It is not useful, and it is potentially damaging, to give someone with a ideological agenda any kind of scientific credibility. They are quite willing to mix both truth and lies to achieve their goals. Not only do they not respect the scientific method, but they go out of their way to denigrate and obfuscate results which HAVE been vetted properly by the scientific community, since such results typically do not support their ideological goals. This lowers the signal-to-noise ratio of the scientific community and makes it more difficult to do know which information you can depend on.
In the presence of people like that, if you want to make any kind of scientific progress at all, you need to filter out the crap they're spewing so that it doesn't affect real science. Crackpots and conmen like many in the intelligent design & anti-global warming crowds need to be utterly exposed, denounced and then shunned so that their lies don't contaminate the public discussion.
Frankly, apologists like yourself are also part of the problem. Because of people like you who are willing to tolerate such behavior, and who try to "look at both sides of a viewpoint" (even when one of the viewpoints is utter shiat), irrationality and ideology has become part of the scientific discussion, even though neither has a valid place there.
The politically-motivated critics of various scientific fields aren't usually difficult to identify: they usually point out some minor flaw in a study, and then state that they have "disproved" an entire field of study. That's a lot different than someone who is merely pointing out that minor flaw so that it can be properly addressed in future studies.
When you've got the first type of person, there really is no point in taking them seriously - they're only interested in pushing their political agenda, not in advancing the state of scientific knowledge. Although you run the risk of occasionally ignoring a "visionary"-type, if you don't identify the politically-motivated hucksters & make sure they are ignored, then the REAL science will get drowned in a tidal wave of ideological bullshit.
Normal people doing their job don't ordinarily violate the civil rights of other citizens. If you want to discourage abuse of police powers, then you've got to make it clear to them that they can and will be monitored whenever they use the special powers that have been granted them.
It doesn't matter who uses the technique first: if you acknowledge it as valid against them, then it's valid against you.
No its not. They're public agents. Public agents are granted special powers over private citizens to be able to perform their duties. In the interests of preventing abuse of those special powers, public agents should not expect the same level of privacy (esp. in the process of using those powers) as private citizens gets.
Hardly. One side has most of the scientific establishment behind it. The other side has a few crackpots, "researchers" paid to provide desired data, and cherry-picked data. Only the willfully ignorant at this stage give equal credibility to both sides.
Reports of lack of body armor doesn't have anything to do with the amount of military funding - it has much more to do with the military procurement system & how it decides where the money is going to be spent. Unfortunately, between politics & bureaucracy, "protecting the troops" is more a lip-service thing for the military-industrial complex than a priority.
Actually, if they start making diamond crystals for semiconductors on the same scale that they had to learn how to make silicon crystals, then you'll see far-beyond-gem-quality diamonds that make the Hope Diamond look like the crumb off a bagel. At that point, DeBiers had better be looking for another kind of stone to throw their marketing weight behind.
Not sure if you're being facetious or just stupid. The 2nd amendment isn't about a society defending itself against foreign powers. It's about a society defending itself against its OWN government - and, hopefully, is one of those "rights" that will never need to be applied.
I've wondered whether it would be more effective to combine the welfare & education budgets and give welfare to recipients only if they (including their kids) are making an effort at getting an education.
And that is one of the questions I asked, if the software you write is for inhouse use or your employer sales said software.
You know, since I actually stated earlier that I'm being paid, and my company is making money using my software, and no copyright was necessary for this happy situation, it should have been possible for you to infer that the company was not trying to make money by selling my software.
You accuse me of not providing evidence however neither have you. I have seen no peer reviewed studied you have submitted, because you haven't.
I don't need to, although I suppose you'd just brush aside as irrelevant all of the classic art & music from all of the various cultures throughout history that didn't have copyright laws. You're the one arguing that you should be allowed to violate my private property rights to "encourage" creativity. To get me to go along with that, you've got to convince me that there's a net societal benefit to doing so. "I deserve it" doesn't meet that standard.
However here's evidence copyrights does work. Copyrights have existed for 200+ years. Take all of the copyrighted works since copyrights were issued and compare how many where are as compared to how many were created in the thousands of years prior to copyrights. I bet you'll see more works have been copyrighted than all of the works created before hand.
Gee, do you think that might have something to do with how many more people there are in the world in the last 200 years compared to before then? Also the invention of technologies necessary to distribute useful information across a wide section of society? That provides more support for my position that free distribution of ideas will generate more creativity than restrictive mechanisms.
Try again! Point to a peer-reviewed study showing that restricting the free flow of ideas generates a net gain in societal "creativity". Frankly, I'd be pleased if you could actually provide such a reference - I've spent quite a bit of time looking for one myself, although have been unsuccessful so far.
Ah, but I bet that if you don't write programs for inhouse use, ie you write commercial software, your employer wants to get paid as well for the software you write.
_If_ there were no such thing as copyright, my employer wouldn't bother trying to sell my software as a product, because (assuming the salespeople had any degree of intelligence) they would know it wasn't a viable business model.
I realise that this is difficult for you to understand, but no one _deserves_ to make money. You've got to have a viable business model. IP laws just provide an artificial way of making a normally-non-viable business model work, but they do it by restricting the rights that people have over their own private property.
Software as a service? Do you mean selling software subscriptions, where the user has to pay each tyme it's used instead of paying it outright? Even this requires copyrights.
NO!!! Are you being dense? My employer pays me to write software for them. They don't pay me FOR the software, they pay me for my labor! Copyright is _irrelevant_ in this business arrangement.
And it serves it's purpose quite well. Copyright adds the incentive to create by providing a financial reward. It's not the only resaon but it's still a good incentive.
Says who? My original statement was that there is no proof that copyright provides any net societal benefit. So far you haven't referred me to any peer-reviewed studies that show differently - you're just another IP sycophant mindlessly repeating the chant that IP "adds the incentive to create" without being able to back up any of it.
It's my way or the highway. Typical of the arrogant.
Do you even bother to look at what your own statements sound like? Who's more arrogant, someone who is defending their private property rights, or someone who insists they have the right to control other peoples' private property?
Of course, I haven't met any 'scientist' that say the earth is doomed.
If you're being honest, I'm sure that you've met a few that are at least willing to say that a large number of humans are probably going to have a hard time though.
Look at you. You too resort to insults to make your point.
For this particular discussion, I'm not really trying to make any kind of scientific point one way or another, or even trying to "win" a debate - I'm just expressing my contempt for people who have bought into the carefully-incubated anti-science rhetoric. After ramming my head into brick walls for years trying to argue these issues using logic and facts with friends, family & associates, I've pretty much concluded that most people don't give a damn about that kind of "evidence". They're much happier accepting as true whatever "fact" their favorite talk show host or preacher tells them, because that authority figure is obviously a LOT more informed and honest than any associate the sucker-I mean, the listener might know personally, no matter how much that associate likes to read. (Why yes, I'm feeling somewhat bitter tonight. Why do you ask?)
For a lot of these subjects, there's no real controversy: it's only some people who don't WANT the general public to come to the obvious conclusion that go out of their way to obfuscate the general agreement by grossly overhyping minor issues. Unfortunately, the general public hasn't been trained enough in critical analysis (and propaganda detection skills) to realize they're being led around like sheep.
I'll freely admit that both sides of these science "controversies" are using the same sorts of sleazy propaganda tactics to sell their memes. Only ONE of those sides tends to have a huge amount of scientific support behind it, however.
I want to get paid for work I do. And I bet you do too.
Did you skip over the bit where I explained how I get paid for the work that I do? I get paid just fine, and I don't need to control what other people do with my work to get paid.
And what do you think the BSA, Business Software Alliance does? It goes after copyright infringers!
The BSA enforces software-as-a-product, not software-as-a-service. If it weren't for artificial scarcity created through government enforcement, they wouldn't have a reason for existing.
Copyright is NOT a mechanism to discourage free expression.
You are confusing the PURPOSE of copyright with the MECHANISM of copyright. Copyright is supposed to encourage the generation of creative works. This is its publicly-stated purpose. The _mechanism_ that it uses is by preventing creative works from being freely copied. To me, it doesn't make any sense that such a mechanism is a good way to achieve the stated public purpose.
If I write something it is my property, however you would allow anyone to steal, er infringe on my work, what I wrote by getting rid of copyrights.
And that's exactly the attitude of somebody who thinks they deserve more out of reality than what reality would normally be willing to give. Why in the world would I let someone with your attitude have control over my private property?
If they're willing to ignore what every reputable scientist is practically screaming from the rooftops, then they've not only bought into the media hype, but they're dancing like puppets on the strings of the people who don't want the public making decisions based on good science.
You just prove my point about some people having a distorted notion of the value of their own product.
Here's a clue about economic value: assuming a "real" free market (i.e., no government enforcement of artificial scarcity), if you can't sell someone a product or service at a particular price, then that product or service wasn't worth that much, no matter how much blood sweat or tears you put into it.
Someone who insists that they "deserve" more money for their product or service than what a free market will give them is basically saying that they don't want to participate in such a market, i.e., they're just greedy.
As a software developer myself, I can assure you that if you choose to unilaterally take my work without my consent, I'll have no qualms or regrets in doing what I can to see you do some time.
That's because you have a distorted idea about what constitutes "your work", and how much control you "deserve" to have over it. There aren't many carpenters that are going to insist on having absolute control on how their customers use the cabinets that they've built.
You've got a pretty obvious bias when you throw out a "prove it" demand like that, with a weak anecdotal argument ("I didn't write a book because I couldn't figure out how to make money doing it") against the respondee.
As far as rebutting your anecdote is concerned, I make a decent living writing software. I'm not getting paid because of copyright (since I'm selling my services as a developer, not the software itself), and the company isn't getting value from my service because of copyright (they get the value from actually using the software I created for them). Just because _you_ can't see a way to make money without copyright doesn't mean that such a way doesn't actually exist - it just means that _you_ don't have a good enough imagination.
Let me flip your question on its head (essentially restating your respondee's post): I've heard and read ad nauseum that copyrights encourage creativity, yet not once has anyone proven it to me. No matter how many times I've asked or searched, I've never read or been referred to any peer-reviewed study supporting the idea that copyright encourages creativity.
It seems highly counterintuitive that a mechanism like copyright (which at its most fundamental is a mechanism that discourages the free expression of ideas) is going to encourage societal creativity, but it gets repeated like a mantra by proponents of copyright, without any kind of logical or evidentiary support. A lot of copyright proponents even mistakenly think that IP has something to do with free-market capitalism.
Before you go around enforcing a bunch of laws that override personal property rights, you'd better make darn sure you're going to get a societal payback that makes that violation worthwhile - but so far, IP proponents keep failing to provide that proof.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 1
That's more of a "fraud" problem than it is a piracy (copyright violation) problem.
How? Prior art is only one facet of patentability -- there's also the whole disclosure issue, whether the "best mode" is disclosed, whether the claims are fully enabled by the specification, etc. Obviousness of a patent, or whether or not it is anticipated, is only part of the question -- and it just doesn't seem likely that the marketplace is really in the position to do that level of due diligence.
Well, the due diligence in question wouldn't be any more difficult than what companies normally have to do to challenge a patent in the Patent Office or the courts, so I don't think it would be any big deal for the usual companies with patents who have deep pockets. If they can't find an easy reason to kill a potential patent, then they can be reasonably sure that someone else won't either, which would make that potential patent more valuable. There's always the risk that they're wrong, but that's just part of business.
Probably a better way to keep "obvious" inventions from being patented would be to start building a database of prior art that is readily searchable, and has a way to access (either directly, or at least tells you a location to look) the original documents. Or original knowledge, even. Combine that with the soon-to-be-in-some-form (assuming the patent reform act passes) public review period, and that should solve the worst of the abuses in the system.
We've already a got a massive database like that - the database of patents itself - and it has already been demonstrated numerous times that the availability of such a system does very little to prevent the granting of bad patents.
but I just don't think it usually possible to know with any level of confidence what the scope, or value, of any particular patent might be -- and this would be a real problem for drub patents and a lot of biotech patents, which rely on clinical trials and FDA approval before you can make a dime on a patent -- I'm not sure any amount of due diligence can determine with ANY level of confidence the value of a drug or biotech patent before the clinical trials are underway.
Just about _any_ kind of business investment has risk associated with it, but businesspeople keep on investing anyway. I think you might be overestimating the risk involved with valuing a patent, and underestimating the amount the effort that some people will put forth to have a chance at getting a good business opportunity.
That's all part of the due diligence that each bidder has to apply to choosing their bid amounts. Somebody who wants ownership of the patent has to be darn sure that they'll get their money's worth after the auction is over & they've got ownership of the patent. Figuring out the narrowness of a claim, or whether a patent will be overturned due to prior art or obviousness is part of that valuation process - and with the auction, you get that due diligence performed without having to depend on overworked patent examiners. Given enough participants with enough information, auctions are pretty good at assigning financial values.
As far as those auction bidders who don't use good due diligence in determining the value of a patent? Well, financial stupidity is also known to be a part of a "real" marketplace. At least a rich moron who pays too much to achieve ownership of a worthless patent is much less likely to be completely destitute after the dust settles.
One detail I haven't figured out is if the application submitter also wants to bid for the patent ownership (i.e., get the patent for themselves). You obviously can't let them pay themselves, so I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that money in a way that causes a good feedback loop (maybe the money goes toward applied R&D for public use?).
I've always liked the idea of putting a relatively low, hard limit on the total number of valid patents. That would make the patent database much easier to search. As various patents expire by age, or by being invalidated through prior art or obviousness judgements, then their "slots" become available to be filled by new patents.
By using some sort of competitive process to compare the patent applications for each slot against each other, you could weed out most of the bad patents. My favorite "competitive process" would be an auction setup - you allow anyone to submit a patent applications for a particular open slot, then you allow everyone else to bid on being able to own the patent rights for any of those applications. The application with the highest bid becomes a valid patent.
The reason I like this setup is because it forces all of the bidders to do "due diligence" on each application, since they will waste a lot of money if they bid a big amount & the patent becomes invalidated for prior art or obviousness reasons.
In addition, if the bid amount is actually given to the submitter of the application, then you have a really big incentive to submit ideas for the "little" inventors who might have a lot of brainpower, but not necessarily the resources to bring their ideas to market. For a really good patent idea, this setup might end up making those inventors much richer than even hitting the lottery. (You have to make sure that the submitter can't pay themselves if they bid on their own application, of course.)
It's also a win for society, since the ideas also end up in the hands of those organizations that DO have the resources to exploit them (instead of being held by someone who might not be able to exploit them properly).
Considering they are supposed to be writing the laws, I don't know how wise it is to have people that don't understand the law in that position. It's like banning economist from holding a position at the federal reserve.
That makes knee-jerk sense, but if you step back and look at the problem, it forms a bad feedback loop. Any system of professionals has a culture and jargon which sets them somewhat apart from the general populace. Any documentation that those professionals write will be couched in terms of their own jargon.
In other words, if your laws are written by lawyers, then they will tend to be written FOR lawyers. If you want laws that are meaningful to the general populace, then lawyers might not be your best choice for the people who you want to write the laws.
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It is not useful, and it is potentially damaging, to give someone with a ideological agenda any kind of scientific credibility. They are quite willing to mix both truth and lies to achieve their goals. Not only do they not respect the scientific method, but they go out of their way to denigrate and obfuscate results which HAVE been vetted properly by the scientific community, since such results typically do not support their ideological goals. This lowers the signal-to-noise ratio of the scientific community and makes it more difficult to do know which information you can depend on.
In the presence of people like that, if you want to make any kind of scientific progress at all, you need to filter out the crap they're spewing so that it doesn't affect real science. Crackpots and conmen like many in the intelligent design & anti-global warming crowds need to be utterly exposed, denounced and then shunned so that their lies don't contaminate the public discussion.
Frankly, apologists like yourself are also part of the problem. Because of people like you who are willing to tolerate such behavior, and who try to "look at both sides of a viewpoint" (even when one of the viewpoints is utter shiat), irrationality and ideology has become part of the scientific discussion, even though neither has a valid place there.
The politically-motivated critics of various scientific fields aren't usually difficult to identify: they usually point out some minor flaw in a study, and then state that they have "disproved" an entire field of study. That's a lot different than someone who is merely pointing out that minor flaw so that it can be properly addressed in future studies.
When you've got the first type of person, there really is no point in taking them seriously - they're only interested in pushing their political agenda, not in advancing the state of scientific knowledge. Although you run the risk of occasionally ignoring a "visionary"-type, if you don't identify the politically-motivated hucksters & make sure they are ignored, then the REAL science will get drowned in a tidal wave of ideological bullshit.
Normal people doing their job don't ordinarily violate the civil rights of other citizens. If you want to discourage abuse of police powers, then you've got to make it clear to them that they can and will be monitored whenever they use the special powers that have been granted them.
No its not. They're public agents. Public agents are granted special powers over private citizens to be able to perform their duties. In the interests of preventing abuse of those special powers, public agents should not expect the same level of privacy (esp. in the process of using those powers) as private citizens gets.
Hardly. One side has most of the scientific establishment behind it. The other side has a few crackpots, "researchers" paid to provide desired data, and cherry-picked data. Only the willfully ignorant at this stage give equal credibility to both sides.
Reports of lack of body armor doesn't have anything to do with the amount of military funding - it has much more to do with the military procurement system & how it decides where the money is going to be spent. Unfortunately, between politics & bureaucracy, "protecting the troops" is more a lip-service thing for the military-industrial complex than a priority.
Actually, if they start making diamond crystals for semiconductors on the same scale that they had to learn how to make silicon crystals, then you'll see far-beyond-gem-quality diamonds that make the Hope Diamond look like the crumb off a bagel. At that point, DeBiers had better be looking for another kind of stone to throw their marketing weight behind.
Not sure if you're being facetious or just stupid. The 2nd amendment isn't about a society defending itself against foreign powers. It's about a society defending itself against its OWN government - and, hopefully, is one of those "rights" that will never need to be applied.
There are more than 2 cups.
And there is no spoon.
I've wondered whether it would be more effective to combine the welfare & education budgets and give welfare to recipients only if they (including their kids) are making an effort at getting an education.
You're the person advocating the "right" to override my private property rights. You're the one who has to prove the benefit of your position.
You know, since I actually stated earlier that I'm being paid, and my company is making money using my software, and no copyright was necessary for this happy situation, it should have been possible for you to infer that the company was not trying to make money by selling my software.
I don't need to, although I suppose you'd just brush aside as irrelevant all of the classic art & music from all of the various cultures throughout history that didn't have copyright laws. You're the one arguing that you should be allowed to violate my private property rights to "encourage" creativity. To get me to go along with that, you've got to convince me that there's a net societal benefit to doing so. "I deserve it" doesn't meet that standard.
Gee, do you think that might have something to do with how many more people there are in the world in the last 200 years compared to before then? Also the invention of technologies necessary to distribute useful information across a wide section of society? That provides more support for my position that free distribution of ideas will generate more creativity than restrictive mechanisms.
Try again! Point to a peer-reviewed study showing that restricting the free flow of ideas generates a net gain in societal "creativity". Frankly, I'd be pleased if you could actually provide such a reference - I've spent quite a bit of time looking for one myself, although have been unsuccessful so far.
_If_ there were no such thing as copyright, my employer wouldn't bother trying to sell my software as a product, because (assuming the salespeople had any degree of intelligence) they would know it wasn't a viable business model.
I realise that this is difficult for you to understand, but no one _deserves_ to make money. You've got to have a viable business model. IP laws just provide an artificial way of making a normally-non-viable business model work, but they do it by restricting the rights that people have over their own private property.
NO!!! Are you being dense? My employer pays me to write software for them. They don't pay me FOR the software, they pay me for my labor! Copyright is _irrelevant_ in this business arrangement.
Says who? My original statement was that there is no proof that copyright provides any net societal benefit. So far you haven't referred me to any peer-reviewed studies that show differently - you're just another IP sycophant mindlessly repeating the chant that IP "adds the incentive to create" without being able to back up any of it.
Do you even bother to look at what your own statements sound like? Who's more arrogant, someone who is defending their private property rights, or someone who insists they have the right to control other peoples' private property?
If you're being honest, I'm sure that you've met a few that are at least willing to say that a large number of humans are probably going to have a hard time though.
For this particular discussion, I'm not really trying to make any kind of scientific point one way or another, or even trying to "win" a debate - I'm just expressing my contempt for people who have bought into the carefully-incubated anti-science rhetoric. After ramming my head into brick walls for years trying to argue these issues using logic and facts with friends, family & associates, I've pretty much concluded that most people don't give a damn about that kind of "evidence". They're much happier accepting as true whatever "fact" their favorite talk show host or preacher tells them, because that authority figure is obviously a LOT more informed and honest than any associate the sucker-I mean, the listener might know personally, no matter how much that associate likes to read. (Why yes, I'm feeling somewhat bitter tonight. Why do you ask?)
For a lot of these subjects, there's no real controversy: it's only some people who don't WANT the general public to come to the obvious conclusion that go out of their way to obfuscate the general agreement by grossly overhyping minor issues. Unfortunately, the general public hasn't been trained enough in critical analysis (and propaganda detection skills) to realize they're being led around like sheep.
I'll freely admit that both sides of these science "controversies" are using the same sorts of sleazy propaganda tactics to sell their memes. Only ONE of those sides tends to have a huge amount of scientific support behind it, however.
Did you skip over the bit where I explained how I get paid for the work that I do? I get paid just fine, and I don't need to control what other people do with my work to get paid.
The BSA enforces software-as-a-product, not software-as-a-service. If it weren't for artificial scarcity created through government enforcement, they wouldn't have a reason for existing.
You are confusing the PURPOSE of copyright with the MECHANISM of copyright. Copyright is supposed to encourage the generation of creative works. This is its publicly-stated purpose. The _mechanism_ that it uses is by preventing creative works from being freely copied. To me, it doesn't make any sense that such a mechanism is a good way to achieve the stated public purpose.
And that's exactly the attitude of somebody who thinks they deserve more out of reality than what reality would normally be willing to give. Why in the world would I let someone with your attitude have control over my private property?
*snort*
If they're willing to ignore what every reputable scientist is practically screaming from the rooftops, then they've not only bought into the media hype, but they're dancing like puppets on the strings of the people who don't want the public making decisions based on good science.
*snort*
You just prove my point about some people having a distorted notion of the value of their own product.
Here's a clue about economic value: assuming a "real" free market (i.e., no government enforcement of artificial scarcity), if you can't sell someone a product or service at a particular price, then that product or service wasn't worth that much, no matter how much blood sweat or tears you put into it.
Someone who insists that they "deserve" more money for their product or service than what a free market will give them is basically saying that they don't want to participate in such a market, i.e., they're just greedy.
That's because you have a distorted idea about what constitutes "your work", and how much control you "deserve" to have over it. There aren't many carpenters that are going to insist on having absolute control on how their customers use the cabinets that they've built.
So essentially, the megacorps are complaining they are being harmed by _competition_. We should get a law passed outlawing that kind of thing.
You've got a pretty obvious bias when you throw out a "prove it" demand like that, with a weak anecdotal argument ("I didn't write a book because I couldn't figure out how to make money doing it") against the respondee.
As far as rebutting your anecdote is concerned, I make a decent living writing software. I'm not getting paid because of copyright (since I'm selling my services as a developer, not the software itself), and the company isn't getting value from my service because of copyright (they get the value from actually using the software I created for them). Just because _you_ can't see a way to make money without copyright doesn't mean that such a way doesn't actually exist - it just means that _you_ don't have a good enough imagination.
Let me flip your question on its head (essentially restating your respondee's post): I've heard and read ad nauseum that copyrights encourage creativity, yet not once has anyone proven it to me. No matter how many times I've asked or searched, I've never read or been referred to any peer-reviewed study supporting the idea that copyright encourages creativity.
It seems highly counterintuitive that a mechanism like copyright (which at its most fundamental is a mechanism that discourages the free expression of ideas) is going to encourage societal creativity, but it gets repeated like a mantra by proponents of copyright, without any kind of logical or evidentiary support. A lot of copyright proponents even mistakenly think that IP has something to do with free-market capitalism.
Before you go around enforcing a bunch of laws that override personal property rights, you'd better make darn sure you're going to get a societal payback that makes that violation worthwhile - but so far, IP proponents keep failing to provide that proof.
That's more of a "fraud" problem than it is a piracy (copyright violation) problem.
Well, the due diligence in question wouldn't be any more difficult than what companies normally have to do to challenge a patent in the Patent Office or the courts, so I don't think it would be any big deal for the usual companies with patents who have deep pockets. If they can't find an easy reason to kill a potential patent, then they can be reasonably sure that someone else won't either, which would make that potential patent more valuable. There's always the risk that they're wrong, but that's just part of business.
We've already a got a massive database like that - the database of patents itself - and it has already been demonstrated numerous times that the availability of such a system does very little to prevent the granting of bad patents.
Just about _any_ kind of business investment has risk associated with it, but businesspeople keep on investing anyway. I think you might be overestimating the risk involved with valuing a patent, and underestimating the amount the effort that some people will put forth to have a chance at getting a good business opportunity.
That's all part of the due diligence that each bidder has to apply to choosing their bid amounts. Somebody who wants ownership of the patent has to be darn sure that they'll get their money's worth after the auction is over & they've got ownership of the patent. Figuring out the narrowness of a claim, or whether a patent will be overturned due to prior art or obviousness is part of that valuation process - and with the auction, you get that due diligence performed without having to depend on overworked patent examiners. Given enough participants with enough information, auctions are pretty good at assigning financial values.
As far as those auction bidders who don't use good due diligence in determining the value of a patent? Well, financial stupidity is also known to be a part of a "real" marketplace. At least a rich moron who pays too much to achieve ownership of a worthless patent is much less likely to be completely destitute after the dust settles.
One detail I haven't figured out is if the application submitter also wants to bid for the patent ownership (i.e., get the patent for themselves). You obviously can't let them pay themselves, so I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that money in a way that causes a good feedback loop (maybe the money goes toward applied R&D for public use?).
I've always liked the idea of putting a relatively low, hard limit on the total number of valid patents. That would make the patent database much easier to search. As various patents expire by age, or by being invalidated through prior art or obviousness judgements, then their "slots" become available to be filled by new patents.
By using some sort of competitive process to compare the patent applications for each slot against each other, you could weed out most of the bad patents. My favorite "competitive process" would be an auction setup - you allow anyone to submit a patent applications for a particular open slot, then you allow everyone else to bid on being able to own the patent rights for any of those applications. The application with the highest bid becomes a valid patent.
The reason I like this setup is because it forces all of the bidders to do "due diligence" on each application, since they will waste a lot of money if they bid a big amount & the patent becomes invalidated for prior art or obviousness reasons.
In addition, if the bid amount is actually given to the submitter of the application, then you have a really big incentive to submit ideas for the "little" inventors who might have a lot of brainpower, but not necessarily the resources to bring their ideas to market. For a really good patent idea, this setup might end up making those inventors much richer than even hitting the lottery. (You have to make sure that the submitter can't pay themselves if they bid on their own application, of course.)
It's also a win for society, since the ideas also end up in the hands of those organizations that DO have the resources to exploit them (instead of being held by someone who might not be able to exploit them properly).
That makes knee-jerk sense, but if you step back and look at the problem, it forms a bad feedback loop. Any system of professionals has a culture and jargon which sets them somewhat apart from the general populace. Any documentation that those professionals write will be couched in terms of their own jargon.
In other words, if your laws are written by lawyers, then they will tend to be written FOR lawyers. If you want laws that are meaningful to the general populace, then lawyers might not be your best choice for the people who you want to write the laws.