That's what consumer organisations do. If we can get them to understand that copyright is enough to protect innovation and that patents only make the consumer pay higher prices, they may well want to make a lot of noise. And coming from a consumer organisation, the message is more likely to be believed by the general public than when it comes from a bunch of techies.
It seems to me that what the Bad Guys really want, is a way to make closed standards. Bill Gates built an empire doing that. How about if we let them patent particular data formats and protocols as long as there are other similar, but different and incompatible protocols?
I wouldn't mind very much if Microsoft owned exclusive rights to the.asf format, as long as we have MPEG, QTime, Real etc, Ogg Vorbis or whatever it's called. I would mind very much if they could patent the idea of streaming video.
I don't mind very much if the fine people at Valve don't want you to sell your own levels people can play on the engine they bough with HL-2. I would mind very much if they could patent the concept of a 3d shooter engine.
I think that's a good idea for software. I think the lifespan of a patent should be related to normal rate of innovation in a particular field. For software 2-5 years might be reasonable. 5 years is really a long time and you can be pretty sure that most inventions will have been independently reinvented more than once during that period. Making the lifespan even longer would harm innovation, not help it.
For something like new medicines, I imagine the cycle would be on the order of 10 to 15 years.
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That's what consumer organisations do. If we can get them to understand that copyright is enough to protect innovation and that patents only make the consumer pay higher prices, they may well want to make a lot of noise. And coming from a consumer organisation, the message is more likely to be believed by the general public than when it comes from a bunch of techies.
I wouldn't mind very much if Microsoft owned exclusive rights to the .asf format, as long as we have MPEG, QTime, Real etc, Ogg Vorbis or whatever it's called. I would mind very much if they could patent the idea of streaming video.
I don't mind very much if the fine people at Valve don't want you to sell your own levels people can play on the engine they bough with HL-2. I would mind very much if they could patent the concept of a 3d shooter engine.
I think that's a good idea for software. I think the lifespan of a patent should be related to normal rate of innovation in a particular field. For software 2-5 years might be reasonable. 5 years is really a long time and you can be pretty sure that most inventions will have been independently reinvented more than once during that period. Making the lifespan even longer would harm innovation, not help it. For something like new medicines, I imagine the cycle would be on the order of 10 to 15 years.