You are missing the point. The fact that there are obvious, substantial differences between IP and physical property doesn't change the fact that both are constructs created and protected by the state. States create artificial scarcity and artificial limitations all the time, and that isn't automatically bad or anti-free-market. If you want to make an effective argument against IP, you need a better argument.
Note that I am against copyrights and patents (at least as they currently are); that is why I find dumb arguments like yours and the GP's so annoying. There are strong arguments against IP, you are just failing to make them.
Right now, you can patent anything, and if you can get it past the USPTO, you're a winner: you can collect royalties as long as you keep your demands below what it would cost to strike down your patent. There is almost no risk or downside (at worst, you lose what you paid for getting the patent, maybe $10k).
Since lawyers are ultimately driving this, maybe we can fix it by giving lawyers an incentive: create laws that allow companies to be sued for damages if they obtain patents if they should reasonably have known about prior art. This might restore some balance to the patent system, and companies would think twice about filing bad patents if they incur potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in liability.
The problem isn't America, but the big corporate lobbyists and major media companies that are the problem.
I think those are only part of the problem, and one that's fairly easy to deal with: sooner or later, those companies will recognize that the current system is not economically rational even for themselves.
Europe, on the other hand, has "droit moral"--perpetual rights to control works. And in powerful European countries like Germany, the copyright lobbies are enshrined in law, entrenched in politics, and self-sustaining, independent of any media companies. Those will be extremely hard to get rid of.
are protectionism and corporate welfare of the 21st century. I think it's best to say that copyright/patents are anti-free market, anti-technology and anti-science IMHO
You may think that, but such arguments are not very convincing. People will rightfully point out that all property could be viewed that way, physical or not. The fact that I own a piece of land, or a car, or a computer, and that I can keep you from using it, is ultimately just a construct and agreement protected by the state.
If copyrights and patents worked the way they were intended, there would be no reason to get rid of them. The way to attack patents and copyrights is to argue that the utilitarian tradeoff they propose isn't actually working: they do more harm than good.
Much of the US industry comes from immaterial things like copyrights, patents and artificial restrictions. This is true for both entertainment industry and things like drugs and medication.
So does much of Europe's industry.
But lets not forget that back in time, this is how US got its power - they blatantly ignored European copyrights. Now others are doing the same to US, and they're suffering. What goes around.. Comes around.
What a brilliant stroke of anti-Americanism: you hold the US responsible first for fighting draconian European copyrights, then for learning its lesson, building businesses around them, and enforcing them.
But in actual fact, the companies advocating copyright are international: companies like Bertelsmann and Sony are a big part of this. Europe just extended its copyright terms to "protect" the Beatles.
EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact. Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.
If totalitarianism is the inevitable outcome for human societies, then moving out into space won't fix the problem because those societies will just go down the same road as our societies here. We can't escape our psychology.
But humanity has shown that it can change, and we have made tremendous progress. And even if we were to get stuck with a global totalitarian society for a while, the next global natural disaster will fix that and allow us to try again.
You can just write ISO images to a USB stick with unetbootin. Various distros and operating systems also have other ways of creating bootable USB sticks.
And if you really want to, you can still buy external DVD drives.
The "threats" to humanity are pretty easy to enumerate, because we know them from the geological record: glaciation, global warming, pandemics, meteorites, and volcanoes. All of these have extinguished many species in the past, but humans are adaptable enough to survive any of them. Even if they happened, earth would still be a more hospitable place than any planet we are likely to be able to travel to, or any space habitat we can build in the foreseeable future.
If the long term survival of our civilization is a concern, what we should focus on is creating time capsules that will help humanity to rebuilt more quickly after the inevitable collapse of our current civilization. We know that works because it has worked before. The technology is simple, reliable, and predictable. Such time capsules should include things like writings, seeds, tools, and recordings.
Manned space travel, on the other hand, will just happen by itself, or it won't, depending on whether it makes physical and economic sense. It is not a rational thing to bet on or worry about.
Slashdot Mirror
Routing those SMSes to their destinations requires much more complex pattern matching than that.
You are missing the point. The fact that there are obvious, substantial differences between IP and physical property doesn't change the fact that both are constructs created and protected by the state. States create artificial scarcity and artificial limitations all the time, and that isn't automatically bad or anti-free-market. If you want to make an effective argument against IP, you need a better argument.
Note that I am against copyrights and patents (at least as they currently are); that is why I find dumb arguments like yours and the GP's so annoying. There are strong arguments against IP, you are just failing to make them.
Right now, you can patent anything, and if you can get it past the USPTO, you're a winner: you can collect royalties as long as you keep your demands below what it would cost to strike down your patent. There is almost no risk or downside (at worst, you lose what you paid for getting the patent, maybe $10k).
Since lawyers are ultimately driving this, maybe we can fix it by giving lawyers an incentive: create laws that allow companies to be sued for damages if they obtain patents if they should reasonably have known about prior art. This might restore some balance to the patent system, and companies would think twice about filing bad patents if they incur potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in liability.
I think those are only part of the problem, and one that's fairly easy to deal with: sooner or later, those companies will recognize that the current system is not economically rational even for themselves.
Europe, on the other hand, has "droit moral"--perpetual rights to control works. And in powerful European countries like Germany, the copyright lobbies are enshrined in law, entrenched in politics, and self-sustaining, independent of any media companies. Those will be extremely hard to get rid of.
You may think that, but such arguments are not very convincing. People will rightfully point out that all property could be viewed that way, physical or not. The fact that I own a piece of land, or a car, or a computer, and that I can keep you from using it, is ultimately just a construct and agreement protected by the state.
If copyrights and patents worked the way they were intended, there would be no reason to get rid of them. The way to attack patents and copyrights is to argue that the utilitarian tradeoff they propose isn't actually working: they do more harm than good.
So does much of Europe's industry.
What a brilliant stroke of anti-Americanism: you hold the US responsible first for fighting draconian European copyrights, then for learning its lesson, building businesses around them, and enforcing them.
But in actual fact, the companies advocating copyright are international: companies like Bertelsmann and Sony are a big part of this. Europe just extended its copyright terms to "protect" the Beatles.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/14/european-union-extends-beatles-copyright-still-gonna-have-to-b/
Trying to change IP laws by blaming America for everything isn't just factually incorrect, it is ineffective because it misses the source of problem.
This really, really sounds like an Onion story.
If totalitarianism is the inevitable outcome for human societies, then moving out into space won't fix the problem because those societies will just go down the same road as our societies here. We can't escape our psychology.
But humanity has shown that it can change, and we have made tremendous progress. And even if we were to get stuck with a global totalitarian society for a while, the next global natural disaster will fix that and allow us to try again.
You can just write ISO images to a USB stick with unetbootin. Various distros and operating systems also have other ways of creating bootable USB sticks.
And if you really want to, you can still buy external DVD drives.
The "threats" to humanity are pretty easy to enumerate, because we know them from the geological record: glaciation, global warming, pandemics, meteorites, and volcanoes. All of these have extinguished many species in the past, but humans are adaptable enough to survive any of them. Even if they happened, earth would still be a more hospitable place than any planet we are likely to be able to travel to, or any space habitat we can build in the foreseeable future.
If the long term survival of our civilization is a concern, what we should focus on is creating time capsules that will help humanity to rebuilt more quickly after the inevitable collapse of our current civilization. We know that works because it has worked before. The technology is simple, reliable, and predictable. Such time capsules should include things like writings, seeds, tools, and recordings.
Manned space travel, on the other hand, will just happen by itself, or it won't, depending on whether it makes physical and economic sense. It is not a rational thing to bet on or worry about.