatic nose picking machine that does not work does that make me rich? No. The only way that happens is if my innovation is useful and productive. Merck's patent is only as good as what they innovate. If competitors work around their patents, as they often do, that patent then becomes a worthless monopoly.
Where are you getting these numbers from? Anyways, India doesn't invent drugs, they copy them. If they are manufacturing their drugs for less (which you would have a hard time knowing), it could be for any number of reasons. Such as, cheap labor, lack of quality control, lack of regulation, etc. Anyways, the manufacturing costs tend to be a very small component of the sales cost from a legitimate manufacturer. An illegal generic, on the other hand, simply has manufacuring costs to worry about, so that's where they'll spend their money.
Maybe so, maybe not. But this doesn't mean IP isn't unnecessary for that final, most expensive, step or two.
I don't consider the vast majority of Open Source development to be innovation, but rather free loading. I don't have time to enumerate the typical stuff that is proffered, but perhaps if you offer what you consider to be significant innovation, i'll take them on individually when I get a chance.
Yes, I made a goof/typo. I'm not appealing to authority, read the thread. He said that economists say that the free market is good, therefor patents must be bad because they're not purely "free market". I simply, matter of factly, pointed out that most economists agree with patents.
I feel a distinction must be made between innovation and pure research. Research can, and often does, come for free because people simply like to know. However, I'd argue that the mere desire to know is not sufficient to power a product into viability. There's a world of difference between spending countless hours making a product viable and wondering about greater truths. Innovation generally requires resources, tremendous and focused effort, risk, etc; pure research often does not. Granted, you have some exceptions in both cases, but by and large there is a difference.
Speaking of penicilin, there is A LOT more to the story. (It can even be used to help illustrate my point.) Contrary to popular belief, penicillin was not an instant cure. Flemming essentially published his discovery once to the academic community in 1929, but it hardly interested anyone. Flemming worked a little bit on it, and then basically abandoned it. It wasn't until 1938 (9 years later) that it was picked up again by a group of researchers in England. Over the period of a couple years, they reproduced Flemmings experiments, worked on it a little more, then began injecting it into mice, then humans. The results were good, but not so good that it was an instant success. It wasn't until 1941 when the ball really began to roll. It was still very difficult and expensive to produce. It took a couple years, millions of dollars, and the involvement of industry to actually make it viable.
The point is that it is very rare for chance and mere curiosity to create usable innovation, there is generally a lot of work that happens in between. If you want to come up with a good counter-example, then show me where millions of dollars worth of resources, countless hours, risk, etc was incurred by individuals to produce a single product out of goodness of their hearts. There may be a few, but they are quite rare, especially in comparison. Can you honestly tell me who you expect to produce the next significantly faster CPU? Intel (or some other company in the semiconductor industry) or a bunch of volunteers? That may be a bit extreme of an example given the capital intensiveness, but think over all the industries and pursuits that directly effect your life. By and large, it's industry through IP, not the loaner individual (differs from an individual that starts a company, of course), a non-profit, etc.
I'm saying I'm not wrong in the assertion that main stream economists generally accept IP as necessary (though some may modify that, as a necessary evil) to modern innovation. [read the comment above mine]. It's not an appeal to authority, rather it's a matter of fact statement of what the vast majority of the "authority" advocates.
That being said, I agree with you that appealing to authority can be dangerous when it leads to intellectual apathy. I really don't feel that I'm doing that though. I'm giving a relatively well reasoned argument for it [about as good as can be expected on this sort of forum], that explains why this person's over-simplified free market/libertarian view is dangerous.
MS is a monopoly. They have little incentive to innovate, unless they can somehow expand their market. The software industry however has extremely short lifespans and is difficult to predict. It's a poor example.
I already told you. Merck, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, AT&T (remember Bell Labs?), etc. I am not a walking bag of links. You can do your own research.
No, but he also didn't ever make a practical invention that people could use. He consumed little capital and hence didn't incur risk. There is a world of difference between theoretical research for learning and applied research for the development of useful things. While it is certainly true that theoretical research has ultimately benefited today's innovations, this does not make the case for IP any weaker. The most you can say is that some things that have benefited us did not require IP. However, they also generally didn't require tremendous resources and IP is primarily about efficient allocation of resources.
Even this introductory book of yours (btw, you go to drexel?), acknowledges that patents solve a real problem. It does not say that patents should not exist. Quite the contrary, because it suggests that there is an optimal length for patent life, it implies very strongly that patents are more optimal. For example,
This book, however, being an introductory level book, oversimplifies the matter. The innovator must also be compensated for taking risk and for the lost opportunity cost/cost of capital. For instance, if I spend 20m dollars developing a product, a return of 20 million real dollars (accounting for inflation and like measures) is not enough. Because I could have plowed that money into a much less risky and low tech investment that yields 10% a year over the course of 10 years. The only way a rational and self-centered investor will invest, is if that risky investment offers a net present expected value significantly greater than the low tech investment. Hint: More than 51m dollars. Likewise, if a particular investment merely returns its cost of development in real dollars, when that particular class of innovation is highly risky, say 9 in 10 fail, the only way that you'll encourage investment is to offer expected returns well in excess of 10x the development costs.
Maybe. However, I am backing it up with an argument (besides the fact that it's a well accepted fact). What's more, just because MS has used it doesn't mean it's worth any less.
After all, criminals have used their rights to privacy to hide evidence of their crimes, but that doesn't mean the arguments for privacy are fundamentally less valid.
It's also well excepted by most mainstream economists that intellectual property is absolutely necessary to innovation. You're simply overgeneralizing. If you wish to defer to the experts, you better know where they actually stand.
Well it's a well known fact in the industry that the vast majority of new drugs take have a time horizon greater than 10 years. Long term in the drug industry is considered to be 20 and 30 years out and does happen at the larger drug companies like Merck, Glaxo, etc. Also there are other industries such as the rirline industry, logging, communication systems, etc where this takes place. Or here's one you should know, the wine industry. Where do you think those 40+ year old wine bottles come from? Or how about loans?
I think you have a lot to learn about business.
This catchup factor that you describe is rarely significant. If we're talking about software, that's about 5 seconds. Medicine, brazil managed to do it with next to nothing in the space of a month or two. A book can essentially be photocopied. An idea, simply passed around. Etc etc etc. What's more, if the innovator is small or has less resources, he could actually be at a disadvantage in terms of implimentation. If we're talking about a manufacturable product, there is a significant amount of resources and expertise involved. Knowing the ins and outs of the R&D on that particular product may pale in competitive comparison to owning 500 million dollars in manufacturing facilities, staff, cash, etc.
Even if we accept your position that the innovator will make 1/4 of what they would have made, who is to say that that is enough, let alone better than the full amount. For all you know, the full amount tends to be absolutely necessary. From a financial point of view, the correlation between risk and expected return is VERY sensitive. Cutting return by 10% can easily mean that the innovation will simply never happen. I have personally been involved with a number of such companies/innovators.
There difference though is that the innovator only gets a monopoly on his innovation. If the competitors are copying the innovation, they're freeriding and not contributing to the advancement of technology. If the competitors wish to compete in the market place, they can do their OWN innovation. The difference is that with these market monopolies, we're talking about the ENDS, not the MEANS. You're mostly incorrectly assuming that there is only one means to an end. Even with the relatively strong IP of today, innovators often find tough competion on their product a mere year or two after they patent it, well before the patent actually expires.
In fact, I dare you to quantify this and prove to me that patent expiration is more often the limiting factor, not alternative MEANS. I can speak with confidence for a number of well known industries and show you just how true this is.
First off, you confuse "research" with practical research and development. It's very rare for an academic or non-profit instution to make a product that is ready for the prime time. If making that product is so easy, you can be sure that the universities themselves would manufacture it or at least license it for a lot more money (as it would have a much higher marketable value)
Corporations do, as a matter of fact, focus on the long term quite often. The drug industry regularly makes investments that are 10, 20, 30+ years off. Perhaps you can argue that the nature of corporate management today, having to focus on short term excessively, is a force against long term development. However, it's simply not fundamental to the corporation. There is no rule in finance that says "the short term is all the matters". Rather, there are principles such as the time value of money, cost of capital, etc. These, however, don't say the long term is worth less, they simply discount future revenues based on how far out in the future they are. Put simply, this means that if a company has a choice between 20m today or 25m in 5 years, they'll most likely choose 20m. But if there is an AIDS vaccine that has an expected value of 1 billion dollars in 10 years versus other allocations that would net a mere 20m using the same amount of a capital, then you can be quite confident that the company will invest, if they have the resources.
Whether intellectual property is pro or anti free market is largely a semantic argument. IP is simply necessary in order to secure future innovation. Without IP the innovator simply gains no advantage on his competitors for spending resources and incuring risk, hence progress halts. When the innovator can gain advantage (e.g., a monopoly on his or her invention) by innovating, then innovation has a chance.
With the current IP system, we've made a great deal of progress and trillions of dollars have been spent towards R&D. Although you might argue, as ridiculous as that would be, that we would experience even more without it, there is NO significant evidence that points to this, quite the opposite in fact.
We do. The NIH, NSF, various universities, etc routinely give out grants. Unfortunately, a great deal of it is wasted on academics and such that live off of grant money. The end result is a great deal of waste. It's been my experience that industry is far more productive and efficient than these grants are, even when you factor in these apparent "marketing and administration" costs.
What you are in essence trying to create is a mini-planned economy. Unfortunately, government is no more capable of producing medical products than it is microchips.
The statement that, because they spend twice as much on marketing and administration as they do on R&D, they don't need patents is totally ridiculous. This is simply the way the economics of the biotech, medical devices, and drug industry work, both big companies and small companies alike. R&D is expensive and risky. In order to secure resources for R&D you need a large number of sales. Believe it or not, very few products sell themselves, even potentially life saving medicine. What's more, the medical industry is complex. Sales often involves going to the doctor's office, convincing them of the merits, educating them, etc. Administration will involve stuff, depending on the specific industry, like fighting with the HMOs. Anyways, to make a long story short, the way you generate those sales is with marketing and administration, which, of course, costs money.
This is a well known truth in the industry, it's not as if the shareholders of all these companies woke up one day and said "gee, I want to reduce my earnings by 2/3rds by spending money needlessly". If you think you can do R&D and produce a product for less, do it. I dare you.
The GPL requires you to publish your source if you use GPL code. This by no means comes automatically with the abolition of copyright. In fact, there is every reason to think that if copyright were abolished, that software developers would keep their source very private, not to mention throwing in a zillion trapdoors, obfuscation, etc. Abolishing copyright may make pirates happy, but it's quite clear from the letter and the intent of GPL, not to mention RMS's own words, that its chief concern is the source, not the ability to copy or modify the binary.
What's more, I suggest to you that if copyright were abolished, a great deal of commercial software development would be devastated. This would result in a reduction of paying programming jobs. The reduction in jobs would, in turn, force the would-be OSS developers of today into non-programming jobs, resulting in a loss to GPL software. In short, it'd be a loose-loose situation.
Ok, my apologies ;)
I simply think these are unreasonable stretches. If ADM, Monsanto, or whomever create a super seed (disclaimer: I'm not too familiar with agriculture), it's not as if the farmer is directly harmed. Their own little plot of soil will, in all likelyhood, continue to produce just as it always did. The only difference is that the competition can do it more cost effectively. You can argue that the competition may then hurt that farmer, but that's extraneous to the argument that intellectual property itself is robbing the farmer of his rights. The same goes for so many of these other ideas. What's more, I'd assert that that is the nature of capitalism, as unpleasant as it can be at times. If the idea is so powerful as to make the competitors significantly more cost effective, that's a good thing. If the only way to secure that progress is with intellectual property, that's still a good thing on the aggregate. If that farmer is unwilling or unable pay, he's probably not equipped to compete in today's world with vastly lower production costs. Making exceptions for the farmer is just delaying the inevitable and will ultimately cost the consumer more.
The same goes for many of these other arguments, however, I don't feel like getting into them at the moment. Perhaps later...
It is ironic though that you choose to criticize me for making assumptions about the rest of the population, when you purport yourself to know what their ideas are. I, in fact, implied nothing of the sort, whereas you clearly just did. What I did was imply that I know the accepted arguments reasonably well. Having studied business. Having known numerous inventors/innovators/entreprenuers, I am quite qualified to comment as to what are the common arguments. The author's definition as to what is or is not property is simply not pertinent to the arguments that you'll hear from academia, business, or most inventors, by and large. [If you want to demonstrate otherwise, then please do so.]
What's more, I suggest to you that most people in this country are far more reasonable and moderate than those on slashdot or in the Open Source community. Those that don't know or aren't concerned simply aren't party to this argument.
Where are you going with this? What is your point?
Still unclear.
I agree with you here and I've called them and others on slashdot on it a number of times.
You know this. I know this. Napster knows this. The industry knows this. Artists know this. Pirates know this. In short, everyone knows this (well anyone who is concerned). It's simply not convenient for people to admit when they're making the small artist "use" argument.
Speaking of which, I strongly suspect that Napster could employ archiving more cost effectively than running these massive databases, 99% of which contains pirated material.
First, the author wastes a good part of his time on Napster. Napster is not intellectual property itself, it's secondary to intellectual property. What's more, he glances over the legal minutia, while ignoring the bigger picture. The legal minutia may be important in the lawsuit, but it's not to napster's morality and, especially, not to the relative cost and benefits of intellectual property. He ignores the fact that, while napster may not be able to discern users (though that is debatable itself), there is little doubt that the vast majority of its use is for copyright infringment. On the balance, I'd say the current design and actual use of napster has far greater costs for society than any benefit it presumably brings about.
Presumably, according to Napster, lesser known artists will use Napster to get an audience. Though I have serious doubts about this (in terms of numbers), the fact is that it could design a system in such a way that the artists ENUMERATES what songs they want to share and submits it via some checksum (or what have you)--rather than rely on some algorithm to divine the artist. Alternatively, they could solve this problem entirely and simply create a massive server where artists can upload their songs, complete with web pages and the like. In reality, this offers virtually all the benefits of their purported "use" [ sometimes even more (e.g., a web page, faster downloads, assured quality, etc) ] without the costs.
Second, (back on point) the author attacks a few specific instances of IP and one or two of the minor (but poorly accepted) arguments for IP, but completely or mostly ignores the well accepted arguments for it. The first argument is that innovation is risky and expensive; the only way you secure difficult innovation is by granting the innovator the exclusive right to the innovation. The second argument is that one should be entitled to the product of their own mind. When those "products" might be indepedently reinvented, then there might be cause for complaint. But when we're talking about a recording or a book in its entirity, it's simply not going to be indepedently reinvented. My creating that product or idea and restricting its usage does NOT detract from your life, unless you take the fact that I generated that product or idea for granted.
With Linux in its current state, Linus is unquestionably at the helm. The concern for me is not that he (or any individual) is at the helm, but rather WHERE and HOW he is steering it. It's not that I question the man's integrity, rather I question his motivations. Although there's nothing wrong with a singular hobbyist perspective (or even a grouping of divergent hobbyists), it's difficult to argue that the output of such an effort is equivelent to that of a company that needs to sell to consumers. Issues like ease of use may not be sexy to someone like Linus, but it can make or break a company.
On the other hand, I'm highly skeptical of the ability of a large panel of "experts" to lead a complex development process. Trying to fit all the different opinions and demands under roof can strain the final product, not to mention slow it down with endless talks. Furthermore, even where the group would all benefit, they don't necessarily all know it at the moment it would be proposed. There is a certain value to breaking away from the rest of the flock at times, striking out on your own, and coming back when you have a finished product.
In other words, I feel most current Open Source projects are, or will be, ultimately limited by their leadership and developers. However, the recent events with IBM, et. al, putting in millions of dollars into the Open Source Labs looks like the one shining prospect--sort of hybrid between traditional capitalist methods and the new open source model. 24m can do a lot of good, initially. I just wonder if the economics of Open Source will encourage sustained contribution to the continued development of technology that, in all likelyhood, will not give any company an edge over its competitors.
that you NEED one individual at the helm. However, the question is, WHAT does Linus consider the greater good? He may think the greatest good is to produce something that he and his cohorts consider fun, educational, neat, etc. While that may be just swell for him, you must also remember that there are hundreds of thousands of people in IT that are looking for something that makes their job easier, cheaper, faster, etc. By this I mean ease of use, high stability, scalability, low maintanence, etc. For all the complaints about business, they are ultimately accountable to whomever will consume their product, whereas Linus need not be at all.