Hacker News Reader

I do have experience with how hard marketing is, but big companies copying small companies' work is not the only application of IP laws. Big companies can copy other big companies' work, and small companies can copy big companies' work. Besides, many small guys — independent developers, three-person teams — don't even have the resources to patent their stuff. Which means patent laws disproportionately benefit big companies.

View on HN

> Besides, many small guys — independent developers, three-person teams — don't even have the resources to patent their stuff. Which means patent laws disproportionately benefit big companies.

Are you talking about software patents?

Yes.

That's already protected by copyright. I do not support software patents.

Sorry for not reading your original post carefully till now. However, I think my point still stands: if you have a product that people are paying you money for, say a camera, and you improve it, your product is more useful, and so you can charge more. Or sell more units at the same price. A camera that can record a timelapse is more useful than one that can't, whether or not other cameras record timelapses. In a world without copyright, the cost of improving your product also reduces, because you can take the code from somewhere, so it needn't sell that many extra units to recoup the lower cost.

In this way, eliminating copyright will create a race to the top, making all products better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com