| >software for example moves too quickly for this to be effective. It's not just software. Progress as a whole is moving way too fast to justify ANY
temporal monopolies over inventions. The curve of technological advancement is
probably roughly exponential. The more we discover, the faster we can discover
more things. We're sacrificing the advancement of the entirety of mankind for
the profit of a few corporations. >The only mechanism that is available to gov't to compensate an inventor is to grant a temporary monopoly. Utterly wrong. A lot of research (including the worst example, the pharma industry)
is funded directly or indirectly by the government, full or in part. Quite a lot
of research is done by universities in cooperation with the industry. It's nonsense
to imply that patents are the only viable solutions. They aren't, and they are probably
the worst solution anybody could come up with. They are a crutch and an impediment to
mankind as a whole. On your miracle drug: highly contrived example. Most pharma research is, at least in good part,
funded by the public through the government. In addition, a very large part of the cost of a drug
is marketing. Yes, that's right - the pharma industry spends billions on ads. In addition, this model is fundamentally flawed. It's a lot more profitable to develop treatments
(for symptoms etc) than it is to develop cures. I'd wager that without this nonsensical system,
we could already have a solution to AIDS and severely reduced the lethality of cancer. Also, I do not care how many billions went into the development of a drug. A human life is
infinitely worth more than that. I get sick when I see corporations whining about their
"intellectual property getting stolen" when developing countries decide to produce generic
clones to save human lives, like recently the case in India. Again, I simply reject the notion that there needs to (and in fact, that there can)
be any sort of artificial monopolies
or other forms of ownership over inventions and technologies. By getting rid of this
paradoxical and, frankly, unethical system, we would gain a monumental speed-up in
technological progress. I postulate we could be colonizing the solar system by now if we'd
never allowed this system to emerge. As a final note, it's funny how you accuse me of thinking in the short term - that couldn't
be any more wrong. If anything, I fight for the prolonged future of humanity, decades and
centuries from now. The patent system is utterly unsustainable in light of this. People will eventually look back at this system and ask themselves how we could ever allow
ownership over abstract concepts. They will shake their heads at the notion of intellectual
property while freely accessing, using and improving upon the shared heritage of all mankind. I
hope this day isn't far away - it can't come fast enough. |