In other words, they were neither purely good nor purely evil.
This is an important point, but in my opinion it's not the most important point.
You won't have a hard time getting your average radical leftist to agree that nothing is purely good or purely evil. In fact, he'll probably beat you to the punch by adopting the nihilist view: that nothing means anything, so everything's equivalent to everything else.
What's more important, in my opinion, is to remember that there are degrees. Yes, what Soldier X did to Prisoner Y at Abu Ghraib was bad. But what Terrorist X did to innocent civilians Y, Z, A, B, C, and D was worse.
The radical leftist would say that we, as Americans, have no right to say that the second thing was bad because we were indirectly responsible for the first thing.
Which is, of course, crap. It is not only possible but also moral to make value judgments. It's not only possible but moral to say that killing a hostage brutally and cruelly on videotape is worse than putting a bag over a prisoner's head for three days.
Now, how much fun is it to play a game where you basically sit back and watch the action, rather than being able to interact with it?
Fun, fun... when you introduce the concept of taking turns.
America's Army works like that, albeit at the squad level rather than the campaign level. Every "turn," i.e. every engagement, one of the players gets elected squad leader, and he's responsible for coming up with the plan of battle and ordering his fire teams around.
Now, the squad leader is basically just a guy with a pair of binocs in addition to his M-16, so it's possible for him to go running off into the fray. Some players, especially inexperienced ones, do just that. At that point, the game devolves into Counterstrike.
But the real fun happens when the squad leader finds a good place to oversee the battle and gives his fire teams orders. Suppress this enemy position, advance under cover to that position, circle around to the rear, lob a smoke grenade, storm the compound.
It's about as realistic as squad-level combat gets, I think. No god's-eye view or anything like that: just a pair of binoculars and some radio channels to communicate with your teams.
SciFi picked up Andromeda. They're running new episodes. Although God knows why. I watched a couple because TiVo said I should, and I always do what TiVo tells me to.
I'm glad to hear it. Understanding my position is the first step toward bending to my will.:-)
I was thinking more in terms of property rights as the set of legal powers the government grants
I'm probably repeating myself here, but I just want to be very explicit: government exists to secure and protect those rights which we already have. Government does not grant anything, nor can it revoke anything.
Your weapons-grade plutonium example is quite apt - that's how software patents are often used in the computer industry today, and why I think they should be limited.
The "natural rights" of property are dependant on the conservation of mass and energy, a law we cannot change.
No, they're not. People much smarter than you or me have figured this out a long time ago. Go read some Locke, specifically his Second Treatise.
In short: natural property rights spring from the notion of "the fruits of labor." A thing, a physical object, becomes your property when you have taken it out of its natural state and applied labor to it. Intangible things become your property when you expend intellectual or creative labor to create them.
Given that your basic assumptions about the philosophy of natural rights are so far from the "state of the art," if you'll pardon the expression, we're going to have a hard time continuing.
Any scarcity associated with existing creative works is artificial
No, it's not. I have it, you lack it. That's scarcity in a nutshell. The intangible nature of good ideas, whether creative ones or useful ones, doesn't change the fact that they're not just lying around in the fields for anybody to pick up. Creating them requires labor, and the result of labor is property.
On one extreme, we could eliminate scarcity, for example by abolishing copyright law.
We could also make it legal for you to steal my furniture by abolishing laws that prohibit burglary. This would not "eliminate scarcity," nor would it be morally just.
On the other extreme, we could make complete scarcity, for example by making patents perpetual and very strong. The profit motive would then be strong, but it would be more difficult to create, fewer people could afford the works, and their market would suffer.
Right at the end, wrong at the beginning. I'm repeating myself here, but it's got nothing to do with scarcity. Property rights are natural in nature; they just happen, whether there's a government there to acknowledge them or another person there to violate them.
But your conclusion in this graf is correct: we, as a society, recognize that limiting property rights in some situations is important. For example, it's not legal for a private citizen to own weapons-grade nuclear material. It doesn't matter if you buy it or if you mine and purify the uranium yourself from unclaimed deposits, it's just not legal for you to own it. The government doesn't recognize your property rights in that instance, and will seize your property in the name of a greater good.
Similarly, we acknowledge that a greater good benefits when authors and inventors are stripped of their property rights after a time, so we do. Authors and other creators of creative works are stripped of their property rights after their copyright expires. Patent holders are stripped of their rights when the patent expires, if they chose to apply for a patent at all. If they didn't, their innovations are treated as "trade secrets" under the law and protected indefinitely.
This is well and good. But we must never, ever slip into the error of believing that the government somehow "grants" or "creates" property rights. We must remember that things like expiring copyrights and patents are a legalized seizure of property.
We accept this state of affairs only because it is pragmatic to do so. It is a small wrong in the service of a greater good.
Creative works and physical property are different, so the rights of creators and property owners need not be identical.
You still haven't answered my question. We begin at the beginning so as to avoid circular reasoning: property rights exist. Period, end of sentence. They exist. Given this fact, which can hardly be argued given that it underlies all modern cultures, how do you justify drawing a line and saying that this kind of property should be respected and this kind should not? How do you justify arbitrarily depriving property owners of their rights, based solely on the premise that some kinds of property exist as atoms and other kinds exist as ideas?
Okay, look. You're not getting this. I'm gonna try one more time to explain this.
A patent describes an invention. It consists of several claims, all of which together describe the invention. You can't point at one of the claims and say, "This is nothing new." Hell, you can't even point at all of the claims and say "These are nothing new." Because the point is that the patent covers the combination of all of those things together.
You cannot infringe upon the described patent with "a few lines of code." That's just silly.
Are you trying to imply that I need to design and build the hardware in order to infringe on it?
It did originally. The phrase was inspired by the writings of John Locke. It wasn't until one of the later drafts that Jefferson changed it from property to "the pursuit of happiness." Most scholars with whom I'm familiar interpret the difference as meaning that Jefferson wanted to speak in more far-reaching terms. The right to property, as described by Locke--and, unbelievably, debated here, as if the question hadn't been settled once and for all centuries ago--is essential to the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness requires not only the right to property, but all sorts of other rights our society takes as a given: the right to freedom of speech, the right to freedom of association, the right to freedom of religion, and so on.
The fact that Jefferson didn't use the word "property" doesn't mean that the Declaration of Independence doesn't declare an unalienable right to property.
If property is among them, and property is passed though wills to others upon death, do you therefore think ownership of inventions should be passed on indefinitely if willed by its owner?
I think that's the natural state, yes. As with copyrights, there are compromises to be made. But we must never forget that the rights belong to the inventor, and that seizure of property to advance the greater good is just that: seizure. There is a level of state intervention we're willing to tolerate for the good of society, but we mustn't forget that the rights belong to us and are being taken from us with our consent.
Once the block and tackle, gears, and hydraulics are invented, is it fair to expect all future inventors to pay for using those in their designs?
Yes. It's fair. There's an argument that it's not optimal for society, which is why we tolerate limited protection for intellectual property rights at all. But it's the fair thing.
You are making a "what's best for society" argument. While that's a valid argument, it's not directly related to a "what's morally sound" argument. I'm making a "what's morally sound" argument.
The categorical imperative is for the state to protect the natural rights of property owners. Anything else is a compromise. Possibly a worthwhile compromise, but a compromise nonetheless.
Why should property be inalienable?
The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
John Locke had a lot of wonderful things to say about natural rights. I'd suggest you check them out. His Second Treatise is the best place to start.
Couldn't society decide we all work on kibbutzim growing and machining things to pay for living, but all invention and art are free for all?
That's called collectivism, which itself is a euphemism for mass theft and forced labor. It's one of the great evils of the 20th century.
Voluntarily sharing the fruits of one's labor is virtuous. Being forced to by an oppressive state is horribly, horribly wrong.
How do you justify drawing an utterly arbitrary line and saying that this kind of property is subject to ownership and the natural rights of property, while this kind of property isn't?
The substance of the patent, as with all patents, is in it's independent claim(s).
No, that's not how patents work. In order for an invention to be protected by a patent, it must embody all of the claims in the patent. Similarly, in order for a work to infringe on a patent, it must infringe significantly on the claims in the patent. It's not enough to pull out three words and yell "Gotcha!"
The entire remainder of the text of the patent is the conventional and deliberate obfuscation
Yes, that's it. It's all a big frame-up. They're trying to cheat you out of what's rightfully yours.
Have you taken your medication today? Are you sure you're on the proper dosing?
You know full well that the apparent complexity of the patent text belies it's actual triviality and you know as well as I do the purpose of this complexity.
I'd recommend thorazine. It does wonders to stop the voices in your head.
You use this serendipitous advantage to bamboozle the innocent reader into a false belief of the sophistication of the invention itself, no doubt in order to further your contested assertions of the merits of software patentability.
Maybe zoloft, paxil, or another SSRI-form antidepressant might help you with the generalized feelings of anxiety and paranoia.
Your cronies have already failed to successfully pull the wool over the eyes of the members of the European Parliament.
Then again, maybe the best alternative is hospitalization. It's gonna be okay, man. There are people who can help you. You don't have to live like this. Seek medical advice immediately.
Patents and copyright are an artifice. They are the state overriding the natural order.
No. The natural order is that the product of my labors belongs to me. I cannot rightfully be forced to work for another man without my consent; neither can I rightfully be forced to turn over my property without my consent. That's the natural order.
The natural order also includes an element of perversity. You might have the power, through virtue of your size or your strength or your arsenal, to force me, against my will, to give up my property to you. Or you might be cunning enough to sneak in and steal my property from me when I'm not looking. These acts, however, are not right. They are possible, but unacceptable. They are wrong.
Patents coerce you into sharing knowledge (through the bribery of a cash reward).
Nonsense. Coercion means convincing somebody to do something that's contrary to their own best interest through intimidation, distortion, or deceit. Patents aren't a bait-and-switch proposition. There's no coercion there.
This is nuts! I won't even start on the idea of crediting the mass hallucination of a "creator" with granting you ANYTHING.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
I'm glad to know that your opinion of the fundamental concept underlying modern society is so high.
If you think you have any right outside the framework of government and society you have lived MUCH too sheltered a life.
Government exists to embody and protect those rights which we already have.
Why is this an important idea? Because if you start with the premise that government grants rights, then you end up with the conclusion that government can revoke rights. And that's not true at all. In fact, that idea, in a nutshell, is one of the great fallacies of history.
Everything you consider to be a god-given right granted to humans by their ever-lovin' creator can be taken away at the point of a gun.
Sure. But just because I'm denied my rights at the point of a gun doesn't mean they cease to be my rights. Just because I'm deprived of (let's say) liberty doesn't mean I'm no longer deserving of liberty.
If you break the law, we put you in jail. We, as a society, deprive you of your liberty, or in some occasions even your life. That doesn't mean we revoke your rights. It just means that you're being denied the free exercise of them because of what you've done. If, for instance, you are able to convince a judge or a governor that you are innocent of the charges of which you were convicted, you'll have your liberty restored. Because it was yours all along.
Didn't you take a political theory or a government or a civics class in junior high? I swear, your teacher covered all this. Weren't you paying attention?
You may think that you SHOULD have some particular right. You may believe that something should belong to you, or that beacuse you created it you should be able to control it, but the fact is you are not strong enough to force this view on everyone else, and there is no all-powerful creator to do it for you.
Ah, now we're into a completely different discussion. We've gone from "people have inherent rights" to "people disagree about what those rights are." That's certainly true. But underlying all of it is the fundamental agreement that we, as human beings, are possessors of certain rights simply by virtue of our living existence.
The only force that exists with enough power to grant or protect a right is the state.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'm sorry that you think your rights are given to you and taken from you by the state. Your life must be very sad.
(Those who are astute will notice that my position on this subject has evolved pretty dramatically over the past couple of years. The more you live, the more you learn.)
Your earlier comment implied that without the promise of profit talented people wouldn't ever produce anything. That's pure bullshit.
Jeez. Clue check on aisle one. Let me see if I can give you a basic lesson in how economics works.
I have an idea. I'm a talented person, and I have an idea. Problem is, because I spent the last year sitting in my mom's basement trying to think, I have no money at all. I have to convince somebody to give me money to act on my idea.
So I go to somebody with money and try to convince him to fund me. "What's in it for me?" he says.
So yeah, for the most part, without the profit motive, talented people won't accomplish much. To the extent that they do, they're just following their whims, and not producing anything that really helps anybody else unless it's purely by coincidence. And even if they do happen to strike upon that coincidence, they're not going to be able to go anywhere without funding, and they're not going to get funding without the promise of profit for their backers.
I really don't know how to say it any more simply. Your stuff about "the talented person will realize" is crap, plain and simple.
I've got plenty of training in economics, both though education and real-world experience.
Then why do the most basic concepts about economic motivators elude you?
The personal computer market was a direct result of the "hobbyist [sic] sector" you so blithly denigrate.
Actually, the personal computer was a direct result of IBM's realization that they could sell desktop computers just like they sold typewriters. Yes, a bunch of kids working out of their garages had demonstrated the possibility of a personal computer, but it took businesses to demonstrate the practicality. In some cases, Apple's for instance, the kids who built the do-it-yourself kits and sold them at club meetings concocted a business plan, found investors, and started a company. How do you think they secured investment? Through the promise of sweet profits for their backers.
Go ask Steve Wozniak, who was just such a hobbyist-inventor, or read about the Wright brothers, who took up aeronautics as a sport.
For every Woz or Orville there are ten thousand weekenders who never produce anything of note. If you throw spaghetti at the wall long enough, eventually a piece is going to stick.
And conversely, keep in mind that businesses frequently produce stuff nobody needs or wants.
Fortunately, the market is a classically Darwinian interaction space. Companies that produce stuff nobody needs or wants start producing things people need and want, or they cease to be companies.
Bad example. A bookshelf, being a horizontal platform on which books are stacked, is not an invention. It lacks the property of being non-obvious. In its simplest form, a bookshelf is just a table, which is just a plank.
A better example might be if I thought of some new and unique and non-obvious improvement to the bookshelf. Maybe a self-alphabetizing bookshelf for libraries. That's an invention, and worthy of a patent.
If you then see it and build your own, yeah, you've stolen my idea. Bad boy.
There are now two of the same idea. The first person still has it.
Right, but what you've deprived me of, as the inventor, is exclusivity. That's not okay.
You say it takes the ownership away, and has no right to, but in practicality, most of the time there is no way to enforce ownership when copies have been made and the knowledge distributed.
Bull. It's very easy to enforce property rights. It happens on two levels. One: when I find out that you've stolen my idea, I send you a letter asking you nicely please to stop. You do, because you're a decent human being who has respect for my rights. If you refuse, then we go to level two: I sue you for a truly vast sum of money.
It's not necessary that the ideas in question remain secret. They can, and should, be common knowledge. It's just that you're not allowed to do anything with those ideas until I give you my permission, because those ideas don't belong to you.
What about the idea of using a chunk of wood as a club?
It's not an invention. It's obvious. Why do you keep hauling out these really bad examples? Are you trying to derail the discussion?
Well, the XOR graphics cursor is a patented "software invention", and I independently invented that when I was 12 years old.
No kidding? Wow.
A computer graphics display system including random access raster memory for storing data to be displayed, a raster memory control unit for writing data into the raster memory, a video control unit for causing such information to be displayed on a CRT display screen, a micro control unit for controlling the function and timing of the raster memory control unit and the video control unit, and a computer adapted for facilitating data exchange between the micro control unit and a host computer. The displayed image can have extremely high complexity with essentially no problem of display flicker. Zoom and pan features allow the use of a very complex stored image in a flexible manner, and a split-screen technique enables an operator to work on a very complex picture at a detail level while still having an overview of the total picture, or any portion thereof, simultaneously presented before him. The split-screen feature also allows the simultaneous display of alphanumeric messages such as prompts, menus, or X-Y readouts added to the graphics display and a small area of the raster memory is usually reserved for this purpose. An XOR feature allows a selective erase that restores lines crossing or concurrent with erased lines. The XOR feature permits part of the drawing to be moved or "dragged" into place without erasing other parts of the drawing.
And that's just the abstract. You did all that? Amazing.
I also independently invented downloadable software delivered by following links on a hypertext page, a couple of years after that, around 1983.
Yeah, I'm similarly going to call bullshit on this one.
See, right here what you're doing is this: you're demonstrating a lack of understanding of what a patent actually is. It describes an entire invention, in great detail. It can't be summed up into a phrase like "XOR graphics cursor." When you try, you end up throwing away significant detail.
Let me put it this way. Let's say, for sake of argument, that my checking account balance is $1,000,012. Let's say I have a million and twelve bucks. "That's no big deal!" you say. "I have $12 right here!" See, you disregarded a lot of very significant digits there, and ended up drawing the wrong conclusion.
(It's the same basic phenomenon that leads to people thinking that $19.99 is closer to $19 than it is to $20. It's approximation through truncation.)
Ideas are easy, and creating a "software invention" is pretty much a matter of having an idea and writing it down in special notation.
"I could have thought of that." But the fact is that you didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too. (Apologies to Douglas Adams.)
In return for the right to sue via the courts for breach of copyright, you have to eventually give it up.
"In return for the right to sue via the courts for breaking and entering, you have to eventually give up your house."
What a crock. Property rights are just that: rights. They exist in and of themselves. Government doesn't grant them or take them away; it merely deigns to enforce them. Or, unfortunately, sometimes opts to ignore them.
Copyright law, to continue using the example I brought up above, is a compromise. On the one hand, we as a society recognize and hold dear the absolute, unalienable right to property. But on the other hand, we know that society is better off if creative works become freely available to all after a time. So we strike a compromise that says: Fine. Take my works from me. But not for a good, long time. And until then, guard them zealously for me!
Patents are a similar compromise. Fine, we say. Take my ideas. But not for a good, long time, and until then, guard them zealously.
The fundamental flaw of both conventions, in my opinion, is that they're too often described falsely as a "granting" of rights. The government "grants" you an exclusive copyright. The government "grants" you a monopoly on your invention.
That's bullshit. The government does not grant rights. The state does not grant rights. Our rights were invested in us by our Creator, to invoke the old-fashioned expression. They exist. Government exists by the consent of the governed for the purpose of protecting those rights which we already have.
If you want to express it in less metaphysical terms, think of rights as something that we claim for ourselves. In the end, it works out the same. Government exists to protect that which we have already given ourselves.
Either way you look at it, the government protects our rights. It does not grant them, and it does not have the power to take them away.
Wrenching this little digression back to the topic, there are a lot of people here who think that some patents simply should not be granted. Certain areas of human endeavor should not be eligible for patent protection. That's like saying certain neighborhoods aren't eligible for police protection. It's arbitrary and it's wrong.
If it's an original idea, then it's yours, man. You thunk it up; it belongs to you. If somebody else thinks they thought of it first, the burden must be on them to demonstrate that they did.
You do not own ideas or works, you own your brain and your house and your computer.
If I share knowledge with my neighbour, what does the state have to do with it?
Nothing. It's the part where the state nullifies your property rights over your own creations that I have a problem with, as in copyright law.
When an anti-property activist, say your average Slashdotter for instance, says "public commons," he's talking about state seizure of private property. If you're not talking about that, great, but don't refer to it as a "public commons." Refer to it as what it is: collaboration.
Nothing wrong with collaboration. But there's something very wrong with being forced into it by the government under which we live.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, they were neither purely good nor purely evil.
This is an important point, but in my opinion it's not the most important point.
You won't have a hard time getting your average radical leftist to agree that nothing is purely good or purely evil. In fact, he'll probably beat you to the punch by adopting the nihilist view: that nothing means anything, so everything's equivalent to everything else.
What's more important, in my opinion, is to remember that there are degrees. Yes, what Soldier X did to Prisoner Y at Abu Ghraib was bad. But what Terrorist X did to innocent civilians Y, Z, A, B, C, and D was worse.
The radical leftist would say that we, as Americans, have no right to say that the second thing was bad because we were indirectly responsible for the first thing.
Which is, of course, crap. It is not only possible but also moral to make value judgments. It's not only possible but moral to say that killing a hostage brutally and cruelly on videotape is worse than putting a bag over a prisoner's head for three days.
Now, how much fun is it to play a game where you basically sit back and watch the action, rather than being able to interact with it?
Fun, fun... when you introduce the concept of taking turns.
America's Army works like that, albeit at the squad level rather than the campaign level. Every "turn," i.e. every engagement, one of the players gets elected squad leader, and he's responsible for coming up with the plan of battle and ordering his fire teams around.
Now, the squad leader is basically just a guy with a pair of binocs in addition to his M-16, so it's possible for him to go running off into the fray. Some players, especially inexperienced ones, do just that. At that point, the game devolves into Counterstrike.
But the real fun happens when the squad leader finds a good place to oversee the battle and gives his fire teams orders. Suppress this enemy position, advance under cover to that position, circle around to the rear, lob a smoke grenade, storm the compound.
It's about as realistic as squad-level combat gets, I think. No god's-eye view or anything like that: just a pair of binoculars and some radio channels to communicate with your teams.
It's wicked fun.
the future of both series looks rather bleak.
Which is a great comfort to the peace-loving peoples of the world.
SciFi picked up Andromeda. They're running new episodes. Although God knows why. I watched a couple because TiVo said I should, and I always do what TiVo tells me to.
They were terrible. I mean, beyond bad.
Bad TiVo!
Enterprise has been posted in HD since the start of season 2, and it's been broadcast in HD since last winter.
If your local UPN affiliate isn't equipped to broadcast HD, call them, don't bitch to Slashdot.
Slashdot: where if enough people agree, your opinion can be wrong.
Let's say my trade is burglary. Are the fruits of my labour my property?
No, because your trade is unlawful. The fruits of your labor are, to use the standard expression, the fruits of a poisoned tree.
If the fruits of my labour are my property, then my child is my property
People aren't be property. No person can claim ownership of another person.
You know, if you weren't such an insufferable asshole, you'd stop denying the reality of the world we live in.
If I'm so insufferable, why do you insist on trolling me?
The rest of your post was devoid of content. Nothing there worth replying to.
I'm beginning to see where you're coming from.
:-)
I'm glad to hear it. Understanding my position is the first step toward bending to my will.
I was thinking more in terms of property rights as the set of legal powers the government grants
I'm probably repeating myself here, but I just want to be very explicit: government exists to secure and protect those rights which we already have. Government does not grant anything, nor can it revoke anything.
Your weapons-grade plutonium example is quite apt - that's how software patents are often used in the computer industry today, and why I think they should be limited.
You're kidding, right?
The "natural rights" of property are dependant on the conservation of mass and energy, a law we cannot change.
No, they're not. People much smarter than you or me have figured this out a long time ago. Go read some Locke, specifically his Second Treatise.
In short: natural property rights spring from the notion of "the fruits of labor." A thing, a physical object, becomes your property when you have taken it out of its natural state and applied labor to it. Intangible things become your property when you expend intellectual or creative labor to create them.
Given that your basic assumptions about the philosophy of natural rights are so far from the "state of the art," if you'll pardon the expression, we're going to have a hard time continuing.
Any scarcity associated with existing creative works is artificial
No, it's not. I have it, you lack it. That's scarcity in a nutshell. The intangible nature of good ideas, whether creative ones or useful ones, doesn't change the fact that they're not just lying around in the fields for anybody to pick up. Creating them requires labor, and the result of labor is property.
On one extreme, we could eliminate scarcity, for example by abolishing copyright law.
We could also make it legal for you to steal my furniture by abolishing laws that prohibit burglary. This would not "eliminate scarcity," nor would it be morally just.
On the other extreme, we could make complete scarcity, for example by making patents perpetual and very strong. The profit motive would then be strong, but it would be more difficult to create, fewer people could afford the works, and their market would suffer.
Right at the end, wrong at the beginning. I'm repeating myself here, but it's got nothing to do with scarcity. Property rights are natural in nature; they just happen, whether there's a government there to acknowledge them or another person there to violate them.
But your conclusion in this graf is correct: we, as a society, recognize that limiting property rights in some situations is important. For example, it's not legal for a private citizen to own weapons-grade nuclear material. It doesn't matter if you buy it or if you mine and purify the uranium yourself from unclaimed deposits, it's just not legal for you to own it. The government doesn't recognize your property rights in that instance, and will seize your property in the name of a greater good.
Similarly, we acknowledge that a greater good benefits when authors and inventors are stripped of their property rights after a time, so we do. Authors and other creators of creative works are stripped of their property rights after their copyright expires. Patent holders are stripped of their rights when the patent expires, if they chose to apply for a patent at all. If they didn't, their innovations are treated as "trade secrets" under the law and protected indefinitely.
This is well and good. But we must never, ever slip into the error of believing that the government somehow "grants" or "creates" property rights. We must remember that things like expiring copyrights and patents are a legalized seizure of property.
We accept this state of affairs only because it is pragmatic to do so. It is a small wrong in the service of a greater good.
Creative works and physical property are different, so the rights of creators and property owners need not be identical.
You still haven't answered my question. We begin at the beginning so as to avoid circular reasoning: property rights exist. Period, end of sentence. They exist. Given this fact, which can hardly be argued given that it underlies all modern cultures, how do you justify drawing a line and saying that this kind of property should be respected and this kind should not? How do you justify arbitrarily depriving property owners of their rights, based solely on the premise that some kinds of property exist as atoms and other kinds exist as ideas?
Then we should invade Israel at once, because that is exactly what the Israeli army is doing.
When's the last time the IDF targeted noncombatants? And no tin-foil-hat bullshit: I mean actual events that really happened.
From what I've seen so far, the parent poster probably has the best example of prior art. It is pretty goddam close to what Apple is claiming.
Have you, you know, read Apple's patent application?
The thing in question has practically nothing in common with Apple's claim. You'd know that if you took one minute to read what Apple's lawyers wrote.
I guess that'd be too much to ask, huh? That you, you know, use your brain.
None of the other claims establish anything new.
Okay, look. You're not getting this. I'm gonna try one more time to explain this.
A patent describes an invention. It consists of several claims, all of which together describe the invention. You can't point at one of the claims and say, "This is nothing new." Hell, you can't even point at all of the claims and say "These are nothing new." Because the point is that the patent covers the combination of all of those things together.
You cannot infringe upon the described patent with "a few lines of code." That's just silly.
Are you trying to imply that I need to design and build the hardware in order to infringe on it?
No, I'm not trying to imply that. I'm saying it.
It did originally. The phrase was inspired by the writings of John Locke. It wasn't until one of the later drafts that Jefferson changed it from property to "the pursuit of happiness." Most scholars with whom I'm familiar interpret the difference as meaning that Jefferson wanted to speak in more far-reaching terms. The right to property, as described by Locke--and, unbelievably, debated here, as if the question hadn't been settled once and for all centuries ago--is essential to the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness requires not only the right to property, but all sorts of other rights our society takes as a given: the right to freedom of speech, the right to freedom of association, the right to freedom of religion, and so on.
The fact that Jefferson didn't use the word "property" doesn't mean that the Declaration of Independence doesn't declare an unalienable right to property.
If property is among them, and property is passed though wills to others upon death, do you therefore think ownership of inventions should be passed on indefinitely if willed by its owner?
I think that's the natural state, yes. As with copyrights, there are compromises to be made. But we must never forget that the rights belong to the inventor, and that seizure of property to advance the greater good is just that: seizure. There is a level of state intervention we're willing to tolerate for the good of society, but we mustn't forget that the rights belong to us and are being taken from us with our consent.
Once the block and tackle, gears, and hydraulics are invented, is it fair to expect all future inventors to pay for using those in their designs?
Yes. It's fair. There's an argument that it's not optimal for society, which is why we tolerate limited protection for intellectual property rights at all. But it's the fair thing.
You are making a "what's best for society" argument. While that's a valid argument, it's not directly related to a "what's morally sound" argument. I'm making a "what's morally sound" argument.
The categorical imperative is for the state to protect the natural rights of property owners. Anything else is a compromise. Possibly a worthwhile compromise, but a compromise nonetheless.
Why should property be inalienable? John Locke had a lot of wonderful things to say about natural rights. I'd suggest you check them out. His Second Treatise is the best place to start.
Couldn't society decide we all work on kibbutzim growing and machining things to pay for living, but all invention and art are free for all?
That's called collectivism, which itself is a euphemism for mass theft and forced labor. It's one of the great evils of the 20th century.
Voluntarily sharing the fruits of one's labor is virtuous. Being forced to by an oppressive state is horribly, horribly wrong.
How do you not?
How do you justify drawing an utterly arbitrary line and saying that this kind of property is subject to ownership and the natural rights of property, while this kind of property isn't?
The substance of the patent, as with all patents, is in it's independent claim(s).
No, that's not how patents work. In order for an invention to be protected by a patent, it must embody all of the claims in the patent. Similarly, in order for a work to infringe on a patent, it must infringe significantly on the claims in the patent. It's not enough to pull out three words and yell "Gotcha!"
The entire remainder of the text of the patent is the conventional and deliberate obfuscation
Yes, that's it. It's all a big frame-up. They're trying to cheat you out of what's rightfully yours.
Have you taken your medication today? Are you sure you're on the proper dosing?
You know full well that the apparent complexity of the patent text belies it's actual triviality and you know as well as I do the purpose of this complexity.
I'd recommend thorazine. It does wonders to stop the voices in your head.
You use this serendipitous advantage to bamboozle the innocent reader into a false belief of the sophistication of the invention itself, no doubt in order to further your contested assertions of the merits of software patentability.
Maybe zoloft, paxil, or another SSRI-form antidepressant might help you with the generalized feelings of anxiety and paranoia.
Your cronies have already failed to successfully pull the wool over the eyes of the members of the European Parliament.
Then again, maybe the best alternative is hospitalization. It's gonna be okay, man. There are people who can help you. You don't have to live like this. Seek medical advice immediately.
Patents and copyright are an artifice. They are the state overriding the natural order.
No. The natural order is that the product of my labors belongs to me. I cannot rightfully be forced to work for another man without my consent; neither can I rightfully be forced to turn over my property without my consent. That's the natural order.
The natural order also includes an element of perversity. You might have the power, through virtue of your size or your strength or your arsenal, to force me, against my will, to give up my property to you. Or you might be cunning enough to sneak in and steal my property from me when I'm not looking. These acts, however, are not right. They are possible, but unacceptable. They are wrong.
Patents coerce you into sharing knowledge (through the bribery of a cash reward).
Nonsense. Coercion means convincing somebody to do something that's contrary to their own best interest through intimidation, distortion, or deceit. Patents aren't a bait-and-switch proposition. There's no coercion there.
This is nuts! I won't even start on the idea of crediting the mass hallucination of a "creator" with granting you ANYTHING.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
I'm glad to know that your opinion of the fundamental concept underlying modern society is so high.
If you think you have any right outside the framework of government and society you have lived MUCH too sheltered a life.
Government exists to embody and protect those rights which we already have.
Why is this an important idea? Because if you start with the premise that government grants rights, then you end up with the conclusion that government can revoke rights. And that's not true at all. In fact, that idea, in a nutshell, is one of the great fallacies of history.
Everything you consider to be a god-given right granted to humans by their ever-lovin' creator can be taken away at the point of a gun.
Sure. But just because I'm denied my rights at the point of a gun doesn't mean they cease to be my rights. Just because I'm deprived of (let's say) liberty doesn't mean I'm no longer deserving of liberty.
If you break the law, we put you in jail. We, as a society, deprive you of your liberty, or in some occasions even your life. That doesn't mean we revoke your rights. It just means that you're being denied the free exercise of them because of what you've done. If, for instance, you are able to convince a judge or a governor that you are innocent of the charges of which you were convicted, you'll have your liberty restored. Because it was yours all along.
Didn't you take a political theory or a government or a civics class in junior high? I swear, your teacher covered all this. Weren't you paying attention?
You may think that you SHOULD have some particular right. You may believe that something should belong to you, or that beacuse you created it you should be able to control it, but the fact is you are not strong enough to force this view on everyone else, and there is no all-powerful creator to do it for you.
Ah, now we're into a completely different discussion. We've gone from "people have inherent rights" to "people disagree about what those rights are." That's certainly true. But underlying all of it is the fundamental agreement that we, as human beings, are possessors of certain rights simply by virtue of our living existence.
The only force that exists with enough power to grant or protect a right is the state.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. I'm sorry that you think your rights are given to you and taken from you by the state. Your life must be very sad.
(Those who are astute will notice that my position on this subject has evolved pretty dramatically over the past couple of years. The more you live, the more you learn.)
Your earlier comment implied that without the promise of profit talented people wouldn't ever produce anything. That's pure bullshit.
Jeez. Clue check on aisle one. Let me see if I can give you a basic lesson in how economics works.
I have an idea. I'm a talented person, and I have an idea. Problem is, because I spent the last year sitting in my mom's basement trying to think, I have no money at all. I have to convince somebody to give me money to act on my idea.
So I go to somebody with money and try to convince him to fund me. "What's in it for me?" he says.
So yeah, for the most part, without the profit motive, talented people won't accomplish much. To the extent that they do, they're just following their whims, and not producing anything that really helps anybody else unless it's purely by coincidence. And even if they do happen to strike upon that coincidence, they're not going to be able to go anywhere without funding, and they're not going to get funding without the promise of profit for their backers.
I really don't know how to say it any more simply. Your stuff about "the talented person will realize" is crap, plain and simple.
I've got plenty of training in economics, both though education and real-world experience.
Then why do the most basic concepts about economic motivators elude you?
The personal computer market was a direct result of the "hobbyist [sic] sector" you so blithly denigrate.
Actually, the personal computer was a direct result of IBM's realization that they could sell desktop computers just like they sold typewriters. Yes, a bunch of kids working out of their garages had demonstrated the possibility of a personal computer, but it took businesses to demonstrate the practicality. In some cases, Apple's for instance, the kids who built the do-it-yourself kits and sold them at club meetings concocted a business plan, found investors, and started a company. How do you think they secured investment? Through the promise of sweet profits for their backers.
Go ask Steve Wozniak, who was just such a hobbyist-inventor, or read about the Wright brothers, who took up aeronautics as a sport.
For every Woz or Orville there are ten thousand weekenders who never produce anything of note. If you throw spaghetti at the wall long enough, eventually a piece is going to stick.
And conversely, keep in mind that businesses frequently produce stuff nobody needs or wants.
Fortunately, the market is a classically Darwinian interaction space. Companies that produce stuff nobody needs or wants start producing things people need and want, or they cease to be companies.
If you invent a bookshelf
Bad example. A bookshelf, being a horizontal platform on which books are stacked, is not an invention. It lacks the property of being non-obvious. In its simplest form, a bookshelf is just a table, which is just a plank.
A better example might be if I thought of some new and unique and non-obvious improvement to the bookshelf. Maybe a self-alphabetizing bookshelf for libraries. That's an invention, and worthy of a patent.
If you then see it and build your own, yeah, you've stolen my idea. Bad boy.
There are now two of the same idea. The first person still has it.
Right, but what you've deprived me of, as the inventor, is exclusivity. That's not okay.
You say it takes the ownership away, and has no right to, but in practicality, most of the time there is no way to enforce ownership when copies have been made and the knowledge distributed.
Bull. It's very easy to enforce property rights. It happens on two levels. One: when I find out that you've stolen my idea, I send you a letter asking you nicely please to stop. You do, because you're a decent human being who has respect for my rights. If you refuse, then we go to level two: I sue you for a truly vast sum of money.
It's not necessary that the ideas in question remain secret. They can, and should, be common knowledge. It's just that you're not allowed to do anything with those ideas until I give you my permission, because those ideas don't belong to you.
What about the idea of using a chunk of wood as a club?
It's not an invention. It's obvious. Why do you keep hauling out these really bad examples? Are you trying to derail the discussion?
No kidding? Wow.And that's just the abstract. You did all that? Amazing.
I also independently invented downloadable software delivered by following links on a hypertext page, a couple of years after that, around 1983.
Yeah, I'm similarly going to call bullshit on this one.
See, right here what you're doing is this: you're demonstrating a lack of understanding of what a patent actually is. It describes an entire invention, in great detail. It can't be summed up into a phrase like "XOR graphics cursor." When you try, you end up throwing away significant detail.
Let me put it this way. Let's say, for sake of argument, that my checking account balance is $1,000,012. Let's say I have a million and twelve bucks. "That's no big deal!" you say. "I have $12 right here!" See, you disregarded a lot of very significant digits there, and ended up drawing the wrong conclusion.
(It's the same basic phenomenon that leads to people thinking that $19.99 is closer to $19 than it is to $20. It's approximation through truncation.)
Ideas are easy, and creating a "software invention" is pretty much a matter of having an idea and writing it down in special notation.
"I could have thought of that." But the fact is that you didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too. (Apologies to Douglas Adams.)
What is the basis of this?
History. How many brilliant software innovations have come from guys who work in a bar and write code during their free time?
Time doesn't grow on trees, it is merely an abstraction of the 4th dimension of my universe.
Are you kidding me? Is this supposed to be funny?
I tried, I really tried. I made a concerted effort to read the rest of your post. It was just too much froshman-year claptrap. I couldn't deal. Sorry.
If you want to try again, I'd suggest you pare it down a bit.
In return for the right to sue via the courts for breach of copyright, you have to eventually give it up.
"In return for the right to sue via the courts for breaking and entering, you have to eventually give up your house."
What a crock. Property rights are just that: rights. They exist in and of themselves. Government doesn't grant them or take them away; it merely deigns to enforce them. Or, unfortunately, sometimes opts to ignore them.
Copyright law, to continue using the example I brought up above, is a compromise. On the one hand, we as a society recognize and hold dear the absolute, unalienable right to property. But on the other hand, we know that society is better off if creative works become freely available to all after a time. So we strike a compromise that says: Fine. Take my works from me. But not for a good, long time. And until then, guard them zealously for me!
Patents are a similar compromise. Fine, we say. Take my ideas. But not for a good, long time, and until then, guard them zealously.
The fundamental flaw of both conventions, in my opinion, is that they're too often described falsely as a "granting" of rights. The government "grants" you an exclusive copyright. The government "grants" you a monopoly on your invention.
That's bullshit. The government does not grant rights. The state does not grant rights. Our rights were invested in us by our Creator, to invoke the old-fashioned expression. They exist. Government exists by the consent of the governed for the purpose of protecting those rights which we already have.
If you want to express it in less metaphysical terms, think of rights as something that we claim for ourselves. In the end, it works out the same. Government exists to protect that which we have already given ourselves.
Either way you look at it, the government protects our rights. It does not grant them, and it does not have the power to take them away.
Wrenching this little digression back to the topic, there are a lot of people here who think that some patents simply should not be granted. Certain areas of human endeavor should not be eligible for patent protection. That's like saying certain neighborhoods aren't eligible for police protection. It's arbitrary and it's wrong.
If it's an original idea, then it's yours, man. You thunk it up; it belongs to you. If somebody else thinks they thought of it first, the burden must be on them to demonstrate that they did.
You do not own ideas or works, you own your brain and your house and your computer.
That is a point on which we cannot agree.
If I share knowledge with my neighbour, what does the state have to do with it?
Nothing. It's the part where the state nullifies your property rights over your own creations that I have a problem with, as in copyright law.
When an anti-property activist, say your average Slashdotter for instance, says "public commons," he's talking about state seizure of private property. If you're not talking about that, great, but don't refer to it as a "public commons." Refer to it as what it is: collaboration.
Nothing wrong with collaboration. But there's something very wrong with being forced into it by the government under which we live.
It's not exactly what's described in the patent
Then may I humbly suggest that you stop spouting off about how it's "prior art?"