Guest Posted March 5, 2002 Report Share Posted March 5, 2002 worldwalker said: --------------------------------------------- If all intellectual property rights were stripped, would the world be a better place to live? Anybody could use any software, music, manufacture and sell any pharmaceutical, rather that the 'owner' holding a monopoly? --------------------------------------------- Most definitely it will be better. Prices for instance will be much cheaper, therefore more is available for the underpriviledged. Also countries with eg. AIDS problems won't have to beg big companies any more to lower their prices, although their profit margins are somewhere around 90 %. For years they refused until India was brave enough to simply ignore IP rights. India got sued, but due to world pressure (people, not companies or governments) those pharma companies finally gave up. Until the next country followed India's example. Guess what: they got sued. It's a long story, but without IP millions of lives could and could have been saved. But greed, not love is manifested in our laws. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 5, 2002 Report Share Posted March 5, 2002 If there were no IP protection, there would BE no music, movies, pharmaceuticals, or software. Who would invest R&D in such ventures if they would immediately end up in the public domain? It costs big bucks to develop and test a drug, design a computer program, produce a film, or even make a music album. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted March 6, 2002 Report Share Posted March 6, 2002 PvtDick To the contrary there is a huge amount of software in the public domain* just go to www.netcraft.com and see what your favorite website is running on. Eventhough this message board runs on a Solaris system it still uses Apache, and PERL, and soon MySql. While all have licenses they are available free of charge under terms that allow the user to modify the software and also to redistribute, or even resell. While Solaris is not free for businesses I think that it is free for personal use (I may be wrong its been awhile since I used Solaris). Sun gives away Star Office which runs quite well on Windows and a variety of Unix and Unix like computers. Sun's Open Office is in the public domain to some extent and modifications to Open Office go into Star Office, just like work on Mozilla goes into Netscape (perhaps not such a great example). Public domain plays a substantial role in the internet, and if you have seen an animated film like Shrek there is a good chance that Linux clusters were used for rendering. While desktop users might be afraid to adopt Unix or a Unix work-alike there is very active development for these platforms just have a look at freshmeat.net . IBM spent one billion dollars on Open Source software last year, you can bet they are expecting a return on their investment down the road. People wrote books and music before copyrights were ever imagined. Biomed firms have a keen interest in "traditional" medicines. One could spend hours listing all the intangible property that was created by need or for amusement. Can you imagine if spoken and written language carried with it a users fee? Actually some languages do, would a peseant farmer have the luxury of learning the 3,000 Chinese characters considered the measure of literacy? Could a person in a "developing country" who pulls in an average salary afford to use a computer, absolutley with high quality free softawre. If they come to a point were they absolutley can't get the job with out some pricey software, they should figure the price of the software as part of their production cost. -AD *While the words public domain may have a specific meaning in various settings, I will assume that you meant license that allow the consumer a great deal of discretion with regards to free use, modification, distribution, and resale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 6, 2002 Report Share Posted March 6, 2002 quote: Originally posted by phiketpete: You must be looking in the wrong places . Pirated copies of thai artists are all over the place. Last week at Panthip (friday i beleive) an event was organised byt the recording industry of Thailand, Grammy etc. To promote the purchase of legit copies and to persuade stall owners to cooperate. [...] thius i would suggest that the local Thai industry does see pirated copies of local artists an issue adversely affecting local artists Yeah, saw copies of Thai stuff yesterday at Pantip, and now that I think of it I'd seen MP3 CD's of Thai artists before. Thai CD's seem to go for about 155B. Copies for 100. In the same store sometimes. Given that many foreign game manufacturers sell their wares at a discount (300-400B), I would guess that they are also trying to 'compete' with the pirate vendors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 6, 2002 Report Share Posted March 6, 2002 PvtDick, ...it would force musicians to make their money not only from sales, but from concerts or even regularly singing in clubs. Not a bad thing actually. ...it might have prevented Microsoft's monopol, and I hope we can agree that everyone would benefit by this. ...it might have forced governments to put more money into universities in order to let them develope pharmaceutical products and others. This might have had a significant input on their prices and medical care systems of many countries. I know I'm dreaming, but... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 6, 2002 Report Share Posted March 6, 2002 db_sed_aloha, pvtdick, All your arguments are dead on, but they're falling on deaf ears. People who want to steal software, music, movies, even drugs will not listen to any rationale that deprives them of their "right" to someone else's property. Stealing from those richer than themselves is fine, but they refuse to share their relatively obscene wealth with all those less unfortunate. They will complain about how these companies are price gouging and raking in the profits, but do they invest in these businesses who would no doubt make them all rich? They will never understand that almost all IP is created with the intent to make a profit. Remove the profit and far fewer of the products we all enjoy will be created. [ March 06, 2002: Message edited by: FarangDang ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 7, 2002 Report Share Posted March 7, 2002 quote: Originally posted by FarangDang: They will never understand that almost all IP is created with the intent to make a profit. Remove the profit and far fewer of the products we all enjoy will be created. I tend to agree. Since the invention of intellectual property (patents, copyrights, etc.) innovation has flourished, and whole new areas of the economy have blossomed that otherwise would not have. Some of the criticisms against intellectual property rights are kind of silly (like saying there is a high profit margin for drugs, while ignoring the enormous costs that drug companies incur in researching new drugs, many of which don't succeed), but some can not be dismissed so easily. I think it is fair to say that intellectual property rights can and have been abused, and sometimes do not work in the interest of society as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.