" my point was that the only reason for a society to grant patents is to provide a viable alternative to the former system (closely held trade secrets) without the risk of the secret dying with the inventor?"
I guess my question would be WHY you see ONLY this reason, and refuse to acknowledge the others. I mentioned at least one of them. But you have rejected it without any real argument or refutation, and simply repeated your original statement again.
The fact that inventions were created before the motivation of patents existed, is not evidence that patents do not create motivation. The real question, which you have refused to even acknowledge so far, is: which is BETTER? A system with no patents, or a system with patents.
Actually, you're changing the argument here. This part of the discussion was about why patent laws were enacted in the first place (was it to motivate people to invent, or to motivate them to disclose the details of their invention?). It was never about whether patents do or don't motivate people to invent thing, only about whether the supposition that they do was behind the creation of the patent system.
You argued that this was "obvious" from the constitution by imposing a modern perspective--shoe horning a Randian perspective on a document written a century and a half before that view gained currency--and a bit of selective reading. I countered that given the prevailing circumstance (e.g. trade secrets as a prevalent practice) and the clear written statement (e.g. the law itself, which I cited above) a much more probable explanation was that the intent was to motivate disclosure of existing inventions rather than (as you would have it) invention per se.
This may seem odd to modern sensibilities, in a world where "the profit motive" is taken for granted (and condoned) and we have more information at our fingertips than we could possibly digest, a world where cases such as starlite (which may well be a fraud in any event) seem like musty relics of pre-Victorian era, but I think it's safe to say the founders of our nation would have had as hard a time seeing things from our perspective as we have seeing it from theirs.
Likewise, as for your question about my phrase "the only reason for a society to grant patents" I think you are confusing motivations of the two parties (society and the inventor). There are many things that might motivate an inventor (dreams of wealth, fame, glory, desire to scratch an itch, prove a point, discomfit a rival, etc.) but society as a whole is largely indifferent to these. If we are to be strictly randian (as seems to be the tenor here, at least in so far as the constraints of historical accuracy permit) the only thing that works as a societal motivation is something that benefits people in general, imposing a cost on (in an ideal case at least) no one but the inventor. The most salient of the possibly candidates is clearly disclosure--we all gain information, and the inventor is out one secret.
I will, though, admit that "only" was too strong and there are indeed other (far less plausible) candidates. Perhaps we all love a Horatio Alger tale enough to want to foster them, or can't help but indulge our schadenfreude habit when a mustachio twirling industry is turned on its head by a plucky upstart. But I haven't been able to turn up any contemporaneous support for these theories.
By your argument, I could claim that firearms are not effective for hunting because animals were killed long before firearms came along. I don't buy it. It's not black and white, it's a matter of degree.
Again, I believe you are getting yourself tangled. You started this line of discussion by making the contrary black and white claim:
You: The idea (which history supports) being that when you don't allow people to profit from their own efforts, things don't
"That would make sense if there was a shred of evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. Say maybe if the world were full of saying like "IP protection is the mother of invention" or "invent a better mouse trap and the world will grant you exclusive use of the idea for a limited time."
Well then, it makes sense, because we have far more than a shred. We have at least 300 years of historical evidence, continuing into modern times.
I would certainly like to see this supposed evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. I can not imagine what it would look like, considering all the evidence we have that people invented things before there were patents.
"Of course, we don't see any of that. We don't live in that world and it takes a rather twisted view of human nature to swallow the notion that patents somehow cause invention. "
You are blaming abuses that exist in our current bureaucratically-fouled system on the very concept of patents. That's like blaming the 4th Amendment for the time the police broke down your door without a warrant.
You response to this point makes no sense. I have said nothing about any abuses here, and haven't blamed anything on anyone.
"If you want a patent on your gizmo, you have to fully disclose the details so anyone reasonably competent can make and use one after the patent expires. That is what society gets out of it."
No shit, Sherlock. What is your point?
Uh, my point was that the only reason for a society to grant patents is to provide a viable alternative to the former system (closely held trade secrets) without the risk of the secret dying with the inventor? And that that is the perceived social good that motivated the creation of the patent system? It seems rather clear to me.
"The promotion of progress isn't about gulling people into inventing stuff (they were doing that already)."
Nobody said it was. I didn't claim it was an attempt to trick people. It *ISN'T* an attempt to "gull" anybody.
Well, "motivate" then. I admit that "gulling" has a pejorative connotation, but operationally it amounts to the same thing. Your claim (which I dispute) is that people wouldn't invent things unless we offered them patents, and that we therefore offer them patents to get them to invent things. You can call it an incentive, a bribe, an inducement, a reward, or anything else you like.
" It's about making sure that other people can copy those inventions, build on them"
Only AFTERWARD. It's about MOTIVATING people to invent, SO THAT society can benefit from it later.
We are arguing the same thing, except that you're denying the necessary first half of the argument.
No, we are not. You are claiming, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that the intent of patents was to motivate people to invent things. I, on the other hand, am pointing out that the intent of the patent system was to induce disclosure of invitations.
That would make sense if there was a shred of evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. Say maybe if the world were full of saying like "IP protection is the mother of invention" or "invent a better mouse trap and the world will grant you exclusive use of the idea for a limited time."
Or suppose we had clear evidence that primitive people lived lives little different than those of other animals until some freak accident created the first intellectual property laws, triggering the taming of fire, agriculture, and so forth.
Of course, we don't see any of that. We don't live in that world and it takes a rather twisted view of human nature to swallow the notion that patents somehow cause invention.
On the other hand, all it takes to support the notion that patents were intended to cause disclosure of inventions is a little reading. For example, in the second paragraph of The Patent Act of 1790 we find the prerequisites for obtaining a patent and the reason for them spelt out. In the second full sentence of US patent law we are told that those seeking patents must:
[...] deliver to the Secretary of State a specification in writing, containing a description, accompanied with drafts or models, and explanations and models (if the nature of the invention or discovery will admit of a model) of the thing or things, by him or them invented or discovered, and described as aforesaid, in the said patents; which specification shall be so particular, and said models so exact, as not only to distinguish the invention or discovery from other things before known and used, but also to enable a workman or other person skilled in the art or manufacture, whereof it is a branch, or wherewith it may be nearest connected, to make, construct, or use the same, to the end that the public may have the full benefit thereof, after the expiration of the patent term;
If you want a patent on your gizmo, you have to fully disclose the details so anyone reasonably competent can make and use one after the patent expires.
That is what society gets out of it. The promotion of progress isn't about gulling people into inventing stuff (they were doing that already). It's about making sure that other people can copy those inventions, build on them, progress from them, rather than having the secret die with the inventor thus forcing everyone else to (as the saying goes) "reinvent the wheel".
"At the heart of any patent, there should be some trade secret."
I think most people would disagree with you. The majority of ills in our patent system today are due to patented "trade secrets" [...] the workings of most useful INVENTIONS usually become pretty obvious at the point the invention hits the market; thus the need for a patent in the first place.
If the working of the invention become obvious at the point the invention hits the market, society has no reason to offer the inventor patent protection in exchange for being let in on the secret. Only in cases where the trick wouldn't be obvious to a practitioner skilled in the applicable arts do we have any reason to say "Oh, come on, just tell us how it works and we promise not to compete with you!" -- in other words, grant a patent in exchange for full disclosure.
Patents are supposed to be what we grant the inventor in exchange for their revealing a "trade secret" that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to figure out.
Yeah. It's a shame RMS never thought of discussing licenses with other developers. I'll bet he would be a lot more widely known if he hadn't been so reticent.
Oh, thank you, sir! For the privilege of accessing the hardware I have paid you money for, I am forever grateful!
This is the sort of entitlist mentality that shows how out of touch some people in this community are.
So objecting to "you bought it but we still get to control how you use it" is somehow "entitlist"?
I agree people shouldn't buy shackled hardware in the first place, but that doesn't mean that it's in any way ethical to sell it. And claiming that the public has made an informed decision by choosing heavily marketed closed systems over the essentially unmarketed open alternatives doesn't pass the laugh test.
"Online" and "offline" in the meeting sense considerably predate the internet sense. Originally it referred to equipment that was in the main production flow or pulled to the side for repairs, dating back to perhaps WWII and possibly further. The meeting sense was in use by the 1970s at least, and didn't seem new or strange then.
what's "tech" about raising the speed limit? why is this on/. anyway?
I think it's because of the effect it could have on all the car analogies. Raising the speed limit might subtly alter the impact of such arguments, strengthen some or totally invalidate others.
If you think of the car analogies we routinely use to explain technical subjects to a non-technical audience as cars, our shared cultural assumptions about cars (how many wheels & doors they have, how fast you are allowed to drive them, etc.) are like the fuel those cars run on. Changing the rules is like changing the fuel. Some will run better, other worse or not at all.
I very much doubt that any organization would be allowed to review Windows kernel source code (regardless of budget), but we might just have to agree to disagree there.
From personal professional experience I can think of at least two organizations (both rather large) that have access to the full MS Windows source, and suspect there are quite a few I don't know of. Both maintain considerable organizational controls around access to the source (contractually obligated, I suspect). I'm not sure what my non-disclosure agreements say about the two cases I know of, but a quick google turns up several other examples (that I personally know nothing of) such as:
The radius of the observable universe is about 14Gly, not 14Gpc; only off by a factor of Pi (not exact, but a handy mnemonic), but still, like the old saying goes "Off by a factor of Pi is still wrong."
soft skills are perceived as more valuable in a manager than technical expertise. To me, that's something that's stupendously obvious.
I agree. Soft skills are perceived as more valuable than technical expertise. Further, your arguments have convinced me that you not only share this perception but do indeed think it is stupendously obvious. If we were having this chat in person I would offer to buy you a drink and suggest we play a diverting little game of chance I happen to know in which soft skills are more valuable that technical expertise.
Google made a major point of ensuring that managers had technical expertise
If we assume that they (Google) were honest in reporting this priority, competent in executing it, etc., we can conclude that given an individual who was a manager at Google it's highly likely that they had technical expertise; that is, to a good first approximation, HasTechnicalExpertise(X) is true for all X for which IsManagerAtGoogle(X) is true.
Google then took a survey of the people being managed, and asked them what was important to them about their manager.
The resulting list of features was presumably finite, as they completed the survey in a finite amount of time.
This might at first seem surprising, since there are an infinite number of things that might be said about a manager. However, a little thought shows that the most probable cause is that predicates that were true of (almost) all or (almost) none of the managers did not make a serious contribution to the data. Note that this filtering could have occurred at any part of the process (if it was a "pick the most important" list, neither "drinks water" or "can fly" were likely to be included; if by chance they were, they would be unlikely to be chosen; likewise, if it was a free-form question most respondents would be unlikely to volunteer such observations).
Therefore we should not expect to see common traits shared by all the managers as a strong component of the data.
Specifically, we should not expect "has technical expertise" to be a strong component of the data.
Chernobyl was built at a time when countries outside the soviet block who cared more about safety already had better designs. The problem wasn't that it was old, the problem was that it was badly designed. If you built a new Chernobyl style reactor today it would still suck even though it was brand new.
You're in luck. This is another case of #statisticsfail.
If all of their managers are selected to have deep technical expertise, it isn't going to correlate with success any more than "having two ears" will. This is a well known phenomenon called "sample bias" and is dearly beloved by everyone who wants to lie with statistics.
The premise of the article is fundamentally flawed.
It implicitly assumes that the US is the only country that matters, and uses this assumption to construct the case that much of the material in WikiLeaks isn't of interest because it doesn't reveal "official misconduct" by the US government. It then goes on to complain that no purpose is served by "embarrassing" other nations (that is, their leaders) by revealing what anyone not blinded by the US-is-everything meme would call official misconduct on their part.
Anyone else note the gratuitous dig at open source:
user can decrypt, over the air, the private data of others, inject malicious traffic into the network, and compromise other authorized devices using open source software,
So I guess everything would be OK except for those pesky kids and their free software. *sigh*
An Uninterpretable Power Supply is basically a honking big battery (or, in advanced models, a desktop fusion setup) that takes over when the normal electrical supply fails.
And sarcasm is a way of making a rhetorical point by stating something that is obviously untrue and yet is a plausible deduction to reach from a position you are trying to rebut.
Slashdot Mirror
" my point was that the only reason for a society to grant patents is to provide a viable alternative to the former system (closely held trade secrets) without the risk of the secret dying with the inventor?"
I guess my question would be WHY you see ONLY this reason, and refuse to acknowledge the others. I mentioned at least one of them. But you have rejected it without any real argument or refutation, and simply repeated your original statement again. The fact that inventions were created before the motivation of patents existed, is not evidence that patents do not create motivation. The real question, which you have refused to even acknowledge so far, is: which is BETTER? A system with no patents, or a system with patents.
Actually, you're changing the argument here. This part of the discussion was about why patent laws were enacted in the first place (was it to motivate people to invent, or to motivate them to disclose the details of their invention?). It was never about whether patents do or don't motivate people to invent thing, only about whether the supposition that they do was behind the creation of the patent system.
You argued that this was "obvious" from the constitution by imposing a modern perspective--shoe horning a Randian perspective on a document written a century and a half before that view gained currency--and a bit of selective reading. I countered that given the prevailing circumstance (e.g. trade secrets as a prevalent practice) and the clear written statement (e.g. the law itself, which I cited above) a much more probable explanation was that the intent was to motivate disclosure of existing inventions rather than (as you would have it) invention per se.
This may seem odd to modern sensibilities, in a world where "the profit motive" is taken for granted (and condoned) and we have more information at our fingertips than we could possibly digest, a world where cases such as starlite (which may well be a fraud in any event) seem like musty relics of pre-Victorian era, but I think it's safe to say the founders of our nation would have had as hard a time seeing things from our perspective as we have seeing it from theirs.
Likewise, as for your question about my phrase "the only reason for a society to grant patents" I think you are confusing motivations of the two parties (society and the inventor). There are many things that might motivate an inventor (dreams of wealth, fame, glory, desire to scratch an itch, prove a point, discomfit a rival, etc.) but society as a whole is largely indifferent to these. If we are to be strictly randian (as seems to be the tenor here, at least in so far as the constraints of historical accuracy permit) the only thing that works as a societal motivation is something that benefits people in general, imposing a cost on (in an ideal case at least) no one but the inventor. The most salient of the possibly candidates is clearly disclosure--we all gain information, and the inventor is out one secret.
I will, though, admit that "only" was too strong and there are indeed other (far less plausible) candidates. Perhaps we all love a Horatio Alger tale enough to want to foster them, or can't help but indulge our schadenfreude habit when a mustachio twirling industry is turned on its head by a plucky upstart. But I haven't been able to turn up any contemporaneous support for these theories.
By your argument, I could claim that firearms are not effective for hunting because animals were killed long before firearms came along. I don't buy it. It's not black and white, it's a matter of degree.
Again, I believe you are getting yourself tangled. You started this line of discussion by making the contrary black and white claim:
You: The idea (which history supports) being that when you don't allow people to profit from their own efforts, things don't
"That would make sense if there was a shred of evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. Say maybe if the world were full of saying like "IP protection is the mother of invention" or "invent a better mouse trap and the world will grant you exclusive use of the idea for a limited time."
Well then, it makes sense, because we have far more than a shred. We have at least 300 years of historical evidence, continuing into modern times.
I would certainly like to see this supposed evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. I can not imagine what it would look like, considering all the evidence we have that people invented things before there were patents.
"Of course, we don't see any of that. We don't live in that world and it takes a rather twisted view of human nature to swallow the notion that patents somehow cause invention. "
You are blaming abuses that exist in our current bureaucratically-fouled system on the very concept of patents. That's like blaming the 4th Amendment for the time the police broke down your door without a warrant.
You response to this point makes no sense. I have said nothing about any abuses here, and haven't blamed anything on anyone.
"If you want a patent on your gizmo, you have to fully disclose the details so anyone reasonably competent can make and use one after the patent expires. That is what society gets out of it."
No shit, Sherlock. What is your point?
Uh, my point was that the only reason for a society to grant patents is to provide a viable alternative to the former system (closely held trade secrets) without the risk of the secret dying with the inventor? And that that is the perceived social good that motivated the creation of the patent system? It seems rather clear to me.
"The promotion of progress isn't about gulling people into inventing stuff (they were doing that already)."
Nobody said it was. I didn't claim it was an attempt to trick people. It *ISN'T* an attempt to "gull" anybody.
Well, "motivate" then. I admit that "gulling" has a pejorative connotation, but operationally it amounts to the same thing. Your claim (which I dispute) is that people wouldn't invent things unless we offered them patents, and that we therefore offer them patents to get them to invent things. You can call it an incentive, a bribe, an inducement, a reward, or anything else you like.
" It's about making sure that other people can copy those inventions, build on them"
Only AFTERWARD. It's about MOTIVATING people to invent, SO THAT society can benefit from it later. We are arguing the same thing, except that you're denying the necessary first half of the argument.
No, we are not. You are claiming, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that the intent of patents was to motivate people to invent things. I, on the other hand, am pointing out that the intent of the patent system was to induce disclosure of invitations.
--MarkusQ
That would make sense if there was a shred of evidence that people only invent things because they hope to patent them. Say maybe if the world were full of saying like "IP protection is the mother of invention" or "invent a better mouse trap and the world will grant you exclusive use of the idea for a limited time."
Or suppose we had clear evidence that primitive people lived lives little different than those of other animals until some freak accident created the first intellectual property laws, triggering the taming of fire, agriculture, and so forth.
Of course, we don't see any of that. We don't live in that world and it takes a rather twisted view of human nature to swallow the notion that patents somehow cause invention.
On the other hand, all it takes to support the notion that patents were intended to cause disclosure of inventions is a little reading. For example, in the second paragraph of The Patent Act of 1790 we find the prerequisites for obtaining a patent and the reason for them spelt out. In the second full sentence of US patent law we are told that those seeking patents must:
If you want a patent on your gizmo, you have to fully disclose the details so anyone reasonably competent can make and use one after the patent expires.
That is what society gets out of it. The promotion of progress isn't about gulling people into inventing stuff (they were doing that already). It's about making sure that other people can copy those inventions, build on them, progress from them, rather than having the secret die with the inventor thus forcing everyone else to (as the saying goes) "reinvent the wheel".
--MarkusQ
If the working of the invention become obvious at the point the invention hits the market, society has no reason to offer the inventor patent protection in exchange for being let in on the secret. Only in cases where the trick wouldn't be obvious to a practitioner skilled in the applicable arts do we have any reason to say "Oh, come on, just tell us how it works and we promise not to compete with you!" -- in other words, grant a patent in exchange for full disclosure.
Patents are supposed to be what we grant the inventor in exchange for their revealing a "trade secret" that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to figure out.
-- MarkusQ
Yeah. It's a shame RMS never thought of discussing licenses with other developers. I'll bet he would be a lot more widely known if he hadn't been so reticent.
-- MarkusQ
I saw what you did there. "The aggregators" that tell you to fill out a form aren't machines, they are corporations.
Nice try though.
-- MarkusQ
So objecting to "you bought it but we still get to control how you use it" is somehow "entitlist"?
I agree people shouldn't buy shackled hardware in the first place, but that doesn't mean that it's in any way ethical to sell it. And claiming that the public has made an informed decision by choosing heavily marketed closed systems over the essentially unmarketed open alternatives doesn't pass the laugh test.
-- MarkusQ
Typically, you start working er'ly in the morning. And stay at it till the even'n's glomming.
-- MarkusQ
"Online" and "offline" in the meeting sense considerably predate the internet sense. Originally it referred to equipment that was in the main production flow or pulled to the side for repairs, dating back to perhaps WWII and possibly further. The meeting sense was in use by the 1970s at least, and didn't seem new or strange then.
-- MarkusQ
I think it's because of the effect it could have on all the car analogies. Raising the speed limit might subtly alter the impact of such arguments, strengthen some or totally invalidate others.
If you think of the car analogies we routinely use to explain technical subjects to a non-technical audience as cars, our shared cultural assumptions about cars (how many wheels & doors they have, how fast you are allowed to drive them, etc.) are like the fuel those cars run on. Changing the rules is like changing the fuel. Some will run better, other worse or not at all.
--MarkusQ
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/08/are_ancient_ruins_flammable.html
tl;dr: heat
-- MarkusQ
Doesn't it get absurdly expensive to "own" the music?
Oh wait, you meant own a copy of the music. Or is it own a license (non-transferable) to a single physical copy...well, there's fair use of course.
I am so glad no one has gotten to the point of trying to build business models around breathing.
-- MarkusQ
From personal professional experience I can think of at least two organizations (both rather large) that have access to the full MS Windows source, and suspect there are quite a few I don't know of. Both maintain considerable organizational controls around access to the source (contractually obligated, I suspect). I'm not sure what my non-disclosure agreements say about the two cases I know of, but a quick google turns up several other examples (that I personally know nothing of) such as:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/operating_systems/225400063
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security/2010/07/08/microsoft-opens-source-code-to-russian-secret-service-40089481/
...and even a link to how you ask for it yourself:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/enterprise-source-licensing.aspx
The radius of the observable universe is about 14Gly, not 14Gpc; only off by a factor of Pi (not exact, but a handy mnemonic), but still, like the old saying goes "Off by a factor of Pi is still wrong."
--MarkusQ
Wrong. Scrubbers don't stop the release of radioactivity from a coal fired power plant. You'd essentially have to go to CO2 sequestration for that.
--MarkusQ
I agree. Soft skills are perceived as more valuable than technical expertise. Further, your arguments have convinced me that you not only share this perception but do indeed think it is stupendously obvious. If we were having this chat in person I would offer to buy you a drink and suggest we play a diverting little game of chance I happen to know in which soft skills are more valuable that technical expertise.
-- MarkusQ
*sigh*
Let me walk you through this:
-- MarkusQ
Older does not always equal less safe.
Chernobyl was built at a time when countries outside the soviet block who cared more about safety already had better designs. The problem wasn't that it was old, the problem was that it was badly designed. If you built a new Chernobyl style reactor today it would still suck even though it was brand new.
-- MarkusQ
You're in luck. This is another case of #statisticsfail.
If all of their managers are selected to have deep technical expertise, it isn't going to correlate with success any more than "having two ears" will. This is a well known phenomenon called "sample bias" and is dearly beloved by everyone who wants to lie with statistics.
-- MarkusQ
-- MarkusQ
The premise of the article is fundamentally flawed.
It implicitly assumes that the US is the only country that matters, and uses this assumption to construct the case that much of the material in WikiLeaks isn't of interest because it doesn't reveal "official misconduct" by the US government. It then goes on to complain that no purpose is served by "embarrassing" other nations (that is, their leaders) by revealing what anyone not blinded by the US-is-everything meme would call official misconduct on their part.
--MarkusQ
It's even more clearly based on the mod squad logo, which predates both of them by decades.
I'm no fan of any of the parties, but it would be funny if the "infringing" logo turned out to be older (which occasionally happens).
--MarkusQ
I used to have a two word answer for this question: Use BeOS
But now it's a six word answer (*sigh*): Invent time machine, then use BeOS
--MarkusQ
Anyone else note the gratuitous dig at open source:
So I guess everything would be OK except for those pesky kids and their free software. *sigh*
-- MarkusQ
An Uninterpretable Power Supply is basically a honking big battery (or, in advanced models, a desktop fusion setup) that takes over when the normal electrical supply fails.
And sarcasm is a way of making a rhetorical point by stating something that is obviously untrue and yet is a plausible deduction to reach from a position you are trying to rebut.
Of course, you probably already knew that.
--MarkusQ