[GRLUG] Itunes and France

[Bob Kline]

All true.  Almost without exception - maybe Newton
and Einstein - people do not create in a vacuum,  and
most "advances" are in the context of what already
exists.  Incremental improvements.  It's only when it
comes time to get paid that most people try to  take
a more generous helping of credit for themselves.

I agree that "intellectual property" has become a
perversion of the copyright process,  and frivolous
patents have done the same thing.   So has politics,
where outfits like Disney have gotten Congress to
extend the copyright period another 25 years,  to an
absurd 95 years.  Sadly,  unlike the patent period,
the Founding Fathers never got back to addressing
the copyright period.  It was left to common sense,
as were other things in the Constitution,  and has
now been so badly perverted that it's hard to create
or invent anything.  If something succeeds at all,
an army of lawyers will take it away from you unless
you are rich enough to get any real justice.  Look at
companies that want to patent ( or is it copyright? ) a
single click.  Or Intel trying to copyright the number
"5" back when the pentium came out.  Absurd?  Not
enough so that some big company won't try,  and
maybe drive any small company in the way out of
business.

The current patent and copyright system seems
dangerously close to creating innovation paralysis.
Many patents are silly,  and never  meant to be
anything more than the opening round for a lawsuit.

   -Bob


On 7/2/06, Ron Lauzon <rlauzon at gmail.com> wrote:

> So the patent and copyright laws were created to balance the bad (i.e. a
> limited monopoly for a limited time) with the good (i.e. getting access
> to new works and making money for their builders).
>
> The concept of "Intellectual Property" never existed until recently.
> This concept lets the co-called "creators" treat their ideas as property
> - with all the rights included with that.  Like ownership after death.
> Like being able to pass the ownership of that idea on to your heirs.
> This is inherently wrong with anything intellectual.  Ideas are not
> physical and ownership of them causes long term problems (like nearly
> all the issues we are having with patent trolls and copyright hogs).
>
> And I'll remind you what the government did with Standard Oil and AT&T.
>
> --
> Ron Lauzon - rlauzon at acm dot org
>    Homepage: http://7lauzon.home.comcast.net/
>    Weblog: http://ronsapartment.blogspot.com/
>
>    DNRC: Lord of All Things That Are Fattening
>
>    "To be sure, conservative radio talk show hosts have a built-in
>    audience unavailable to liberals: People driving cars to some
>    sort of job." - Ann Coulter
>
> Microsoft Free since July 06, 2001
> Running Mandriva Linux 2006
>
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>