Re: Java and avoiding software piracy?

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:49:20 +0000, Twisted wrote:
Please check out
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm before making
any more lengthy followups to this thread. Other readers of this thread
are encouraged to read (or at least skim) the material there also. It
won't bite, despite the pdf format of much of the material there.

Having just read the first chapter, I can only point out the problems. It
quotes from the Economist, saying that "A patent is the way of rewarding
somebody for coming up with a worthy commercial idea," and then proceeds
to attack that statement. Naturally, what comes next from the same
article and is ignored by your reference is quite different from that
idea.

Your reference continually refers to absurd patents. Had they fully cited
the article (it says "this comes from an article in the June 23, 2001
copy of The Economist, page 42"), they would have debunked their
argument. The title is, "Patently Absurd?"

The Economist's article points out that the flaw is not in the idea of
patents, but in the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
"everything under the sun made by man is patentable." In fact, in
reviewing your reference, the authors use many of the same arguments but
ignore the glaring fact United States patent law is horribly broken.

Furthermore, your reference compares the Trevithick and the Watt steam
engines. What it neglects to mention was that Richard Trevithick was a
wealthy aristocrat living comfortably off of land rents whereas James
Watt was lower middle class (maybe even working class?) who needed the
money to survive. I suppose the world would have no need for patents and
copyright if money were not a problem.

In short, your entire argument against patents and intellectual property
are based on flimsy supports. US patent law is egregious and counter-
productive; you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with that
statement. Little mention is made of foreign patent models. Talking about
historical patent models is comparing apples to steaks: the majority of
production is now in the information and service sectors, as opposed to
the dominating agriculture and manufacturing sectors a century or two ago.

I will close my post with a quote from the referent Economist article:

One thing is clear: the stronger patents are made, the greater the
incentive to avoid them. And avoidance leads to anti-competitive
practices. The alternative—secrecy coupled with first-mover advantage—may
impede the informal flow of information as well as the formal trading of
know-how between firms. That, also, is hardly a recipe for promoting
innovation. On the other hand, cross-licensing appears to stimulate R&D—
and, by inference, the pace of innovation.
....
According to Joshua Lerner, an economist at Harvard Business School, "one
of the big lessons that comes out of the economic literature on patents
is that 'one size fits all' doesn’t make sense."
.

Relevant Pages

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