On 6 Dec 2006 at 10:56, dhbailey wrote: > As to whether the absolutist nature of current copyright law is more > beneficial to society or not, that is clearly a debatable issue -- > stronger copyright protections give more individuals the incentive to > create, making the culture richer, yet weaker protections allow more > members of the society to do more with others' creative content, which > also makes the culture richer.
Patent law, at least in the US, is even more of a mess than copyright law, seems to me, especially when it comes to computer software. I wouldn't be surprised if there were not a move by the pharmaceutical industry to extend the length of patents, the way copyrights have been extended at the behest of the media giants like Disney. It's questionable whether the current patent system in the US is of is of greater benefit or cost to society. The pharmaceutical industry is the poster child for this argument, where the industry claims patents are essential to recoup speculative research costs, while that raises the costs of the drugs so high that people without good prescription drug insurance plans can't afford them, all the while when the drug manufacturing is spending 100s of millions on marketing the patented drug. It's a mess, a terrible mess, and makes the copyright problems look minor by comparison, seems to me. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
