is now the way I will end every argument I ever have.
What's the word that means you're impressed by the reasonableness and intelligence of something you've been taught to mock?
Next thing you know, telecoms will be liable for medical malpractice if the network connections fail during remote robotic surgery.
Raises an interesting point. Is it ridiculous to hold an ISP accountable for a reasonable service standard in such a case? Should telecoms be necessarily immune to lawsuit for failing to provide a reasonable level of service for a critical care applications? What if the company boasted 99.999% uptime as part of their sales pitch, but failed to deliver that level, and some of the outages cost innocent patients their lives or wellbeing? The client service agreement the doctor signed to get internet service specifically disclaims any liability for losses the doctor might suffer, so it may be up to the patient to hold the ISP accountable.
Or would it be more sensical to make ISP's immune to such liability altogether?
I hate to be sued as much as the next guy, and I like getting music for free, so I can definitely understand the bitter reaction to the RIAA's strong-arm tactics with file sharers.
But ownership exists as a legal ideology in this country. I doubt many of us with expensive cutting edge hardware would be willing to move to a society where ownership doesn't exist. Cuba, I think it's called, since the USSR went bankrupt. Too much/. anti-IP kool-aid over there.
So, given that we embrace ownership, why are software and music exempt from these rules? I really don't feel automatically entitled to the hard work, cleverness, or even luck of another man.
Now, as in the open-source software movement, if everyone agrees that the price they will pay to use another man's ideas is that they will share their own ideas, then no one loses. But when one party says, "Please don't steal what we've created," it's pretty obviously (although maybe mildly) evil to push them down and take it anyway. So again, why is the RIAA evil and the thieves(?) innocent? Just because the RIAA will do anything in their power to protect something that our laws say is theirs? Don't come "open-sourcing" into my house and try to take my system, or I too will do everything in my power to prevent/punish you.
I used to get busted for plugging into an external electrical outlet outside of a public library. Back then the internet was called "books". It was weird, man.
It made sense to me at the time that what I was doing was wrong. Whoever was making decisions about how to offer "Public Services" from the Library had decided that providing a very cheap bit of electrical service to me outside the Library was not what was intended. Ergo, I was misusing a few Public tax dollars.
While it seems a reasonable cost for society to up and provide "free" public Internet access to everyone out of our tax dollars, until that happens, it seems reasonable that society should enforce against "theft" of wireless access both Private and Public.
Of course we all realize that we are using short hand and stereotypes to describe Liberal and Conservative, but these are just two Adjectives of Art, and can be very fuzzy. One can be conservative in economic policy and be easily labeled Conservative, when one (oh okay, it's me) is actually very socially liberal, and anti-religion in politics. I don't want my government making policy decisions based on the reported words of an invisible Paleolithic super-hero residing in outer space. I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard, so I think it's too general to link conservative with religious without qualification.
"The US did it" isn't an excuse for IP theft as it is not an excuse for far more serious transgressions such as slavery or genocide.
IP protection doesn't PREVENT developing nations from advancing. It is an attempt to prevent "free riding" on others' hard work. Of COURSE stealing other people's ideas and creations that they've poured their time and effort into is profitable, whether to the newly founded US, or to modern China. That's as good a point as saying that stealing a stereo from your neighbor is profitable, unless you get caught and punished for violating laws that are designed for the betterment of society.
IP protection is to encourage innovation, and it favors innovators, not "fat cats". If you ever create something yourself, and run up against the problem that so many of us do - i.e., that a little guy trying to launch his life's work in the form of a new or better idea, is (without strong IP protection) at the complete mercy of the big companies, who have the resources to steal and recreate anything. And then to dump marketing $ into it and put the little guy out of business before he even gets a chance to compete. And as OpenSource advocate, I'm sure you would agree that the little guys in aggregate can invent and improve technology and life as well as the big companies. So why would you wish to throw away the only protection available to the little guys? Why would you not rejoice that, due to the US' economic importance, we are able to increase that level of protection all over the globe? Increased protection of IP is a successful meme - regardless of the methods it uses to propagate. It's a successful meme because it works better in the developed world. I agree with you that this is less true for developing countries, who profit so much from IP theft that some sanctions and trade disadvantage is easily paid for in the benefits of free riding.
Odd that 'harmonizing' is always in one direction - for some reason, no one ever wants to decrease IP regulation to harmonize with some other country.
Instead of blindly drinking the/. kool-aid, why not postulate a likely theory to explain this point?
Perhaps "harmonizing" is always in the direction of greater IP protection for a reason. Here is a suggested explanation which seems more likely than a Schopenhaurian belief in the fundamental evil of people. Perhaps nations with better Intellectual Property protection are more economically powerful than nations with weaker IP protection. I doubt that this relationship is purely coincidental. So when two countries meet to work out trade agreements, the country with a better system and more to offer its partner is the one who sets the rules.
I don't think anyone is up in arms about arguing that IP rights are IDEOLOGICALLY superior to the "no private property" bias espoused on these boards day in and day out. But regardless of the arguable ideology of IP protection, it was envisioned, enacted, and continues to be supported for one reason and one reason only: it encourages innovation. Our history and legal enshrinement of this incentive, along with the historical industriousness of our workers and scientists, our natural resources, and our peace from internal conflict and division are the sole reasons why we are the world's most important economy. Look at the implications at least one, and realize that although the relationship may not be as simple as I'm making it out to be, There is a relationship between IP Rights and economic success as a nation.
While I agree that genomics as a useful science is in its infancy, that doesn't mean that this is a time when there is no need for incentive protection for innovation. In fact, it's more important now, when the likelihood of generating revenue off some new direction in research is so unsure, than it is in a more mature science such as traditional pharmaceuticals, where you can tell with somewhat more accuracy what the eventual commercial reward will be for any particular improvement. New science is exciting, risky, expensive, and often of quesitonable ultimate value. In developmental cycles of pharmaceuticals, 5 years (as suggested by a another poster) is way too short to have any hope of gnerating enough revenue to incentivize the outlay of time and resources often required to move forward in science.
I also didn't see anyone point out that the patent system, in addition to providing incentive for useful innovation, also acts as an Open Source share-meet. What is required in order to get a patent issued? Other than presumably its novelty and unobviousness? Full public disclosure of the protected matter. Which is published right away, adding to the communal knowledge base.
So with the minor wrinkle of allowing inventors 30 years to profit from their own work if possible, the patent system acts as one of the best Open Source markets imaginable. In exchange for all this benefit, you have to share.
Going back to the analogy of coding, coming up with a superior method to perform some function within an application is a novel addition to the world's knowledge base, but it doesn't cost you much to do, and it seems like civic duty, a personal ego boost, and just the right thing to do, to share your work with others. But what if you had to sacrifice a lot to come up with that innovation? Years, lots of money, opportunity costs. How would the OpenSource community reward you? Well wishes, mad props, their own meager improvements building on your huge one. Which is nice, but would hardly give you any good reason to dedicate blood, sweat, and tears to a pie-in-the-sky dream. Since everyone is a free rider who wants to be in OpenSource, large expenditures of time, money and effort are actually dis-incentivized.
I realize that it's incredibly unpopular on slashdot to come out in favor of practically any intellectual property, but this article was logically flawed.
Yes, it makes sense that the genetic code(s) for apples should be public domain, or perhaps even shared by the few people willing/able to describe those codes, but to extend that logic and say that if someone CREATES a new code based on the old, let's say for an apple that cures cancer, is ridiculous.
At the very least, if someone were nice enough to do so on their own dime (they'd have to if they didn't own the improvement - we'd all just steal it from them otherwise) then we should be nice enough to give that guy some help/money/services in exchange for his incredible contribution to life. If only we could count on everyone to do that, or if only there were some kind of sociological structure to accomplish the same goal. OHWAIT! There is - and it's called the public freaking market.
By allowing (temporary) ownership of intellectual property such as this, we collectively incentivize innovation, via direct reward. I completely agree with shareadvocates that in some cases, specifically in environments where information is quickly and universally shared as a matter of course, that same level of innovation can probably be reached or even surpassed by many people making very minor, inexpensive innovations collectively. Hell, there are millions of programmers - it's not that exclusive a club.
But in genetic engineering and manipulation, where the resources to contribute to the science are often incredibly expensive, more protection and incentive needs to be applied if any innovation can be expected.
Slashdot Mirror
is now the way I will end every argument I ever have. What's the word that means you're impressed by the reasonableness and intelligence of something you've been taught to mock?
Next thing you know, telecoms will be liable for medical malpractice if the network connections fail during remote robotic surgery. Raises an interesting point. Is it ridiculous to hold an ISP accountable for a reasonable service standard in such a case? Should telecoms be necessarily immune to lawsuit for failing to provide a reasonable level of service for a critical care applications? What if the company boasted 99.999% uptime as part of their sales pitch, but failed to deliver that level, and some of the outages cost innocent patients their lives or wellbeing? The client service agreement the doctor signed to get internet service specifically disclaims any liability for losses the doctor might suffer, so it may be up to the patient to hold the ISP accountable. Or would it be more sensical to make ISP's immune to such liability altogether?
I hate to be sued as much as the next guy, and I like getting music for free, so I can definitely understand the bitter reaction to the RIAA's strong-arm tactics with file sharers. But ownership exists as a legal ideology in this country. I doubt many of us with expensive cutting edge hardware would be willing to move to a society where ownership doesn't exist. Cuba, I think it's called, since the USSR went bankrupt. Too much /. anti-IP kool-aid over there.
So, given that we embrace ownership, why are software and music exempt from these rules? I really don't feel automatically entitled to the hard work, cleverness, or even luck of another man.
Now, as in the open-source software movement, if everyone agrees that the price they will pay to use another man's ideas is that they will share their own ideas, then no one loses. But when one party says, "Please don't steal what we've created," it's pretty obviously (although maybe mildly) evil to push them down and take it anyway. So again, why is the RIAA evil and the thieves(?) innocent? Just because the RIAA will do anything in their power to protect something that our laws say is theirs? Don't come "open-sourcing" into my house and try to take my system, or I too will do everything in my power to prevent/punish you.
I used to get busted for plugging into an external electrical outlet outside of a public library. Back then the internet was called "books". It was weird, man. It made sense to me at the time that what I was doing was wrong. Whoever was making decisions about how to offer "Public Services" from the Library had decided that providing a very cheap bit of electrical service to me outside the Library was not what was intended. Ergo, I was misusing a few Public tax dollars. While it seems a reasonable cost for society to up and provide "free" public Internet access to everyone out of our tax dollars, until that happens, it seems reasonable that society should enforce against "theft" of wireless access both Private and Public.
Of course we all realize that we are using short hand and stereotypes to describe Liberal and Conservative, but these are just two Adjectives of Art, and can be very fuzzy. One can be conservative in economic policy and be easily labeled Conservative, when one (oh okay, it's me) is actually very socially liberal, and anti-religion in politics. I don't want my government making policy decisions based on the reported words of an invisible Paleolithic super-hero residing in outer space. I don't think I'm that unusual in that regard, so I think it's too general to link conservative with religious without qualification.
"The US did it" isn't an excuse for IP theft as it is not an excuse for far more serious transgressions such as slavery or genocide. IP protection doesn't PREVENT developing nations from advancing. It is an attempt to prevent "free riding" on others' hard work. Of COURSE stealing other people's ideas and creations that they've poured their time and effort into is profitable, whether to the newly founded US, or to modern China. That's as good a point as saying that stealing a stereo from your neighbor is profitable, unless you get caught and punished for violating laws that are designed for the betterment of society. IP protection is to encourage innovation, and it favors innovators, not "fat cats". If you ever create something yourself, and run up against the problem that so many of us do - i.e., that a little guy trying to launch his life's work in the form of a new or better idea, is (without strong IP protection) at the complete mercy of the big companies, who have the resources to steal and recreate anything. And then to dump marketing $ into it and put the little guy out of business before he even gets a chance to compete. And as OpenSource advocate, I'm sure you would agree that the little guys in aggregate can invent and improve technology and life as well as the big companies. So why would you wish to throw away the only protection available to the little guys? Why would you not rejoice that, due to the US' economic importance, we are able to increase that level of protection all over the globe? Increased protection of IP is a successful meme - regardless of the methods it uses to propagate. It's a successful meme because it works better in the developed world. I agree with you that this is less true for developing countries, who profit so much from IP theft that some sanctions and trade disadvantage is easily paid for in the benefits of free riding.
Odd that 'harmonizing' is always in one direction - for some reason, no one ever wants to decrease IP regulation to harmonize with some other country. Instead of blindly drinking the /. kool-aid, why not postulate a likely theory to explain this point?
Perhaps "harmonizing" is always in the direction of greater IP protection for a reason. Here is a suggested explanation which seems more likely than a Schopenhaurian belief in the fundamental evil of people. Perhaps nations with better Intellectual Property protection are more economically powerful than nations with weaker IP protection. I doubt that this relationship is purely coincidental. So when two countries meet to work out trade agreements, the country with a better system and more to offer its partner is the one who sets the rules.
I don't think anyone is up in arms about arguing that IP rights are IDEOLOGICALLY superior to the "no private property" bias espoused on these boards day in and day out. But regardless of the arguable ideology of IP protection, it was envisioned, enacted, and continues to be supported for one reason and one reason only: it encourages innovation. Our history and legal enshrinement of this incentive, along with the historical industriousness of our workers and scientists, our natural resources, and our peace from internal conflict and division are the sole reasons why we are the world's most important economy. Look at the implications at least one, and realize that although the relationship may not be as simple as I'm making it out to be, There is a relationship between IP Rights and economic success as a nation.
While I agree that genomics as a useful science is in its infancy, that doesn't mean that this is a time when there is no need for incentive protection for innovation. In fact, it's more important now, when the likelihood of generating revenue off some new direction in research is so unsure, than it is in a more mature science such as traditional pharmaceuticals, where you can tell with somewhat more accuracy what the eventual commercial reward will be for any particular improvement. New science is exciting, risky, expensive, and often of quesitonable ultimate value. In developmental cycles of pharmaceuticals, 5 years (as suggested by a another poster) is way too short to have any hope of gnerating enough revenue to incentivize the outlay of time and resources often required to move forward in science. I also didn't see anyone point out that the patent system, in addition to providing incentive for useful innovation, also acts as an Open Source share-meet. What is required in order to get a patent issued? Other than presumably its novelty and unobviousness? Full public disclosure of the protected matter. Which is published right away, adding to the communal knowledge base. So with the minor wrinkle of allowing inventors 30 years to profit from their own work if possible, the patent system acts as one of the best Open Source markets imaginable. In exchange for all this benefit, you have to share. Going back to the analogy of coding, coming up with a superior method to perform some function within an application is a novel addition to the world's knowledge base, but it doesn't cost you much to do, and it seems like civic duty, a personal ego boost, and just the right thing to do, to share your work with others. But what if you had to sacrifice a lot to come up with that innovation? Years, lots of money, opportunity costs. How would the OpenSource community reward you? Well wishes, mad props, their own meager improvements building on your huge one. Which is nice, but would hardly give you any good reason to dedicate blood, sweat, and tears to a pie-in-the-sky dream. Since everyone is a free rider who wants to be in OpenSource, large expenditures of time, money and effort are actually dis-incentivized.
I realize that it's incredibly unpopular on slashdot to come out in favor of practically any intellectual property, but this article was logically flawed. Yes, it makes sense that the genetic code(s) for apples should be public domain, or perhaps even shared by the few people willing/able to describe those codes, but to extend that logic and say that if someone CREATES a new code based on the old, let's say for an apple that cures cancer, is ridiculous. At the very least, if someone were nice enough to do so on their own dime (they'd have to if they didn't own the improvement - we'd all just steal it from them otherwise) then we should be nice enough to give that guy some help/money/services in exchange for his incredible contribution to life. If only we could count on everyone to do that, or if only there were some kind of sociological structure to accomplish the same goal. OHWAIT! There is - and it's called the public freaking market. By allowing (temporary) ownership of intellectual property such as this, we collectively incentivize innovation, via direct reward. I completely agree with shareadvocates that in some cases, specifically in environments where information is quickly and universally shared as a matter of course, that same level of innovation can probably be reached or even surpassed by many people making very minor, inexpensive innovations collectively. Hell, there are millions of programmers - it's not that exclusive a club. But in genetic engineering and manipulation, where the resources to contribute to the science are often incredibly expensive, more protection and incentive needs to be applied if any innovation can be expected.