"In all fairness, "property" is also about a government-granted (and protected) right - only less temporary."
Less temporary and with much stronger foundations in reality.
Even without a government protecting your property, you could reasonably explain to your peers that if someone takes your cow you have lost something, and that loss may create suffering for you.
But without a government enforcing intellectual property laws, could you explain to your peers that someone heard a tune you were whistling and his whistling of that tune causes you loss and suffering, and that he should be forbidden to whistle that tune?
Without the artificial construct of intellectual property you would not have lost anything. In fact, the man that reproduced your tune would have an easier time making a case that preventing him from whistling the tune would deprive him of something of value.
Intellectual property derives its value not from the inherent value of the subject matter, but directly from the ability to prevent others from exercising rights they would otherwise have. The 'exclusive' comes from 'excluding everyone else' from these rights.
Re:Minor correction to the story:
on
LokiTorrent Shut Down
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"Copyright infringement is a type of theft."
No, it isnt. It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies.
If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property. Not even the RIAA/MPAA's propaganda machines tries to claim that yet. I'll bet you it's coming tho, and that it's the reason they want to anchor the belief that physical and intellectual property are in any way similar - wait for the campaign where they'll try to convince us that the state is trying to steal their property, and that copyright and patents should be extended to forever.
Beware what ideas the propaganda machines try to place in your head, for their agenda is not always what they claim it to be.
I wish one of those temporal agents would go back in time and tell me not to watch Enterprise.
In fact, I keep hoping one of them would go back in time and shoot the writers. Please. Give us back our temporal cold war free world. I wont even complain about the paradox of not being able to complain about never having had the opportunity to complain about it never happening. Or whatever.
Any online bank that doesnt use offline one-time keys as transaction verification is insecure and vulnerable to client computer hacking.
The technology to solve the problem is available, and many banks use it, so frankly I'd say any bank which does not offer such an option should be held at least partially responsible for losses incurred through lax security policies.
"So what? You can lie and deceive, and still get published. Big deal!"
Indeed. And that's sortof what kills most criticism against wikipedia. The unquestioning deference to 'experts' that is not entirely uncommon in academic circles is a blemish that reduces the value of all academic titles and publications.
There's a difference between peer review and peer backpatting. Some circles have trouble with that.
Good choice, as pharmaceuticals is one of the few industries where the industry structure creates an actual benefit from patents.
However, the problem is that the actual structure itself generates the need for patents, not the research costs. Basic research is already heavily government funded. And like you say, this is where the patents are granted. A huge amount of the costs are incurred _after_ the patent is granted, and not for research related activities.
Now, patents are meant to stimulate and reward invention. They are not meant to transfer the costs of inefficient approval processes, huge advertising budgets and deficient legal systems onto the consumers as yet another tax.
So, yes, I'd suggest the government continue finance the research as they're doing today, I suggest medical approval be restructured as a lowest-bidder process instead, and I'd suggest a globalized approval process.
The current system is grossly deficient and needs a complete overhaul to put incentives back into actual research, rather than risk-averse beurocracy building.
No you havent. By publishing your work you may have the ability to overturn a granted patent in court, should you be able to afford it. Good luck on that.
You cant even protect your work against patents by patenting it; patents are granted for things that are already patented on a regular basis.
Can you cite research validating that claim for specific fields? For specific lengths of protection periods? For average product cycles? For average patent development cost in a field?
Take a look at the Intergraph patents here. They've had those patents for more than 10 years without enforcing them. In fact, they didnt start enforcing them until their hardware buisness had already failed. Had they tried enforcing them while they still had a hardware buisness they'd have been litigated into the ground by other companies holding patents.
Can you come up with a credible explanation how the patents motivated those 'innovations'? Were they thinking 'Oh, I know, lets develop this cache stuff for our new processors, then not produce them, change focus and litigate!'?
Or were they in fact already going to spend the money for the research in the hope of making their products competetive, and the litigation is just an economic drain by vampiric lawyers on companies actually producing new technology.
I'd posit your theory is _wrong_. Patents have become a burden on actual innovators, slowing innovation, and a benefit for noone but lawyers.
"The real problem is that patents should only be awarded in any field based on innovativeness"
The trouble is, for anyone skilled in a field there are few things that are truly innovative.
Encryption algorithms may seem advanced and innovative to you, but to a mathematician they're often old news barely worth a mention in a puzzle book. And to a programmer reasonably skilled in math, it's trivial to implement something like that in code, so no real 'invention' has been made.
Most new ideas are made up from small steps, and each of those small steps is often natural progression, incremental improvement. Hard work and toil, trying to solve a specific problem.
But patents are not supposed to be a reward for hard work. They're not a salary. And they definitely were not meant to take away someone elses salary and prevent them from reaping the benefit of their own hard work.
No, if we still need a state sponsored reward for inventions, let the patent office grant grants instead. If they think an invention is such a great leap that it deserves a reward, let the government pay out a cash prize instead.
The small inventor would be far more likely to profit from such a scheme, and the patent office could have an interest in not letting someone patent the green, blue, yellow, red and black paperclip because that makes them seem five times as productive and the country five times as innovative.
Patents and copyright are not private property. They're a government granted temporary monopoly. By definition the concepts of copyright and patents themselves take private property by reducing natural property rights, and by prohibiting people from realizing the fruits of their own labor.
The powers given do not come out of thin air. What the copyright owners and patent owners are granted is taken from everyone else. And frankly I dont see we get much compensation for that these days.
Your argument is invalid. You dont need any workers to own a patent.
The countries with the cheapest labour still win, except now some rich guy gets richer, the products cost more for the consumers, and the rich guys money gets invested in low-wage countries anyway.
Unless, of course, you're talking about illegal immigrants cleaning the houses of the patent owners for less than minimum wage.
Maybe you missed the real world where the same lawyers, IP barratry companies and declining uncompetetive large corporations who want software patents have no interest in a fair patent system for algorithms that expire, ever?
It is impossible for a patent system to be 'fair', because it is always biased towards those who have money and legal resources.
In many fields this is not a huge problem, as the barrier to entry is already so high that anyone capable to reaching that barrier may have those resources, so it becomes only a slightly harmful resource drain. Also, any single product is less likely to infringe far more patents than it itself implements.
In software it becomes deadly, as the barriers are far lower. A single inventor can create a product in his basement and sell. It's a product of the mind, not a product requiring manufacturing plants, labs, inventory purchases, etc. He will rarely have access to the resources to either patent or defend himself.
Patents as they are have outlived their usefulness. If you still want something like it to promote development I'd suggest you give the patent office a bunch of money and have them give money to the inventors, rather than monopoly rights.
That way we'd see the cost directly, rather than being subjected to it through hurting innovation, consumers and the world as a whole.
"Now, im sorry, but when it comes to 'novel' and 'unobvious' as pre-requsites for a patent, I imagine someone like Thomas Edison, slaving away in his workshop for years and finally producing the lightbulb and associated patent applications."
And ironically, Edison didnt invent the lightbulb, he didnt patent it (he bought the patent cheap from Woodward and Evans who were unable to secure enough funding), the patent was ruled invalid due to prior art, and finally managed to have the patent upheld by having his attorneys tamper with the evidence.
Of course, when you've spent $x to create your new fast algorithm, and start selling it, three ip-holding companies come along and tell you that you've got to pay them each $y for their patents which your product incidentally infringes. Then your competitor decides he doesnt want your new and improved algorithm on the market, and promptly sues you for patent infringement for doing what your product does at all.
You end up unable to sell a product at all, the majority of your investment capital ends up in the pockets of others, and you go bankrupt.
Software patents cannot be commercially exploited by inventors, because any piece of software will infringe on tens, hundreds or thousands of other software patents. Your single patent will never cover the costs of procuring licenses for the rest, or the litigation risk. To benefit you need many, many patents yourself to defend against competitors, and even then those wont protect you against the no-product extortionists.
The only ones to really profit are patent lawyers. Guess who the ones who want software patents are?
Software patents create a disincentive for people to engage in economic activity by removing the possibility of generating a return on an investment.
One single piece of software can easily infringe on tens or hundreds of so-called 'software patents'. Each of those patent holders can do anything from taking the entire profit to denying the distribution of said software completely.
So, how would you feel about writing some new software you wanted to sell when you know that someone else will come along and legally take your money if you ever become moderately successful?
"If it weren't possible to patent such things, this research would never have been done."
Colonoscopies take time and money, and colon cancer kills taxpayers. As it is cheaper and more resource effective to use tests on feces, it would be in the interest of both taxpayers and insurance companies to fund such research.
As it then would not be patented, it would be cheap enough for MrMuscle to add it to their toiletbowl fresheners, indicating possible colon cancer by color marking the toilet water and almost completely wiping the existence of colon cancer from the face of the earth, saving massive amounts of taxpayer and insurance money, and preventing a vast amount of undesired anal intrusions.
Oh, and dont bother trying to patent toilet bowl freshener medical tests, I'm filing that idea with my attorney as prior art.
"If you deny that men can own their ideas, then you deny that men can survive by ideas, and you deny the right of man to survive at all."
You've completely misunderstood the point of patents. The point of patents is not to let someone own their own ideas, the point is to deny everyone else the right to _their_ own ideas.
So, how does your philosophy justify someone denying someone else the right to have his own ideas?
With a countryrestricted website it appears they appear to even have trouble understanding the internet as a concept, so I must say I'm not surprised the network executive goofs at Shotime cancelled something with geek appeal.
And if they really want to keep their website secret from non-US citizens they need to hire a web consultant competent enough to block at least the most common proxies.
Slashdot Mirror
"In all fairness, "property" is also about a government-granted (and protected) right - only less temporary."
Less temporary and with much stronger foundations in reality.
Even without a government protecting your property, you could reasonably explain to your peers that if someone takes your cow you have lost something, and that loss may create suffering for you.
But without a government enforcing intellectual property laws, could you explain to your peers that someone heard a tune you were whistling and his whistling of that tune causes you loss and suffering, and that he should be forbidden to whistle that tune?
Without the artificial construct of intellectual property you would not have lost anything. In fact, the man that reproduced your tune would have an easier time making a case that preventing him from whistling the tune would deprive him of something of value.
Intellectual property derives its value not from the inherent value of the subject matter, but directly from the ability to prevent others from exercising rights they would otherwise have. The 'exclusive' comes from 'excluding everyone else' from these rights.
"Copyright infringement is a type of theft."
No, it isnt. It is a violation of government granted temporary exclusive rights. You're not taking any property, you're violating their exclusive right to make copies.
If copyright was 'actual property', then the expiration of copyright would mean the state was confiscating that property. Not even the RIAA/MPAA's propaganda machines tries to claim that yet. I'll bet you it's coming tho, and that it's the reason they want to anchor the belief that physical and intellectual property are in any way similar - wait for the campaign where they'll try to convince us that the state is trying to steal their property, and that copyright and patents should be extended to forever.
Beware what ideas the propaganda machines try to place in your head, for their agenda is not always what they claim it to be.
I wish one of those temporal agents would go back in time and tell me not to watch Enterprise.
In fact, I keep hoping one of them would go back in time and shoot the writers. Please. Give us back our temporal cold war free world. I wont even complain about the paradox of not being able to complain about never having had the opportunity to complain about it never happening. Or whatever.
Just make it go away.
Any online bank that doesnt use offline one-time keys as transaction verification is insecure and vulnerable to client computer hacking.
The technology to solve the problem is available, and many banks use it, so frankly I'd say any bank which does not offer such an option should be held at least partially responsible for losses incurred through lax security policies.
"So what? You can lie and deceive, and still get published. Big deal!"
Indeed. And that's sortof what kills most criticism against wikipedia. The unquestioning deference to 'experts' that is not entirely uncommon in academic circles is a blemish that reduces the value of all academic titles and publications.
There's a difference between peer review and peer backpatting. Some circles have trouble with that.
Good choice, as pharmaceuticals is one of the few industries where the industry structure creates an actual benefit from patents.
However, the problem is that the actual structure itself generates the need for patents, not the research costs. Basic research is already heavily government funded. And like you say, this is where the patents are granted. A huge amount of the costs are incurred _after_ the patent is granted, and not for research related activities.
Now, patents are meant to stimulate and reward invention. They are not meant to transfer the costs of inefficient approval processes, huge advertising budgets and deficient legal systems onto the consumers as yet another tax.
So, yes, I'd suggest the government continue finance the research as they're doing today, I suggest medical approval be restructured as a lowest-bidder process instead, and I'd suggest a globalized approval process.
The current system is grossly deficient and needs a complete overhaul to put incentives back into actual research, rather than risk-averse beurocracy building.
No you havent. By publishing your work you may have the ability to overturn a granted patent in court, should you be able to afford it. Good luck on that.
You cant even protect your work against patents by patenting it; patents are granted for things that are already patented on a regular basis.
"while I was presenting I noticed him scribbling away like mad..."
He was probably filling in his patent application on your work.
"Hell maybe there find something I've done infringes on there work and sue me."
Heh, or even decide you're infringing on your work and sue you.
Gotta love the system.
"Without patents there would be LESS innovation."
Can you cite research validating that claim?
Can you cite research validating that claim for specific fields? For specific lengths of protection periods? For average product cycles? For average patent development cost in a field?
Take a look at the Intergraph patents here. They've had those patents for more than 10 years without enforcing them. In fact, they didnt start enforcing them until their hardware buisness had already failed. Had they tried enforcing them while they still had a hardware buisness they'd have been litigated into the ground by other companies holding patents.
Can you come up with a credible explanation how the patents motivated those 'innovations'? Were they thinking 'Oh, I know, lets develop this cache stuff for our new processors, then not produce them, change focus and litigate!'?
Or were they in fact already going to spend the money for the research in the hope of making their products competetive, and the litigation is just an economic drain by vampiric lawyers on companies actually producing new technology.
I'd posit your theory is _wrong_. Patents have become a burden on actual innovators, slowing innovation, and a benefit for noone but lawyers.
Sun always prefers seeming open, rather than actually being open. Open is a marketing buzzword to be used and confused as much as possible.
They're like that salesman uncle with all the stories, likeable, but you just can trust them further than you can throw an E10K.
"The only truly significant success story was Japan."
Japan was also fairly far along towards democracy (for that time) before the military takeover.
So, there are pretty much no success stories at all when it comes to democracy by-the-sword.
"A figure around 85% springs to mind, but that's likely not 100% correct."
Mmm, no. Try 10% of world wheat, about half as much as the EU, and with half the efficiency per area. And then most of Asia eats rice anyway...
Fortunately, the world isnt that dependent on any single area.
"The real problem is that patents should only be awarded in any field based on innovativeness"
The trouble is, for anyone skilled in a field there are few things that are truly innovative.
Encryption algorithms may seem advanced and innovative to you, but to a mathematician they're often old news barely worth a mention in a puzzle book. And to a programmer reasonably skilled in math, it's trivial to implement something like that in code, so no real 'invention' has been made.
Most new ideas are made up from small steps, and each of those small steps is often natural progression, incremental improvement. Hard work and toil, trying to solve a specific problem.
But patents are not supposed to be a reward for hard work. They're not a salary. And they definitely were not meant to take away someone elses salary and prevent them from reaping the benefit of their own hard work.
No, if we still need a state sponsored reward for inventions, let the patent office grant grants instead. If they think an invention is such a great leap that it deserves a reward, let the government pay out a cash prize instead.
The small inventor would be far more likely to profit from such a scheme, and the patent office could have an interest in not letting someone patent the green, blue, yellow, red and black paperclip because that makes them seem five times as productive and the country five times as innovative.
Yes, murder is a crime against the state, as it deprives the state of taxpayers.
Patents and copyright are not private property. They're a government granted temporary monopoly. By definition the concepts of copyright and patents themselves take private property by reducing natural property rights, and by prohibiting people from realizing the fruits of their own labor.
The powers given do not come out of thin air. What the copyright owners and patent owners are granted is taken from everyone else. And frankly I dont see we get much compensation for that these days.
Your argument is invalid. You dont need any workers to own a patent.
The countries with the cheapest labour still win, except now some rich guy gets richer, the products cost more for the consumers, and the rich guys money gets invested in low-wage countries anyway.
Unless, of course, you're talking about illegal immigrants cleaning the houses of the patent owners for less than minimum wage.
Maybe you missed the real world where the same lawyers, IP barratry companies and declining uncompetetive large corporations who want software patents have no interest in a fair patent system for algorithms that expire, ever?
It is impossible for a patent system to be 'fair', because it is always biased towards those who have money and legal resources.
In many fields this is not a huge problem, as the barrier to entry is already so high that anyone capable to reaching that barrier may have those resources, so it becomes only a slightly harmful resource drain. Also, any single product is less likely to infringe far more patents than it itself implements.
In software it becomes deadly, as the barriers are far lower. A single inventor can create a product in his basement and sell. It's a product of the mind, not a product requiring manufacturing plants, labs, inventory purchases, etc. He will rarely have access to the resources to either patent or defend himself.
Patents as they are have outlived their usefulness. If you still want something like it to promote development I'd suggest you give the patent office a bunch of money and have them give money to the inventors, rather than monopoly rights.
That way we'd see the cost directly, rather than being subjected to it through hurting innovation, consumers and the world as a whole.
"Now, im sorry, but when it comes to 'novel' and 'unobvious' as pre-requsites for a patent, I imagine someone like Thomas Edison, slaving away in his workshop for years and finally producing the lightbulb and associated patent applications."
And ironically, Edison didnt invent the lightbulb, he didnt patent it (he bought the patent cheap from Woodward and Evans who were unable to secure enough funding), the patent was ruled invalid due to prior art, and finally managed to have the patent upheld by having his attorneys tamper with the evidence.
Of course, when you've spent $x to create your new fast algorithm, and start selling it, three ip-holding companies come along and tell you that you've got to pay them each $y for their patents which your product incidentally infringes. Then your competitor decides he doesnt want your new and improved algorithm on the market, and promptly sues you for patent infringement for doing what your product does at all.
You end up unable to sell a product at all, the majority of your investment capital ends up in the pockets of others, and you go bankrupt.
Software patents cannot be commercially exploited by inventors, because any piece of software will infringe on tens, hundreds or thousands of other software patents. Your single patent will never cover the costs of procuring licenses for the rest, or the litigation risk. To benefit you need many, many patents yourself to defend against competitors, and even then those wont protect you against the no-product extortionists.
The only ones to really profit are patent lawyers. Guess who the ones who want software patents are?
I think you miss the point.
Software patents create a disincentive for people to engage in economic activity by removing the possibility of generating a return on an investment.
One single piece of software can easily infringe on tens or hundreds of so-called 'software patents'. Each of those patent holders can do anything from taking the entire profit to denying the distribution of said software completely.
So, how would you feel about writing some new software you wanted to sell when you know that someone else will come along and legally take your money if you ever become moderately successful?
Yes, but you (probably, who knows these days) couldnt sue someone for patent infringement for distributing the book.
"If it weren't possible to patent such things, this research would never have been done."
Colonoscopies take time and money, and colon cancer kills taxpayers. As it is cheaper and more resource effective to use tests on feces, it would be in the interest of both taxpayers and insurance companies to fund such research.
As it then would not be patented, it would be cheap enough for MrMuscle to add it to their toiletbowl fresheners, indicating possible colon cancer by color marking the toilet water and almost completely wiping the existence of colon cancer from the face of the earth, saving massive amounts of taxpayer and insurance money, and preventing a vast amount of undesired anal intrusions.
Oh, and dont bother trying to patent toilet bowl freshener medical tests, I'm filing that idea with my attorney as prior art.
"If you deny that men can own their ideas, then you deny that men can survive by ideas, and you deny the right of man to survive at all."
You've completely misunderstood the point of patents. The point of patents is not to let someone own their own ideas, the point is to deny everyone else the right to _their_ own ideas.
So, how does your philosophy justify someone denying someone else the right to have his own ideas?
With a countryrestricted website it appears they appear to even have trouble understanding the internet as a concept, so I must say I'm not surprised the network executive goofs at Shotime cancelled something with geek appeal.
And if they really want to keep their website secret from non-US citizens they need to hire a web consultant competent enough to block at least the most common proxies.
We're not talking about what's in things today. We're talking about what people want in the near future, and what drives the storage market.
Ask your average PVR user if they'd like to be able to store five times as much on their PVR.
The market for very large storage is not shrinking. As digital video storage is going mainstream, it's growing. Fast.