On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 19:34:37 -0500, "Michael Halcrow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > 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.
Well, I have to agree that I didn't (and don't) favor *longer* copyright and patent protections. Both have been increased in recent years due to efforts by Disney and others. But patents and copyrights *are* designed to protect their inventors for a limited period of time, and *then* insure that society receives the benefit. The struggle is to find the right balance. > 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. I don't like the recent increases in the *length* of the protection -- the balance has swung to far one way. From Orson Scott Card's article, he would like copyright protection for the creator's life + 20 years and a flat 20 years for corporations. And if I remember right, patent protections have recently jumped from 17 to 20 years. I think I'd be happier with a flat 20 years for copyright and 10-15 for patents. Enough so that people who actually create Good Stuff(tm) aren't taken advantage of, but short enough to prevent them from just resting on their laurels and depriving society of the benefits of their work. Perhaps software copyrights should be shorter due to how quickly the industry changes. I'm not convinced that software should be patenable as it hasn't really changed in decades. People keep doing the same things in a different way -- just like some plot-lines for novels. > > , 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... I agree that it's probably better to make incremental changes to our existing laws. We just need to make sure Sony and Disney don't make too many incremental changes the "wrong" way. :-) But that's democracy for you -- we, the people, have to continue to fight for it or we lose it. --Dan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
