The real issue here is the hegemony that gives a single coalition governments the ability dictate worldwide patent and copyright law.
It seems that if that didn't exist, people interested in innovating and creating great, new, things would just go to the countries that didn't have forcefully draconian IP laws.
Sure, maybe there are some advantages to having patents, but in their current form for software, they are a civil version of the thought police.
And mark my words, if MS and IBM and Apple get sued for copyright infringement, they did this to themselves. They are the ones for lobbied for this in an attempt to push the little guy out. And it was working until someone figured out that 'patent trolling' was possible.
In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed. Otherwise, patent litigation is basically restricted to people who already have their own huge legal departments.
In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed.
I think this is really naive. People who do dishonest things and get rich from them are not regarded as a problem in America - they're celebrated as clever guys and put on Forbes magazine's cover.
It doesn't matter where things are created; if they infringe US patents they can't be sold in the US. Most companies can't afford to ignore that market.
In politics/activism, this is usually referred to as "heightening the contradictions". That strategy only works, however, if you have a fairly optimistic view of history and progress. If you don't, the strategy is just as likely to produce a dramatically worse outcome.
I was going to ask the GP, I'll ask you instead, can you think of concrete historical cases where pointing out a ton of problems led to a dramatic reform instead of just slight tweaking that ends up introducing more problems? Can you think of cases where (bad) --causes alone--> (worse) --causes alone--> (incredibly better)? (It seems to me it's more of an ebb and flow of good/bad.) The sentiment seems especially popular among nerds for some reason. To both charitably and caricaturely quote: "I hope SOPA passes; then everyone will use Freenet!" "I hope Facebook severely violates its users' trust, then people will care about privacy." "I hope someone blows up a security line at an airport, then we'll get rid of security theater." "I hope we have patent Armageddon, it will hasten the destruction of IP."
It's a bit unclear what you're asking - are you looking for historical examples where heightening the contradictions has actually led to a good resolution? Because I was definitely arguing against that. Or examples where it's made it worse? For the latter, the most event would probably be Nader.
Dramatic and successful reform has happened, of course. Look at Upton Sinclair, the Chicago meat-packers, and the rise of muckraker journalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
Sure, drawing from recent history in the US I'd say that 1986 tax reforms[1] the 1996 welfare reforms[2]. I don't think that they happen often enough that they should be relied on, though, and I'd say that they're pretty much impossible in the current US political climate. On the other hand, countries that aren't the US might have better luck, since most are smaller and more homogeneous, and have parliamentary systems with less veto points. But then again, smaller countries are by their very nature less able to take on the rest of the world in the resulting trade disputes, and the EU countries I believe have the EU itself dictating aspects of patent law.
> In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed.
Unfortunately this is not realistic. A major problem of the current patents system is the amount of money invested ("zillions" of dollars); every step towards reforming it is essentially equivalent to burning (some) people's dollars in flames - there may be a good reason behind, but it's very unlikely to happen.
> the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed
You're betting that the fix won't be to do something that effectively restricts patent protection to a fixed number of companies, maybe restricting patent litigation to those companies in a patent collective that, no, you can't join.
It already does that, and I don't discount that it could actually get worse instead of getting better. However, I am an optimist.
(Assuming you have a legitimate patent). Can you personally realistically sue Microsoft for patent infringement and win? No. Can a small company? No.
Why? Because the litigation would bankrupt anyone without Microsoft's coffers, and Microsoft can likely afford a better lawyer than you can anyway.
(I recall there was a movie a few years back about the guy who invented intermittent wipers and had them basically stolen by the Detroit auto-industry, it gives an interesting perspective on the matter. Basically, fighting the auto-companies ruined his life, ended his productivity as an inventor, and bankrupted him. By the time he was rewarded for his invention, he was old).
So, it is already a one way street in that regard, with the exception of patent trolls, who are large entities with lots of money which actually have the ability to sue the likes of Microsoft and Google and have a realistic chance of winning.
It should also not be discounted that patent trolls exist on the same time-scale as megacorps (potentially immortal), where as humans are extremely feeble and limited in their life-spans (last time I checked).
I'm getting very devil's advocatey here, as I really think software patents are a bad idea, in general. Copyright is already enough protection for software, patents just give entrenched entities a big bunker to hurl grenades from.
It seems that if that didn't exist, people interested in innovating and creating great, new, things would just go to the countries that didn't have forcefully draconian IP laws.
Sure, maybe there are some advantages to having patents, but in their current form for software, they are a civil version of the thought police.
And mark my words, if MS and IBM and Apple get sued for copyright infringement, they did this to themselves. They are the ones for lobbied for this in an attempt to push the little guy out. And it was working until someone figured out that 'patent trolling' was possible.
In my opinion, patent 'trolling' is a good thing, (as long as it doesn't happen to me). Why? because the harder they troll, the more obviously broken the system will be, and the more likely it is to get fixed. Otherwise, patent litigation is basically restricted to people who already have their own huge legal departments.