Re: Bezos on 1-click ordering

[mjd-perl-pm@plover.com]

> That's not the way patents work though. If anything, they restrict
> innovation. Were we to do away w/ them, you wouldn't get fat corporations
> making money by preventing others from innovating. 

Yes, but there would also be a huge body of invention that would be
totally inaccessible to absolutely everyone because the inventors had
kept the discoveries secret.  Everything patented before about 1983 is
in the public domain now, and if there weren't any patents, a lot of
that stuff wouldn't even exist.

Let me give you a real example, taken from copyrights, instead of
patents.  (As I understand it, you're making the same argument against
copyrights also.)  I'm writing a book.  I will get the exclusive
rights to publish and distribute that book for a really long time---at
least for my entire life, in fact, and certainly longer than the
twenty-five years permitted for a patent.

Writing the book is going to take me about ten months of my life,
during which I'm not going to be able to hold a regular job because
I'll be working so hard on the book.  If I didn't expect to be able to
make money from the book, I wouldn't be able to do that.  I would have
to get a job instead.  If I don't get an exclusive right to publish
the book, then anyone who wants to can come along and start selling
the same book, and they can collect the money instead of me and give
me nothing.  If that is going to happen, I might not make enough money
to make it worthwhile to spend ten months of my life writing it.  I
can tell you right now that without an exclusive copyright, I would be
looking for work instead of writing a book.

The purpose of copyrights is to promote progress and authorship.
That's what they did in this case.  If you abolish copyrights, you
won't get my book.  So contrary to what you said above, that *is* the
way they work, at least in this one case.

Here is another example.  I do sometimes write things that I don't
plan to get paid for.  I wrote up the notes for the string typing talk
that I gave, just for fun, without any intention of making a penny
from it.  Let's suppose that I was going to write a book the same way,
just for fun.

Now my book is written, and I want to have it published.  Someone has
to pay the publisher, the compositor, the editor, the designer, and
the printer.  Usually the way that works is that a publisher agrees to
pay for all those things in return for a share of the revenue from
selling copies of the book.  Now suppose you are the publisher.  You
pay for all those things, and publish the book, and it is a big
success and starts selling.  Then another publisher starts printing
copies of the same book and selling them cheaper.  They can do that,
because they were able to take advantage of all the editing and design
you did, for free.  Now you cannot sell any books.  You paid for all
the design and editing work, and you get nothing back.  Then you go
out of business.

Well, you don't want to go out of business, so chances are you simply
decline to publish my book in the first place.  Now the other
publisher can't even rip it off, so nobody gets to read my book at
all, even though I starved for ten months in order to be able to write
it.  Oh well, maybe if I get a big inheritance I will be able to pay
to have it published myself.

Here's another example.  Why my book is finished, I'm going to post it
on my web site so that anyone anywhere can read it for free.  I have
an idea that that is not going to hurt sales of the book, and I think
I will get a benefit because more people will be visiting my site to
learn who I am.

In a world without copyright, anyone would be able to take my book off
my web pages and put it up on their own web site and claim it as their
own work, and I would not be able to stop them.  They would be able to
copy the book off my web site, change it around so that it said a lot
of things that were not true, and publish it, and I would not be able
to stop them.  They would be able to print and bind it and sell it in
bookstores and keep the money, and I would not be able to stop them.
If I were afraid that this would happen, I would not be willing to
post it on my web site for people to read for free.  Copyrights give
me the safety to do that.

I've never held a patent, but I can believe that it's the same for
inventors as it is for writers.  Who is going to spend years of their
life trying to invent something if they aren't going to be able to
make any money from it when they are done?  The joy of creation is
wopnderful, but it's not if you don't have any food on the table.

> So then as the person who had access to this information first, you have a
> head start. You shouldn't need patents, especially at the current rate of
> technological progress.

What a nice idea.  How has that worked out for you on all the things
you invented and declined to patent?  Was your head start adequate?
Or did you just contribute them all to the public domain right away,
since you don't believe in intellectual property rights?  It would be
much easier to take you seriously if you would post a list of the
patentable inventions you have contributed to the public domain in
this way.

> That may be the intention, but that's not how things work in the real
> world.

Oh, pardon me.  I must make a note to get out more. 

I'm sure that my own experiences as an independent business owner and
professional software developer, are entirely irrelevant to the real
world.  And I'm sure that my decision to write a book and hold a
copyright on it have nothing to do with the real world either.

Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.  I guess that people only
have to earn a living in my funny little fantasy world.  

> Also, I think that if we're granting a right that isn't a natural
> right, then we need to take a serious look at why that right is being
> granted and whether or not it's justified.

We grant statutory rights all the time.  If you have a driver's
license, you hold a statutory right to drive a car; you have no
natural right at all to drive cars.  The justification for
intellectual property is really clear: It encourages authorship and
invention by granting *temporary* licenses to authors and inventors.

Except that apparently, in the `real world', such grants are
unnecessary.  

I will be the first to agree that there are plenty of things wrong
with the patent system, particularly in the area of software patents.
But I think the idea of patents and copyrights in general is basically
sound.
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