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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Reading some of the comments on this thread it astounds me how many people still buy into lie that patents foster innovation, particularly as it applies to software.

Read Ben Franklin [1] on the subject.

Everyone should familiarize with the nascent days of the aviation industry when the Wright brothers' patent on the three-axis control method used in planes left the United States completely unable to produce planes when it entered World War One [2], ultimately forcing Congress to intervene [3].

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron.

[1]: http://movingtofreedom.org/2006/08/31/ben-franklin-on-patent...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_brothers_patent_war#...

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The idea of "intellectual property" has been so ingrained in many people that they simply cannot or will not recognize any difference between copying/distributing an idea (or a digital work) and stealing physical property. Generally, their (faulty) logic is that putting time and effort into creating something necessarily gives you absolute ownership of that thing, even if it's just an idea or a string of bytes.

I don't think you're giving the modern population enough credit. I'd argue that most people understand that there are cases where you can take something, and the original owner still has it. What's ingrained, rather, is a respect for the inventors, creators, originators of the world. We look to them with awe and, rightly or not, feel some low-level need to recognize and uphold that they came first with their creation.

As someone who has tried to argue against the idea of "intellectual property", this is the response I usually receive. Unfortunately, creating something and enforcing property rights on the ideas to "reward" the author doesn't make the system any better.

There's that idea in software development that it doesn't matter who came up with the idea first, but who executed it better. I actually think this is how the world should work. Who cares if you came up with an idea if you never acted on it? Why should you have the right to hold up innovation in that field?

Just get rid of "intellectual property" (at least patents) and let the people decide with their wallets.

> "Intellectual property" is an oxymoron.

Do you also disagree with the other types of intellectual property rights such as trademarks & copyrights, or are you just talking in the context of patents?

Trademarks are fairly clear cut. A trademark needs to be registered and it generally takes the form of something that isn't an existing word or phrase. It's easy to find out if someone has registered a particular trademark and not generally a big deal if they have (typically this is just a branding issue).

There is legal recourse if the trademark enters the common lexicon (as happened to aspirin [1]).

Basically I have no problem with trademarks except when people decide to trademark what is the generally accepted phrase, as happened with the ugg boot [2], which has long since been a generic term in Australia.

Copyright is a little greyer but basically OK. It just needs to be protected from copyright trolls like Righthaven [3]. The danger here is that lots of low-quality or automatically generated text will be used as the basis of copyright violation lawsuits. Generally speaking, it's extremely difficult to independently come up with the same exact text as someone else for anything nontrivial in length.

The problem with patents is that two people can (and do) come up with the same idea completely independently and that many of those ideas are completely obvious (eg I remember seeing an early GPU trademark that related to applying 2 or more textures to a pixel in a cycle instead of 1).

I can write a computer program and it will quite possibly violate any number of patents. I can write a book and it almost certainly won't (randonmly) violate anyone else's copyright. If I want to trademark something it's easy enough to find out if it's already been trademarked and to trademark it myself.

Software patents are beyond moronic.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Trademark

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugg_boots#Trademark_disputes

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righthaven

Although you are correct that trademarks and copyright are a different story, the state of events in those is still not satisfying.

A couple of examples:

1. Trademarks - Facebook recently insisted on owning trademark of word "book". Although not 100% successfully, but some companies settled. What next - trademark "luck", "suck" and "fuck"?

2. If I recall correctly copyright is 75 years + life of descendants. So if I (and say 1000 more people) would like to buy/read a book, that was published 15 years ago and was since abandoned by the author, there is no practical way to do so even if people would be eager to pay royalty. The path/copyright ownership for hits is clear, but what about long tail?

It's not that government-enforced monopolies on copying or using certain pieces of information are never justified, just that they aren't property.

Your right to drive as indicated by a driving licence is not 'property', your planning permission for a building is not 'property', your FCC permission to use a particular part of the EM spectrum is not 'property'. And your right to make copies of a particular piece of information isn't 'property' either. These are all abstract legal rights/privileges.

If you drive without a licence, broadcast in a band reserved for someone else, or copy a copyrighted work, then you are 'driving without a licence', 'breaking FCC regulations', and 'infringing copyright', respectively. Calling any of those things stealing is inaccurate, which is the kind of mistake you end up making if you think of them as property.

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