Truly. They should create absolutely marvellous queues where terrorists can blow up bombs and get a whole lot more people killed.
"It just has to be perceived as responsive."
Indeed. Of course, the money could have been spent on things that might actually save some lives, like measures to prevent traffic accidents or healthcare. Which means spending the money on useless security junk actually costs people lives instead.
"It's about the perception of security."
Yep. Sticking a 10 cent blinking diode device in the hand of security guards and calling it a 'bomb detector' would do just as well. Heck, stage a few very public and publicised incidents where an actor is caught by such a device emitting a beep and even a whole bunch of the terrorists would think they couldnt get away with carrying around explosives.
No, _rewarding_ things that are innovative and developed at a great expense is a good thing.
Monopolies are always bad things.
Therefore, patents are among the very worst ways possible to sometimes, in very few cases, achieve a good thing.
The whole concept needs to be rethought from scratch, we may need methods to further reward investment in innovation, but patents are rapidly proving to be entirely inappropriate.
Most products have traceability, branding or not. Traceability is usually an issue of food regulations.
"I don't make the connection, trademark is IP law which gives exclusive use of a symbol in a particular industry."
It's when it's combined with real exclusivity that the serious damage surfaces; Apple as a trademark, by itself creates only some damage, because people can get equivalent products, but Apple preventing the workalikes in the Apple clone business arguably creates more damage.
Intel preventing vendors from selling AMD chips in exclusive deals is similar. Coke and/or Pepsi-only deals are the same.
"What makes a desired good though? The difference between $20 golf club vs a $400 golf club is design and marketing, the actual production issue is negligable."
As long as there are no artificial barriers of exclusivity, the design and marketing can certainly be seen as desired goods. As long as the design and marketing can sell themselves on their own value it's acceptable. It's when you're forced to pay for the marketing or not buy at all that you get runaway costs associated with marketing wars.
"Would either side want to go to a less efficient production with inferior goods?"
Indeed, but the design is only the oil to the machinery. The end consumers do not buy the designs, they buy the finished product.
"Each side must continue using competitive advantage and trade for existing goods, but continue to innovate and diversify in other areas."
Yes, trade for goods, which again moves us back to the fundamental creation of wealth.
"For example, the design only village better continue making better designs, or even start production of goods that could not be as efficiently made in the other village."
The design-only village _has_ to start production of goods, or it will find its resources slowly but surely depleted as it pays for its desired goods, while not being able to sell for as much.
"But think about that, if the higher value items are reproducable at zero cost, what sense does it make to go into the manufacturing of such items?"
Exactly! We cant base our economy on the artificial scarcity of IP. The evolution of design and ideas is driven by constantly making production cheaper. The plow was invented to make plowing fields easier, the wheel was invented to make transporting goods easier, the industrial robot was invented to make manufacturing easier. Every design fulfills a need, and every need is driven by something.
"The same arguement was made for robot replacements of people working on automobiles."
Partly. I dont necessarily assume it's a bad thing; the automated creation of wealth leads to more wealth for everyone. As long as we use it to our advantage as a society, it's a great thing.
"The problem with that arguement is the assumption that new layers of jobs aren't created."
Well, not really, new jobs arent a necessity. The change from plowing fields 16 hours a day to working in factories 8 hours per day may have killed a few jobs permanently... as long as there's an equitable arrangement of the division of labour we can cut the manhours worked and gain as a whole from it.
And do note that the unemployment statistics are very very iffy; even if jobs disappear and are not replaced it is unlikely we'll see that until there's a real disaster situation in the social systems.
"If small businesses can get core software cheaply, they'll spend additional money having it tailored to their own needs."
Indeed. A very good demonstration of my idea of the constant existence and motivation of production/productivity-driven improvement:).
"Just from a "fairness" point, if somebody creates something amazing, shouldn't they have a chance to capitalize on it?"
Actually, I think they should automatically get capitalized. If someone creates something amazing, should they not be rewarded we
"I always thought this measure was just like the US one that allows the crazy patents."
It is. The trouble is that the pro-SW patent lobbyist claim to not want SW patents, as saying they want them would make their position hopeless. The major proponents have been linked time after time with organisations that have _no_ interest outside software or business method patents.
So instead they claim they dont want software patents, then turn around and lobby against any changes that would ban software patents. If, at any time, they're confronted on this inconsistency they ignore, avoid the question or divert the subject.
"Can someone tell me if I'm missing something?"
Indeed, yes, you are.
"If so, maybe it is time to say that this measure is okay."
And there you have the reason. The exact target response the obfuscation is intended to create.
It's hard to tell the difference, even for people who've followed the debate for years on end, so it's no wonder that people fall for it.
Indeed it isnt. Should the gap ever threaten to increase beyond ten percent a fair number can expect getting reclassified as unsuitable for work, mandatory employed in highway cleaning or otherwise.
The 'unemployment rate' number must be the most fudged statistic in the history of statistics, and no politician can afford to let it pass ten percent.
"the original 17 year (right?) patent limit is just too long"
The problem is more insidious than that. As long as there is no connection between patent duration, investment cost, time to develop and time to generate ROI, patents encourage investment in low or zero-cost 'inventions'. The value of the patent becomes only the monopoly, the costs to obtain the monopoly detract from ROI, and you end up with patented inventions that would have been invented even with only time-to-market incentive, as those are the most profitable and least-risk investments, with or without patents.
"I am not anti-patent"
I have become anti-patent. Now, dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-ROI, but I consider patents to fail utterly at accomplishing their intented goal, and as such they should be entirely replaced with a completely different system that rewards actual investment in R&D and risk taking.
Sorry it's taken a while to respond. Interesting discussion by the way, it's rare to find people who actually appear to want to think these issues through:).
"The negative effects of granting a monopoly to a specific name/symbol for use in trade is outweighed by the positive aspects of accountability."
To an extent, yes. Currently, too much resources are diverted into the name and symbol promotion, as opposed to accountability. For example, look at Coca-Colas introduction of Dasani bottled water in Britain. A supposedly very, from the perspective of trademark investments, accountable company introduces a product that is actually more or less dangerous to ones health? Yes, they'll lose some of the brand investment in Dasani, but apparently the supposed accountability doesnt even make them ensure they're selling non-toxic tapwater.
"So long as products can be differentiated there will always be an opportunity for marketing."
True, and as long as it serves a specific purpose and can stand on its own, it's acceptable (ie, people buy the marketed product because they like what the marketing gives them imagewise or otherwise). It's when it's combined with anti-competetive measures such as exclusive deals, IP law, etc, that the problem and real economic damage sets in.
"What is our engine of wealth creation? Used to be the engine was the laboring of the people, then it became the manufacturing of goods, now it's the design of goods."
The ever more efficient creation of desired goods. That is the fundamental engine of material wealth.
Play some mind-game simulations, create smaller economies, like villages and compete them against eachother as you assign people different tasks, and see where the actual wealth comes from.
See what happens if one village makes all the goods, and the other one only makes designs? You'd better hope the good-making village doesnt start making their own designs, or simply copying the design-villages designs, or the design-only village gets in deep trouble.
Yes, the design of goods is important, but it will never employ as many people as other fields did, simply because it's infinitely reproducible at zero cost. The rate of development there is mostly statistically tied to education and communication, ie, the free dessimination of ideas. We're slowly leaving the age of scarcity, but we still want to replace those jobs with new jobs in IP and service fields, but the reality is that mass employment in those fields is an artefact of resource waste, and they're just a diversion from the more fundamental changes that our technology and globalization has led to.
"How much time, is one year enough time for somebody to recover the investment costs? If not, nobody will make the investment. That's where patents come in, they assure a time period where there is an advantage so people will take the risks."
But patents arent related to investment costs. They make it vastly more profitable to invest in small-investment-cost ideas, but much more risky to invest in large-investment-cost ideas. You get twenty years for an hours brainstorming, as well as a decades backbreaking work. The crazy stuff is still more risky and less profitable than the safe stuff.
"You need some sort of encouragement to put resources towards the crazy stuff, which usually doesn't work, but once in awhile you get a profound breakthrough that changes things completely."
Yes, definitely. This is what we need to have in mind when redesigning the system to better fulfill that need.
If you were designing an economic model to reward risky investments, how would you do it? Riskier investments should reap larger returns than safer investments, larger investments should return more than smaller investments, R&D should be the only thing rewarded, not competition prevention, etc.
Patents fulfill the required design very badly, imo, but I'd be perfectly open to some alternate way to create ROI incentive. Perhaps so
"These lawsuits are spiraling out of control and they destroy huge amounts of investment money and invester confidence"
So stop skirting the lines of anticompetitive behaviour. Investment money and investor confidence is damaged through the actions of the corporation when it takes risks by breaking the law.
"yet the uneducated masses think they are a good thing."
As you apparently dont even comprehend Adam Smiths basic fundamentals of capitalism, nor the role of government in the free market, I think you should think twice before calling the masses uneducated.
"the result is less diverse media that has to appeal to a larger common denominator."
The result of monopoly power is less diverse media; profits are increased by pushing minor players out and catering mass marketing to lowest common denominator (as prices in any monopoly are always at the ceiling of what the market can bear they cannot generate more profits by selling a larger number of products, instead they must crowd out the smaller competition).
This cultural impoverishment is a direct result of the monopoly power derived from copyright. As copyright no longer leads to the desireable outcome of increased production of the desired goods, any allocation of funds into different sectors of the economy is a net gain for society as a whole.
"So STFU and buy more, which will cause more to be brought over, and the price to drop."
Take a look at every intellectual monopoly protected industry out there. Prices have never dropped when demand has increased, because price in those industries is _not_ tied to production costs. Every monopoly industry has a price tied to the highest cost of what the market can bear. That means, as demand and available capital increases prices _rise_.
Prices only drop when you have competition, and copyright on non-interchangable goods means you never have competition.
Of course, the money saved by the copyright infringers probably goes to consume other products, and probably products from some more competetive industry. Those purchases would probably also be taxed, and even better, they would quite likely employ more local people per spent unit of currency and create more wealth as almost every production chain is more efficient than the intellectual monopoly industries.
So, as a whole, society quite probably gains from piracy.
No. Your desire for exclusivity raises the bar for competition, prevents cheaper and/or better products from reaching the consumers, and as such it damages the free market.
The end result of all anti-competetive action is a wealth-loss for society as a whole, and as such that type of action cannot be tolerated.
From a macroeconomic perspective there's no difference between a chipmaker extracting monopoly premiums by preventing competition and a glazer hiring a bunch of teenagers to smash up the windows on the city hall. It may be good business for the producer, but the rest of us are the ones who get to pay.
"So who would ensure this quality control, some monopoly company, some bloated goverment agency?"
Ugh, please no. Trademarks are tricky. Their damage is mostly in the nature of their diversionary incentive, but as they dont prevent competition or the production of equivalent products it's much harder to find a good design that keeps the positive aspects and reduces the negative ones.
The best way would probably be to leave them alone and simply run some form of consumer database tracking product equivalence. That would remove part of the incentive to overmarket, as well as discourage simple markup of generic products, and force the actual value of the mark to be concentrated into the good aspects.
"So you are all for the Walmart type displacement of mom & pop shops? It provides alot more efficiency."
For? Against?
I'm for a free market, believing that it is the best way we have to create material wealth for all. As such, I'd be a hypocrite to advocate protectionism just because I sympathise with someones situation.
Yes, if Walmart competes fairly and actually can deliver products to consumers for a lower cost than the mom & pop shops, then that's perhaps sad for those moms and pops, but it's less sad for all the other moms and pops who get to keep their jobs because they dont need a raise, thus causing outsourcing, just to afford food. If one part in the economic chain is less efficient than it should be it affects us all.
"Marketing isn't just ads, marketing is the communication process between customers and suppliers."
Indeed, and it's not all bad. The facilitation you're talking about is one of the good things with it. It's the overmarketing that is bad.
"Because the use of trademarks (or similar marking) for the past 4000+ years, and patents for 200+ years isn't really "long run"?"
Oh, I'm sure there's been a lot of damage caused from it, but in general we dont tend to notice it as wealth is partly a comparative factor. Like I said somewhere else, if there were no outside world, the Soviet Union would have made fantastic economic and scientific progress and communism would have been regarded as an economic epitome. There was progress. There just wasnt _as much_ progress as there could be.
But what we're experiencing now, unlike what we've done in the past, is that our engine of wealth creation is being successively moved out from our economy, while we keep the cost aggregators. That is a new and much more serious situation. When we dont produce the actual wealth anymore, nor produce tradeable wealth, but still pay for it we are going to run into some entirely new and much more serious problems.
"Of course, we use the products we import for more value added activities."
Yep, and as long as we do that, it's fine. But that's been changing you know...
"You give a bad example, because the cost to create air is 0, the cost to create new ideas can be millions or even billions of dollars."
The cost doesnt really matter for the example. While it's easy to make up an actual cost for the air creation (you could say that it's the trees making the air, and owning trees isnt free), the macroeconomic problem stems from all the people employed doing things that arent creating any actual desireable wealth. It doesnt matter if it's inefficient government monopolies paid for by taxes, or private industry protected from competition; the economic damage is caused by the population of the economy having to pay for the overhead.
Sometimes this is an acceptable tradeoff because we, as a society, see other benefits.
At other times, like employing 200K air counters when we dont gain any actual wealth as a society by counting breaths, 200k farmhands when we could have a few tractors do the same job, 200k manual laborers in a factory when a few robots could be doing the job, or 200k pharmaceutical marketers when we could have a database on drug efficiency data, the actual benefit is more dubious.
"Without trademarks the consumer has no clue what they are getting."
So, what you want is actually a form of quality control, guaranteeing that a certain product fulfills certain criteria. You cant call it Coke unless it tastes a certain way and contains certain ingredients.
Still no necessity for monopoly.
"How do you define undesired work?"
Anything with negative value to the consumer. Would you pay to watch ads? Marketing is by definition a negative-value product for the consumer (and is even used to pay for positive value products!). It cannot survive on its own merits without attaching itself to (preferably protected) desired products.
"Music, art, going to a ball game do not generate wealth. They are things we enjoy, but long term they do not improve society. However, those things are still important to the identity of a society."
Any product which an end consumer is willing to part with his own resources to obtain improves the material wealth of society. Music, art and ballgames are perfectly definable as wealth.
However, anything which unduly increases the price of the desired product to the consumer instead _decreases_ wealth of society, as it prevents the consumer from obtaining more of the desired products, and as it represents resources spent on not producing the actual desired goods.
"I wasn't aware of the western shoe monopoly. I can go to the store and get $5 shoes. I also have the choice to buy $150 shoes."
Indeed. The main problem with that is the systemic failure of resource dilution; we do indeed have that choice, but our economy will in the long run be damaged because resource waste is encouraged.
Eventually the trade balance will even things out, currency will float and the resource wasting economy will have comparatively lost that amount of wealth, absolute-value wages will fall until they cannot sustain the waste and they will be forced to adapt.
We always have the choice to allow market inefficiencies for various purposes, but in the long run this comes with a price attached that may not be immediately obvious.
For an vastly simplified example, if you have two countries, one with free air and one with owned air, but otherwise pretty much exactly the same. The country with owned air employs 200K workers in the air industry, counting breaths and charging the rest of the population for that. The other country employs 100k people in other industrial production, and has 100k people unemployed.
The air counting country might have a higher GDP and higher employment rate as the air counting industry is increasing cashflow through the economy, but which country would actually be creating more material wealth, and what countrys consumer would be able to spend more of their earned wealth on desired goods? In the long run, which countrys population would come out ahead?
Even if you define breating as 'optional but cool' it doesnt really change the macroeconomic effects of the resource diversion in the example.
"It's better those patented drugs cost a few hundred bucks extra than never have them at all. Sure maybe the drug will come out of the university some time in the future, how long would that take?"
But now we pay a few hundred bucks extra _and_ never have them at all. The resources dont go to the research. That's the whole problem. We're already spending more than five times the money that goes to research. The 80 percent of the patent premium that does not go to research is money that could go to research if the system was changed. It represents money that our society has agreed to pay to accomplish research that is wasted.
"Innovation goes beyond efficiency. For the big breakthroughs to occur capital has to be devoted at exploring disruptive technologies. If the only profit is making things more efficiently, then we won't getter better things, just cheaper."
Making things better is in itself an improvement in efficiency that gives you a competetive edge.
"Trademarks are a great example of the positive effects of IP law. It enables the consumer to easily identify the maker of a product by using a specific symbol."
Again, that's the propaganda, not the practice. In reality, it enables the owner of the trademark to label generic goods and extort a premium from the market. It's not like the trademark owners are actually the ones making the products, and it hasnt been that way for a long long time.
If you want a quality certifications, then we should be talking about quality certifications. There is nothing in that goal that require monopoly rights, or that is even accomplished by monopoly rights. Again, look at what generates (any desired form of) wealth for society as a whole. Anything that diverts resources from that impoverishes us by encouraging undesired work.
Is it any wonder western workers cant compete when they are tricked into paying $150 for shoes that cost $5 to produce?
"What evidence? Look at drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, acetominophin."
But you can still buy the cheaper versions, which means that unlike patented drugs, the brand labels cost a few bucks extra, rather than a few hundred bucks extra.
"Maybe you mean medicaid/medicare. That is an entirely different can of worms where you have direct goverment involvement in capping prices."
No, I mean the total available amount of resources for medicine. The difference between a monopoly market and a free market is that in a monopoly market prices rise to the pain point of what the market can bear, while in a free market, price fall until they reach the most efficient available production.
The pain point for medicines is when the taxed and/or insured patients are no longer willing to pay higher taxes and/or premiums. That sets the total resource pool to a limited amount of money, and because of the effects of monopolies, the costs will always grow to fill any surplus.
Monopoly affected markets always have a cap where there simply isnt any more free capital to spend for a specific purpose; that's what you see in pharms, and that's what you see in music. That's why you rarely see any prices falling in those markets, even if production becomes cheaper.
"Moving to a sponsorship type model has alot of problems."
Not necessarily a sponsorship model, what I suggested was retaining exclusive rights for the creators, but not allowing the monopoly effects to transfer and protect other work. The creator team of a new medicine could sell their product to multiple generics, thus only allowing the monopoly incentive to protect and generate ROI on the actual research.
"While a world of perfect competition may sound great, it does not encourage innovation. Perfect competition gives you an economic profit of 0."
Perfectly _balanced_ competition where there is no room for improvement gives you an economic profit of 0.
As long as there are inefficiencies in the market striving to improve yourself and your company so you'll always be slightly more efficient than your competition will give you profit. That's the entire idea of the free market. Decreasing that competetive pressure by extending the time a single improvement will serve to give you profit will only ensure that there is less incentive to improve yourself. Organizations are slackers by nature, and investors are risk averse. They dont want to improve themselves, it's hard work, and they want money for nothing.
The competetive pressure of constant improvement will work and generate profits for those who try hard to be better and faster, all the way until the worlds entire production chains are completely automated and instantaneous, at which point, you're right, profit will be zero, but the amount of labour required will also be zero, room for improvement will be zero and prices will have reached zero.
Then we can sortof, you know, take a long vacation and pat ourselves on the back for being so clever or something.
And, of course, we wont reach that point for a long time, if ever. We may however reach a point where the efficient wealth generation allows us to live far cushier lives if we werent wasting so many resources.
"Those resources are diverted from production capacity to IP generation."
Would that it were that way, because then it would be rational. As a whole, the exclusivity effects of the incentives encourage more diversion into unproductive areas than into research (for the extreme, look at trademarks).
"I would argue we might have cheaper cars, however, without a specialized workforce of people dedicated to being creative, they wouldn't be better."
Oh, I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing that IP isnt very effective at accomplishing that, or that it might even be counterproductive.
"And without IP protections it would be even more lopsided."
One could think so, but as far as I can tell, empirical evidence indicates otherwise.
"Why invest in any research if the next company over can just take your product, out spend you on the marketing and manufacturing front and run you out of business."
Take a look at the generics production; typically they spend far less on marketing than the protected pharms. And their production tends to be cheaper.
Unfortunately, the monopoly effects not only protect investment in R&D, they're a force-multiplier for investments in marketing (as you cant be undercut by a non-marketing competitor), and they remove competetive pressure for production improvement. (And do note, we're talking about pharaceuticals for the moment; the consumers should be pretty darn sold on your products as is, or we might have to do some research on wether drug commercials actually _cause_ diseases...;)
And for the absolutely worst effects, as the available resources for pharmaceutical spending is limited by the fixed or slowly increasing size budget of social security systems, producing _more_ drugs, where each drug needs spending on R&D and advertising, means _lower_ ROI. You get a system incentive to research _fewer_ drugs. And at the same time, as the total pool of economic resources is limited, the marketing wars decrease the part that should be available to R&D.
You cant look at it like 'IP or nothing', you have to take a wider approach. For (a really bad) example (that I'm not advocating), we could take what we're currently spending on pharmaceuticals, give that money to state-run university research, license the research results to generic producers and let them fight it out in the market and _we'd be quadrupling our societys research spending_, getting the ability to hire _four times as many researchers_.
Now, state run programs tend to, well, suck, due to mainly the same reasons IP protected programs suck. They're not subjected to competetive pressure, thus end up wasting resources like there was no tomorrow.
However, there are better alternatives; tying the monopoly rights to the R&D units, for one, denying the ability to sell exclusivity (like we dont allow people to sell themselves into slavery, any contract stipulating exclusive rights to IP would be invalid). That way the incentive for R&D remains in the investment market, while sales and production are forced to compete.
Like I said, you have to take a wider approach. IP limited capitalism beats totalitarian communism (and do note, we just _barely_ did that, and quite probably because the free markets we did have generated enough wealth to offset the resource waste of our own systems), but just barely beating totalitarian communism at resource efficiency isnt something that should make you feel warm and fuzzy about your economic prowess.
Can you even _imagine_ where we'd be today with a more efficient system? Can you imagine if the incentives that are lost today were directed into research and art? The number of people who could live on writing music, the number of people who could be working to cure diseases?
Right, me, Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism and two Nobel prize for Economy winning free-market capitalist supporters.
"Extremists". Sure.
I think you need to reevaluate your position a bit. And maybe study some economy instead of repeating corporate propaganda.
"It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have to seriously examine whether the award of a monopoly privilegie is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of riskbearing which investment in scientific research involves." (F.A. Hayek: "Free" Enterprise and Competitive Order, 1947)
Yes, and if there was no world outside the Soviet Union you'd be thinking 'wow, how did they make all that progress in such a short period of time'.
Even if you win the special olympics you're still handicapped.
The primary correlations with innovation rate and technological advancement are education and communications infrastructure. (Patenting rates correlate better with divorce rates than they do with technological indicators, suggesting they're mostly an artefact of the legal system).
And, yes, I do believe we'd have better cars, planes and drugs with a system different from the patent system. It would depend on the industry, as patents are proportionally damaging to the extent that their monopoly effects divert resources from the primary production capacity of the industries. For example, look at the pharmaceuticals, where twice as much is spent on marketing and administration as is spent on research, largely due to monopoly protection.
As such, the effects are getting worse as more resources are diverted as the intellectual monopolies part of our economy grows. Prices remain high, while more people are employed in non-wealthproducing monopoly-protected jobs, and the engine of wealth is offshored.
"Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public."
Mmm, if I remember correctly, it sortof happened in Britain when people got really tired of the monopolies that James I granted. At the time they were used as a form of indirect taxation, where merchants were granted monopolies on products for money or support. These days it's money, support and 'jobs'.
It's much easier to trick people that way. If you were to suggest putting a 2000% VAT on music to pay for a state-supported music monopoly you'd get an outrage among conservatives, capitalists and free market supporters. But give the state-sponsored taxation rights to private interests, and call them 'property', and suddenly it's easy to confuse for some form capitalism.
The effects on the free market are pretty much the same either way. The consumers get to pay for vast economic waste, Adam Smith's free market 'invisible hand' is shoved into a bucket of cement and dumped into a river, and the wealth of society is depleted.
"Have you considered the possibility that the people who want software patents make really good arguments"
Actually, no. Free market economists from Adam Smith through Hayek and Friedman have expressed serious doubts about the effects of patents and intellectual monopolies. It's becoming obvious that the damage they cause to the market is simply far greater than the positive effects.
The diversion of economic resources from the fundamental wealth creating ever more efficient production of goods into negative value products like marketing and inefficiency due to monopoly effects is severely damaging the foundation of our societys wealth.
Intellectual monopolies like patents are to the competetiveness of our industries like five-year plan economy was to Soviet bed factories. Good protection from competition (see, no 3.6 million bullshit little bed factories), but frankly it's not very good for the wealth of nations.
On the other hand, unless you actually are a software company, used to selling products such as this, it's guaranteed to cost you even more to set up a professional organization around the product and then it will cost and cost and cost as part of your company is diverted from its core purpose to a whole new one.
If it's good enough to make money and enough of it, fork the unit into a new subsidiary company that gets to stand on its own, wether as opensource or proprietary software.
But if it isnt that good, forget it. Either decide it's not an area where you see a competetive advantage to keeping it for yourself, like you say, making it into a standard and spreading the costs around the industry, in which case you might as well opensource it, or decide it is a strategic product that you dont want to share and eat the costs yourself.
But half measures like selling it on the side isnt going to make any money, nor make any friends.
"The american motion picture and video industry alone directly employs 360,000 people"
Yep, and if we introduce breathing rights and give them to me I'll promise to employ another million. Of course, breating might cost a bit.
The number of people employed in non-wealth creating jobs is not an indication of the health of an economy.
Look at it this way, if China ignores IP laws that 'lucrative export market' is worth zero in trade balance. But I challange you to find a way to make DVD players without paying for the production.
Counting on other countries to implement the same economic damage that we are isnt a reliable way forward... it didnt work particularly well for the Soviets, and it wont work for us.
Slashdot Mirror
"Expensive scanners in tube stations? Brilliant!"
Truly. They should create absolutely marvellous queues where terrorists can blow up bombs and get a whole lot more people killed.
"It just has to be perceived as responsive."
Indeed. Of course, the money could have been spent on things that might actually save some lives, like measures to prevent traffic accidents or healthcare. Which means spending the money on useless security junk actually costs people lives instead.
"It's about the perception of security."
Yep. Sticking a 10 cent blinking diode device in the hand of security guards and calling it a 'bomb detector' would do just as well. Heck, stage a few very public and publicised incidents where an actor is caught by such a device emitting a beep and even a whole bunch of the terrorists would think they couldnt get away with carrying around explosives.
No, _rewarding_ things that are innovative and developed at a great expense is a good thing.
Monopolies are always bad things.
Therefore, patents are among the very worst ways possible to sometimes, in very few cases, achieve a good thing.
The whole concept needs to be rethought from scratch, we may need methods to further reward investment in innovation, but patents are rapidly proving to be entirely inappropriate.
"But branding allowed traceability."
:).
Most products have traceability, branding or not. Traceability is usually an issue of food regulations.
"I don't make the connection, trademark is IP law which gives exclusive use of a symbol in a particular industry."
It's when it's combined with real exclusivity that the serious damage surfaces; Apple as a trademark, by itself creates only some damage, because people can get equivalent products, but Apple preventing the workalikes in the Apple clone business arguably creates more damage.
Intel preventing vendors from selling AMD chips in exclusive deals is similar. Coke and/or Pepsi-only deals are the same.
"What makes a desired good though? The difference between $20 golf club vs a $400 golf club is design and marketing, the actual production issue is negligable."
As long as there are no artificial barriers of exclusivity, the design and marketing can certainly be seen as desired goods. As long as the design and marketing can sell themselves on their own value it's acceptable. It's when you're forced to pay for the marketing or not buy at all that you get runaway costs associated with marketing wars.
"Would either side want to go to a less efficient production with inferior goods?"
Indeed, but the design is only the oil to the machinery. The end consumers do not buy the designs, they buy the finished product.
"Each side must continue using competitive advantage and trade for existing goods, but continue to innovate and diversify in other areas."
Yes, trade for goods, which again moves us back to the fundamental creation of wealth.
"For example, the design only village better continue making better designs, or even start production of goods that could not be as efficiently made in the other village."
The design-only village _has_ to start production of goods, or it will find its resources slowly but surely depleted as it pays for its desired goods, while not being able to sell for as much.
"But think about that, if the higher value items are reproducable at zero cost, what sense does it make to go into the manufacturing of such items?"
Exactly! We cant base our economy on the artificial scarcity of IP. The evolution of design and ideas is driven by constantly making production cheaper. The plow was invented to make plowing fields easier, the wheel was invented to make transporting goods easier, the industrial robot was invented to make manufacturing easier. Every design fulfills a need, and every need is driven by something.
"The same arguement was made for robot replacements of people working on automobiles."
Partly. I dont necessarily assume it's a bad thing; the automated creation of wealth leads to more wealth for everyone. As long as we use it to our advantage as a society, it's a great thing.
"The problem with that arguement is the assumption that new layers of jobs aren't created."
Well, not really, new jobs arent a necessity. The change from plowing fields 16 hours a day to working in factories 8 hours per day may have killed a few jobs permanently... as long as there's an equitable arrangement of the division of labour we can cut the manhours worked and gain as a whole from it.
And do note that the unemployment statistics are very very iffy; even if jobs disappear and are not replaced it is unlikely we'll see that until there's a real disaster situation in the social systems.
"If small businesses can get core software cheaply, they'll spend additional money having it tailored to their own needs."
Indeed. A very good demonstration of my idea of the constant existence and motivation of production/productivity-driven improvement
"Just from a "fairness" point, if somebody creates something amazing, shouldn't they have a chance to capitalize on it?"
Actually, I think they should automatically get capitalized. If someone creates something amazing, should they not be rewarded we
"I always thought this measure was just like the US one that allows the crazy patents."
It is. The trouble is that the pro-SW patent lobbyist claim to not want SW patents, as saying they want them would make their position hopeless. The major proponents have been linked time after time with organisations that have _no_ interest outside software or business method patents.
So instead they claim they dont want software patents, then turn around and lobby against any changes that would ban software patents. If, at any time, they're confronted on this inconsistency they ignore, avoid the question or divert the subject.
"Can someone tell me if I'm missing something?"
Indeed, yes, you are.
"If so, maybe it is time to say that this measure is okay."
And there you have the reason. The exact target response the obfuscation is intended to create.
It's hard to tell the difference, even for people who've followed the debate for years on end, so it's no wonder that people fall for it.
"They do not have..."
Dont forget that they also do not have to pay for expensive intellectual property monopolies in everything from food and clothes to health insurance.
"This can't be a coincidence."
Indeed it isnt. Should the gap ever threaten to increase beyond ten percent a fair number can expect getting reclassified as unsuitable for work, mandatory employed in highway cleaning or otherwise.
The 'unemployment rate' number must be the most fudged statistic in the history of statistics, and no politician can afford to let it pass ten percent.
So, if I download it ten times, do I have ten legitimate copies I can spread to friends?
"the original 17 year (right?) patent limit is just too long"
The problem is more insidious than that. As long as there is no connection between patent duration, investment cost, time to develop and time to generate ROI, patents encourage investment in low or zero-cost 'inventions'. The value of the patent becomes only the monopoly, the costs to obtain the monopoly detract from ROI, and you end up with patented inventions that would have been invented even with only time-to-market incentive, as those are the most profitable and least-risk investments, with or without patents.
"I am not anti-patent"
I have become anti-patent. Now, dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-ROI, but I consider patents to fail utterly at accomplishing their intented goal, and as such they should be entirely replaced with a completely different system that rewards actual investment in R&D and risk taking.
Sorry it's taken a while to respond. Interesting discussion by the way, it's rare to find people who actually appear to want to think these issues through :).
"The negative effects of granting a monopoly to a specific name/symbol for use in trade is outweighed by the positive aspects of accountability."
To an extent, yes. Currently, too much resources are diverted into the name and symbol promotion, as opposed to accountability. For example, look at Coca-Colas introduction of Dasani bottled water in Britain. A supposedly very, from the perspective of trademark investments, accountable company introduces a product that is actually more or less dangerous to ones health? Yes, they'll lose some of the brand investment in Dasani, but apparently the supposed accountability doesnt even make them ensure they're selling non-toxic tapwater.
"So long as products can be differentiated there will always be an opportunity for marketing."
True, and as long as it serves a specific purpose and can stand on its own, it's acceptable (ie, people buy the marketed product because they like what the marketing gives them imagewise or otherwise). It's when it's combined with anti-competetive measures such as exclusive deals, IP law, etc, that the problem and real economic damage sets in.
"What is our engine of wealth creation? Used to be the engine was the laboring of the people, then it became the manufacturing of goods, now it's the design of goods."
The ever more efficient creation of desired goods. That is the fundamental engine of material wealth.
Play some mind-game simulations, create smaller economies, like villages and compete them against eachother as you assign people different tasks, and see where the actual wealth comes from.
See what happens if one village makes all the goods, and the other one only makes designs? You'd better hope the good-making village doesnt start making their own designs, or simply copying the design-villages designs, or the design-only village gets in deep trouble.
Yes, the design of goods is important, but it will never employ as many people as other fields did, simply because it's infinitely reproducible at zero cost. The rate of development there is mostly statistically tied to education and communication, ie, the free dessimination of ideas. We're slowly leaving the age of scarcity, but we still want to replace those jobs with new jobs in IP and service fields, but the reality is that mass employment in those fields is an artefact of resource waste, and they're just a diversion from the more fundamental changes that our technology and globalization has led to.
"How much time, is one year enough time for somebody to recover the investment costs? If not, nobody will make the investment. That's where patents come in, they assure a time period where there is an advantage so people will take the risks."
But patents arent related to investment costs. They make it vastly more profitable to invest in small-investment-cost ideas, but much more risky to invest in large-investment-cost ideas. You get twenty years for an hours brainstorming, as well as a decades backbreaking work. The crazy stuff is still more risky and less profitable than the safe stuff.
"You need some sort of encouragement to put resources towards the crazy stuff, which usually doesn't work, but once in awhile you get a profound breakthrough that changes things completely."
Yes, definitely. This is what we need to have in mind when redesigning the system to better fulfill that need.
If you were designing an economic model to reward risky investments, how would you do it? Riskier investments should reap larger returns than safer investments, larger investments should return more than smaller investments, R&D should be the only thing rewarded, not competition prevention, etc.
Patents fulfill the required design very badly, imo, but I'd be perfectly open to some alternate way to create ROI incentive. Perhaps so
"These lawsuits are spiraling out of control and they destroy huge amounts of investment money and invester confidence"
So stop skirting the lines of anticompetitive behaviour. Investment money and investor confidence is damaged through the actions of the corporation when it takes risks by breaking the law.
"yet the uneducated masses think they are a good thing."
As you apparently dont even comprehend Adam Smiths basic fundamentals of capitalism, nor the role of government in the free market, I think you should think twice before calling the masses uneducated.
"the result is less diverse media that has to appeal to a larger common denominator."
The result of monopoly power is less diverse media; profits are increased by pushing minor players out and catering mass marketing to lowest common denominator (as prices in any monopoly are always at the ceiling of what the market can bear they cannot generate more profits by selling a larger number of products, instead they must crowd out the smaller competition).
This cultural impoverishment is a direct result of the monopoly power derived from copyright. As copyright no longer leads to the desireable outcome of increased production of the desired goods, any allocation of funds into different sectors of the economy is a net gain for society as a whole.
"So STFU and buy more, which will cause more to be brought over, and the price to drop."
Take a look at every intellectual monopoly protected industry out there. Prices have never dropped when demand has increased, because price in those industries is _not_ tied to production costs. Every monopoly industry has a price tied to the highest cost of what the market can bear. That means, as demand and available capital increases prices _rise_.
Prices only drop when you have competition, and copyright on non-interchangable goods means you never have competition.
Of course, the money saved by the copyright infringers probably goes to consume other products, and probably products from some more competetive industry. Those purchases would probably also be taxed, and even better, they would quite likely employ more local people per spent unit of currency and create more wealth as almost every production chain is more efficient than the intellectual monopoly industries.
So, as a whole, society quite probably gains from piracy.
No. Your desire for exclusivity raises the bar for competition, prevents cheaper and/or better products from reaching the consumers, and as such it damages the free market.
The end result of all anti-competetive action is a wealth-loss for society as a whole, and as such that type of action cannot be tolerated.
From a macroeconomic perspective there's no difference between a chipmaker extracting monopoly premiums by preventing competition and a glazer hiring a bunch of teenagers to smash up the windows on the city hall. It may be good business for the producer, but the rest of us are the ones who get to pay.
"So who would ensure this quality control, some monopoly company, some bloated goverment agency?"
Ugh, please no. Trademarks are tricky. Their damage is mostly in the nature of their diversionary incentive, but as they dont prevent competition or the production of equivalent products it's much harder to find a good design that keeps the positive aspects and reduces the negative ones.
The best way would probably be to leave them alone and simply run some form of consumer database tracking product equivalence. That would remove part of the incentive to overmarket, as well as discourage simple markup of generic products, and force the actual value of the mark to be concentrated into the good aspects.
"So you are all for the Walmart type displacement of mom & pop shops? It provides alot more efficiency."
For? Against?
I'm for a free market, believing that it is the best way we have to create material wealth for all. As such, I'd be a hypocrite to advocate protectionism just because I sympathise with someones situation.
Yes, if Walmart competes fairly and actually can deliver products to consumers for a lower cost than the mom & pop shops, then that's perhaps sad for those moms and pops, but it's less sad for all the other moms and pops who get to keep their jobs because they dont need a raise, thus causing outsourcing, just to afford food. If one part in the economic chain is less efficient than it should be it affects us all.
"Marketing isn't just ads, marketing is the communication process between customers and suppliers."
Indeed, and it's not all bad. The facilitation you're talking about is one of the good things with it. It's the overmarketing that is bad.
"Because the use of trademarks (or similar marking) for the past 4000+ years, and patents for 200+ years isn't really "long run"?"
Oh, I'm sure there's been a lot of damage caused from it, but in general we dont tend to notice it as wealth is partly a comparative factor. Like I said somewhere else, if there were no outside world, the Soviet Union would have made fantastic economic and scientific progress and communism would have been regarded as an economic epitome. There was progress. There just wasnt _as much_ progress as there could be.
But what we're experiencing now, unlike what we've done in the past, is that our engine of wealth creation is being successively moved out from our economy, while we keep the cost aggregators. That is a new and much more serious situation. When we dont produce the actual wealth anymore, nor produce tradeable wealth, but still pay for it we are going to run into some entirely new and much more serious problems.
"Of course, we use the products we import for more value added activities."
Yep, and as long as we do that, it's fine. But that's been changing you know...
"You give a bad example, because the cost to create air is 0, the cost to create new ideas can be millions or even billions of dollars."
The cost doesnt really matter for the example. While it's easy to make up an actual cost for the air creation (you could say that it's the trees making the air, and owning trees isnt free), the macroeconomic problem stems from all the people employed doing things that arent creating any actual desireable wealth. It doesnt matter if it's inefficient government monopolies paid for by taxes, or private industry protected from competition; the economic damage is caused by the population of the economy having to pay for the overhead.
Sometimes this is an acceptable tradeoff because we, as a society, see other benefits.
At other times, like employing 200K air counters when we dont gain any actual wealth as a society by counting breaths, 200k farmhands when we could have a few tractors do the same job, 200k manual laborers in a factory when a few robots could be doing the job, or 200k pharmaceutical marketers when we could have a database on drug efficiency data, the actual benefit is more dubious.
"Unions can create temporary bubbles where you get higher pay than you deserve, but ultimately it hurts you."
Oh, wait, that's the same as intellectual property.
"Europe is choosing "no job" every day."
Seems like pretty much everyone does that. Nobody wants to play by free market rules, neither the unions, nor investors nor the corporations.
Competition is such a bitch, and everyone tries to get the politicians to protect them from it.
"Without trademarks the consumer has no clue what they are getting."
So, what you want is actually a form of quality control, guaranteeing that a certain product fulfills certain criteria. You cant call it Coke unless it tastes a certain way and contains certain ingredients.
Still no necessity for monopoly.
"How do you define undesired work?"
Anything with negative value to the consumer. Would you pay to watch ads? Marketing is by definition a negative-value product for the consumer (and is even used to pay for positive value products!). It cannot survive on its own merits without attaching itself to (preferably protected) desired products.
"Music, art, going to a ball game do not generate wealth. They are things we enjoy, but long term they do not improve society. However, those things are still important to the identity of a society."
Any product which an end consumer is willing to part with his own resources to obtain improves the material wealth of society. Music, art and ballgames are perfectly definable as wealth.
However, anything which unduly increases the price of the desired product to the consumer instead _decreases_ wealth of society, as it prevents the consumer from obtaining more of the desired products, and as it represents resources spent on not producing the actual desired goods.
"I wasn't aware of the western shoe monopoly. I can go to the store and get $5 shoes. I also have the choice to buy $150 shoes."
Indeed. The main problem with that is the systemic failure of resource dilution; we do indeed have that choice, but our economy will in the long run be damaged because resource waste is encouraged.
Eventually the trade balance will even things out, currency will float and the resource wasting economy will have comparatively lost that amount of wealth, absolute-value wages will fall until they cannot sustain the waste and they will be forced to adapt.
We always have the choice to allow market inefficiencies for various purposes, but in the long run this comes with a price attached that may not be immediately obvious.
For an vastly simplified example, if you have two countries, one with free air and one with owned air, but otherwise pretty much exactly the same. The country with owned air employs 200K workers in the air industry, counting breaths and charging the rest of the population for that. The other country employs 100k people in other industrial production, and has 100k people unemployed.
The air counting country might have a higher GDP and higher employment rate as the air counting industry is increasing cashflow through the economy, but which country would actually be creating more material wealth, and what countrys consumer would be able to spend more of their earned wealth on desired goods? In the long run, which countrys population would come out ahead?
Even if you define breating as 'optional but cool' it doesnt really change the macroeconomic effects of the resource diversion in the example.
"It's better those patented drugs cost a few hundred bucks extra than never have them at all. Sure maybe the drug will come out of the university some time in the future, how long would that take?"
But now we pay a few hundred bucks extra _and_ never have them at all. The resources dont go to the research. That's the whole problem. We're already spending more than five times the money that goes to research. The 80 percent of the patent premium that does not go to research is money that could go to research if the system was changed. It represents money that our society has agreed to pay to accomplish research that is wasted.
"Innovation goes beyond efficiency. For the big breakthroughs to occur capital has to be devoted at exploring disruptive technologies. If the only profit is making things more efficiently, then we won't getter better things, just cheaper."
Making things better is in itself an improvement in efficiency that gives you a competetive edge.
"Trademarks are a great example of the positive effects of IP law. It enables the consumer to easily identify the maker of a product by using a specific symbol."
Again, that's the propaganda, not the practice. In reality, it enables the owner of the trademark to label generic goods and extort a premium from the market. It's not like the trademark owners are actually the ones making the products, and it hasnt been that way for a long long time.
If you want a quality certifications, then we should be talking about quality certifications. There is nothing in that goal that require monopoly rights, or that is even accomplished by monopoly rights. Again, look at what generates (any desired form of) wealth for society as a whole. Anything that diverts resources from that impoverishes us by encouraging undesired work.
Is it any wonder western workers cant compete when they are tricked into paying $150 for shoes that cost $5 to produce?
"What evidence? Look at drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, acetominophin."
But you can still buy the cheaper versions, which means that unlike patented drugs, the brand labels cost a few bucks extra, rather than a few hundred bucks extra.
"Maybe you mean medicaid/medicare. That is an entirely different can of worms where you have direct goverment involvement in capping prices."
No, I mean the total available amount of resources for medicine. The difference between a monopoly market and a free market is that in a monopoly market prices rise to the pain point of what the market can bear, while in a free market, price fall until they reach the most efficient available production.
The pain point for medicines is when the taxed and/or insured patients are no longer willing to pay higher taxes and/or premiums. That sets the total resource pool to a limited amount of money, and because of the effects of monopolies, the costs will always grow to fill any surplus.
Monopoly affected markets always have a cap where there simply isnt any more free capital to spend for a specific purpose; that's what you see in pharms, and that's what you see in music. That's why you rarely see any prices falling in those markets, even if production becomes cheaper.
"Moving to a sponsorship type model has alot of problems."
Not necessarily a sponsorship model, what I suggested was retaining exclusive rights for the creators, but not allowing the monopoly effects to transfer and protect other work. The creator team of a new medicine could sell their product to multiple generics, thus only allowing the monopoly incentive to protect and generate ROI on the actual research.
"While a world of perfect competition may sound great, it does not encourage innovation. Perfect competition gives you an economic profit of 0."
Perfectly _balanced_ competition where there is no room for improvement gives you an economic profit of 0.
As long as there are inefficiencies in the market striving to improve yourself and your company so you'll always be slightly more efficient than your competition will give you profit. That's the entire idea of the free market. Decreasing that competetive pressure by extending the time a single improvement will serve to give you profit will only ensure that there is less incentive to improve yourself. Organizations are slackers by nature, and investors are risk averse. They dont want to improve themselves, it's hard work, and they want money for nothing.
The competetive pressure of constant improvement will work and generate profits for those who try hard to be better and faster, all the way until the worlds entire production chains are completely automated and instantaneous, at which point, you're right, profit will be zero, but the amount of labour required will also be zero, room for improvement will be zero and prices will have reached zero.
Then we can sortof, you know, take a long vacation and pat ourselves on the back for being so clever or something.
And, of course, we wont reach that point for a long time, if ever. We may however reach a point where the efficient wealth generation allows us to live far cushier lives if we werent wasting so many resources.
"Those resources are diverted from production capacity to IP generation."
Would that it were that way, because then it would be rational. As a whole, the exclusivity effects of the incentives encourage more diversion into unproductive areas than into research (for the extreme, look at trademarks).
"I would argue we might have cheaper cars, however, without a specialized workforce of people dedicated to being creative, they wouldn't be better."
Oh, I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing that IP isnt very effective at accomplishing that, or that it might even be counterproductive.
"And without IP protections it would be even more lopsided."
One could think so, but as far as I can tell, empirical evidence indicates otherwise.
"Why invest in any research if the next company over can just take your product, out spend you on the marketing and manufacturing front and run you out of business."
Take a look at the generics production; typically they spend far less on marketing than the protected pharms. And their production tends to be cheaper.
Unfortunately, the monopoly effects not only protect investment in R&D, they're a force-multiplier for investments in marketing (as you cant be undercut by a non-marketing competitor), and they remove competetive pressure for production improvement. (And do note, we're talking about pharaceuticals for the moment; the consumers should be pretty darn sold on your products as is, or we might have to do some research on wether drug commercials actually _cause_ diseases...;)
And for the absolutely worst effects, as the available resources for pharmaceutical spending is limited by the fixed or slowly increasing size budget of social security systems, producing _more_ drugs, where each drug needs spending on R&D and advertising, means _lower_ ROI. You get a system incentive to research _fewer_ drugs. And at the same time, as the total pool of economic resources is limited, the marketing wars decrease the part that should be available to R&D.
You cant look at it like 'IP or nothing', you have to take a wider approach. For (a really bad) example (that I'm not advocating), we could take what we're currently spending on pharmaceuticals, give that money to state-run university research, license the research results to generic producers and let them fight it out in the market and _we'd be quadrupling our societys research spending_, getting the ability to hire _four times as many researchers_.
Now, state run programs tend to, well, suck, due to mainly the same reasons IP protected programs suck. They're not subjected to competetive pressure, thus end up wasting resources like there was no tomorrow.
However, there are better alternatives; tying the monopoly rights to the R&D units, for one, denying the ability to sell exclusivity (like we dont allow people to sell themselves into slavery, any contract stipulating exclusive rights to IP would be invalid). That way the incentive for R&D remains in the investment market, while sales and production are forced to compete.
Like I said, you have to take a wider approach. IP limited capitalism beats totalitarian communism (and do note, we just _barely_ did that, and quite probably because the free markets we did have generated enough wealth to offset the resource waste of our own systems), but just barely beating totalitarian communism at resource efficiency isnt something that should make you feel warm and fuzzy about your economic prowess.
Can you even _imagine_ where we'd be today with a more efficient system? Can you imagine if the incentives that are lost today were directed into research and art? The number of people who could live on writing music, the number of people who could be working to cure diseases?
Right, me, Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism and two Nobel prize for Economy winning free-market capitalist supporters.
"Extremists". Sure.
I think you need to reevaluate your position a bit. And maybe study some economy instead of repeating corporate propaganda.
"It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have to seriously examine whether the award of a monopoly privilegie is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of riskbearing which investment in scientific research involves."
(F.A. Hayek: "Free" Enterprise and Competitive Order, 1947)
Yes, and if there was no world outside the Soviet Union you'd be thinking 'wow, how did they make all that progress in such a short period of time'.
Even if you win the special olympics you're still handicapped.
The primary correlations with innovation rate and technological advancement are education and communications infrastructure. (Patenting rates correlate better with divorce rates than they do with technological indicators, suggesting they're mostly an artefact of the legal system).
And, yes, I do believe we'd have better cars, planes and drugs with a system different from the patent system. It would depend on the industry, as patents are proportionally damaging to the extent that their monopoly effects divert resources from the primary production capacity of the industries. For example, look at the pharmaceuticals, where twice as much is spent on marketing and administration as is spent on research, largely due to monopoly protection.
As such, the effects are getting worse as more resources are diverted as the intellectual monopolies part of our economy grows. Prices remain high, while more people are employed in non-wealthproducing monopoly-protected jobs, and the engine of wealth is offshored.
"Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public."
Mmm, if I remember correctly, it sortof happened in Britain when people got really tired of the monopolies that James I granted. At the time they were used as a form of indirect taxation, where merchants were granted monopolies on products for money or support. These days it's money, support and 'jobs'.
It's much easier to trick people that way. If you were to suggest putting a 2000% VAT on music to pay for a state-supported music monopoly you'd get an outrage among conservatives, capitalists and free market supporters. But give the state-sponsored taxation rights to private interests, and call them 'property', and suddenly it's easy to confuse for some form capitalism.
The effects on the free market are pretty much the same either way. The consumers get to pay for vast economic waste, Adam Smith's free market 'invisible hand' is shoved into a bucket of cement and dumped into a river, and the wealth of society is depleted.
"Have you considered the possibility that the people who want software patents make really good arguments"
Actually, no. Free market economists from Adam Smith through Hayek and Friedman have expressed serious doubts about the effects of patents and intellectual monopolies. It's becoming obvious that the damage they cause to the market is simply far greater than the positive effects.
The diversion of economic resources from the fundamental wealth creating ever more efficient production of goods into negative value products like marketing and inefficiency due to monopoly effects is severely damaging the foundation of our societys wealth.
Intellectual monopolies like patents are to the competetiveness of our industries like five-year plan economy was to Soviet bed factories. Good protection from competition (see, no 3.6 million bullshit little bed factories), but frankly it's not very good for the wealth of nations.
On the other hand, unless you actually are a software company, used to selling products such as this, it's guaranteed to cost you even more to set up a professional organization around the product and then it will cost and cost and cost as part of your company is diverted from its core purpose to a whole new one.
If it's good enough to make money and enough of it, fork the unit into a new subsidiary company that gets to stand on its own, wether as opensource or proprietary software.
But if it isnt that good, forget it. Either decide it's not an area where you see a competetive advantage to keeping it for yourself, like you say, making it into a standard and spreading the costs around the industry, in which case you might as well opensource it, or decide it is a strategic product that you dont want to share and eat the costs yourself.
But half measures like selling it on the side isnt going to make any money, nor make any friends.
"The american motion picture and video industry alone directly employs 360,000 people"
Yep, and if we introduce breathing rights and give them to me I'll promise to employ another million. Of course, breating might cost a bit.
The number of people employed in non-wealth creating jobs is not an indication of the health of an economy.
Look at it this way, if China ignores IP laws that 'lucrative export market' is worth zero in trade balance. But I challange you to find a way to make DVD players without paying for the production.
Counting on other countries to implement the same economic damage that we are isnt a reliable way forward... it didnt work particularly well for the Soviets, and it wont work for us.