Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Well, if that is what he believes, he's wrong. Think about it. Take that perspective to its logical conclusion ... meaning that anything of yours is mine and I can take it anytime I want. In other words there is no such thing a private or personal property, ideas or ownership. :
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For the second time, stop calling me He.
Second, slippery slope fallacy. To deny that an idea can be personal property does not deny the existence of personal property. You cannot own the moon or the sun, you cannot own the space in international waters. You cannot own an idea, both the wheel and the works of Shakespeare belong to the world.
Governments who at least nominally work for the people can grant you a temporary monopoly, but they don't have to and thus we get into the question, why should they? So you can make money? Why should the government and my extension the people care if you make money writing books or digging ditches? Of course inventions might be useful, if people make them and don't share then they're useful to one person. If they're released into the wild then many can benefit. We could try watching something work and try to figure out how and maybe be able to make something similar ourselves, that's still advancement or we could try to convince someone to publish the plans or history book or whatever.
You still don't see it do you? Publishing gets something out into the wild where it can be useful. No one but you cares if you make a penny. If a patent or copyright doesn't expire then there's no difference between creating or not.
And then there's a second problem, the widget is made with things like screws and wheels and I don't see the inventors of those things being paid for them. No one's paying Shakespeare for the words he made up and no one's paying Moses for making any references to the book of Exodus. Well no problem no one really owns those things how could they? In the English speaking world these things come as naturally as breathing they're part of the culture we live in, in a way everyone owns an equal share. No problem, we'll just rent those things out in a non exclusive way and in return we get whatever else comes along to add to the pile that is the culture we live in.
When you manage to do something that in no way builds on ANY public domain anything that came before then we can talk about society not having a claim on it. But the price of using our public domain is expanding our public domain. How long you can wait before doing that is a matter for debate. I advocate times much shorter than what the law currently allows.