I'm talking about European, typically British, authors BEFORE we had any kind of foreign copyright agreements. They couldn't get copyright in the US, so the payment was for the manuscript (more specifically, getting their hands on it before other publishers could flood the market), not for publishing rights.
The US copyright system did have strict rules until about 1989 when we finally joined the Berne Convention. Night of the Living Dead fell into the public domain due to clerical error, but Romero still had quite a bit of success with the sequels.
It is true, although to be fair, in many cases, authors made more money from the 'piracy' in the US than they did domestically because publishers were paying for early access and printing more copies at low prices. So, authors made more money and more people became literate and thus capable of writing books themselves.
Not normally being a troll doesn't mean you aren't engaging in frivolous patent suits, and having other advantages doesn't mean that they aren't choosing it primarily because of how they generally side in patent cases.
Actually, Steve Jobs said that Picasso said that, but he didn't. Stravinsky is reported to have said something similar except about composers, while T.S. Eliot actually said something that both of these quote are likely derived from:
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
There's no telling where Eliot took that notion from, but they probably didn't come up with it either.
The 'guilt' of ACS lies in where the work originated from
The work that Crossly claims was stolen from him was actually copied from yet another firm, Davenport Lyons, who helped Crossly set up his own business
He claims that he acquired the rights to the work legitimately, but whether that's true or not isn't particularly clear. Also, I'm not sure of what degree of protection legal notices have in the UK and the US. I would think it might be reasonable to argue against copyrighting them should fall within fair use/dealing, since different wording can be interpreted quite differently in court, and courts would benefit from not having to constantly re-evaluate subtle nuances in various clauses that strong copyright protection for legal notices would create. However, IANAL, and I'm not even aware of any kind of case on this subject.
"If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 [wired.com] years? "
Because patents aren't quite so bad as to bring society to a total halt. Is that concept so hard to grasp? Also, there were quite a few countries that didn't have patents during a large part of that time. Venice is not a particularly good example to use, anyway, since it is no longer autonomous.
This is a hypothetical situation where a lone inventor has created a mind-blowing breakthrough without stepping on any of the patented techniques of others. This virtually never plays out in the real world. Even the inventions and inventors touted as the biggest breakthroughs, such as the lightbulb, were often just an improved implementation of an existing idea, and often not even the best combination of known techniques.
You can argue that if patents were very narrow, then you could get around the patents of the big dog easily, but the big dog can get around your patents too.
No advantage of the patent system doesn't go both ways except for the advantages that a non-practicing entity has by virtue of not having any chance of infringing. The only winning move really is not to play.
"In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. "
Yes, and that's how ASCAP feels as well. The notion of ownership of all implementations of an idea is the artificial thing, and dishonest behavior in that area would be fraud, not theft.
Perhaps you'd like to show some of these "most surveys"?
Quite a few are cited in against intellectual monopoly, and the 2008 berkeley survey was another recent comprehensive survey.
Examples of patents actually hurting society are extremely rare, and usually coupled with the original inventors getting screwed.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of reduced efficiency in quite a few markets, including pharmaceuticals and chemicals, which is where the argument for patents is generally seen to be at its strongest. The decreased efficiency wasn't always as drastic as it was with Watt and the steam engine, but being less efficient than competition counts as 'harming society.'
While Microsoft can afford to waste money on the XBox, I don't know any guy in a garage with money to spend like that.
Yes, big firms have the advantage of lots of resources. They also often have difficulty quickly adapting. Both of these are true with or without patents, although patents tend to result in greater consolidation of firms, and thus having the big firms be bigger. And of course, bigger firms have more money to use inefficiently and less ability to adapt.
"With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company."
That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
Here's an example. I own the knowledge of how to play 'Blackbird' on a guitar. You cannot take that knowledge away from me short of inducing brain damage.
I didn't write the song, and I don't hold the copyright to the song, but I have a copy of the knowledge of how to play the song in my head. I also have a copy of the song on a CD. You actually could steal that copy from me. And FYI, I didn't obtain the knowledge through any kind of theft.
"Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE"
That may be true, but what I was saying was that when there was competition, progress happened rapidly. When there was no competition to speak of, there was virtually no progress, and when a decent amount of competition appeared from Firefox, progress started again.
"Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms."
Actually, Google's breadwinner is trade secrets, and you again aren't getting my point. It doesnt matter how Google made its money, just that they brought more competition to the market
1 big browser in the market = no progress
2 big browsers in the market = some progress
3 big browsers in the market = lots of progress.
Maybe you can pick up on the pattern. More competition is very strongly correlated with more progress in the browser market.
Vista sucked because XP dominated, and MS wasn't motivated to make a good product anyore. When Vista bombed, and people starting using non-Windows operating systems a lot more, MS put forth a lot more effort because sitting on their laurels would be very bad for them.
"If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents."
You didn't read it right. Most of the time, under any situation, startups will get screwed. It sucks, but this will most likely never change. However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
The term 'free market' in general usage isn't limited to absolutely free markets with zero regulation, just markets that are generally free. Telephone companies would be a good example of a market that is not free. There is a LOT of red tape in laying down lines, and many telephone companies have agreements with municipalities that prevent competitors from entering.
That example should be interpreted as "get a patent, and it'll keep Big Bad Corporation away from you. Don't get a patent, and take the risk of losing your market..."
The problem is Big Bad Corporation has patents. Many more patents than you. They've also got cross licensing deals with the other Big Bads that you'll never be able to get, meaning you'll almost certainly be a niche player at best.
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are not beneficial to society.
The book Against Intellectual Monopoly is laden with real world examples of patents and copyright having no noticeable effect or a negative effect, as well as very well written logical arguments. It's a good read, and easy to find a copy of.
You mean like the GRiDPad? Or QDOS? Those are just off the top of my head.
Okay, a product not sucking is pretty important as well, as is a market for your idea existing. Those aren't methods of protection. First mover's advantage and trade secrets are the biggest protection factors listed in most surveys, with patents being last outside of pharmaceutical companies, and this is the role of patents when patents exist. If there are no patents, then defensive patents, often cited as one of the most common reasons for acquiring patents, are not needed.
Even if it were, it takes time to get enough investors to produce something. During that time, another (larger) company could launch their identical product first. Without patents, inventors get screwed.
How exactly does one make an identical product if the product is not publicly known? Also, copying is only useful if it's a good product. If you attempt to make a clone of every product by every startup, you'll be wasting a fortune on failures, and if you wait to see if it's a success, then you will be at a disadvantage.
Evidence of competition spurring innovation, progress and consumer welfare? It's one of the CORE PRINCIPLES OF MODERN ECONOMICS War and natural selection are two good examples of competition resulting in faster progress. The rapid changes in the first browser war, the near standstill between when IE crushed netscape and when firefox became popular, and the incredible jumps in javascript performance when Chrome entered the arena. Vista was the result of limited competition, and the changes in 7 and the netbook craze were the result of Macs and GNU/Linux gaining ground.
As for little guy, yes they are often screwed. They will often get screwed with or without patents, and most indications suggest that they will have a better chance without patents because the big players will have enough power to lock an up and comer out of the market, while they might have a meager chance to make it to the top if they kick enough ass when we don't have patents.
I'm not blurring lines, I'm drawing distinctions. Your copy of an idea and a patent on the same idea are separate entities.
The patent holder holds legal rights to it for 20 years, but your copy of the idea still exists, even if its value has been greatly damaged. 20 years later, you will have the legal right to use that idea, and so will everyone else.
The question is whether or not a non-broken implementation does exist, can ever exist, or if patents are just something that may look good on paper (or may not even pass that), but fail in all real world usage. And no, a world without markets doesn't require playing nice. Competition is a big part of the replacement, and competitors tend to not play nice too often, and yet it's got a very good body of evidence for actually working to push innovation.
Value and ownership are different things. I could set your car on fire, thus making it lose virtually all of its value, but that doesn't mean I stole your car. Something else you own could lose similar amounts of value simply by the market it is dying, but nobody is committing a crime when that happens.
You mentioned capitalism and fairness. Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous. The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents, and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution. It's a mechanism that requires very complex areas of economics and psychology, and the basics haven't been changed that much since it's inception, which predates Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud, meaning that it predates anything reasonably considered modern economics and psychology.
As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society, although to be fair, we don't have a lot of good scientific data on the effects of patents (many European countries adopting patents often came from monarchs arbitrarily granting monopolies to the more limited monopolies patents gave and WIPO and the like make not strongly enforcing US/EU patent and copyrights results in developing countries getting royally screwed in regards to trade relations.). In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money, with patents often being ranked as one of the least important elements.
It's hard to tell what role patents did play in Google's growth. It could be that they were actually vital to their growth, or their patents may have been entirely for defensive purposes, and were effectively a tax that reduced their ability to grow. Not to an extent that they couldn't succeed, but it might be that they could have become an even more powerful and/or innovative force without them. We don't know where Google would be in a world without software patents.
You can argue that patents have a net benefit and are thus socially desirable under certain conditions, but it is without a doubt restricting competition, which is what I'm arguing. Toot your horn for patents, but don't spout the nonsense that it's part of a free (as in freedom) market.
You didn't get that job you wanted because someone else got there first. Do you think they cheated you? Do you think you should both have the job? That scholarship you were depending on to go to school isn't available because it ran out of funds before you applied for it. Did you get cheated, or is that just life?
Copying ideas is just life too. You acknowledge that someone beating you out of an opportunity is a result of competition. Better utilization of an idea by someone who didn't come up with the idea is competition as well.
"So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned?"
Because the idea is in your head, and nothing short of brain damage will remove the idea from your head. Ideas can't be stolen, only copied. Credit for creating an idea can arguably be stolen, and patents can be awarded fraudently, but ideas can't be stolen. The value of your copy of an idea will be greatly reduced if a patent prevents you from exercising it, but you still retain the copy of your idea.
To put it in simple terms, the closest you can come to actually stealing an idea is to learn an idea from someone and then make them forget the idea. And it's only stealing if you do this against their will.
Licenses don't have to be revocable, and that applies to software and patents. When Oracle acquired Sun, they didn't have a chance to make OpenOffice, Virtualbox, and OpenSolaris not available under the FOSS licenses they were previously released under, even though they were the sole copyright holders of at least some of those. If Google had used something OpenJDK based instead of Dalvik, then Oracle wouldn't be able to sue. I'm pretty sure the same thing applies to a license Sun granted for any JVM that follows the Java spec.
As far as I can tell, Google doesn't want software patents and hasn't started any patent litigation. Also, it seems hadoop is under version 2.0 of the Apache license, which grants an irrevocable license to their patents for derivative works, so you could develop a proprietary competition that uses tech covered by Google's relevant patents.
They don't completely restrict the right to compete, but they do strongly limit it, which is a force contrary to the principles of a free market. There is a lot of competition in the aspirin market because there are no active patents covering it. There is no competition in the market for Cialis because it is covered by a patent. ICOS is the only company that makes it AFAIK.
The patent shouldn't have been valid, and he did lose the right to freely practice that for the patent period, but he still knew how to do it because he retained his mental copy of the idea.
If you cannot legally profit from your own invention, from your own idea, because someone else is doing just that without your permission, then your idea was stolen.
With that metric, a legit patent could actually steal your idea. If I independently invent something after someone else did it, I had the idea, and I cannot legally profit from it.
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I'm talking about European, typically British, authors BEFORE we had any kind of foreign copyright agreements. They couldn't get copyright in the US, so the payment was for the manuscript (more specifically, getting their hands on it before other publishers could flood the market), not for publishing rights. The US copyright system did have strict rules until about 1989 when we finally joined the Berne Convention. Night of the Living Dead fell into the public domain due to clerical error, but Romero still had quite a bit of success with the sequels.
It is true, although to be fair, in many cases, authors made more money from the 'piracy' in the US than they did domestically because publishers were paying for early access and printing more copies at low prices. So, authors made more money and more people became literate and thus capable of writing books themselves.
I wouldn't say it's got to do with whether or not you are generating ideas, but rather, whether or not you have a large, well established industry.
Not normally being a troll doesn't mean you aren't engaging in frivolous patent suits, and having other advantages doesn't mean that they aren't choosing it primarily because of how they generally side in patent cases.
There's no telling where Eliot took that notion from, but they probably didn't come up with it either.
He claims that he acquired the rights to the work legitimately, but whether that's true or not isn't particularly clear. Also, I'm not sure of what degree of protection legal notices have in the UK and the US. I would think it might be reasonable to argue against copyrighting them should fall within fair use/dealing, since different wording can be interpreted quite differently in court, and courts would benefit from not having to constantly re-evaluate subtle nuances in various clauses that strong copyright protection for legal notices would create. However, IANAL, and I'm not even aware of any kind of case on this subject.
"If having patents is a losing game, why has it worked fine for 536 [wired.com] years? " Because patents aren't quite so bad as to bring society to a total halt. Is that concept so hard to grasp? Also, there were quite a few countries that didn't have patents during a large part of that time. Venice is not a particularly good example to use, anyway, since it is no longer autonomous.
This is a hypothetical situation where a lone inventor has created a mind-blowing breakthrough without stepping on any of the patented techniques of others. This virtually never plays out in the real world. Even the inventions and inventors touted as the biggest breakthroughs, such as the lightbulb, were often just an improved implementation of an existing idea, and often not even the best combination of known techniques.
You can argue that if patents were very narrow, then you could get around the patents of the big dog easily, but the big dog can get around your patents too.
No advantage of the patent system doesn't go both ways except for the advantages that a non-practicing entity has by virtue of not having any chance of infringing. The only winning move really is not to play.
"In your view even the original creator of the song copies it every time he plays it. " Yes, and that's how ASCAP feels as well. The notion of ownership of all implementations of an idea is the artificial thing, and dishonest behavior in that area would be fraud, not theft.
Quite a few are cited in against intellectual monopoly, and the 2008 berkeley survey was another recent comprehensive survey.
There was pretty conclusive evidence of reduced efficiency in quite a few markets, including pharmaceuticals and chemicals, which is where the argument for patents is generally seen to be at its strongest. The decreased efficiency wasn't always as drastic as it was with Watt and the steam engine, but being less efficient than competition counts as 'harming society.'
Yes, big firms have the advantage of lots of resources. They also often have difficulty quickly adapting. Both of these are true with or without patents, although patents tend to result in greater consolidation of firms, and thus having the big firms be bigger. And of course, bigger firms have more money to use inefficiently and less ability to adapt. "With no protection, there's nothing preventing one of those hired hands from passing the design on to another company." That's where NDAs, appropriate wages, and a need to know basis can come in.
Here's an example. I own the knowledge of how to play 'Blackbird' on a guitar. You cannot take that knowledge away from me short of inducing brain damage.
I didn't write the song, and I don't hold the copyright to the song, but I have a copy of the knowledge of how to play the song in my head. I also have a copy of the song on a CD. You actually could steal that copy from me. And FYI, I didn't obtain the knowledge through any kind of theft.
"Firefox gained ground because of the US government pushing Microsoft to reduce the bundling with IE"
That may be true, but what I was saying was that when there was competition, progress happened rapidly. When there was no competition to speak of, there was virtually no progress, and when a decent amount of competition appeared from Firefox, progress started again.
"Chrome is funded by Google, which got its money through the use of patented (!) algorithms."
Actually, Google's breadwinner is trade secrets, and you again aren't getting my point. It doesnt matter how Google made its money, just that they brought more competition to the market
1 big browser in the market = no progress
2 big browsers in the market = some progress
3 big browsers in the market = lots of progress.
Maybe you can pick up on the pattern. More competition is very strongly correlated with more progress in the browser market.
Vista sucked because XP dominated, and MS wasn't motivated to make a good product anyore. When Vista bombed, and people starting using non-Windows operating systems a lot more, MS put forth a lot more effort because sitting on their laurels would be very bad for them.
"If I read it right, you seem to be saying that little guys get screwed, and without patents the big players can lock them out of the market. Yep. That's why we need patents."
You didn't read it right. Most of the time, under any situation, startups will get screwed. It sucks, but this will most likely never change. However, they have a much better chance when the field has no patents or weak patentability because patents are used as a weapon against startups. The 3 measly patents your startup has are nothing compared to the thousands of patents the big boys have.
The problem is Big Bad Corporation has patents. Many more patents than you. They've also got cross licensing deals with the other Big Bads that you'll never be able to get, meaning you'll almost certainly be a niche player at best.
The book Against Intellectual Monopoly is laden with real world examples of patents and copyright having no noticeable effect or a negative effect, as well as very well written logical arguments. It's a good read, and easy to find a copy of.
Okay, a product not sucking is pretty important as well, as is a market for your idea existing. Those aren't methods of protection. First mover's advantage and trade secrets are the biggest protection factors listed in most surveys, with patents being last outside of pharmaceutical companies, and this is the role of patents when patents exist. If there are no patents, then defensive patents, often cited as one of the most common reasons for acquiring patents, are not needed.
How exactly does one make an identical product if the product is not publicly known? Also, copying is only useful if it's a good product. If you attempt to make a clone of every product by every startup, you'll be wasting a fortune on failures, and if you wait to see if it's a success, then you will be at a disadvantage.
Evidence of competition spurring innovation, progress and consumer welfare? It's one of the CORE PRINCIPLES OF MODERN ECONOMICS War and natural selection are two good examples of competition resulting in faster progress. The rapid changes in the first browser war, the near standstill between when IE crushed netscape and when firefox became popular, and the incredible jumps in javascript performance when Chrome entered the arena. Vista was the result of limited competition, and the changes in 7 and the netbook craze were the result of Macs and GNU/Linux gaining ground. As for little guy, yes they are often screwed. They will often get screwed with or without patents, and most indications suggest that they will have a better chance without patents because the big players will have enough power to lock an up and comer out of the market, while they might have a meager chance to make it to the top if they kick enough ass when we don't have patents.
I'm not blurring lines, I'm drawing distinctions. Your copy of an idea and a patent on the same idea are separate entities. The patent holder holds legal rights to it for 20 years, but your copy of the idea still exists, even if its value has been greatly damaged. 20 years later, you will have the legal right to use that idea, and so will everyone else.
The question is whether or not a non-broken implementation does exist, can ever exist, or if patents are just something that may look good on paper (or may not even pass that), but fail in all real world usage. And no, a world without markets doesn't require playing nice. Competition is a big part of the replacement, and competitors tend to not play nice too often, and yet it's got a very good body of evidence for actually working to push innovation.
Value and ownership are different things. I could set your car on fire, thus making it lose virtually all of its value, but that doesn't mean I stole your car. Something else you own could lose similar amounts of value simply by the market it is dying, but nobody is committing a crime when that happens.
You mentioned capitalism and fairness. Free markets and capitalism are largely synonymous. The reference to a protection racket shows the potential for serious problems with patents, and it's unhealthy for a society to not have some skepticism of the institution. It's a mechanism that requires very complex areas of economics and psychology, and the basics haven't been changed that much since it's inception, which predates Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud, meaning that it predates anything reasonably considered modern economics and psychology. As for your claim, there's not that much evidence that patents actually are beneficial to society, although to be fair, we don't have a lot of good scientific data on the effects of patents (many European countries adopting patents often came from monarchs arbitrarily granting monopolies to the more limited monopolies patents gave and WIPO and the like make not strongly enforcing US/EU patent and copyrights results in developing countries getting royally screwed in regards to trade relations.). In most markets, the first mover's advantage is generally seen as the biggest element in turning an idea into money, with patents often being ranked as one of the least important elements.
It's hard to tell what role patents did play in Google's growth. It could be that they were actually vital to their growth, or their patents may have been entirely for defensive purposes, and were effectively a tax that reduced their ability to grow. Not to an extent that they couldn't succeed, but it might be that they could have become an even more powerful and/or innovative force without them. We don't know where Google would be in a world without software patents.
You can argue that patents have a net benefit and are thus socially desirable under certain conditions, but it is without a doubt restricting competition, which is what I'm arguing. Toot your horn for patents, but don't spout the nonsense that it's part of a free (as in freedom) market.
Copying ideas is just life too. You acknowledge that someone beating you out of an opportunity is a result of competition. Better utilization of an idea by someone who didn't come up with the idea is competition as well. "So how is that idea now yours as far as the legal and financial systems are concerned?" Because the idea is in your head, and nothing short of brain damage will remove the idea from your head. Ideas can't be stolen, only copied. Credit for creating an idea can arguably be stolen, and patents can be awarded fraudently, but ideas can't be stolen. The value of your copy of an idea will be greatly reduced if a patent prevents you from exercising it, but you still retain the copy of your idea. To put it in simple terms, the closest you can come to actually stealing an idea is to learn an idea from someone and then make them forget the idea. And it's only stealing if you do this against their will.
Licenses don't have to be revocable, and that applies to software and patents. When Oracle acquired Sun, they didn't have a chance to make OpenOffice, Virtualbox, and OpenSolaris not available under the FOSS licenses they were previously released under, even though they were the sole copyright holders of at least some of those. If Google had used something OpenJDK based instead of Dalvik, then Oracle wouldn't be able to sue. I'm pretty sure the same thing applies to a license Sun granted for any JVM that follows the Java spec.
As far as I can tell, Google doesn't want software patents and hasn't started any patent litigation. Also, it seems hadoop is under version 2.0 of the Apache license, which grants an irrevocable license to their patents for derivative works, so you could develop a proprietary competition that uses tech covered by Google's relevant patents.
They don't completely restrict the right to compete, but they do strongly limit it, which is a force contrary to the principles of a free market. There is a lot of competition in the aspirin market because there are no active patents covering it. There is no competition in the market for Cialis because it is covered by a patent. ICOS is the only company that makes it AFAIK.
With that metric, a legit patent could actually steal your idea. If I independently invent something after someone else did it, I had the idea, and I cannot legally profit from it.