Here is the end game of all patent protection laws -- making the attorneys wealthy. Patents are a government granted monopoly. All government granted monopolies take advantage of their power over time -- and the big winners are the lawyers, of course.
Do you expect another result? Do you expect patents to make people innovate? We've been human for thousands of years, we've innovated for thousands of years. New products hit the market every day that were designed by some mom or some kid in a garage -- they didn't think of patents when they started designing.
Patents are not inherently bad. Yes, they can be abused, BUT they are an integral part of our entrepreneurial society. There is a direct correlation between countries that have strong patent protection (i.e. your [horrible] government enabled monopolies) and innovation.
I will explain. Why would a drug company invest the hundreds of million of dollars that it takes to develop a life-saving drug and push it through years of FDA hoops? The only reason they would attempt this is the very patents that you condemn. With the use of patents they can be more certain to recouple their HUGE costs. Without that patent protection, there is no incentive for them to invest the capital to find new solutions. This is the reason that America, due to its strong patent protection and low medical industry price controls is responsible for a HUGE portion of the world's innovative and life-saving drugs.
As for your other arguments... It is a different world than it was bad in the "Mom and Pop shop"/"Garage inventions" days. Yes, it can be done, but it is becoming the exception rather than the norm.
Your uneducated cynicism shows a depressing degree of ignorance of reality and knowledge of economics.
I ask this in all sincerity and probably naivete (i.e. not flaming). Here is a James Joyce-ish stream of consciouse version of my thoughts on this matter.
Is a Microsoft type of monopoly bad?
I mean... I understand that it is the point at which a company has very little or virtually no competition for their business. And this is considered bad because competition is good. Competition is good because it gets us the most quality and quantity at the lowest price, and a monopoly does not necessarily do this. Okay I understand that this is how the average person thinks about this, but does a monopoly necessarily have to NOT give customers the best product at the lowest price? No. A monopoly could very well produce a great product at a reasonable price and have a natural monopoly because it does so. And this seems to be what MS did, for a period of time. But that product and price and were not "the best" at "the lowest" and as a result, other people saw the holes and flaws(i.e. security) and sought to improve or create an alternative(i.e. linux). Now MS is slowing seeing their market share in software being encroaching upon with Apache and Firefox.
By way of explaination, by "MS-like monopoly" I mean a natural monopoly as apposed to an artificially maintained monopoly like the US postal service(for a long time before FedEx and others) or other organizations that are maintained through legislation.
Another question that I'm trying understand is...
What is bad about a business engaging in anti-competitive practices?
I mean, we see anti-competitive practices around us all the time. Price wars, non-compete agreements, patents, trademarks, product bundling, long-term supplier/retailer contracts/incentives and other barriers to entry are around us all the time. They are normal "competitive" tactics and strategies in the business world, but when Microsoft does them, they are called anti-competitive and monopolistic and frowned upon. I mean... in business school they teach people to do things that Microsoft does, and does well. They competed so damn well that they created a monopoly and now get crucified/litigated for it.
So in summary of my thought process (as disjointed as it is) I think that monopolies are bad, but they are really the ultimate goal of companies. Companies want to beat the competition and sometimes this includes the competition going bankrupt or losing market share. This naturally results in monopolies which, due to human nature/entropy, don't maintain that "competitive edge" or "best product for lowest price" which is bad. This is what happened with MS and now they have to start working hard to maintain that product at a decent price to keep their large market share. Their monopoly isn't much of a monopoly anymore because, yes, they are getting some serious competition that we all knew was coming. Did it take some time? Yes, but it was the natural progression of things. Was MS's monopoly a bad thing? No, because they were doing what business do, try to beat the competition.
I realize that I'm playing the devils advocate on this issue (I love linux), but just because I hate windows doesn't mean that I hate the company.
A link that has some good info on the legality of port scanning is:
Journal of Technology Law and Policy
If you take the time to read it, there is a bunch of interesting stuff in it. Just do a page search for "port" and you'll get to the cool stuff.
Point #1:
I think that it is so incredibly obvious the technology is fueling today's economy. Another way of putting this, is "Today's technology is keeping the economy AFLOAT".
Congress would be incredibly stupid to let a bill like the SSSCA threaten / destroy the prosperity that we've seen as a result of technology.
Point #2:
What happens when some company in China decides to make electronic equipement that doesn't have this anti-piracy hardware? Won't this put American technology companies at a huge disadvantage internationally?
I don't know much about this stuff, but couldn't you have a Gnutella-like system in which people contribute to a list of known spammers. It wouldn't be maintained by one anti-spam company or prog writer, but many people who ban together to build a distributed DB of spammers.
One problem with this would be the obvious way in which someone could play a bad prank on someone else by adding the poor bastards name to the list. A possible way to overcome this would be have a minimum number of complains about one spam, after which their name would be added to the list.
Anyway, what do you think?
PS. I think I might have read about something like this as an open-source project... "razor... something", so don't think I'm being original or anything.
Slashdot Mirror
about the mug that won first place?
Here is the end game of all patent protection laws -- making the attorneys wealthy. Patents are a government granted monopoly. All government granted monopolies take advantage of their power over time -- and the big winners are the lawyers, of course. Do you expect another result? Do you expect patents to make people innovate? We've been human for thousands of years, we've innovated for thousands of years. New products hit the market every day that were designed by some mom or some kid in a garage -- they didn't think of patents when they started designing.
... It is a different world than it was bad in the "Mom and Pop shop"/"Garage inventions" days. Yes, it can be done, but it is becoming the exception rather than the norm.
Patents are not inherently bad. Yes, they can be abused, BUT they are an integral part of our entrepreneurial society. There is a direct correlation between countries that have strong patent protection (i.e. your [horrible] government enabled monopolies) and innovation.
I will explain. Why would a drug company invest the hundreds of million of dollars that it takes to develop a life-saving drug and push it through years of FDA hoops? The only reason they would attempt this is the very patents that you condemn. With the use of patents they can be more certain to recouple their HUGE costs. Without that patent protection, there is no incentive for them to invest the capital to find new solutions. This is the reason that America, due to its strong patent protection and low medical industry price controls is responsible for a HUGE portion of the world's innovative and life-saving drugs.
For further reading, look at " Applied Economics" by Thomas Sowell
As for your other arguments
Your uneducated cynicism shows a depressing degree of ignorance of reality and knowledge of economics.
I ask this in all sincerity and probably naivete (i.e. not flaming). Here is a James Joyce-ish stream of consciouse version of my thoughts on this matter. ... I understand that it is the point at which a company has very little or virtually no competition for their business. And this is considered bad because competition is good. Competition is good because it gets us the most quality and quantity at the lowest price, and a monopoly does not necessarily do this. Okay I understand that this is how the average person thinks about this, but does a monopoly necessarily have to NOT give customers the best product at the lowest price? No. A monopoly could very well produce a great product at a reasonable price and have a natural monopoly because it does so. And this seems to be what MS did, for a period of time. But that product and price and were not "the best" at "the lowest" and as a result, other people saw the holes and flaws(i.e. security) and sought to improve or create an alternative(i.e. linux). Now MS is slowing seeing their market share in software being encroaching upon with Apache and Firefox.
... ... in business school they teach people to do things that Microsoft does, and does well. They competed so damn well that they created a monopoly and now get crucified/litigated for it.
Is a Microsoft type of monopoly bad?
I mean
By way of explaination, by "MS-like monopoly" I mean a natural monopoly as apposed to an artificially maintained monopoly like the US postal service(for a long time before FedEx and others) or other organizations that are maintained through legislation.
Another question that I'm trying understand is
What is bad about a business engaging in anti-competitive practices?
I mean, we see anti-competitive practices around us all the time. Price wars, non-compete agreements, patents, trademarks, product bundling, long-term supplier/retailer contracts/incentives and other barriers to entry are around us all the time. They are normal "competitive" tactics and strategies in the business world, but when Microsoft does them, they are called anti-competitive and monopolistic and frowned upon. I mean
So in summary of my thought process (as disjointed as it is) I think that monopolies are bad, but they are really the ultimate goal of companies. Companies want to beat the competition and sometimes this includes the competition going bankrupt or losing market share. This naturally results in monopolies which, due to human nature/entropy, don't maintain that "competitive edge" or "best product for lowest price" which is bad. This is what happened with MS and now they have to start working hard to maintain that product at a decent price to keep their large market share. Their monopoly isn't much of a monopoly anymore because, yes, they are getting some serious competition that we all knew was coming. Did it take some time? Yes, but it was the natural progression of things. Was MS's monopoly a bad thing? No, because they were doing what business do, try to beat the competition.
I realize that I'm playing the devils advocate on this issue (I love linux), but just because I hate windows doesn't mean that I hate the company.
From what I hear, the T-Mobile sidekick II is GREAT for bathroom reading. Just get one of those suckers. http://www.t-mobile.com/promos/sidekickII.asp?WT.m c_n=Skick2_nycpeach&WT.mc_t=Other
A link that has some good info on the legality of port scanning is: Journal of Technology Law and Policy
If you take the time to read it, there is a bunch of interesting stuff in it. Just do a page search for "port" and you'll get to the cool stuff.
I should sell a case mod kit that makes a computer invisible.
It will come with two big guys and a truck!
Point #1:
I think that it is so incredibly obvious the technology is fueling today's economy.
Another way of putting this, is "Today's technology is keeping the economy AFLOAT".
Congress would be incredibly stupid to let a bill like the SSSCA threaten / destroy the prosperity that we've seen as a result of technology.
Point #2:
What happens when some company in China decides to make electronic equipement that doesn't have this anti-piracy hardware? Won't this put American technology companies at a huge disadvantage internationally?
I don't know much about this stuff, but couldn't you have a Gnutella-like system in which people contribute to a list of known spammers. It wouldn't be maintained by one anti-spam company or prog writer, but many people who ban together to build a distributed DB of spammers.
One problem with this would be the obvious way in which someone could play a bad prank on someone else by adding the poor bastards name to the list. A possible way to overcome this would be have a minimum number of complains about one spam, after which their name would be added to the list.
Anyway, what do you think?
PS. I think I might have read about something like this as an open-source project... "razor... something", so don't think I'm being original or anything.
Honey, you're scaring the children
The horse is gone ??? !!!!