open source

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Because there was no real intellectual labour involved in coming up with, and implementing, the pizza idea

This does not seem clear. What is "real" intellectual labour? I suspect you're trying to suggest the obvious vs non-obvious type distinction that the patent office uses, but here that seems strange.

Its the difference between the first person on the moon building a fence around an area and saying "I declare all this to be mine", and someone building a shop on the moon. Only the second would have a legitimate claim to property rights, since he is the only one who has actually invested productive labour into the land.

I think here "productive labour" is just as unclear as your "real" labour before. I mean, even if you equate productive labour with "anything that increases the lands value" then it's still unclear. What if someone paints a section of the moon? Most people think it's useless, but some think it's acecakes. Can that guy keep that section of the moon? What if someone builds some shitty sculpture on the moon, does he get property rights? Notions on this value are bound up (imo) with utility.

The drugs vs pizza example seems like a fairly straightward application of the Lockean 'property rights = resources + productive labour' idea to me, with 'resources' here being slightly metaphorical; I dont know where the pragmatism accusation is coming from.

Locke is ultimately coming from a pragmatic justification - his whole argument on property/land is that we should be able to use it so we don't starve, that there shouldn't be any waste, that there shouldn't be excesses, etc. This is why he put in various conditions on property ownership.

I believe he gives a patent-style argument in favour of land rights - they will be one hundred times more productive, etc.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, why isnt the 'right to life' a fictional construct which we only observe for pragmatic reasons

Well, it's true that you could argue that. Which is why I put "exists" in speech marks. My point was that some rights are ends in themselves, and others are (supposed) rights to other ends. The right to life is an end in itself - you do not need to justify a ban on murder on grounds of utility for instance. Other "rights" are (in general conception, I admit you're taking a different approach) rights to achieve certain (practical) ends.

In general, my view of rights is that they stem from our biological nature. Human beings merit the right to life, freedom of expression, etc because of how we are. I'm not sure if even if I supported IP that I could logically say that "The right to exclusive use of an idea you come up with for no longer than 15 years" is a natural/inherent right in the same sense.

This is begging the question. Your liberty is only being restricted if you believe you have an inherent right to use the intellectual products of others without their permission.

Patents go beyond this though. You could have never ever met someone, or encountered any one of their works (indirectly or directly) and still be violating their patent.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

This does not seem clear. What is "real" intellectual labour? I suspect you're trying to suggest the obvious vs non-obvious type distinction that the patent office uses, but here that seems strange.

No, an 'obvious vs non-obvious' criteria is far too subjective, especially since those working in a patent office are unlikely to be creative geniuses (lol einstein). I would class it more as the amount of work (time + money) that seems typical to produce such a result. This is why I have no problem supporting copyright, but think patents can be a bit dodgy espeically in the case of 'beautifully simple' inventions. But in the case of drugs, where the innovation obviously requites massive funding and large amounts of time, it seems clearcut.

I think here "productive labour" is just as unclear as your "real" labour before. I mean, even if you equate productive labour with "anything that increases the lands value" then it's still unclear.

That is roughly how I'd define it, but again, its also a function of time invested. Painting a section of the moon red isnt really much more of a development than building a fence round it, but if someone were to paint the next Guernica on the moon's surface, that would be different. There's obviously an element of subjectivity here, but some cases are a lot more black/white than others.

Locke is ultimately coming from a pragmatic justification - his whole argument on property is that we should be able to use it so we don't starve, that there shouldn't be any waste, that there shouldn't be excesses, etc. This is why he put in various conditions on property ownership.

Oh, fair enough. I've never actually read Locke but I assumed his conception of rights would have been similar to Rand's or Nozick's (although the latter is admittedly a bit of a pragmatist). But in any case, I would reject the argument that property rights are any more 'pragmatic' than the right to life.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Why would they be "shady"?

Also, I'm not sure. Coca Cola may spend ("waste") a lot of money on marketing but I'd imagine they're reasonably efficient in terms of production. If they can't, with their economies of scale, produce their syrup (or whatever) cheaper than anyone else then I'm not sure there's much hope for them in the longer term. Although they invest some money in R&D and the like it's not like the drugs companies which are investment heavy or whatnot.

Finally, my comments more referred to a society which wasn't primarily profit-motivated.

The aluminium can costs more than the contents put in it, and the can costs less than 1 penny to make.

So go figure, Coca Cola and all the other soft drink manufacturers make a fortune out of us.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Well, it's true that you could argue that. Which is why I put "exists" in speech marks. My point was that some rights are ends in themselves, and others are (supposed) rights to other ends. The right to life is an end in itself - you do not need to justify a ban on murder on grounds of utility for instance. Other "rights" are (in general conception, I admit you're taking a different approach) rights to achieve certain (practical) ends.

Isnt this highly subjective though? When you say 'right X is an end in itself', I take this to mean "A person cannot think of a good reason for supporting right X, so he says 'the discussion stops here'". Within certain frameworks a right to life could certainly be justified by more fundamental factors - consider a mystic who thinks that human life is a creation of God, and hence the right to life is justified because to kill is to transgress against divine law.

But in any case, the justification for property rights (both intellectual and material) can be founded upon the right to life, rather than on pragmatics. The right to life must necessitate the right to the tools and actions needed to actually live. Since man's method of survival involves production and the continual transformation of the environment, property rights follow almost as a corollary. This is essentially a (highly simplified) version of the Randian argument.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Nusselt

ive never understood this cocacola secret recipe business. They know the chemical and molecular make up of coca cola and what ingredients got them there, im sure it isn't a 'top secret uber secret' coca cola is brewed in practically every country, how could they not know the recipe?

Coca Cola ship their syrup to all other manufactures (production facilities) where it is produced under their direct instruction.

I used to work at Ben Shaws soft drinks factory in Pontefract where it was not uncommon to see Pepsi on one production line and Coca Cola on another.

Oh and as a side note the boxes that the syrup comes in is marked with a skull and crossbones and labeled POISON.

Nice

[queball]

Originally Posted by hyfe

However, a share in a company is something tangible. It entails physical assets, various contracts regarding the company (to employes, to customers, etc) and certain intangibles like reputation and prior market access. There is no need for the government to restrict what I can do in my own home in order for your company to exist. That does not hold for patents.

I'm not even sure this starting point is true. Patents are fundamentally about what businesses can do. It's only when you start engaging in trade that patents will affect you. You can sit at home doing LZW compression all you like and nothing will happen.

Patents are not necessary to protect applications. The source code is already copyrighted. We all know ideas are a dime a dozen in computer science, and that the devil is the in implementation. What good is patents in this regard? If you don't see the harm in somebody being disallowed to make similiar applications I say you are either blind or stupid!

If you believe innovative ideas are easy to come by then it indeed follows logically that patents are always wrong. I can't really argue that. The essence of patents is to make implementers pay inventors. Could you share some of those ideas?

Writing software is the easy bit as I see it. Patents protect, explicitly, invention. Copyright protects implementation, not invention. And again, I am not barred from using your invention. I just have to pay you for that liberty.

Where do you think the computer industry would be today if MacOS and AmigaOS had patented their GUI innovations? These patents would still be valid. Microsoft Windows probably wouldn't exist. I remember a quite by Bill Gates saying how lucky we are we the companies in the 80's didn't go on patenting sprees. We aren't that lucky nowadays.

I personally doubt it would have made a huge difference. I'm sure they would have licenced it to anyone interested. Besides, I have nothing against patent reform.

Seen anything interesting released?

Besides work on Wavelets, I haven't seen anything remotely interesting in a long time.

Ok, you seem to be interested in the desktop. Codecs, cryptography and voice recognition are all big areas of research.
Recent interest in wavelet compression isn't much to do with blue sky research though. The maths has been around for a while.

Yes, if the other party is to blame, you won't go to jail. With patents however, you seem to accept the fallout of legitimate research being invalidated without any further thought. In traffic atleast, we accidents as wrong.

Wasting time on duplicating research is wrong. There's an economical level of research and I wouldn't want surplus people working on something. If a technology is so good that it's worth having redundant research then the investors can take that risk. If it's so valuable that two groups would be researching it even without patents, then the groups could instead come to some agreement over patents first (something like cross-licensing). The researchers are still going to end up better off under a system patents because they can actually get paid for their work instead of soliciting patronage from the Princes of Italy.

No, it most certainly doesn't.

It has be considered innovative, non-trivial and new.

Ok, it just has to be useable not actually profitable. Indeed there are lots of speculative patents. I just don't see how a patent is any less "based on market pressure" than land rights.