On Apr 9, 10:31 pm, Marcin Szkudlarek <[email protected]> wrote: > Capitalism is about respect for individual's property. People have > right to own things. If you deny this principle then you're going into > direction of communism/socialism and I believe that's what Joe meant. > So saying that patent law is communistic is an absolute nonsense. It > protects individual's property, the same way as the law which says > that stealing is illegal.
Patent systems (and other notions of intellectual "property") are not about defending property rights, they are about fostering creativity and innovation in a way that benefits all of us. The mechanism by which they do this is a temporary monopoly which allows the inventor to capitalise on their efforts; this is something that is *granted*, not *earned*. We grant this monopoly to the inventor because it is (in theory) in our broader interest to do so, as it provides incentive for people to invent useful things and not keep them to themselves. We can also decide that in some areas granting such monopolies is not beneficial and remove or temper them (or at least we could if our democratic processes were not skewed by the interests of large corporations). In that case if you publish your idea then it is up to you to ensure that you make a compelling product, the market will decide whether you get to benefit from that invention or not. If you don't like those terms you can always keep the idea to yourself. - Steve -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
