Dilbert Takes On Patent Trolls; Will Congress?

from the a-fix-is-needed dept

Last summer, we were pleasantly surprised to see Scott Adams use Dilbert to highlight some of the absurdity of the patent system. It looks like Scott Adams has decided to tackle the subject again, with a specific focus on the rise of patent troll firms. Considering how frequently we see information and data showing just how much patent trolling costs the economy, it would be nice to make more people aware of the issues. Getting the issue covered on the Dilbert site seems like a good first step.

By the way -- I had intended to embed the Dilbert comic with this story, but it appears that Universal Uclick has decided to go ahead and maximalist up the joint -- removing the previously available embedding feature. This is pretty surprising for a web property -- especailly one with Scott Adams involved... Its not like embedding it is more likely to lead to people infringing on that particular patent...

Filed Under: dilbert, patent trolls, scott adams
Companies: universal uclick

When Even Dilbert Is Making Fun Of The Absurdity Of The Patent System...

from the there's-a-problem dept

The general awfulness of the patent system seems to be reaching deeper and deeper into the mainstream these days. As a whole bunch of you sent in, even Scott Adams is mocking the patent system via a recent Dilbert strip: When the idea of insanely broad patents and crazy legal battles even makes it to the funny pages, you might think it's time for a fix. But, instead, it looks like Congress is going to pass the world's weakest patent reform bill that will do nothing to fix the broken system, and a few things to make it worse.

Filed Under: dilbert, patents, scott adams

Dilbert Takes On The Paywall

from the destroying-revenue dept

As a few of you have sent in, it looks like Scott Adams isn't a huge fan of paywalls, and has expressed that with his latest Dilbert strip: It's a nice way to put things succinctly: setting up a paywall equals destroying revenue... I think this is actually a point that gets ignored by many defenders of the paywall. They think that any revenue earned from a paywall is incremental, as if implementing (and then managing) a paywall doesn't have tremendous costs. The maintenance side is one thing, but the real cost is opportunity cost in ceding the future to other publications.

Filed Under: dilbert, paywall

Scott Adams: Ideas vs. Execution

from the you-got-it dept

For many years, we've pointed out over and over and over and over and over again, that ideas are easy, whereas execution is hard. People get way too hung up on ideas, but lots of people have ideas, and no two people (or groups of people) are likely to execute in the same way. And, for anyone who's ever built up a success, you quickly learn that execution is everything. The initial ideas are usually completely meaningless. Apparently Scott Adams is thinking the same way. Andrew F was the first of a whole bunch of you to have sent in his recent blog post on the "value of ideas" which highlights this point, specifically with regards to people complaining about the idea of a Dilbert movie:

Movies are good or bad because of execution, not concept. Even outside of the movie realm, ideas generally have no economic value whatsoever, except in rare cases such as when a patent is issued. And even in those cases it's the patent law that creates the value, not the ideas.

From there, he goes on to point to a whole series of huge success stories... all of which probably sound like terrible ideas on paper:

I've long been fascinated by the common human illusion that ideas can be sorted into good and bad, when all experience shows this not to be the case. We could play the game all day long where I describe a simply terrible idea and then tell you about the people who got rich implementing it just right. Let's try a few...

How about a comic strip that is literally a bunch of stick figures? It will be called XKCD and have no discernable characters. Done! It's the most viewed comic on the Internet.

How about a movie about two gay cowboys? Done! Academy Award!

How about a comedic TV show about a Nazi concentration camp? Done! It was called Hogan's Heroes and was a hit in its time.

How about a Broadway musical about a bunch of frickin' cats? Done!

You'd be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn't succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn't fail if the execution were left to morons.

Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.

Separately, I should note that it's pretty cool to see Adams highlighting the massive success of XKCD. Last week, when we had posted about another Scott Adams item, one of our regular critics insisted in the comments that Adams was only successful because of newspapers, and that no new comic strips could be successful or make money without the aid of an industry like newspapers. Others in the comments quickly pointed to Penny Arcade and XKCD -- both of which have been huge success stories. Honestly, I didn't realize that XKCD was "the most viewed comic on the internet," but as Adams has been considering how the market is changing, it's great that he's paying attention to what folks like Randall are doing, and recognizing that it's been such a huge success.

Filed Under: dilbert, execution, ideas, scott adams

Dilbert Explains Why Just Copying Others Is A Dumb Business Model

from the the-wisdom-of-dilbert dept

One of the common claims that is brought up by patent system defenders when we discuss the idea of a greatly limited or eliminated patent system is that it doesn't make sense for anyone to innovate, because others will just copy them. Of course, historically we have plenty of evidence that this isn't true -- and it makes sense if you think about it logically. Just copying something doesn't give anyone a reason to buy from you -- and depending on the product, copying them will take time, combined with the additional time to even let people know you've got a product in the market. By that time, the real innovator may be much further ahead. Steven points out that a recent Dilbert cartoon makes this point perfectly:

Filed Under: copying, dilbert, patents

Dilbert Takes On Overbearing Patents

from the but-confuses-trademark-law dept

It didn't take very long for a whole bunch of you to submit today's Dilbert, where Scott Adams (finally) goes after overly broad patents, with Dilbert announcing that it makes no sense to build things any more, since "all future ideas are already covered by over-general patents": Though, to be fair, Adams seems to confuse patents and trademarks in the second panel (editors?). Still, nice to see Dilbert taking on such an issue.

Filed Under: dilbert, patents

Self Plagiarism And The Creative Process

from the but-is-it-infringement? dept

Last year, we had a post looking at the question of joke "stealing" and if it should be seen as infringement. Basically, there are tons of comics who are known for "stealing" the jokes of other comics, and there's even been some questions about trying to copyright jokes. The whole thing seems ridiculous, frankly. The power of a joke is rarely in the joke itself, but the delivery -- and you can't copyright that. Plus, there seem to be social measures in place to deal with "joke theft." Comics who are regularly caught doing it may have their reputations damaged, as was the case with Carlos Mencia last year.

But there's even more to it than that. In an interesting post on his blog, Scott Adams writes about how he (not for the first time) was caught drawing a nearly identical Dilbert comic strip to one he had done in the past. He delves a bit into his creative process to explain how it works, noting that there are a ton of ideas flowing through his head at once and he just has to reach out and grab from that mass of ideas:

For me, ideas stream through my head at a frantic pace. I feel like a bear trying to grab a salmon. If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don't dwell on it. I just lunge for the next salmon. I think people who have fewer thoughts per hour have time to let them settle in and form memories. It's just a theory.

That's likely true for many creative folks, including stand-up comics. As such, the ideas that you have in your head, and the ones that you hear and see from others end up getting mixed up in that mass of "idea salmon." As such, it shouldn't be surprising or scandalous or bad when someone ends up coming up with a similar (or even almost identical) joke or idea to someone else. It's just part of the creative process at work. It's not "stealing" and it's not "infringement." It's just a recognition of the creative process that involves a large number of ideas flowing around that a content creator tries to bring together in some sort of useful or interesting manner.

Filed Under: creative process, dilbert, ideas, plagiarism, scott adams

Scott Adams To Try Crowdsourcing Dilbert's Jokes?

from the can't-wait-to-see-dogbert's-take dept

While I've had my own minor run in with Dilbert-creator Scott Adams, I remain a fan of the strip. Adams has always received many of his ideas for the strip from readers, incorporating them into the storylines and jokes. Now, it looks like he's taking that idea even further: letting his fans write the comics themselves. Late last week, the Dilbert.com website got a massive makeover, which upset many folks, in particular for its wide use of flash. It also broke the "unofficial" RSS feed that someone had created for Dilbert comic strips -- though the Dilbert people (finally!) realized it wasn't such a bad idea to offer one of their own. While the new site may be a bit flash-heavy and annoying to manage, it's quite interesting to see that one of the features on the site will be to allow fans of the strip to write their own punchline, filling in the text for the final frame. Eventually, this will extend to filling in the text of the whole cartoon. While there are no official plans to publish any of the results, Adams seems curious to see what pops out. He even admits the realities of copyright when it comes to these cartoons (which is amusing, since the argument we had was over copyright), telling News.com:

"We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."

Even though there is something of a filter in place, it's likely that (as with other such efforts) some of the results will push the boundaries of tastelessness. Still, once you get past that, it will be worth seeing how much this impacts Adams' work. The suggested punchlines could influence future strips, or Adams may eventually do something interesting with those alternative panels. Of course, the whole thing could fail miserably, but it'll still be fun to watch the experiment in action.

Filed Under: comic strips, crowdsourcing, dilbert, scott adams