On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 04:18:32PM -0700, Dan Reese wrote: > I never mentioned "socialize healthcare" or "patent monopolies." I just > pointed out that if you remove monetary rewards (which patents and > copyrights are designed to protect)
The role of copyrights and patents is not to protect profits. Their
role is to provide an impetus for the increase in wealth of knowledge
possessed by society. To the degree that copyrights and patents fail
to promote the increase of intellectual (scientific and artistic)
works for the benefit of the members of society, they fail to perform
their only justifiable function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's works, Hot and Cold Blood and Invasion of the
Sanctuary, should have been released into the public domain a long
time ago. Thanks to the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act, society
has been robbed of his works and kept in bondage to whatever producers
have inherited (and/or purchased) the copyrights. It is patently
immoral for the government to force people not to copy these works at
this point. The law has ceased to serve its only valid purpose.
> , then a lot of motivation to innovate
> is lost. I also limited my comments to "a company" and excluded
> "individuals" who often have altruistic motives outside of money.
>
> I guess I just really doubt that a scenario where the "the company
> profits without any need for 'ownership' of the idea" would work in real
> life as you suggest.
This is a fundamental problem with economic theories. The only petri
dish is the real world, and when people start experimenting, you get
things like Mussolini...
Mike
.__________________________________________________________________.
Michael A. Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Security Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center
GnuPG Fingerprint: 05B5 08A8 713A 64C1 D35D 2371 2D3C FDDA 3EB6 601D
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where
Mike got the plutonium" is better than what most get.
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