[GRLUG] Itunes and France

[Bob Kline]

That used to be what patents and copyrights addressed.
While I doubt there's any one answer here,  there is the
problem of monopolies.  So if something becomes
important,  probably more important than even the
inventor envisioned,  then the answer might be no,  they
no longer have that right,  because at some point that right
becomes destructive.   e.g.,  M$ and windoz.

As I see it,  monopolies are a flaw in the capitalist
system.  If a company becomes big enough,  it smothers
innovation - its own,  and/or that of a whole industry.  The line
is never completely clear just when that happens.  But in
principle a patent or copyright allows the inventor or
developer to make a big bag of money,  and after that
people are supposed to be allowed to compete,  and
further the development of whatever it is.

To see what can go wrong with all this,  look at the music
and movie businesses - a.k.a. the RIAA and the MPAA,
and what they will do to protect their monopoly status.

    -Bob


On 7/2/06, David Pembrook <david at pembrook.net> wrote:
> But are you saying that a company does not have a right to make
> something and own it? I love open source and thats a choice for me and
> many others. But if I make something the world wants, do they have a
> right to it by demanding it from me? Are intelectual rights obsolete?
>
>
> Ron Lauzon wrote:
>
> >Bob Kline wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I think France has this basically right in principle. Knowingly or not, it is fighting for standards, and we mostly know how important those are, and
> >>what the PC world was like just 15 years, when almost everything was proprietary, and expensive.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >Many groups are (finally!) discovering what many of us have known for a
> >long time: Proprietary is bad for the consumer.
> >And they are discovering what "proprietary" really means.
> >
> >For example, the big push to use the Open Document Format instead of
> >Microsoft Word.
> >
> >Back in the '80s, the saying was "No one ever got fired for going with
> >IBM."  By the mid 1990s, that was no longer said.  Now the saying is "No
> >one ever got fired for going with Microsoft" but that is now just
> >starting to be false.
> >
> >
> >
> >>The only way to beat all this is with standards.  You
> >>either have standards or you get monopolies.
> >>
> >>
> >And companies (like Microsoft and Apple) who have business models based
> >not on providing the best value, but rather on DRM and customer lock-in,
> >want to either own these "standards" or cry foul when their proprietary
> >standards become de facto standards and they are called to open them up.
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>