The only IP right that is real would be the right to copy. The right to copy and use ideas, information, and invention that comes our way freely without fraud or coercion. This right is just like the right to free religion, the right to free speech, or the right to choose our employers rather than to be slaves.
There are also dutys, like the duty to call copyrights and patents what they are: a fraud, a lie, and not a property right. Like the duty to call "piracy" what it is: the boarding of a ship and murdering people and not copying. Like the duty to call them controls rather than incentive or protection. Like the duty to bypass and defy people who try to control our liberties via controlling the information we have or via telling us how we must use it.
Finally, there are other things that are just human nature, like sharing music and information and ideas freely with the world around us.
Lets just face it, the WIPO are WhImPO's and are against free markets and property rights, not for them.
Agreed, the ironic truth is that we are far more likely to be terrorized by our own government than by rogue terrirosts. They nickle dime away our privacy rights and civil liberties, they constantly assult us in the name of the war on drugs, they nickle and dime us to death with taxes and regulations, constantly lie to us about inflation and value of our money, saturate us with more debt than we can pay back, and now we're told that what we really need is protection from rogue terrorists. Bullshit, the tax terrorists are far more evil, a far bigger threat, far more arrogant, and in as much dire need of an ass kicking as anyone else.
... obviously, in 150 years, china will be issuing diplomatic myspace invectives to azerbaijan...
It's more like in 30 years, and it's more like they will be RIAA-ing their own people to death. The copying of information and ideas are some of the few liberties and rights the Chinese people have, by pressuring them to kill that - the US is not only destabilizing the country and the region, but also pre-destining the death of a lot of people. In the US, the RIAA and the MPAA have certain legal restrictions that keep people from being shot in the head to set an example. Does anyone think for a moment that they wouldn't persue that if they could lawfully get away with it? Well, in China, the legal structure that holds back the powers that be is weak and non existent in many areas. When their content and invention industries start to make the transtition to a service based high tech model, it will likely be brutal and violent. It will also likely create the bitterest resentment of the US that one could imagine. For those who wish to impose copyright and patnet, I have no problem calling them what they are: murderers.
Let me get this straight, the government grants companies this personal monopoly (patents) under the justification that it will incentivize them to create usefull things (it didn't), and then the government makes these massice FDA regulations that only huge mega corporations can wade their way thru, and now that nothing usefull can freaking get done we're told that the best solution is for the government to fund the research and development.
Well bullshit, the best solution is to kill the patent system and the FDA and give me back my goddam tax money while they're at it.
It will not be municipalities that push out the telco's, it will be new wireless technology that will allow people all the ease of 802.11b, but with a 30 mile radius.
All your premises fail to understand that people have a right to copy information that they posess, share it, sell it, or whatever. It is as pure as the right to free speech, and the right to free religion. So how will you make money without copyrights? That is a Red Herring, it's like asking "How will I make money without slaves on the plantation?" and an appropiate answer is, "respect my rights and figure it out".
There is also only one appropiate way for lawmakers to address the copyright issue. Set the term to zero. Anything else is not only unacceptable, but obviously unworkable as society enters the information age. And that's the point, copyrights have always been overrated sewage, immoral, and a burdon on society, but in the age of print society could bear those costs. Now enforcement is having obvious, suvere, and unbearable costs everywhere we look. Any idiot can see it, but the rational follow it thru to a logical conclusion. Copyrights must be killed no matter what.
If he thinks that he is going to help the poor starving North Koreans, he will probably be in for the shock of his life. It will probably be for the rich ruling class, or even worse the elite may suffer from poor aim when they go out hunting rabits for sport.
If Korea is really concerned about starvation, they should look at their neighbor China. China went from a disaster of 10's of millions of starving people to total solution almost immediately. How did they do it? They let the farmers have private property rights.
Real world? WTF are you talking about. In the real world people can't print up money and loan it out whenever they need it without causing disaster. In the real world, people are employed by rich people, not poor slobs on welfare. In the real world we are loosing the war on drugs. In the real world, social security is a bankrupt ponzi scheme. In the real world, public ecducation sucks and the overfunded US system is the worst in the western world. In the real world, medicare subsidized medical costs are skyrocketing and Canadians have waiting lists a mile long for simple procedures. In the real world, government is 30% as efficient at allocating resources and money as the private sector. Hypocrite! You're the one that needs a dose of the real world pal.
Income inequality drives crime. When everyone is poor, no one steals from each other....
Bullshit, there are billions of poor people in this whold who live perfectly honest lives and your assertion is a slap in the face to all of them. Inequality of wealth does not drive crime, inequality of freedom does. In this case it is the freedom taken away from all of us by the way the US Federal Reserve bank controls our money. It amazes me how many fools believe in this system, but then wine about all the inequality it creates by it's very nature. May I sugest that you educate yourself about nature of honest money vs banking by fiat.
Which is part of the problem with a gold based system... the basic assumption that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. The amount of gold in the world in 1507 versus 2007 is reasonably constant. However, the amount of wealth in the world is significantly higher in 2007 than in 1507.
But that's half the point. As people become more productive, they deserve to reap the rewards of that productivity. It's true that if society becomes 5% more productive and the fed waters down the value of our money by 5% that nobody may notice and values will stay the same. But that's bogus, why should they get the dough? Why should they get the power? We're the ones who earned it, we're the ones that increased our value, not them. We deserve the lower prices that productivity brings, not prices forced up to stay equal while they rake the cream off the top. A thief who steals from your increase is just as much a thief as one who steals from your holdings.
You have it all backwards. The amount of wealth is limited, but the amount of money isn't because when a bank needs a loan they go to the US central bank, and the US central bank prints it up. This system always guarantees that society becomes over-saturated in debt with ez credit, always guarantees that money gets watered down as more and more gets pushed into circulation, and always guarantees that the poor get screwed as the value of their meeger pay and savings gets watered down while those close to the central banking system always get a cut of any fresh new money loaned into the system.
In China during the 50's and 60's there were 10's of millions of people dying and suffering from starvation. No amount of charity and human aid could relieve the situation, no amount of government distribution was stopping it. So how did they solve it? Well they let the farmers have their private property rights back and the problem was solved within a year and it jump started an economic boom that has lasted for 20 years. To solve the problem in the US the poor don't need a handout, they need control over their money. We need to switch back to a gold system, that will put money power back into the hands of savers because money will need to come from them and not from the central bank via their cronies.
Income inequality is a fact of life in a capitalistic society, and should be embraced, not scowled upon.....
Well normally this is true, but this income inequality happens not because of true market forces but because the nature of the US fiat banking system and their cozy relation with major financial institutions. The fact is that we are forced to use USD notes no matter how many they print up, or how many they loan out. Now society is over satureated in debt and prices are going up everywhere, and these guys get to rake the cream off the top. In a healty economy, investment money would come from savers - not from central bankers who print it up and loan it out thru major financial institutions.
... having a fiat monetary system does. In a gold based system there are natural limits on the amount of money so that naturally limits the amount of debt and stabilizes prices over time. In a fiat system there are no natural limits on debt or money, so the economy tends to become over saturated in debt and prices tend to rise over time. However, fiat money systems fail for the same reason that any state central planed economy fails. In a gold system, if someone wants a loan or an investment - they can't print it up so they must get it from savers. In a fiat system, savers have no say and saving is punished because all loaned out money comes from the central bank. That takes investment power away from the people and puts it into the hands of central bankers (think central planners) and their friends causing all sorts of excesses - especially in the pay and bonuses of high level investment bankers who have close ties to the Federal Reserve.
I agree. At this point we're just better off setting the term to zero and pushing the whole system over the cliff. "fixing it" will just prolong the pain.
It's more like the difference of driving the speed-limit and driving 1 mph over the speed-limit. Your "shop lifting" analogy implies that they're taking something from us by comeing here. An honest hard working illegal imigrant contributes just as much to society as an legal one.
Dude, I'm a computer programmer, and have been for several years. I keep hearing about this wave of h1bs that is going to put me out of work, well bullshit. The dot com crash and the over leveraged housing bubble is a direct result of the fed screwing around with ez money, and jacked up interest rates.
Yeah, illegal immigration is illegal, but yeah, so is going 3mph over the speed limit too. It's not as if they say, "well we've got too many illegal immigrants - so lets cut off the legal ones" Nonsense, if a guy sneaks up here illegally and because of that is able to give his family a decent living while making my food bill one-tenth of what it would be. Please, go for it! We need you! Welcome aboard!
Living in California, (San Diego which is loaded with illegal Mexicans) I can tell you that California's problem is not the illegals sucking up all the freebies, but the state of California beating the crap out of the taxpayers to provide them. Don't blame the immigrants, blame CA for handing out a bunch of freebies coerced at every one elses expense.
What you are saying does not match up to practice. Most the immigrants that came to America came in waves, in large waves, and we handled it. After WW2, the tiny area of Hong Kong was literally flooded with poor people, more people, and lots of people - and they not only handled it, they thrived. People are not burdens. Your lifeboat analogy implies that every time one comes in, that it ads more harmful pressure on the system. Well, I'll give that it does to the welfare state, and all the other freebies that the government hands out coerced at other peoples expense. So what, those kinds of programs need to die anyhow.
When a poor person comes to the US and takes advantage of our having more freedom to create wealth and opportunity that never existed before - that benefits us, it benefits them, and it benefits the world. That we should tell them "well, get in line and wait and starve while we process a bunch of formalities that takes 5 years to complete" is bullshit. Isn't the whole point of a free country that peoples liberties shouldn't revolve around the permissions of those that govern?
I was thinking the same thing. The cost of living index is lower than all the other cities, and Texas has no state income tax, and lower taxes over all (except for property, which is competitive)
reminds me of qualcomm
on
Bluetooth Lawsuit
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If I recall, the US govt paid Qualcomm over 100 million dollars to do R&D on RF technology for military communications. Then just as the technology started to become developed in the market, they patented the shit out of everything to do with CDMA. I always thought that was sort of unfair, after all my tax money paid for that R&D, and even if it didn't - it seemed like there was incentive was already out and that it was going to be invented anyhow,
Uhh, the 80's didn't have an account deficit of over 6% - I'm sorry but that's Argentina territory. Also, during the 80's they raised interest rates to 21% to halt a panic out of the dollar. If they do that today, the US economy will be ripped to shreds.
It's a bubble because the FED is printing too much money. Eventually foreign investors will figure it out and the dollar will go down the toilet. You've been warned.
I'm sorry, but this should be modded +5 insightfull, not -1 offtopic. The fed printed up a bunch of money, used it to buy US bonds (to finance the war in Iraq), and now people are supprised that the price of every commodity across the board has doubbled in the last 5 years. Well, hint hint, they haven't - in "real" terms it's the dollar that's gone down in value far more than the commodities that have gone up. The only problem is that they loaned out so much freaking money that now society is saturated in more debt than it can pay back. By any standard, the US is bankrupt.
Well, guess what. They only have one choice: "print up money and buy stocks" and that's exactly what they've been doing. But it will fail for the same reason that any central planned economy fails, and it will be very very ugly. Forget stocks, people should buy gold and prepare for the US dollar not to be a currency anymore. It really is that bad.
1. If a researcher looses a monopoly on one patent, but in turn gains access to 10 million other patents - then that is a net gain for invention and for business, not a net loss. The facts bear that out. For example, how most the new drug innovation was happening in India where they don't have patents on drugs, or the less proprietary x86 architecture that took the market by storm in spite of it's design flaws.
2. Patents do not change the demand for invention and R&D, they only distort the market and cause it to center around invention controls instead of invention related services. Well, large companies, lawyers, and government are good at controlling things. Inventors are good at inventing things, so patents do really not help inventors or small lean innovators.
3. To control inventions requires physical coercion and violence, and patents are very violent. Like how they arguably held back safety devices in cars for 20 years while millions died needlessly, and like how attempts of patent enforcement in Africa have likely led to over a million unneeded AIDS related deaths. Also, DDT was banned within months of its patent running out, freon too, to make room for bigger markets. But at least the freon one can't be attributed to 50 million malaria deaths.
4. In the future, technology is likely to bring production back into the home thru 3d printers and nanotechnology. IMHO, patents will require more violence and more government micro-regulation than ever in order to be secured.
5. A side effect of the patent system is that researchers who share research and innovation between companies are punished. It creates a strong disincentive against collaboration. It forces innovators to spend orders of magnitude more on R&D and causes them and their research to be micromanaged. So patents drive up the cost of R&D by orders of magnitude, drive down quality, and then now they say "well, we need patent monopolies to recover all these costs".
6. People tend to think that having all these incompatible parts and all these incompatible interfaces on every single car, cell phone, and consumer product - is just a normal part of a free market economy. I speculate that it is not, and that patents encourage these distortions in addition to all the waste and unneeded obsolescence that goes with it.
7. People tend to think that having expensive pharmaceuticals with all sorts of strange chemical side effects is just a normal part of a free market economy. In addition they think that the shunning natural cures, herbs, and vitamins is a normal function of modern medicine and science. I speculate that it also is not, but another distortion caused by patents.
8. Patents are not property anymore than slaves on the plantation are. Just cause someone calls something a property doesn't mean that it is.
In sum, patents don't help inventors, but distort markets to work against them and even punish and isolate them. They are violent, genocidal, coercive, unproductive, inefficient, and drive down profit, quality, and compatibility across markets everywhere. The future for patents does not look promising, but rather to be one of millions of US elderly suffering from high costs and strange chemichal side effects on their medication, and one of a military police state required to enforce them as things like 3d printing and nanotechnology force the commoditization of invention.
ESR has been saying that free as in freedom "zealots" are going to hurt Liunux for forever. Well he is still wrong. Because we are free and because we have control, that means that the market is under pressure to cater to us as we grow and expand... not the other way around. It also means that our growth happenes is spite of proprietary alternatives and inspite of occasional commercial bias against free software. Is is the free nature of Linux that puts pressure on the market to go our way, not corporate idealisim or conformity. Nothing magical about 2008 is going to change that. Nothing magical is going to say "well, the window has passed and now all of a sudden people have no alternative". Yeah, I'm sure he wants to beat Vista to the punch, but that is a personal thing just as is his bias against people who see freedom as the ends and not the means.
A common logical fallacy people make is assuming that because existence is rationsl, that it must also be pre-deterministic. Well, that is not true, and I think it is reflected in the fact of human action. It is also reflected the fact that society has laws. If people were destined by circumstances, then law in societies wouldn't be so relavent.
It is not a cooncidence that the same Moses who defied all circumstance to stand before the pharoah and demand "let my people go", was also the Moses who brought the 10 commandments down from the mountain. Free will is way more than a religious doctrine, it is part of the nature of existence and the universe.
Slashdot Mirror
The only IP right that is real would be the right to copy. The right to copy and use ideas, information, and invention that comes our way freely without fraud or coercion. This right is just like the right to free religion, the right to free speech, or the right to choose our employers rather than to be slaves.
There are also dutys, like the duty to call copyrights and patents what they are: a fraud, a lie, and not a property right. Like the duty to call "piracy" what it is: the boarding of a ship and murdering people and not copying. Like the duty to call them controls rather than incentive or protection. Like the duty to bypass and defy people who try to control our liberties via controlling the information we have or via telling us how we must use it.
Finally, there are other things that are just human nature, like sharing music and information and ideas freely with the world around us.
Lets just face it, the WIPO are WhImPO's and are against free markets and property rights, not for them.
Agreed, the ironic truth is that we are far more likely to be terrorized by our own government than by rogue terrirosts. They nickle dime away our privacy rights and civil liberties, they constantly assult us in the name of the war on drugs, they nickle and dime us to death with taxes and regulations, constantly lie to us about inflation and value of our money, saturate us with more debt than we can pay back, and now we're told that what we really need is protection from rogue terrorists. Bullshit, the tax terrorists are far more evil, a far bigger threat, far more arrogant, and in as much dire need of an ass kicking as anyone else.
It's more like in 30 years, and it's more like they will be RIAA-ing their own people to death. The copying of information and ideas are some of the few liberties and rights the Chinese people have, by pressuring them to kill that - the US is not only destabilizing the country and the region, but also pre-destining the death of a lot of people. In the US, the RIAA and the MPAA have certain legal restrictions that keep people from being shot in the head to set an example. Does anyone think for a moment that they wouldn't persue that if they could lawfully get away with it? Well, in China, the legal structure that holds back the powers that be is weak and non existent in many areas. When their content and invention industries start to make the transtition to a service based high tech model, it will likely be brutal and violent. It will also likely create the bitterest resentment of the US that one could imagine. For those who wish to impose copyright and patnet, I have no problem calling them what they are: murderers.
Let me get this straight, the government grants companies this personal monopoly (patents) under the justification that it will incentivize them to create usefull things (it didn't), and then the government makes these massice FDA regulations that only huge mega corporations can wade their way thru, and now that nothing usefull can freaking get done we're told that the best solution is for the government to fund the research and development.
Well bullshit, the best solution is to kill the patent system and the FDA and give me back my goddam tax money while they're at it.
It will not be municipalities that push out the telco's, it will be new wireless technology that will allow people all the ease of 802.11b, but with a 30 mile radius.
All your premises fail to understand that people have a right to copy information that they posess, share it, sell it, or whatever. It is as pure as the right to free speech, and the right to free religion. So how will you make money without copyrights? That is a Red Herring, it's like asking "How will I make money without slaves on the plantation?" and an appropiate answer is, "respect my rights and figure it out".
There is also only one appropiate way for lawmakers to address the copyright issue. Set the term to zero. Anything else is not only unacceptable, but obviously unworkable as society enters the information age. And that's the point, copyrights have always been overrated sewage, immoral, and a burdon on society, but in the age of print society could bear those costs. Now enforcement is having obvious, suvere, and unbearable costs everywhere we look. Any idiot can see it, but the rational follow it thru to a logical conclusion. Copyrights must be killed no matter what.
If he thinks that he is going to help the poor starving North Koreans, he will probably be in for the shock of his life. It will probably be for the rich ruling class, or even worse the elite may suffer from poor aim when they go out hunting rabits for sport.
If Korea is really concerned about starvation, they should look at their neighbor China. China went from a disaster of 10's of millions of starving people to total solution almost immediately. How did they do it? They let the farmers have private property rights.
Real world? WTF are you talking about. In the real world people can't print up money and loan it out whenever they need it without causing disaster. In the real world, people are employed by rich people, not poor slobs on welfare. In the real world we are loosing the war on drugs. In the real world, social security is a bankrupt ponzi scheme. In the real world, public ecducation sucks and the overfunded US system is the worst in the western world. In the real world, medicare subsidized medical costs are skyrocketing and Canadians have waiting lists a mile long for simple procedures. In the real world, government is 30% as efficient at allocating resources and money as the private sector. Hypocrite! You're the one that needs a dose of the real world pal.
Bullshit, there are billions of poor people in this whold who live perfectly honest lives and your assertion is a slap in the face to all of them. Inequality of wealth does not drive crime, inequality of freedom does. In this case it is the freedom taken away from all of us by the way the US Federal Reserve bank controls our money. It amazes me how many fools believe in this system, but then wine about all the inequality it creates by it's very nature. May I sugest that you educate yourself about nature of honest money vs banking by fiat.
But that's half the point. As people become more productive, they deserve to reap the rewards of that productivity. It's true that if society becomes 5% more productive and the fed waters down the value of our money by 5% that nobody may notice and values will stay the same. But that's bogus, why should they get the dough? Why should they get the power? We're the ones who earned it, we're the ones that increased our value, not them. We deserve the lower prices that productivity brings, not prices forced up to stay equal while they rake the cream off the top. A thief who steals from your increase is just as much a thief as one who steals from your holdings.
You have it all backwards. The amount of wealth is limited, but the amount of money isn't because when a bank needs a loan they go to the US central bank, and the US central bank prints it up. This system always guarantees that society becomes over-saturated in debt with ez credit, always guarantees that money gets watered down as more and more gets pushed into circulation, and always guarantees that the poor get screwed as the value of their meeger pay and savings gets watered down while those close to the central banking system always get a cut of any fresh new money loaned into the system.
In China during the 50's and 60's there were 10's of millions of people dying and suffering from starvation. No amount of charity and human aid could relieve the situation, no amount of government distribution was stopping it. So how did they solve it? Well they let the farmers have their private property rights back and the problem was solved within a year and it jump started an economic boom that has lasted for 20 years. To solve the problem in the US the poor don't need a handout, they need control over their money. We need to switch back to a gold system, that will put money power back into the hands of savers because money will need to come from them and not from the central bank via their cronies.
Well normally this is true, but this income inequality happens not because of true market forces but because the nature of the US fiat banking system and their cozy relation with major financial institutions. The fact is that we are forced to use USD notes no matter how many they print up, or how many they loan out. Now society is over satureated in debt and prices are going up everywhere, and these guys get to rake the cream off the top. In a healty economy, investment money would come from savers - not from central bankers who print it up and loan it out thru major financial institutions.
... having a fiat monetary system does. In a gold based system there are natural limits on the amount of money so that naturally limits the amount of debt and stabilizes prices over time. In a fiat system there are no natural limits on debt or money, so the economy tends to become over saturated in debt and prices tend to rise over time. However, fiat money systems fail for the same reason that any state central planed economy fails. In a gold system, if someone wants a loan or an investment - they can't print it up so they must get it from savers. In a fiat system, savers have no say and saving is punished because all loaned out money comes from the central bank. That takes investment power away from the people and puts it into the hands of central bankers (think central planners) and their friends causing all sorts of excesses - especially in the pay and bonuses of high level investment bankers who have close ties to the Federal Reserve.
I agree. At this point we're just better off setting the term to zero and pushing the whole system over the cliff. "fixing it" will just prolong the pain.
It's more like the difference of driving the speed-limit and driving 1 mph over the speed-limit. Your "shop lifting" analogy implies that they're taking something from us by comeing here. An honest hard working illegal imigrant contributes just as much to society as an legal one.
Dude, I'm a computer programmer, and have been for several years. I keep hearing about this wave of h1bs that is going to put me out of work, well bullshit. The dot com crash and the over leveraged housing bubble is a direct result of the fed screwing around with ez money, and jacked up interest rates.
Yeah, illegal immigration is illegal, but yeah, so is going 3mph over the speed limit too. It's not as if they say, "well we've got too many illegal immigrants - so lets cut off the legal ones" Nonsense, if a guy sneaks up here illegally and because of that is able to give his family a decent living while making my food bill one-tenth of what it would be. Please, go for it! We need you! Welcome aboard!
Living in California, (San Diego which is loaded with illegal Mexicans) I can tell you that California's problem is not the illegals sucking up all the freebies, but the state of California beating the crap out of the taxpayers to provide them. Don't blame the immigrants, blame CA for handing out a bunch of freebies coerced at every one elses expense.
What you are saying does not match up to practice. Most the immigrants that came to America came in waves, in large waves, and we handled it. After WW2, the tiny area of Hong Kong was literally flooded with poor people, more people, and lots of people - and they not only handled it, they thrived. People are not burdens. Your lifeboat analogy implies that every time one comes in, that it ads more harmful pressure on the system. Well, I'll give that it does to the welfare state, and all the other freebies that the government hands out coerced at other peoples expense. So what, those kinds of programs need to die anyhow.
When a poor person comes to the US and takes advantage of our having more freedom to create wealth and opportunity that never existed before - that benefits us, it benefits them, and it benefits the world. That we should tell them "well, get in line and wait and starve while we process a bunch of formalities that takes 5 years to complete" is bullshit. Isn't the whole point of a free country that peoples liberties shouldn't revolve around the permissions of those that govern?
I was thinking the same thing. The cost of living index is lower than all the other cities, and Texas has no state income tax, and lower taxes over all (except for property, which is competitive)
If I recall, the US govt paid Qualcomm over 100 million dollars to do R&D on RF technology for military communications. Then just as the technology started to become developed in the market, they patented the shit out of everything to do with CDMA. I always thought that was sort of unfair, after all my tax money paid for that R&D, and even if it didn't - it seemed like there was incentive was already out and that it was going to be invented anyhow,
Uhh, the 80's didn't have an account deficit of over 6% - I'm sorry but that's Argentina territory. Also, during the 80's they raised interest rates to 21% to halt a panic out of the dollar. If they do that today, the US economy will be ripped to shreds.
I'm sorry, but this should be modded +5 insightfull, not -1 offtopic. The fed printed up a bunch of money, used it to buy US bonds (to finance the war in Iraq), and now people are supprised that the price of every commodity across the board has doubbled in the last 5 years. Well, hint hint, they haven't - in "real" terms it's the dollar that's gone down in value far more than the commodities that have gone up. The only problem is that they loaned out so much freaking money that now society is saturated in more debt than it can pay back. By any standard, the US is bankrupt.
Well, guess what. They only have one choice: "print up money and buy stocks" and that's exactly what they've been doing. But it will fail for the same reason that any central planned economy fails, and it will be very very ugly. Forget stocks, people should buy gold and prepare for the US dollar not to be a currency anymore. It really is that bad.
1. If a researcher looses a monopoly on one patent, but in turn gains access to 10 million other patents - then that is a net gain for invention and for business, not a net loss. The facts bear that out. For example, how most the new drug innovation was happening in India where they don't have patents on drugs, or the less proprietary x86 architecture that took the market by storm in spite of it's design flaws.
2. Patents do not change the demand for invention and R&D, they only distort the market and cause it to center around invention controls instead of invention related services. Well, large companies, lawyers, and government are good at controlling things. Inventors are good at inventing things, so patents do really not help inventors or small lean innovators.
3. To control inventions requires physical coercion and violence, and patents are very violent. Like how they arguably held back safety devices in cars for 20 years while millions died needlessly, and like how attempts of patent enforcement in Africa have likely led to over a million unneeded AIDS related deaths. Also, DDT was banned within months of its patent running out, freon too, to make room for bigger markets. But at least the freon one can't be attributed to 50 million malaria deaths.
4. In the future, technology is likely to bring production back into the home thru 3d printers and nanotechnology. IMHO, patents will require more violence and more government micro-regulation than ever in order to be secured.
5. A side effect of the patent system is that researchers who share research and innovation between companies are punished. It creates a strong disincentive against collaboration. It forces innovators to spend orders of magnitude more on R&D and causes them and their research to be micromanaged. So patents drive up the cost of R&D by orders of magnitude, drive down quality, and then now they say "well, we need patent monopolies to recover all these costs".
6. People tend to think that having all these incompatible parts and all these incompatible interfaces on every single car, cell phone, and consumer product - is just a normal part of a free market economy. I speculate that it is not, and that patents encourage these distortions in addition to all the waste and unneeded obsolescence that goes with it.
7. People tend to think that having expensive pharmaceuticals with all sorts of strange chemical side effects is just a normal part of a free market economy. In addition they think that the shunning natural cures, herbs, and vitamins is a normal function of modern medicine and science. I speculate that it also is not, but another distortion caused by patents.
8. Patents are not property anymore than slaves on the plantation are. Just cause someone calls something a property doesn't mean that it is.
In sum, patents don't help inventors, but distort markets to work against them and even punish and isolate them. They are violent, genocidal, coercive, unproductive, inefficient, and drive down profit, quality, and compatibility across markets everywhere. The future for patents does not look promising, but rather to be one of millions of US elderly suffering from high costs and strange chemichal side effects on their medication, and one of a military police state required to enforce them as things like 3d printing and nanotechnology force the commoditization of invention.
ESR has been saying that free as in freedom "zealots" are going to hurt Liunux for forever. Well he is still wrong. Because we are free and because we have control, that means that the market is under pressure to cater to us as we grow and expand ... not the other way around. It also means that our growth happenes is spite of proprietary alternatives and inspite of occasional commercial bias against free software. Is is the free nature of Linux that puts pressure on the market to go our way, not corporate idealisim or conformity. Nothing magical about 2008 is going to change that. Nothing magical is going to say "well, the window has passed and now all of a sudden people have no alternative". Yeah, I'm sure he wants to beat Vista to the punch, but that is a personal thing just as is his bias against people who see freedom as the ends and not the means.
A common logical fallacy people make is assuming that because existence is rationsl, that it must also be pre-deterministic. Well, that is not true, and I think it is reflected in the fact of human action. It is also reflected the fact that society has laws. If people were destined by circumstances, then law in societies wouldn't be so relavent.
It is not a cooncidence that the same Moses who defied all circumstance to stand before the pharoah and demand "let my people go", was also the Moses who brought the 10 commandments down from the mountain. Free will is way more than a religious doctrine, it is part of the nature of existence and the universe.