Interoperability for games is fundamentally flawed reasoning

Posted Aug 24, 2005 22:03 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

What you may be missing is that under US law the only legitimate motivation for copyrights and patents is the good of the public, unless and until the Constitution is ammended. This has nothing to do with burden of proof (in fact, that mostly favors the copyright - if registered - or patent holder). Also, the discussion isn't about ownership. Blizzard owns the copyright to their games and to Battle.net. I do not challenge that. I don't think anyone else did. To attack our statements based on that argument is just tearing up straw men. Also, it isn't about "majority support", though now that you mention it, in technical circles, I think your position would be in the minority.

Posted Sep 1, 2005 12:32 UTC (Thu) by biehl (subscriber, #14636) [Link]

... and rights that an individual gets (an author's right).

Yes, but it is a fair argument that a society/public giving rights to individuals that are out of line with benefit to that society/public is just a bunch of bad merchants - pay lots - get little back.

Anyone who says that an author has to justify his ownership in his creation (and has to prove that otherwise he'd go out of business) positions himself in a way that is unacceptable for politicians anywhere right of the Greens and the far left. There's no majority support for that approach.

Maybe - but that "there is not support" is not reason that it is not true! And it is important to stress that nothing is taken from authors the work is theirs always, what is in question is what "rights" they can enforce through a public legal system after they release it - it is all about what OUR tax-money are spent on. Why must our tax-money be spent on a judicial system that gives us, (society in general) a bad deal?
Should we also support a system of rules that gives the original makers of Samsung televisions the rights to raid private homes and destroy their television product, at any time they see so fit? Maybe we should have a publicly funded police unit to stand by so Samsung just has to make a call?

I've talked to many conservative and center-left and (neo)liberal politicians, and like it or not, their approach is that the burden of proof is on those who want to restrict IPRs.

Yes - it is important to remember how the arguments you present makes you look. But saying that something is right because you can find a group of people (conservative and center-left and (neo)liberal or whatever) that think so doesn't make it so.

-Anders