Property rights versus... property rights ?!?
Posted by davidmcnab 9 years ago to Business
It may soon be the case that when you buy a car, you won't actually own the car. Auto makers are wanting to extend the concept of intellectual property rights to prevent car owners from modifying or even repairing their own cars.
I grew up in a time where if I bought something, the property rights conferred by the sale allowed me to do whatever I damn well wanted to it - use it, break it, burn it, change it - as long as I didn't do it to commit a crime.
Nowadays, property rights in relation to physical goods appear to be getting weakened dramatically, so when you "buy" something, all you're actually getting is possession and exclusive use, possibly for a limited time.
Whatever happened to *actual* ownership?
I grew up in a time where if I bought something, the property rights conferred by the sale allowed me to do whatever I damn well wanted to it - use it, break it, burn it, change it - as long as I didn't do it to commit a crime.
Nowadays, property rights in relation to physical goods appear to be getting weakened dramatically, so when you "buy" something, all you're actually getting is possession and exclusive use, possibly for a limited time.
Whatever happened to *actual* ownership?
Clearly not every aspect of her philosophy was completely original. Should she have been prevented from writing it because some aspects had been thought of by other people?
I don't think that we are arguing about major philosophical differences. As near as I can tell, we have one key difference in opinion, that is whether an algorithm, independent of actual implementation, is protectable intellectual property. If we agreed on that, we would probably agree on most things.
If you don't wish to talk to me unless I am explicitly an Objectivist, that is your right. I won't, however abstain from commenting on things of interest to me.
Especially when you tell us we don't know how software works. Now if you tell us we don't know how the law works you would be on firmer ground. I suspect my knowledge of software law is on a par with your knowledge of software development. We are both looking at the process as outsiders.
In practice that would be far to complex of a circuit for anyone to actually build.
The same is true of a modern software program. You couldn't build a real electronic circuit that would do that. It is too complex.
It is that complexity that caused Texas Instruments to make the first microprocessor chip because hand held calculators were becoming too complex to design using electronic circuitry.
I do remember the era when software was actually wired into the machine. I didn't do it myself but watched someone working on one as we were getting the new system working.
It differs from wiring circuits primarily in the flexibility and vast complexity.
The underlying electronics that a piece of software can run on is far from unique and in fact can be any variety of things the emulate the required instructions including simulations.
I'm not against patents for electronics. That's a different world with far more discrete applications.
I'm not opposed to progress, I like it a lot -- we just have a idea as to how to achieve it.
(I don't know who decremented your count -- I have never decremented one of yours.)
From the 1981 introduction until the early 1990's there were virtually no software patents (I am aware that there were some). The industry flourished, many billionairs were made. For the most part our software was protected by copyright and restricted distribution. It worked well.
In the early 1990's the looters realized that there wasn't a lot of lobbying money flowing into Washington from the industry and the various investigations and anti-trust cases began. As a result they learned their lesson and are handing significant amounts of cash to the looters to be left alone. This is when software patents went from dozens to thousands.
I firmly resent your declaration that I, sitting in front of a computer writing code that I conceive of from my own brain without reference to anyone else's work am a looter. I make what I sell.
Somewhere there may be someone else who came up with a similar idea and patented it in a format that I am not qualified to read and certainly wouldn't help me design and test the code. I did not steal their work.
You and others in the patent industry, neither write code nor create applications for users. Instead, you want to build an infrastructure that requires us to pay you for permission to create. That is, as near as I can tell, the exact definition of a looter.
Where I find this worrying is that each piece of real estate can only have 1 instance. 214 Jones Lane, Smithville can only be possessed by you, or me, or someone else. But concepts can exist in limitless instances. Anyone in our industry with half a brain or, anyone with understanding of invention-based businesses, would know that this would slow down the US innovation economy and give other countries a massive advantage. The US software industry would turn into a bunch of MBAs registering overseas companies and outsourcing their development to the BRICS economies, even further afield into eastern Europe and Africa. The USA is cash squeezed enough as it is without trillions more flowing overseas to pay for foreign cloud computing services.
We generate original software; we do not steal code from our competitors. The common screen and database functions needed to generated a product are in a common pool of tools - the slider at the right side of the box I am typing in is a good example. Any patents on these items are spurious and made by trolls, not by innovators.
We know what we are doing and we know that we produce original and innovative work. If you disagree with what we are doing, that is fine: I am long past the point where I expect the universe to agree with me. But labeling someone "looter" is counterproductive and insulates both parties from change.
You have some interesting points, and Wm and I have been discussing them at work. Hot and flaming labels get in the way of productive action.
Jan
this line of reasoning is not objectivist. You will necessarily experience dissonance on this subject whomever you are because the fundamentals in objectivism beg to be paid attention to. as well, go back and read this post. these posters are trashing our profession and calling db a fraud. yet, he is to be civil, tolerant, patient. he provided much evidence to no evidence in return. what if he came in and called all software programmers frauds? please understand context. I do not trash your profession not your competence nor your integrity. knock knock. who's there? PROPERTY RIGHTS
You clearly do not want to, because you are not interested in the truth you are a troll
When someone advocates that it is okay to take the work of other people, they are looters. His arguments are not well formulated. What he does is constantly change the subject. A common technique of the anti-patent and regressive crowd.
Did he provide any evidence for his point of view - no. When I pointed to the overwhelming evidence showing that patent and software development have gone hand and hand (Countries with the strongest patent laws have the strongest patent systems and vice versa) he changed the subject. At that point he is not only a looter, but the worst sort of Ellsworth Toohey second hander, which I will continue to point out.
I think that it would have been inappropriate for me to weigh in on your comments on Wm, since we are colleagues. But I have no hesitation to ask you to stop calling davidmcnab (whom I do not know) a looter because his well-reasoned arguments disagree with yours.
Some of your points (ie definition of 'invention') are perceptive and make me reflect on them, but then you try to end the discussion by calling davidmcnab a looter. That is irrational: It is obvious that davidmcnab is quite concerned with both the ability to own and the ability to invent. That is not a looter, it is a producer.
Jan
What is your preference for timespan of patents? If your answer is "lifetime of creator", then what if the patent is sold?
Ditto for copyrights?
A classic case here is the pharmaceuticals, who have to spend upwards of $1billion to get original new drugs through all the blinded testing protocols on a large enough scale to prove safety and efficacy to the satisfaction of the medical profession. No patent? No drug. People get/stay sick and even die.
For drugs, defining an 'invention' is easy - a drug invention is simply a chemical formula for a therapeutic compound which has not previously passed testing protocols. This also covers the cases of drug companies studying naturally-occurring substances, isolating their active ingredients and validating their safety and therapeutic effect.
Note here that drug companies take out the patent on the complete molecular structure. They don't patent functional groups, such as a reactive site on a benzene ring. Also, they don't patent general classes of drugs, such as alkaloids.
For software, it's a different ball game. In software, all the tiny constituent parts of a software application can be separately patented.
As for precise definition of 'invention' that would stand up to legal scrutiny - I'll have to ponder on that for a while. The broad-brush answer would be William's earlier response about 'spark of inspiration' versus 'well, duh' types of creation. Nailing this down into watertight wording is the trick.
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