We must protect digital intellectual property to foster innovation (ZDNet)

Posted Jun 18, 2003 13:54 UTC (Wed) by TimCunningham (guest, #10316) [Link]

Fun fun. He manages, in one breath, to state both that free software is created without regard for profit and that without profit no one would create software.

What an idiot.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 13:57 UTC (Wed) by jdthood (subscriber, #4157) [Link]

> I applaud Microsoft for taking the high road and protecting
> a rival company’s investment in intellectual property.
> Quite frankly, each of us needs to analyze both our family's
> and our company’s stance toward protecting everyone’s
> intellectual property. If we don’t, we'll create a country
> whose citizens place no value on bits, and the incentive to
> innovate will disappear.

I am going to frame this.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 14:07 UTC (Wed) by lpbbear (guest, #4827) [Link]

Don't bother with reading the article. The only value in reading this article would be to give the reader a glimpse of the twisted mentality
that supports restrictive IP laws. Pretty scarey attitude.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 15:01 UTC (Wed) by rdtennent (guest, #11327) [Link]

Enter the author's name, Tim Landgrave, into Google and one discovers that
he's a Microsoft Regional Director. Pretty evident from the content, though
not from the by-line.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 15:08 UTC (Wed) by ateras (subscriber, #10113) [Link]

I find this sad rather than fun. The author seems to think that natural human behaviour should be reversed and being hostile towards friends is something to be applauded and sought for. Also, he seems to completely ignore that there are a lot of music legally available in the Internet.

Fortunately in most of the cases the creators and innovators themselves have a saner attitude. It might not be "I'll give everything out for free" but usually at least a better balance.

This just again reminds of the importance of easily understandable tools for the artists themselves to fight this kind of development - for example the Creative Commons licenses.

AJT

Posted Jun 18, 2003 15:58 UTC (Wed) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

I think it is interesting to notice the first sentence of the article :

"One of the most difficult issues that we as a society have to resolve is how to encourage new ideas and inventions by protecting the interests of those who create them."

For most people reading this without enough awareness, they think that this first hypothesis is right. Then basing a good part of his argument on this hypothesis the author manages to write a lot of things that will seem right as well.

But in fact the starting hypothesis is wrong. Some people are motivated by money and encouraged by money to create new ideas and invention. But in fact money is not the best way to motivate people.

When you do not have money and need to resolve a vital problem, like finding food or communicating with other people, you find ideas to solve those problems, and often those idea are better adapted to real problems than those you could have found by just sitting in your desktop and pondering about "What can I invent today to make money?".

Today most vital problems are solved in developped country, but there are still room for solving communication problems, even in US or Europe. Anyway there are other motivation than mere necessity and money. For my own part I'm affraid of sharing some of my ideas because I fear that someone could just patent them and prevent the whole mankind of using them. So I wait to find really good way to share and secure ideas so that anyone anywhere can use them without patents.

Why do I think that way? Because I don't care about money. I have enough to have two meals everyday, hot water in the shower, electricity to power the fridge the lamps and the computer, and a bed with four walls and a roof around. I know my life whatever I do won't span above a hundred years, I don't see what I could do with plenty of money just for me alone (except donating it to FSF or some non-profit organization that really help people) and even having wife and children wouldn't change much that point of view.

In fact, as I know that my life is not infinite, I also know that the "life" of mankind will be longer (hopefully) and I expect that any idea I may have would benefit to mankind instead of just myself. Just because improving mankind is a better goal than improving my own comfort.

I hope some people around have the same motivation, and I think that today there can be more, and better innovations from people with other motivations than money than from "only money-motivated" people. Maybe this is an error, but, as far as I see, there is no proof that I'm wrong. (By the way, if you want to know the real goal of patents today, it is for information agency to be informed of what is being developped by foreign companies early enough to help their national companies to better compete).

Posted Jun 18, 2003 16:25 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

What this guys are complaining is the impossibility, of ripping off everybody else ideas into proprietary copyrights and patents, only because open-source is winning.
Unfortunatly this has to make a little jump into politics, only to mention that exploring others labor and findings without due value or payment, always was the best way to make a fortune, back from the time humanity invented Kings...
If corporations or other lucrative and non lucrative inatitutions were to pay to the actual personal individuals and or groups directly responsible for the discoverys, 10% of what they receive as royalties for copyrights or patents, the world would have 3000% more rich people...sorry dont have a URL,, hum simple because no real studies were ever published(i belive).
So,... i belive this Tym Landgrave is complaining not because he has some discovery to protect, the best position to be deceived, rip off it, and throw into oblivion,... but because he has an high interest in "defending his job by lickyng his boss boots" because he gets payed heavly to wright articles that defend the rights of "BOSSES" to rip off artists and inventors... if i'm wrong in this, than i'll be confronted whit an almost endless list of artists and inventors that got real rich with their work!!
DEFEND DIGITAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?- ABSOLUTLY!, and the best way to do it is to "SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE", or you most probably will be meat for the soulless wolfs that govern the world.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 18:26 UTC (Wed) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link]

Tim Landgrave's article is just a particularly bad example of the kind of sophistry that passes for informed commentary on copyright and patent law in these debased times.

The worst effect of all this hogwash, in my view, is one that lurks beneath the surface: The use of certain phrases, such as "Intellectual Property", "War on Drugs" or "Enemy of the State", is intended to guide the listener's mind into accepting an implicit assumption. In the case of "Intellectual Property", the assumption is that the rights of copyright or patent holders are equivalent to the rights of physical property owners; thus, copyright violation or patent infringment is the same as theft. Wrong. In custom, law and common sense, the rights are not the same, and neither are the offenses committed by violating them.

Let's not fall into the trap of saying "Hey, copyright violation is really the same as stealing, and trying to distinguish between the two is just rationalizing bad behavior." Not so. Burglary and robbery are crimes, but they are different crimes. I can be opposed to (or support) both war and terrorism without saying that one equals the other. We are not doing anyone a favor by casually referring to MP3 copying as "theft" or installing an application without a license as "piracy."

Now, Tim Landgrave and his employer have a strong vested interest in feeding this confusion. Microsoft has done as much as anyone to cement the use of "piracy" into popular usage. Public statements by Microsoft officials have consistently referred to software as if it were a limited physical resource in danger of having its "value" destroyed by sinister communitarian licensing schemes.

Against this tidal wave of bullhockey, what do we have? Poor lonely RMS, trying against all odds to persuade the world to use accurate language in matters of morality, rights and law. Kinda makes you think that Saint Sebastian had it easy.

Posted Jun 18, 2003 19:09 UTC (Wed) by TimGraf (guest, #12155) [Link]

What is really sad is that this guy is getting his commentary posted on a widely read web site. Not only does he demonstrate his ignorance so blatantly but he also corrupts the minds of those unsuspecting and uninformed readers. The open source and free software community is doing a nice job of informing and getting their message out to software developers and IT professionals, however the general public, politicians and business leaders also need to hear our message.

It is true irony that the opposition to the free software and open source communities are using the argument that these communities are stifling creativity and innovation when they are the only source of truly innovative and creative software products. One only needs to look at the most innovative and creative software created in the past decade and realize the truth.

Posted Jun 19, 2003 4:07 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

ok so I didn't actually click the link, all anti-free-software FUD starts to sound the same after awhile anyway. But this LWN quote hits it on the head:

I think the open source movement does even more damage to the perceived value of bits.

Yes! Exactly!

And that's a good thing. Because the "perceived value" (or "fair market value") of a lot of bits is quite inflated. In terms of software, people are willing to pay a lot more, and get a lot less, than should be possible. Open-source software aims to correct this market inefficiency.

the open source movement greatly denigrates the public’s perception of the value of digital intellectual property.

(Once again - "you say that like it's a bad thing.") Digital intellectual property is overvalued. Plain and simple. The public's perception should be denigrated.

Posted Jun 22, 2003 3:07 UTC (Sun) by stock (guest, #5849) [Link]

Tim Landgrave ends his piece with :

"I applaud Microsoft for taking the high road and protecting a rival company's investment in intellectual property. Quite frankly, each of us needs to analyze both our family's and our company's stance toward protecting everyone's intellectual property. If we don't, we'll create a country whose citizens place no value on bits, and the incentive to innovate will disappear. "

So Tim thinks that the incentive to innovate is solely connected to the desire to earn and grab cash? Ain't that what we call greed? Well i can help him out of his illusions.

Somehow in all these years of experience i came to the conclusion that the most talented and gifted programmers, coders, thinkers, creators, scientists never were people who's single purpose was to grab the cash. On the contrary i would say. These people have a desire to create something great and usefull. In the years after wwII talented creators/coders almost never were the same people who are in charge. Lately when somethting innovative was created , it seldom was the case that the employee who did the work was given the credit by allowing him/her display his/her name on the innovation/creation. This gave a lot of frustration amongst these developers. Something which never can be compensated by more cash.

I would say that the most gifted and talented people who can create and innovate briljant and usefull things seldom are evil minds. Also i would say that evil minds seldom have the capability to innovate and create and contribute to society. Maybe being blinded by greed and cash lowers those capabilities.

Robert