If I, as an individual copyright holder, assign full rights to (someone else), then that entity is *effectively* the owner. If that entity happens to be a "corporation", then we're right back to where we started in terms of corporations lobbying for "their" copyrights.
Again, a "corporation" is not necessarily an Evil Entity, but rather a certain kind of legal relationship between individual(s) and the government. I know a lot of *individuals* who incorporate *themselves* so they get Extra Special Treatment from the government that "corporation" status often enjoys.
This of course makes a mockery of the current corporation system, which is why the real solution to this overall problem would be to abolish said Treatment and make corporations have essentially the same legal status as individuals.
However, limiting ownership of copyrights--or anything else that can be owned--is not the solution.
[quote]...disallowing corporations from holding copyrights of anything. reserve copyright for individuals only. that would protect the small time artist [/quote]
The problem is that a "corporation" is not necessarily a faceless evil entity. Often *individual artists* make a personal choice to license their works to a "corporation" of some form, or make some other more complicated arrangement (artists' deals with record companies are often very complicated). Also, an "individual artist" make actually choose to be a "corporation" for tax or business reasons.
I just want to put my $.02 in for Salon. I really hope they make it. There's no other news/culture site like them on the Net at their quality level. The closest site with the same format and quality level is Slate (in terms of the amount of writers and the production quality), which of course Sucks(tm). Hopefully they can go into Chapter 11 and pull out of it as a viable (albeit small) company. Fight the good fight, Salon!
I wasn't aware the the general consensus of opinion on/. was that all patents are bad, only that stupid ones on obvious things were bad.
Well sometimes. The only catch is that if Google files a patent, then it's OBVIOUSLY innovative and Good. If Microsoft (or probably any other company) files a patent, then it's OBVIOUSLY stupid and obvious.
Most of the folks here don't seem to bother to READ THE DETAILS of these patents, and go off half-cocked by looking at the title of it, making the assumption that the patent is claiming what is in the title (viz. "a method of making an internet search engine" != "patenting the entire concept of an internet search engine", and so on). Most of the time software patents cover the specific implementation details of the system in question, not the "overall concept". InfoSeek's "search within search results" patent was like this. The patent covered the extremely complicated caching they did to make that work on a high-traffic engine, even though a simpler approach could be had by doing a string AND search on the same dataset.
There are a lot of stupid patents out there, and a lot of good ones. The patent system has problems, but it would be immoral to scrap the whole thing. Any company is capable of abusing the patent system, and the next one may be Google. Many non-Google companies have filed perfectly reasonable patents, including Microsoft.
Distinguishing between the two requires some thinking though, and a lot of folks here have an easier time of hating all non-Google technology companies (especially Microsoft), and blindly loving Google (even though it's getting harder to find the actual search results on their pages through all of the text-link ads).
I read this article expecting a typical ra-ra pro-/. story about removing intellectual property rights and forcibly curtailing concenting parties from engaging in the contracts they want to engage in.
Instead I found this article to be balanced, and it's by no means a ringing endorsement of the B&L's theories. On the contrary, they site numerous examples of other economists that disagree with them.
Unfortunately most of the economists are united in the belief that removing the rights of a minority in the in the name of "social good" is acceptable. (I.e. outlawing any kind of contact that attaches strings to the downstream use of the good sold). While the current system of patents and copyrights has a lot of flaws, slavery of a minority (which is what this amounts to) is never the answer.
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If I, as an individual copyright holder, assign full rights to (someone else), then that entity is *effectively* the owner. If that entity happens to be a "corporation", then we're right back to where we started in terms of corporations lobbying for "their" copyrights.
Again, a "corporation" is not necessarily an Evil Entity, but rather a certain kind of legal relationship between individual(s) and the government. I know a lot of *individuals* who incorporate *themselves* so they get Extra Special Treatment from the government that "corporation" status often enjoys.
This of course makes a mockery of the current corporation system, which is why the real solution to this overall problem would be to abolish said Treatment and make corporations have essentially the same legal status as individuals. However, limiting ownership of copyrights--or anything else that can be owned--is not the solution.
[/quote]
The problem is that a "corporation" is not necessarily a faceless evil entity. Often *individual artists* make a personal choice to license their works to a "corporation" of some form, or make some other more complicated arrangement (artists' deals with record companies are often very complicated). Also, an "individual artist" make actually choose to be a "corporation" for tax or business reasons.
So you see it's not quite that simple...
I just want to put my $.02 in for Salon. I really hope they make it. There's no other news/culture site like them on the Net at their quality level. The closest site with the same format and quality level is Slate (in terms of the amount of writers and the production quality), which of course Sucks(tm). Hopefully they can go into Chapter 11 and pull out of it as a viable (albeit small) company. Fight the good fight, Salon!
Well sometimes. The only catch is that if Google files a patent, then it's OBVIOUSLY innovative and Good. If Microsoft (or probably any other company) files a patent, then it's OBVIOUSLY stupid and obvious.
Most of the folks here don't seem to bother to READ THE DETAILS of these patents, and go off half-cocked by looking at the title of it, making the assumption that the patent is claiming what is in the title (viz. "a method of making an internet search engine" != "patenting the entire concept of an internet search engine", and so on). Most of the time software patents cover the specific implementation details of the system in question, not the "overall concept". InfoSeek's "search within search results" patent was like this. The patent covered the extremely complicated caching they did to make that work on a high-traffic engine, even though a simpler approach could be had by doing a string AND search on the same dataset.
There are a lot of stupid patents out there, and a lot of good ones. The patent system has problems, but it would be immoral to scrap the whole thing. Any company is capable of abusing the patent system, and the next one may be Google. Many non-Google companies have filed perfectly reasonable patents, including Microsoft.
Distinguishing between the two requires some thinking though, and a lot of folks here have an easier time of hating all non-Google technology companies (especially Microsoft), and blindly loving Google (even though it's getting harder to find the actual search results on their pages through all of the text-link ads).
I read this article expecting a typical ra-ra pro-/. story about removing intellectual property rights and forcibly curtailing concenting parties from engaging in the contracts they want to engage in. Instead I found this article to be balanced, and it's by no means a ringing endorsement of the B&L's theories. On the contrary, they site numerous examples of other economists that disagree with them. Unfortunately most of the economists are united in the belief that removing the rights of a minority in the in the name of "social good" is acceptable. (I.e. outlawing any kind of contact that attaches strings to the downstream use of the good sold). While the current system of patents and copyrights has a lot of flaws, slavery of a minority (which is what this amounts to) is never the answer.
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