You dont need to eliminate copyright altogether to eliminate the negative properties of it altogether.
The concept of copyright should be built upon the foundation of compensating the authors, not upon restricting everyone elses rights to do what they wish with their own property or creating artificial scarcity through monopoly.
Want the government to encourage writing or other arts? Then it can damn well put its money where its mouth is and actually pay for it straight out, rather than fool around with indirect taxation through legalized monopoly rents. We're paying either way, so we might as well put the level of encouragement desired on paper.
"all the parties involved are apparently bad guys."
The patent system pretty much encourages such behaviour. Awarding monopolies creates a situation where one company can gain control over anothers capability to compete and profit, an almost unacceptable risk; something that will only get worse as technology becomes more integrated.
Consider if we had a system that worked more like other incentive systems, where the patent office paid the inventors instead; Rambus would apply for and be granted a patent, the manufacturers would notify the patent office that they're using the patent, and the patent office would pay Rambus their R&D incentive money on, for example, a per-use basis.
The motivations change entirely; Rambus would have no interest in having a conflict with the manufacturers, the manufacturers would have no interest in avoiding the use of Rambus technology or hiding it if they did use it. The PTO would have a vested interest in only granting reasonable patents, as they get the budget responsibility for the payments, the patent applicants would have an interest in the PTO not overgranting patents, as that would decrease everyones share of the R&D incentive funds. Everyone wins. Except the patent attorneys, of course, who are out the half-a-billion dollars the conflict costs, which can now be invested in R&D and/or cheaper RAM.
And, no, I'm not bringing up the financing of such a system change. That's because the current financing of the system is indirect through monopoly rent on supposedly new inventions, which has approximately the same economic effect as an actual tax on such products. Considering the disadvantages of such economic effects, it has to be the absolutely worst way imaginable to finance an R&D incentive, and pretty much any financing system possible would be less damaging than the current one.
The random recommendations are just that; random. New randomization each time you load the page. Try it a few times.
Statistically, people voting using only the nosoftwarepatents recommendations should favor none of the candidates in the unrelated polls, so as far as avoiding any undesired deviations in a poll with these rules I think that's the best it can get.
"Unfortunatly, it has a negative effect on the value of programming jobs"
It's not quite that simple. When you free up resources spent basically reimplementing the same wheel the last decade, you also free up the resources spent by other companies buying that wheel. That means the other companies suddenly have more available resources they can spend on custom software improving their own business. Or they can lower their prices, in the end leading to you getting more value for your paycheck.
In the end, any increase in actual wealth for society as a whole is driven by things getting cheaper to produce. When you eventually approach a zero cost due to the nature of an infinitely reproducible product, you have effectively ended scarcity for that product and there is a permanent increase in wealth for society.
Good for businesses, good for consumers, good for programmers who can move on to new things instead.
Perhaps we'll eventually run out of that many new things to do, but that will mean we've also run out of scarcity. And when there is no scarcity, well, having some more free time would probably do wonders for the average programmers stress levels.
"saying `yeah, but can you make phone calls?` as if there's a single camera-phone on the market with which you can't!"
Frankly, personally I suspect it's more because the fact that cell phone coverage is still lacking in many places, they tend to disconnect suddenly even in many good coverage areas, and costs are vastly higher than what would be reasonable.
A more valid question, perhaps, would be 'can you make cheap reliable phone calls'?
Compared with old POTS, or upcoming VoIP/Wlan merged tech, the cell industry risks being found vastly underperforming in many areas. IMO, because they've spent overly many resources getting sidetracked, bickering about standards and pissing territory and nowhere near enough maintaining and improving price/performance for their fundamental service. And now when they risk getting alternate tech competition in that area, they, like Iridium versus Cell tech, like proprietary data networks versus Internet, may find their offerings simply arent nearly competetive enough.
Ah, very interesting, and I was quite surprised. I did take a serious look at it tho, and did the calculations, as I've been reading quite a lot about horticultural lighting for my orchids as a side-geek-hobby:).
Unfortunately it seems the high efficiency of the LED's in the study is due to the directionality of the light, not as a direct result of light output. The highest efficiency LEDs I've seen are around 55 Lumens per watt, and they're orange or green. The highest efficiency white ones appear to be around 35lm/W. As a comparison, the highest CF bulb I actually have is around 66lm/w, and HID lighting goes up to almost twice that per watt.
So, for specific purposes (especially replacing halogen reflector spotlights) the LED's may be useful, but for general purpose light-level increase they're not quite as efficient as CF's yet.
They definitely show promise tho, so I'll be following developments, especially from the geeky compose-your-own-spectrum point of view:).
"State monopolies are not about efficiency my good sir, they're about high-quality service and providing said service to everyone, even when it's completely inefficient to provide said service."
A very good and astute explanation, but there are many intermediate versions.
You can have state financing where the state sets a certain level of quality and service that should be provided to everyone, then the party (which can include state-run organizations) who can fulfill that level at the best terms gets to provide the service. Thus you get competition and can still serve the longterm public interest, the best of both worlds. Examples would be hiring contractors to fix pot-holes in roads, building a public building, privately run hospitals where you have state-mandated standards, the consumer chooses which doctor or hospital to visit and state insurance systems pay for it.
Then you have state-granted monopolies where the state grants the right to perform a specific service and/or sells a specific piece of public property only to a certain entity, without either requiring multiple active competitors, appropriate separation of services or frequent renegotiations. While I'm not intimately familiar with UK rail services I suspect they fall under this type. Other comparable issues is when governments have privatized telecoms without retaining ownership of infrastructure and just contracting maintenance and support. It seems to be most common in infrastructure and other 'natural monopolies'.
You should note that there are many other european countries where private rail traffic is allowed to compete (I suspect they might have to allow it (EU, y'know)), but which havent seen the problem the UK appears to have had.
Then there are state-run monopolies when the governments both owns, finances and provides the service in question, without allowing competition at all. Examples would be, for example, old style telecom monopolies or former communist state factories. Like you say, they usually conform to the service levels set by the state, but tend to accumulate inefficiency.
And then you have the state-protected monopolies, where private owner interests are protected against competition by the state itself, which is pretty much the worst combination of all, and this is where one can place intellectual property.
The old left-right view of the economy isnt really valid anymore. There are many axises in the equation, public/private owner, public/private financing and monopoly/competition.
Public ownership (which also implies financing) may make sense when the value and utility of multiple versions of something is vastly reduced after the first one. Such things would be roads, rail and communications infrastructure. The maximum value for the public comes when they do not have to pay for such things more than once.
Public financing makes sense when, like you say, the public wishes to obtain, for social or other reasons, a higher level of service than would be profitable for private interests. If there is no disadvantage from multiple instances providing the same service, there might not be a reason for public ownership, even tho we want public financing, for example clinics, railroad repair companies, telecom service providers, etc.
The historical performance of monopolies compared to competetive sectors should indicate to all but the most sceptical that competition is good, and that it is in the interest of the public that the state encourages competition on the market and that it is imperative that it prevents anti-competetive behaviour. But as you see, this does not mean you cant have public ownership or public financing, nor does it mean you get competition just because something is privately owned.
"Isn't it possible that the pharmaceutical industry is a significantly different case from the software industry, at least when it comes to IP?"
Unfortunately, no, I dont think so. The drawbacks are just far easier to observe in the software industry, as the barriers to the market ar far lower and the turnover rate far higher.
"On the other hand, why bother spending 10 years and million of dollars developing a brilliant new wonder drug."
For example, you could apply for, say, call it a 'protent' at the patent office, where you'd get ROI for your investment on a per-use basis. So when those two-bit companies copy your drug (or even better, look it up in the database) and start manufacturing and selling it, they'll just register sales with the patent office and you get paid.
You could concentrate on research, you wouldnt have to be afraid to base your advances on other peoples research, manufacturers could concentrate being efficient at manufacturing, they wouldnt have to be afraid of getting sued and would have no interest in hiding their use from you, the patent office and inventors would have a vested interest in not seeing overgranting of 'protents' in the system, as that would decrease ROI payout for each one, and politicians could be concerned with granting the right levels of economic incentive for R&D.
See, it isnt impossible to come up with an alternative system with large benefits over the current one. (Yes, I know I havent brought up financing, but as the current financing is mainly through monopoly rent on any and all supposed advancement, the effects of the current system should be similar to an actual extra tax on inventions, which has got to be the absolutely worst way possible to finance R&D incentives, so basically anything you can think of would be better.).
"Businesses need reasons to innovate, they need motivation. In this case it is money."
In this case, you're wrong. If it were money there'd be no danger for the economy. It'd just be another subsidy in the interest of the citizens.
In this case it is monopoly. It is the opposite of competition. Which, in a capitalistic free market, is very very damaging to the economy.
"GIF was patented so the superior PNG was created"
If GIF wasnt encumbered it could have been extended or improved, and we'd have had support for the lacking capabilities a decade ago.
Same with MP3/Ogg. The extra work engineering around patents does not represent more useful innovation, it represents a direct loss of innovative wealth to society as a whole. Resources dont exist in a vacuum, and the engineering spent reimplenting could have been spent creating _other_ advances, advances we are now poorer for not having.
Multiply this by the number of audio/video/other formats out there, how much development have we lost because the wheel has been reinvented time after time after time?
Take a look in other industries; how many resources are spent looking for the 20th SSRI antidepressant which does essentially the same thing as the last 15, but in an unencumbered fashion? Medicine is rife with the same issue; everyone wants their slice of the pie so they develop medicines that work with pretty much the exact same mechanisms, but are patented by _them_. That effort could be spent curing _new_ things, or researching into new avenues.
No, patents in the form of monopolies are entirely and throughly bad.
Rewarding innovation and giving financial rewards for investment in it is good.
Confusing those two issues is what has gotten us into the current situation.
In a free market capitalist economy competition is what drives improvement. The ability to develop and produce more, cheaper. Kill competition by granting monopolies and you dont get more development, you get less. Take away competetive pressure and companies grow fat and inefficient, just like state-run monopolies. The inefficiencies drive costs and lead to massive wasted resources. Remember, not even 20% of the income of the pharmcorps is spent on R&D. They spend twice what they spend on R&D on marketing and administration.
The unfortunate economics of monopolies means that it will only get worse; pricing in monopoly fields isnt driven by competition, it's driven by available capital and the cost at which people will do without instead. The more money available in the insurance systems, the more money the pharmcorps will charge. And promptly spend on marketing, convincing doctors to prescribe patented headache pills, instead of generics.
"in turn we will sacrafice the insentive"
A monopoly is an extremely inappropriate incentive in a free market, and the likelyhood is it does more damage than good. A vast amount of the medical research is already funded by various states, and something along the lines of granting per-use payments, government contracting for development or tax breaks for patents would be far more in line with other extra incentives in the free market.
Unfortunately, while the subdued lighting is 'fine' there are many indications that it isn't exactly healthy. It might be ok if you're spending a lot of time outdoors, but if you're an indoors geek, you'd probably be better off with far stronger daylight equivalent lighting. And as these lights are not particularly energy efficient compared to CF, their utility might be limited.
"Why pay for R&D when you can simply wait around to piggyback off of someone else's hard work?"
Which company would you invest in? The one spending money doing R&D, or the one sitting on their arse always being one step after the competition? If Microsoft said 'meh, we're gonna quit developing and just sell copies of FreeBSD', would you invest in them? If Redhat said 'screw this, we'll just copy Mandriva', would you think they had a bright future?
R&D always gives an advantage in itself.
"This is why we have intellectual property laws."
No, that's the propaganda reason we have intellectual property laws. The actual reason we have intellectual property laws is that several hundred years ago some royalty realized they could further tax the population and curry favours from merchants by granting the merchants monopolies.
However, while a certain amount of R&D always has been and always will be done for its own value and the first-player advantage, we may still want to increase the rewards for R&D to further increase the rate. That's a straightforward subsidy problem, nothing new and nothing strange for any government. But government support for specific sectors and specific acts by granting monopolies is one of the absolutely worst ways to generate such rewards and it creates so much economic collateral damage you'd have to go to state-run former Soviet factories to see something similar.
"Would that be ok, if I signed no agreement that they keep my information private?"
That's really mainly a security question; you should probably design a public/private key system for that kind of secrets. It's rather beside the point anyway:).
"but things like entertainment are different."
To an extent, yes. There are however ways you can look at it that are more adapted to the normal economy if you step out of the IP mold.
For example, if you look at music as a performance art, writing new music becomes a competetive advantage. People will go watch a cover band, but I'd pay a lot more to see the original. If you change to that perspective, you suddenly also have a whole new capacity to solve supply/demand problems in the music industry; more artists could recieve income from basically doing cover performances and cover recordings, more fans could see desired music if/when the original band isnt touring everywhere, more musicians could take current music and make their own version of it, etc.
"They are undercutting by taking something that someone else spent a lot of money to produce and simply giving it out for a lower price."
Again, to some extent. The problem is that nobody is actually spending very much money creating the music, and it simply doesnt cost much to create music. Instead, a few major players are using their monopoly power over the music to leverage and recoup ROI from vast investments in marketing and merchandising.
Now, you're right that those investments would simply be undercut, and probably made impossible. However, I'd argue that those investments are not beneficial to the economy as a whole anyway, nor conductive to the actual creation of the art.
Writing, recording and playing music is within the economic reach of pretty much anyone holding a job. The music industry is rife with examples of musicians living off _unprotected_ music; look at the players of classical music. The capacity for worldwide distribution and marketing is _also_ available for anyone holding a job these days.
For sure, paying radio stations to play them, paying for front placement in stores, printing and distributing posters worldwide, paying for music videos, paying for expensive exec habits, paying for round the clock tv-commercials, paying for expensive lobbying campaigns and paying for lawsuits against teenagers may not be within reach of any musician, but are those really investments we need to protect?
"In fact, copyright as it was when it was conceived, was supposed to be for the public's benefit."
Mmm, I used to think so too, but then I read up on the history. It's a very good propaganda line, and looking at the civil law extensions from the french revolution times it's even partly true.
The actual truth is, copyright as it was concieved, was a monopoly granted to the publisher and owner of the printing press by the crown in exchange for censorship control and/or monetary exchange. As the public eventually got very annoyed with this arrangement, and very angry with the monopolies at that point in time, the publishers gauged the situation as unlikely to end up in their favour and came up with and pushed for 'authors rights' instead, which was more politically sound. However, the publishers knew the authors could not afford their own presses, and would be forced to sign exclusive contracts for printing, and after those first 28 years the publishers would be free to print anyway. Which is pretty much similar to what we have today, with the difference being that the authors cant afford the marketing instead, in a market where consumer attention is becoming the scarce commodity, leading to the current situation where the public, the authors and the economy are getting the short end of the stick.
"That doesn't sound bad, but you are effectively limited in what you can create if you cannot recoup your costs."
Oh, I agree, but it's not as bad as it sounds; the costs for creation sink as well. Currently there w
"So if person A told person B all about your patterns, say bank account, PIN, Credit Card #"
You know, if you dont want your PIN spread around you should probably keep it to yourself.
"if a person works long and hard hours to produce something useful or that people enjoy, then it is ok for people to take what that person has done and not give him any sort of compensation for it"
Of course not. That person should be able to charge however much they wish. However, that does not mean they should be allowed to then prevent the purchaser from doing whatever they want with their newly purchased property.
"thus undercutting me and running me out of business, is that OK?"
That's the fundamental reason that the free market works; the creation of wealth through the ever increasing efficiency of production. So, yes, that's the way it's supposed to work. Unless you're opposed to or dont believe in competition or free market capitalism in general.
"If its OK, then why should I bother to develop widget A in the first place?"
Because it gives you a competetive advantage? Because it solves a particular problem you were having?
There are many reasons, but in the end it comes down to this; are we as a society satisfied with the rate of development we're getting without added incentives? If we're not satisfied with the rate we need to create a system that creates extra incentives for development. And if you start there you'll find that granting monopolies is one system that is extrordinarily inappropriate and creates such effects as slower adoption of new technology, creates legal overhead for any combination tech, sometimes even making it impossible to produce, creates lockin effects on the market, diverts resources from research into marketing, etc.
The IP system is in its essence a form of taxation/subsidy system, in the form of monopoly rent on certain items, comparable to other product taxes in economic effects. As for what the public gets for those hidden taxes, it has got to be the absolutely worst performing and undemocratic subsidy/corporate welfare scheme ever invented.
"he argues that there needs to be sufficient incentive for investment;"
Yep, that's often the rationale for the current system. What that argument misses is that incentive does not necessarily equal monopoly, and the IP systems is pretty much the only place in our economy where we give them out as incentives (more commonly such incentives are in the form of tax-breaks or outright monetary compensation).
For an example alternative system, why dont patents simply pay a certain amount of public funds per use? Then there'd be an incentive for the patent office to hold a high quality, as they'd be responsible for the funds allocated to development incentives and there'd be political control over how much funds are allocted to development incentives.
There'd also be a builtin interest from the inventors and investors not to have too many patents granted in the system or they might get a smaller payment. There'd be no interest for companies to hide their use of, or avoid the use of, a certain patent as they're not the ones directly paying for it, thus minimizing litigation.
Anyways, like you said, it seems we're heading in similar directions, and feel free to use my comments anyway you want:).
Ah, I didnt disagree with you, I just pointed out that the whole terminology needs to be throughly changed for any sort of rational economic/political discussion.
The 'left'/'right'/'property' associations are bad, altho in non-US countries, the 'left' association may actually garner the same misdirected support as 'right' or 'property' do in the US. The point being that the entire terminology _has_ to go or it will be impossible to ever reach a constructive solution to the issues, for either side.
To solve the issues the debate needs to be reframed in the actual economical essence of the issues. For patents you could reframe it something like this:
Investment in innovation might need to be stimulated, therefore there may need to be an extra incentive in the form of higher ROI. Market freedom needs to be maintained to achieve the beneficial effects of market capitalism, therefore monopolies cannot be an acceptable form of incentive. Innovative and better products need to be adopted and integrated into the economy and production as fast as possible, therefore there should be no price premium on such products, which again means that monopoly rent is not an appropriate stimuli as it counters that goal. As research intensifies, cross-research-team integration becomes highly desireable and likely, which means legal barriers to integration must be avoided. Again, monopoly rights are counterproductive; to obtain the maximum economic and social benefit any manufacturer or researcher must be allowed to instantly integrate advances from other areas without a premium.
When you dont use the propaganda terms from either side the whole issue is much easier to rephrase in a way that makes it far easier to actually create a beneficial solution for all. Constructing incentives that fulfill the actual intents and purposes of such goals isnt impossible, it just remains impossible and enforces irreconcilable sides as long as the entire debate is phrased in the current terms.
The whole IP terminology is defective. Consider for example that as state enforced and state granted monopolies the concept of IP has little in common with free market economy, and even less with any form of 'property'. As a taxation system where the monopoly rent can be compared to a private taxation right on specific products, the IP concept is far from both left and right politics and really shows its roots; it's mostly comparable to some form of feudal economy system where nobles were given such monopoly rights or other taxation rights in exchange for supporting the crown.
Unfortunately, most of the players have an active interest in using such flawed terminology, as they would otherwise find it very difficult to obtain any serious support.
The usefulness of the comparison is, of course, to allow the reader to form a rational basis for the amount of risk, and thus form a rational opinion on what kind of response is appropriate.
If you're not afraid to go out in traffic every day, you have no particular reason to hold a larger amount of irrational fear for something less likely to kill you, nor should politicians or media be spending more time and resources on such things.
China's just playing catchup; when they reach technological parity and surpass the US they'll join the enforcement team and make the current offshoring look like paradise. Imagine the glee with which the future patent holders will suck every drop of available capital out of our insurance systems.
Intellectual property is in its actual essence a corporate taxation and welfare system without borders. It's rather mindboggling to see elected politicians handing out rights to (foreign) entities to basically tax buisnesses and citizens in the various countries, and to do it without demanding anything in return.
Actually, most computer knowledgable people I know started taking AMD seriously around the time when Intel was going RAMBUS and messed around changing I dont know how many slots and sockets in a few years. At that point Intel had created a number of compelling reasons for people building their own systems to actually avoid Intel.
Those things were really the beginning of where Intel might still be leading, but a whole lot of people werent following in that direction.
If someone put a gun to your head you could stand on that broken leg. That doesnt make it any less broken, or less painful to do so.
You're mixing up symptoms with illnesses, you're confusing preferences with brain chemistry, and you're attempting to merge many different viewpoints into a single definition.
The symptoms of some illnesses can be covered up, you can suppress a sneeze, you can ignore pain, you can put a smile on your face. That doesnt change the fact that a more through medical examination will reveal low serotonin levels, stress hormones near panic state thresholds or a fracture in your leg. From a medical point of view, they're all specific states of physiology, largely out of the patients control.
You're confusing that with the individual experience of illness. As many physiological states may be less than perfect, but still not entirely debilitating, an individual can choose to seek relief, depending on wether or not they can or cannot, want or will not live with the symptoms, wether the symptoms are manageable, get better or worse. That where the choice comes in.
On top of that you attempt to confuse it with the social point of view, which is the interaction between the individual experience of the physiological state, how it affects their ability to function in society, and how societys perception of the state affects the individuals experience and ablity to function in society.
Society can affect the individuals perception of their physiological state, and that is where we should strive to limit any undue negative influence. However, once there is a specific physiological state that causes an individual a certain amount of pain or functional difficulty, then it falls within the definition of what we commonly call 'illness'.
With the advent of easy price comparisons on the net ads simply arent useful anymore, and instead they're just a drain on the market, increasing costs needlessly.
"If I remember correctly... MD never took off in the US because they never allowed it to be used as a digital storage medium."
Indeed. That's pretty much what drives the market today; consumer PC interoperability.
What the studios want to publish on is irrelevant. HD isnt enough of a compelling advantage over regular DVD to drive the format adoption; the data storage capacity of the new formats is. The first to approach DVD level price/MB with no hassles will win this round easily.
Slashdot Mirror
"Perhaps not eliminate copyright altogether"
You dont need to eliminate copyright altogether to eliminate the negative properties of it altogether.
The concept of copyright should be built upon the foundation of compensating the authors, not upon restricting everyone elses rights to do what they wish with their own property or creating artificial scarcity through monopoly.
Want the government to encourage writing or other arts? Then it can damn well put its money where its mouth is and actually pay for it straight out, rather than fool around with indirect taxation through legalized monopoly rents. We're paying either way, so we might as well put the level of encouragement desired on paper.
"all the parties involved are apparently bad guys."
The patent system pretty much encourages such behaviour. Awarding monopolies creates a situation where one company can gain control over anothers capability to compete and profit, an almost unacceptable risk; something that will only get worse as technology becomes more integrated.
Consider if we had a system that worked more like other incentive systems, where the patent office paid the inventors instead; Rambus would apply for and be granted a patent, the manufacturers would notify the patent office that they're using the patent, and the patent office would pay Rambus their R&D incentive money on, for example, a per-use basis.
The motivations change entirely; Rambus would have no interest in having a conflict with the manufacturers, the manufacturers would have no interest in avoiding the use of Rambus technology or hiding it if they did use it. The PTO would have a vested interest in only granting reasonable patents, as they get the budget responsibility for the payments, the patent applicants would have an interest in the PTO not overgranting patents, as that would decrease everyones share of the R&D incentive funds. Everyone wins. Except the patent attorneys, of course, who are out the half-a-billion dollars the conflict costs, which can now be invested in R&D and/or cheaper RAM.
And, no, I'm not bringing up the financing of such a system change. That's because the current financing of the system is indirect through monopoly rent on supposedly new inventions, which has approximately the same economic effect as an actual tax on such products. Considering the disadvantages of such economic effects, it has to be the absolutely worst way imaginable to finance an R&D incentive, and pretty much any financing system possible would be less damaging than the current one.
"Well, this is exactly the way not to go."
The random recommendations are just that; random. New randomization each time you load the page. Try it a few times.
Statistically, people voting using only the nosoftwarepatents recommendations should favor none of the candidates in the unrelated polls, so as far as avoiding any undesired deviations in a poll with these rules I think that's the best it can get.
"Unfortunatly, it has a negative effect on the value of programming jobs"
It's not quite that simple. When you free up resources spent basically reimplementing the same wheel the last decade, you also free up the resources spent by other companies buying that wheel. That means the other companies suddenly have more available resources they can spend on custom software improving their own business. Or they can lower their prices, in the end leading to you getting more value for your paycheck.
In the end, any increase in actual wealth for society as a whole is driven by things getting cheaper to produce. When you eventually approach a zero cost due to the nature of an infinitely reproducible product, you have effectively ended scarcity for that product and there is a permanent increase in wealth for society.
Good for businesses, good for consumers, good for programmers who can move on to new things instead.
Perhaps we'll eventually run out of that many new things to do, but that will mean we've also run out of scarcity. And when there is no scarcity, well, having some more free time would probably do wonders for the average programmers stress levels.
"saying `yeah, but can you make phone calls?` as if there's a single camera-phone on the market with which you can't!"
Frankly, personally I suspect it's more because the fact that cell phone coverage is still lacking in many places, they tend to disconnect suddenly even in many good coverage areas, and costs are vastly higher than what would be reasonable.
A more valid question, perhaps, would be 'can you make cheap reliable phone calls'?
Compared with old POTS, or upcoming VoIP/Wlan merged tech, the cell industry risks being found vastly underperforming in many areas. IMO, because they've spent overly many resources getting sidetracked, bickering about standards and pissing territory and nowhere near enough maintaining and improving price/performance for their fundamental service. And now when they risk getting alternate tech competition in that area, they, like Iridium versus Cell tech, like proprietary data networks versus Internet, may find their offerings simply arent nearly competetive enough.
Ah, very interesting, and I was quite surprised. I did take a serious look at it tho, and did the calculations, as I've been reading quite a lot about horticultural lighting for my orchids as a side-geek-hobby :).
:).
Unfortunately it seems the high efficiency of the LED's in the study is due to the directionality of the light, not as a direct result of light output. The highest efficiency LEDs I've seen are around 55 Lumens per watt, and they're orange or green. The highest efficiency white ones appear to be around 35lm/W. As a comparison, the highest CF bulb I actually have is around 66lm/w, and HID lighting goes up to almost twice that per watt.
So, for specific purposes (especially replacing halogen reflector spotlights) the LED's may be useful, but for general purpose light-level increase they're not quite as efficient as CF's yet.
They definitely show promise tho, so I'll be following developments, especially from the geeky compose-your-own-spectrum point of view
"State monopolies are not about efficiency my good sir, they're about high-quality service and providing said service to everyone, even when it's completely inefficient to provide said service."
A very good and astute explanation, but there are many intermediate versions.
You can have state financing where the state sets a certain level of quality and service that should be provided to everyone, then the party (which can include state-run organizations) who can fulfill that level at the best terms gets to provide the service. Thus you get competition and can still serve the longterm public interest, the best of both worlds. Examples would be hiring contractors to fix pot-holes in roads, building a public building, privately run hospitals where you have state-mandated standards, the consumer chooses which doctor or hospital to visit and state insurance systems pay for it.
Then you have state-granted monopolies where the state grants the right to perform a specific service and/or sells a specific piece of public property only to a certain entity, without either requiring multiple active competitors, appropriate separation of services or frequent renegotiations. While I'm not intimately familiar with UK rail services I suspect they fall under this type.
Other comparable issues is when governments have privatized telecoms without retaining ownership of infrastructure and just contracting maintenance and support. It seems to be most common in infrastructure and other 'natural monopolies'.
You should note that there are many other european countries where private rail traffic is allowed to compete (I suspect they might have to allow it (EU, y'know)), but which havent seen the problem the UK appears to have had.
Then there are state-run monopolies when the governments both owns, finances and provides the service in question, without allowing competition at all. Examples would be, for example, old style telecom monopolies or former communist state factories. Like you say, they usually conform to the service levels set by the state, but tend to accumulate inefficiency.
And then you have the state-protected monopolies, where private owner interests are protected against competition by the state itself, which is pretty much the worst combination of all, and this is where one can place intellectual property.
The old left-right view of the economy isnt really valid anymore. There are many axises in the equation, public/private owner, public/private financing and monopoly/competition.
Public ownership (which also implies financing) may make sense when the value and utility of multiple versions of something is vastly reduced after the first one. Such things would be roads, rail and communications infrastructure. The maximum value for the public comes when they do not have to pay for such things more than once.
Public financing makes sense when, like you say, the public wishes to obtain, for social or other reasons, a higher level of service than would be profitable for private interests. If there is no disadvantage from multiple instances providing the same service, there might not be a reason for public ownership, even tho we want public financing, for example clinics, railroad repair companies, telecom service providers, etc.
The historical performance of monopolies compared to competetive sectors should indicate to all but the most sceptical that competition is good, and that it is in the interest of the public that the state encourages competition on the market and that it is imperative that it prevents anti-competetive behaviour. But as you see, this does not mean you cant have public ownership or public financing, nor does it mean you get competition just because something is privately owned.
"Isn't it possible that the pharmaceutical industry is a significantly different case from the software industry, at least when it comes to IP?"
Unfortunately, no, I dont think so. The drawbacks are just far easier to observe in the software industry, as the barriers to the market ar far lower and the turnover rate far higher.
"On the other hand, why bother spending 10 years and million of dollars developing a brilliant new wonder drug."
For example, you could apply for, say, call it a 'protent' at the patent office, where you'd get ROI for your investment on a per-use basis. So when those two-bit companies copy your drug (or even better, look it up in the database) and start manufacturing and selling it, they'll just register sales with the patent office and you get paid.
You could concentrate on research, you wouldnt have to be afraid to base your advances on other peoples research, manufacturers could concentrate being efficient at manufacturing, they wouldnt have to be afraid of getting sued and would have no interest in hiding their use from you, the patent office and inventors would have a vested interest in not seeing overgranting of 'protents' in the system, as that would decrease ROI payout for each one, and politicians could be concerned with granting the right levels of economic incentive for R&D.
See, it isnt impossible to come up with an alternative system with large benefits over the current one. (Yes, I know I havent brought up financing, but as the current financing is mainly through monopoly rent on any and all supposed advancement, the effects of the current system should be similar to an actual extra tax on inventions, which has got to be the absolutely worst way possible to finance R&D incentives, so basically anything you can think of would be better.).
"Businesses need reasons to innovate, they need motivation. In this case it is money."
In this case, you're wrong. If it were money there'd be no danger for the economy. It'd just be another subsidy in the interest of the citizens.
In this case it is monopoly. It is the opposite of competition. Which, in a capitalistic free market, is very very damaging to the economy.
"GIF was patented so the superior PNG was created"
If GIF wasnt encumbered it could have been extended or improved, and we'd have had support for the lacking capabilities a decade ago.
Same with MP3/Ogg. The extra work engineering around patents does not represent more useful innovation, it represents a direct loss of innovative wealth to society as a whole. Resources dont exist in a vacuum, and the engineering spent reimplenting could have been spent creating _other_ advances, advances we are now poorer for not having.
Multiply this by the number of audio/video/other formats out there, how much development have we lost because the wheel has been reinvented time after time after time?
Take a look in other industries; how many resources are spent looking for the 20th SSRI antidepressant which does essentially the same thing as the last 15, but in an unencumbered fashion? Medicine is rife with the same issue; everyone wants their slice of the pie so they develop medicines that work with pretty much the exact same mechanisms, but are patented by _them_. That effort could be spent curing _new_ things, or researching into new avenues.
No, patents in the form of monopolies are entirely and throughly bad.
Rewarding innovation and giving financial rewards for investment in it is good.
Confusing those two issues is what has gotten us into the current situation.
"in a capitalist economy"
In a free market capitalist economy competition is what drives improvement. The ability to develop and produce more, cheaper. Kill competition by granting monopolies and you dont get more development, you get less. Take away competetive pressure and companies grow fat and inefficient, just like state-run monopolies. The inefficiencies drive costs and lead to massive wasted resources. Remember, not even 20% of the income of the pharmcorps is spent on R&D. They spend twice what they spend on R&D on marketing and administration.
The unfortunate economics of monopolies means that it will only get worse; pricing in monopoly fields isnt driven by competition, it's driven by available capital and the cost at which people will do without instead. The more money available in the insurance systems, the more money the pharmcorps will charge. And promptly spend on marketing, convincing doctors to prescribe patented headache pills, instead of generics.
"in turn we will sacrafice the insentive"
A monopoly is an extremely inappropriate incentive in a free market, and the likelyhood is it does more damage than good. A vast amount of the medical research is already funded by various states, and something along the lines of granting per-use payments, government contracting for development or tax breaks for patents would be far more in line with other extra incentives in the free market.
Unfortunately, while the subdued lighting is 'fine' there are many indications that it isn't exactly healthy. It might be ok if you're spending a lot of time outdoors, but if you're an indoors geek, you'd probably be better off with far stronger daylight equivalent lighting. And as these lights are not particularly energy efficient compared to CF, their utility might be limited.
"Why pay for R&D when you can simply wait around to piggyback off of someone else's hard work?"
Which company would you invest in? The one spending money doing R&D, or the one sitting on their arse always being one step after the competition? If Microsoft said 'meh, we're gonna quit developing and just sell copies of FreeBSD', would you invest in them? If Redhat said 'screw this, we'll just copy Mandriva', would you think they had a bright future?
R&D always gives an advantage in itself.
"This is why we have intellectual property laws."
No, that's the propaganda reason we have intellectual property laws. The actual reason we have intellectual property laws is that several hundred years ago some royalty realized they could further tax the population and curry favours from merchants by granting the merchants monopolies.
However, while a certain amount of R&D always has been and always will be done for its own value and the first-player advantage, we may still want to increase the rewards for R&D to further increase the rate. That's a straightforward subsidy problem, nothing new and nothing strange for any government. But government support for specific sectors and specific acts by granting monopolies is one of the absolutely worst ways to generate such rewards and it creates so much economic collateral damage you'd have to go to state-run former Soviet factories to see something similar.
"Would that be ok, if I signed no agreement that they keep my information private?"
:).
That's really mainly a security question; you should probably design a public/private key system for that kind of secrets. It's rather beside the point anyway
"but things like entertainment are different."
To an extent, yes. There are however ways you can look at it that are more adapted to the normal economy if you step out of the IP mold.
For example, if you look at music as a performance art, writing new music becomes a competetive advantage. People will go watch a cover band, but I'd pay a lot more to see the original. If you change to that perspective, you suddenly also have a whole new capacity to solve supply/demand problems in the music industry; more artists could recieve income from basically doing cover performances and cover recordings, more fans could see desired music if/when the original band isnt touring everywhere, more musicians could take current music and make their own version of it, etc.
"They are undercutting by taking something that someone else spent a lot of money to produce and simply giving it out for a lower price."
Again, to some extent. The problem is that nobody is actually spending very much money creating the music, and it simply doesnt cost much to create music. Instead, a few major players are using their monopoly power over the music to leverage and recoup ROI from vast investments in marketing and merchandising.
Now, you're right that those investments would simply be undercut, and probably made impossible. However, I'd argue that those investments are not beneficial to the economy as a whole anyway, nor conductive to the actual creation of the art.
Writing, recording and playing music is within the economic reach of pretty much anyone holding a job. The music industry is rife with examples of musicians living off _unprotected_ music; look at the players of classical music. The capacity for worldwide distribution and marketing is _also_ available for anyone holding a job these days.
For sure, paying radio stations to play them, paying for front placement in stores, printing and distributing posters worldwide, paying for music videos, paying for expensive exec habits, paying for round the clock tv-commercials, paying for expensive lobbying campaigns and paying for lawsuits against teenagers may not be within reach of any musician, but are those really investments we need to protect?
"In fact, copyright as it was when it was conceived, was supposed to be for the public's benefit."
Mmm, I used to think so too, but then I read up on the history. It's a very good propaganda line, and looking at the civil law extensions from the french revolution times it's even partly true.
The actual truth is, copyright as it was concieved, was a monopoly granted to the publisher and owner of the printing press by the crown in exchange for censorship control and/or monetary exchange. As the public eventually got very annoyed with this arrangement, and very angry with the monopolies at that point in time, the publishers gauged the situation as unlikely to end up in their favour and came up with and pushed for 'authors rights' instead, which was more politically sound. However, the publishers knew the authors could not afford their own presses, and would be forced to sign exclusive contracts for printing, and after those first 28 years the publishers would be free to print anyway. Which is pretty much similar to what we have today, with the difference being that the authors cant afford the marketing instead, in a market where consumer attention is becoming the scarce commodity, leading to the current situation where the public, the authors and the economy are getting the short end of the stick.
"That doesn't sound bad, but you are effectively limited in what you can create if you cannot recoup your costs."
Oh, I agree, but it's not as bad as it sounds; the costs for creation sink as well. Currently there w
"So if person A told person B all about your patterns, say bank account, PIN, Credit Card #"
You know, if you dont want your PIN spread around you should probably keep it to yourself.
"if a person works long and hard hours to produce something useful or that people enjoy, then it is ok for people to take what that person has done and not give him any sort of compensation for it"
Of course not. That person should be able to charge however much they wish. However, that does not mean they should be allowed to then prevent the purchaser from doing whatever they want with their newly purchased property.
"thus undercutting me and running me out of business, is that OK?"
That's the fundamental reason that the free market works; the creation of wealth through the ever increasing efficiency of production. So, yes, that's the way it's supposed to work. Unless you're opposed to or dont believe in competition or free market capitalism in general.
"If its OK, then why should I bother to develop widget A in the first place?"
Because it gives you a competetive advantage? Because it solves a particular problem you were having?
There are many reasons, but in the end it comes down to this; are we as a society satisfied with the rate of development we're getting without added incentives? If we're not satisfied with the rate we need to create a system that creates extra incentives for development. And if you start there you'll find that granting monopolies is one system that is extrordinarily inappropriate and creates such effects as slower adoption of new technology, creates legal overhead for any combination tech, sometimes even making it impossible to produce, creates lockin effects on the market, diverts resources from research into marketing, etc.
The IP system is in its essence a form of taxation/subsidy system, in the form of monopoly rent on certain items, comparable to other product taxes in economic effects. As for what the public gets for those hidden taxes, it has got to be the absolutely worst performing and undemocratic subsidy/corporate welfare scheme ever invented.
Ok, phrase it like this instead; intellectual monopolies should not be allowed.
"It's like stating all car repairs should be free!"
No, actually it's like stating anyone should be allowed to fix a car.
You're confusing the right to charge for your work with monopoly rights allowing a certain party to control what other people do with their property.
"he argues that there needs to be sufficient incentive for investment;"
:).
Yep, that's often the rationale for the current system. What that argument misses is that incentive does not necessarily equal monopoly, and the IP systems is pretty much the only place in our economy where we give them out as incentives (more commonly such incentives are in the form of tax-breaks or outright monetary compensation).
For an example alternative system, why dont patents simply pay a certain amount of public funds per use? Then there'd be an incentive for the patent office to hold a high quality, as they'd be responsible for the funds allocated to development incentives and there'd be political control over how much funds are allocted to development incentives.
There'd also be a builtin interest from the inventors and investors not to have too many patents granted in the system or they might get a smaller payment. There'd be no interest for companies to hide their use of, or avoid the use of, a certain patent as they're not the ones directly paying for it, thus minimizing litigation.
Anyways, like you said, it seems we're heading in similar directions, and feel free to use my comments anyway you want
Ah, I didnt disagree with you, I just pointed out that the whole terminology needs to be throughly changed for any sort of rational economic/political discussion.
The 'left'/'right'/'property' associations are bad, altho in non-US countries, the 'left' association may actually garner the same misdirected support as 'right' or 'property' do in the US. The point being that the entire terminology _has_ to go or it will be impossible to ever reach a constructive solution to the issues, for either side.
To solve the issues the debate needs to be reframed in the actual economical essence of the issues. For patents you could reframe it something like this:
Investment in innovation might need to be stimulated, therefore there may need to be an extra incentive in the form of higher ROI. Market freedom needs to be maintained to achieve the beneficial effects of market capitalism, therefore monopolies cannot be an acceptable form of incentive. Innovative and better products need to be adopted and integrated into the economy and production as fast as possible, therefore there should be no price premium on such products, which again means that monopoly rent is not an appropriate stimuli as it counters that goal. As research intensifies, cross-research-team integration becomes highly desireable and likely, which means legal barriers to integration must be avoided. Again, monopoly rights are counterproductive; to obtain the maximum economic and social benefit any manufacturer or researcher must be allowed to instantly integrate advances from other areas without a premium.
When you dont use the propaganda terms from either side the whole issue is much easier to rephrase in a way that makes it far easier to actually create a beneficial solution for all. Constructing incentives that fulfill the actual intents and purposes of such goals isnt impossible, it just remains impossible and enforces irreconcilable sides as long as the entire debate is phrased in the current terms.
The whole IP terminology is defective. Consider for example that as state enforced and state granted monopolies the concept of IP has little in common with free market economy, and even less with any form of 'property'. As a taxation system where the monopoly rent can be compared to a private taxation right on specific products, the IP concept is far from both left and right politics and really shows its roots; it's mostly comparable to some form of feudal economy system where nobles were given such monopoly rights or other taxation rights in exchange for supporting the crown.
Unfortunately, most of the players have an active interest in using such flawed terminology, as they would otherwise find it very difficult to obtain any serious support.
The usefulness of the comparison is, of course, to allow the reader to form a rational basis for the amount of risk, and thus form a rational opinion on what kind of response is appropriate.
If you're not afraid to go out in traffic every day, you have no particular reason to hold a larger amount of irrational fear for something less likely to kill you, nor should politicians or media be spending more time and resources on such things.
China's just playing catchup; when they reach technological parity and surpass the US they'll join the enforcement team and make the current offshoring look like paradise. Imagine the glee with which the future patent holders will suck every drop of available capital out of our insurance systems.
Intellectual property is in its actual essence a corporate taxation and welfare system without borders. It's rather mindboggling to see elected politicians handing out rights to (foreign) entities to basically tax buisnesses and citizens in the various countries, and to do it without demanding anything in return.
"Nobody took AMD seriously until AMD64;"
Actually, most computer knowledgable people I know started taking AMD seriously around the time when Intel was going RAMBUS and messed around changing I dont know how many slots and sockets in a few years. At that point Intel had created a number of compelling reasons for people building their own systems to actually avoid Intel.
Those things were really the beginning of where Intel might still be leading, but a whole lot of people werent following in that direction.
'If someone came to you and said, "You're a moron, so I'm going to start telling you what's true," don't you think you'd be a little upset?'
Hell, no. If they could explain it throughly and provide reasonable evidence in support for their truth I'd be more than happy to listen.
Most of the time it's a pain to figure out and research everything yourself, so when you're served accurate facts on a platter it's a treat.
If someone put a gun to your head you could stand on that broken leg. That doesnt make it any less broken, or less painful to do so.
You're mixing up symptoms with illnesses, you're confusing preferences with brain chemistry, and you're attempting to merge many different viewpoints into a single definition.
The symptoms of some illnesses can be covered up, you can suppress a sneeze, you can ignore pain, you can put a smile on your face. That doesnt change the fact that a more through medical examination will reveal low serotonin levels, stress hormones near panic state thresholds or a fracture in your leg. From a medical point of view, they're all specific states of physiology, largely out of the patients control.
You're confusing that with the individual experience of illness. As many physiological states may be less than perfect, but still not entirely debilitating, an individual can choose to seek relief, depending on wether or not they can or cannot, want or will not live with the symptoms, wether the symptoms are manageable, get better or worse. That where the choice comes in.
On top of that you attempt to confuse it with the social point of view, which is the interaction between the individual experience of the physiological state, how it affects their ability to function in society, and how societys perception of the state affects the individuals experience and ablity to function in society.
Society can affect the individuals perception of their physiological state, and that is where we should strive to limit any undue negative influence. However, once there is a specific physiological state that causes an individual a certain amount of pain or functional difficulty, then it falls within the definition of what we commonly call 'illness'.
... ads are obsolete.
With the advent of easy price comparisons on the net ads simply arent useful anymore, and instead they're just a drain on the market, increasing costs needlessly.
"If I remember correctly... MD never took off in the US because they never allowed it to be used as a digital storage medium."
Indeed. That's pretty much what drives the market today; consumer PC interoperability.
What the studios want to publish on is irrelevant. HD isnt enough of a compelling advantage over regular DVD to drive the format adoption; the data storage capacity of the new formats is. The first to approach DVD level price/MB with no hassles will win this round easily.