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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Patent vs. Copyright. I must leave this in the discussion. Sorry.
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I beg you: Dont do this to my nerves. I am just recovering from that whole "software patent"-issue and my nerves break down every time I hear that evil word. Do you know how expensive my psychiater is?
Last session he greeted me with "Well, I owned my house for quite a while - but with todays session you bought me an accompanying yacht"
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Patents aren't evil, (although they've been made too easy to get), and most of the squawking you've read about has been due to companies being actually forced to pay for the I.P. they've been cheerfully stealing....
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Yes, Patents in itself are not evil - just as copyright as the principal idea is not evil. But: How patents are used nowadays IS evil. Patents are used to bully everybody (especially small companies and single creatives) around. They are granted for non-issues (anybody remember e.g. patents on basketcorbs or XOR-operations?). Big companys use patents as a device to control the industrie.
THIS is evil. Patents - as they are used nowadays - are not protecting ideas and creatives, but are evil. End of story.
Especially the idea to get Patents on something non-technical ... What would happen?
E.g. Tolkien had a patent on LOTR. The result? No fantasy stories anymore, they would be violating the patent (assuming Tolkien or his publisher was some kind of evil man, and I dont believe that).
Though - take whatever idea you like, but leave patents (as a whole) out of the equation.
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The underlying problem I was trying to address the idea of forcing copyright back to a rational length. It won't be successful by just demanding a shorter length, because too many corporations have gotten too fat off the current system.
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This is too true.
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I was trying to set up a way to let somebody keep a copyright going, but only at the expense of a higher and higher renewal rate. If Disney wants to keep Fantasia under copyright for another 100 years, well, it would cost them say, 10 million, 20 million, ect. At some point it would revert to the public domain because it's not worth the renewal rate. I think this would be easier to sell politically, because I'm using the politician's greed for more money to buy votes with. I figure this would increase the chance from 0 to .000001 percent....
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Yes, I understood what you meant. And the principal idea is not bad - but, and that is a big but, you would need a way to allow small companys and single artists to share in the copyright. And that is something a patent system is NOT doing. Take this into account and perhaps I will agree
