On Mar 8, 2011, at 4:07 PM, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > No, now you're committing a fallacy, or, at least misunderstanding the > argument here.
When you don't quote ANY of the message you are responding to I have a terrible time trying to figure out which argument you are responding to. > > Software patents are per se a drag; they amount to thought crime legislation. > By themselves they suck, and only suck - they force everyone to look up > stuff. In theory there's the benefit of letting you walk down to the patent > office and have a look through, but nobody does that. > > We need to pull in the theory that without them, we'd be hampering > creativity. However, Kevin's point was trying to highlight that there's no > actual proof, or even a decently convincing argument, that no patents means > creativity goes down. > > If patents don't actually help creativity any, why the heck have them? It's > trivial to prove they cost a bundle in economic loss in up-front obvious > costs (those lawyers don't actually produce anything tangible for society). > The theory is that these costs are more than offset by the gain, presumably > because industry is more innovative with them. > > TLDR: The burden of proof is on patent law defenders. While you get no argument from me I'm sure you will from the defenders. So far in this lengthy shred, despite claims that facts justify patents, all I've seen is facts that show how non-beneficial software patents actually are (which have been waved off as not relevant) but no facts that justify them - just assertions purported to be facts. Ralph -- 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.
