Posted on 03/09/2007 11:16:11 AM PST by slickeroo
I knew it. Post 16 was designed especially for you.
That sounds okay to me, but it goes far beyond trademarks and logos.
The explosive proliferation of "intellectual property" in the past thirty years benefits nobody other than lawyers.
All knowledge builds upon previous knowledge: "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." --Isaac Newton
Minutiae patenting prevents other researchers from expanding on the ideas of others, which is how science works.
Pharmaceutical research is slowly but surely grinding to a halt because every new semi-discovery is now patented rather than published for others to build upon, resulting in primising ideas being abandoned because of patent-gridlock.
It's also what protects his own software. He relies on it quite strongly, and has used the courts to defend the copyrights of software under his license. What a loon.
Stallman would be a minor point in computer history if Linus Torvalds hadn't chosen his license for Linux.
What has he stolen?
I wouldn't diss Richard Stallman. He's been writing code since before computers used monitors.
A great book if you're interested is "Hackers" by Steven Levy.
How insulting... unlike communism, open source software actually works.
i beleive you're thinking of Peter Norton.
Stallman gets speakers fees, writes books, and writes software.
His viewpoint is that software should be free, but support, customization, etc are legitimate to charge for. It has proven to be a viable business model.
Does Stallman suffer from cognitive dissonance? Or is he just a phony?
But true knowlege is reflected in patents, not copyrights or trademarks. This is why patent law is relatively simple when it comes to expiration dates.
How much slower would pharmaceutical research (or any research, for that matter) be if the proponents (ney, INVESTORS) of that research were not able to financially capitalize upon those ideas?
Nobody is suffering because Winnie the Poo is not in the public domain. However, when "Ricky Rat" is litigated because he infringes upon "Mickey Mouse", then we run into a situation where ideas are stymied and nobody can ever, EVER draw a picture of a mouse in pants ;)
A reasonable point of view. If people wishes to contribute their labor to free software, more power to them. (I frequently use software from the FSF.) At the same time, there is nothing immoral about private property, be it tangible property or intellectual property.
How does he feel about others copying his books, plagiarizing his speeches, et al?
Personally, if an individual or company wants to join the movement and contribute their efforts (software, ideas, literature), they should be free to do so.
However, it's been long held that America's greatness came about quickly, and eclipsed all other nations, BECAUSE of our strict adherence to property rights and more explicitly, the DOCUMENTATION of property rights (deeds, patents, copyrights, trademarks, et al).
IIRC, these ideas won an economist the Nobel Prize (small praise, these days) for that very assertion.
Yes, but companies patent gene sequences without knowing anything about what they do or how to use them, other than they want to charge other people who may want to use them.
The real problem is that you can patent a ham sandwich these days. The more frivolous patents the better for lawyers specializing in patent barratry.
I used to think so, but our resident patent attorney on FR has convinced me otherwise. Patents were loose in the 1990s but have tightened up significantly.
I don't understand how you can patent something that exists naturally (gene sequences). Perhaps they patented the sequencing technology or gene sequences that they actually spliced themselves?
IIRC, you have to prove a practical application/working model before you can patent.
Yes but what he is saying is making programs free that people paid a lot of time and money to create. If programs were free would we have programs like Photoshop so we can paste John Kerrys head on a poodle body? Maybe so, but it wouldn`t be as good. If I spent tons of money and years in college to learn how to program, I`ll be damed if I work for free once I graduated. What he`s asking is insane. All getting rid of copyrights does is lose investors and drive away top talent. Money is not evil, making money is not evil, making money supports people so they can concentrate on new ideas, new inventions with more energy rather than spending all their time hunting for food.
Of course, Castro and Valdez appeal to the nerds. They do everything their way, just the way nerds would like to.
"YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real."
-- Michael Chrichton (New York Times, February 13, 2007)
Sounds just like the idiots I went to college with.
Thanks.
I've been a Crichton fan since I read "The Andromeda Strain" at age ten. He has an amazing grasp of the politics of science and the resulting failures.
I now recall the patent/genome hubub of the early 1990s but hadn't followed it much.
I can't understand how something that's discovered can be patented. Patent the process that's used to discover it? Definitely. But something that already exists should not be patented. It existed before the discovering process and would have existed without that process.
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