Hi Harry, At 01:56 16/02/02 -0800, you wrote: (HP) <<<< I suppose everyone knows that I want to see the end of both patents and copyrights -- the source of privileges costing us billions every year.
Someone else has similar ideas! >>>> Yes. And I think this view is slowly gaining ground among economists who, hitherto, have not dwelt much upon the injustice of copyrights and patents. Here, for example, is a sentence from a recent book (or, rather, it's about to be published in April -- "Free Trade Today", Princeton University Press) by Prof Jagdish Bhagwati, of Columbia University and a Special Advisor to the UN, one of the world's leading experts on trade: "To many economiss, the demands for intellectual property protection are not cnducive to advancing economic welfare worldwide, contrary to the self-serving propaganda of our [American] industries and our [American] campaign-contributions-purchased politicians. But they do amount to an income transfer from the other, intellectual-property-using countries to us." A corollary of this that the individual inventor or small firm has no chance of protecting innovation via the present system of expensive patents. Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
