Comments on: Oligopoly or a Free Market – A Realistic Choice?

By: pb2c

pb2c — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:54:42 +0000

“In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

If that’s true, i think it’s a problem indeed, though not the same problem.
IP means almost nothing to me, it’s too big of an umbrella. One thing is copyrights, another patents.

There was a blog post recently where the author reasons,
“If the current US Copyright Law had been in effect over Shakespeare, I think he could have been sued by many authors for copyright infringement for writing that masterpiece.”
(referring to King Lear)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090621124054133

I just lost a long post because i forgot to put my email address. I lost my thoughts, but i leave my links i guess.

For anyone open minded, i would suggest watching this from Lessig:
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/
” No one can do to the Disney Corporation what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm.”

By: Stephan Zimmermann

Stephan Zimmermann — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:41:40 +0000

Interesting comment regarding patents.

Would your same thinking hold for copyrights, especially in the face of self-publishing and greatly eased distribution, including electronically?

By: pb2c

pb2c — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:22:19 +0000

To expand a bit on my comment, i’d just like to say that people usually attack the so called free market for all the wrong reasons, and never for the right ones.

But i liked your post, don’t get me wrong.

By: pb2c

pb2c — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:15:14 +0000

Note: i’m not for a totally deregulated market.

The problem most people disregard when criticizing free market is the fact that the markets are not really free. This is a simple fact to observe from several perspectives.

One easy to understand is patents, and i’m just going to touch this little detail here..

Patents do not derive from a free market, they are, in effect, part of government intervention. And these practically sanction monopolies and oligopolies. There’s no other way of looking at them, it’s in their very definition.

For this short comment, it doesn’t really matter weather we abolish it altogether, or reduce the patent’s term (something human like 5 years).
What really matters right now is for people to acknowledge that problem.
20 years is ridiculous, considering that all of us use previous knowledge on any of our findings/ inventions/innovations.

“Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.”
Lawrence Lessig – http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessig.html

BTW, Adam Smith hated big companies and i don’t think he’d ever approve patents of any kind.