Andrew- Recalling your excellent Guardian article, I wish you well on this seminar.
This is an interesting question in itself and also in light of the GPL v3 discussions going on... See my post: "Stallman's Clarity" http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2006/03/stallmans_clari.html If we are keen on the Four Software Freedoms, and loath of abuse of the patent system, then we ought to come up with some way that incentivizes the hard work of innovation without having the opposite effect. Is one answer that companies should not be trying to make a profit on easily replicated digital goods? It's been my feeling that the music industry, for one, will learn "natural pricing:" that low-res digital music files are worth something like 13 to 35 cents -- roughly the opportunity cost of the effort to copy and there will be other forms of the product for which people will pay...perhaps even higher prices than CD's today. Free Software and collaborative methodologies should likewise simply drive shifts away from old areas that are now commoditized. The effort will shift into natural value-added areas. I think in the interim -- while the shifts take place -- it's hard to see where the value is being added, or being taken away by new methods. -Sam On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 13:28 +0000, Andrew Brown wrote: > I have been invited to a day-long seminar on intellectual property in > Munich in late April by the European Patent Office. This is probably on the > back of an article of mine in the Guardian last autumn denouncing software > patents. Obviously, I would like to say something more than whatever was in > that article: my own view is that software patents are bad but we do need > an intellectual proerty regiome which will encourage people to make money > from software, without strangling those who would like it to be free. > > This is vague. If peope have more precise ideas, they cold write to me, or > discuss it here, if it's not too far off-topic. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
