Patents only protect you against entities that can't outspend you. If a big company wants to rip off your idea, they can do so easily whether or not you have a patent.
I'm a bit confused. If patents don't stop copying, then what's the problem with them? Let's ignore them and move on.
Another factor in getting rid of patents might be the way we fund R&D. If most research is crowd-sourced or conducted by non-profit academic and scientific institutions, then that would help eliminate the argument that patents are necessary to recover costs (e., pharmaceuticals).
Eliminating IP protection is appealing to me if it is accompanied by significant flattening of ownership. Let everyone share in everything as much as possible. What's different than the communism days are digital networks, digital products, and increased productivity due to technology. That which couldn't easily and equitably shared in the past is more doable now. Of course, we'll still be fighting over land, water, minerals, and fossil fuels until we figure out how to reduce scarcities of those, but in other areas, maybe abundance can be achieved.
One negative potential of dropping patents altogether is the possibility that a small company or impoverished inventor might come up with an idea and then a big company with huge amounts of resources will beat it/him to market. No protection for the little guys.
But let's say we reinvent the world economic system so that it is so decentralized there is no longer any competitive advantage to scale. As much as possible every household, every small company, and every small community can deal with their own needs without using the services of major corporations. With each small unit meeting its own needs, the corporate system declines in usefulness and there is no longer a fear that corporations will "steal" ideas and the idea creators won't be properly compensated.
Again, if you want to see where this kind of thinking is headed, follow along with what gets posted here.
I plug this organization so much that many of you might assume I have some connection to it. I have none. I'm just looking at new business and economic models and this has proven to be the best single source of info and discussion I have found.
It should be noted that Google donated to many other democrats in Colorado, but specifically NOT Polis. I wonder why?
Polis's district, which includes Boulder, has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, so he isn't considered to be at major risk of losing his seat. So Google may have felt it should donate to other candidates who need the money more.
Re: Re: But haven't laws always involved some sort of technology?
I wouldn't read it as saying "we shouldn't regulate new technology", but rather "technology changes at a rapid rate and the regulations need to keep pace".
There's a paper by economist Paul Romer that addresses this. Here's a bit of a summary and you can find a link to the paper itself.
Romer on rules - NYU Stern Economics: "Rules aren’t 'one and done.' As the world changes, the rules need to change with it. Advances in technology and globalization have made this more difficult in two ways. One is that the pace of innovation requires more rapid change. The other is that the scale is so large that traditional social mechanisms for controlling behavior don’t work as well — and changing more formal systems is harder to do. ...
"Principle-based systems work better in some settings. His example is the FAA, which 'approaches its task of ensuring flight safety with rules that specify required outcomes but that are not overly precise about the methods by which these outcomes are to be achieved,' … Examiners have 'a large measure of flexibility' but 'are held responsible for their decisions.'"
3D printing has already been used to build houses, make musical instruments, build an airplane, create custom science lab instruments, etc. (I've got links to all the articles mentioning these uses. I've been saving all the 3D printing articles that I see.)
The small printers for home use are limited, but the technology is already being used for a diverse range of products. The expectation isn't that everyone will necessarily have their own printer, but there will be ones available within communities.
The big economic vision is that these printers will allow for cost effective short runs. Economies of scale will be less important.
The remarkable thing here is that, once again, you don't seem to consider the opposite: What happens when you chase every fad as if it was the next telephone or personal computer?
I sort of agree with you, but in a different way than your point. I think the shelf life of just about anything is short these days. I've been expecting the decline of Facebook from the beginning of the hype because I've been involved in lots of online groups/communities since 1993 and none of them has staying power. Anything that can quickly replace the past can itself be replaced because there are no significant barriers to entry. (Remember during the first dotcom boom when people actually tried to sell the concept of first mover advantage? So much BS.)
The churn cycle of much technology today is short. Combine that with a stock market that no longer seems to understand buy and hold and you've got the makings of an economic revolution. What I like about 3D printers are the disruptive possibilities. Will they come to pass? Well, it will be interesting if we get to a point where the printers can replicate themselves so there isn't even a market in selling them. Again, the only money might be in the liquids that the printers consume because those can't be reproduced digitally.
I like to project the disruptive technologies for music
If you've read any of my comments about music, you'll know I am a big proponent of technologies that let everyone make their own music. As more people become music creators themselves (or creators in any field), they can make for themselves what they once paid others for.
The 3D printers are part of that continuum. If you can make your own version of music merchandise, you have less need to buy it from a musician.
It's not that I want artists to continue to lose sources of income, it's just that I expect it to happen. And as people cut back on the things that they own (and if in addition they have less money to spend on events like live shows), the money goes out of the system or to other places. For example, the real winners in the 3D printing industry will be those who supply the plastics, metals, etc. that are squirted out of the machines. The ideas of what can be created with the machine will pretty much be free. The digital instructions will be widely shared. There will be mass duplication or modification for anything that people find cool.
I look forward to the disruptions because I think the world economy needs it. The more we can meet basic needs for everyone, with the fewest resources and the least environmental damage, the better.
But haven't laws always involved some sort of technology?
Radio was once the latest thing. Electricity was once the latest thing. Cars were once the latest thing. X-rays were once the latest thing.
Seems if you want to avoid writing regulations because you might stumble upon changing technology, you'd banish all regulations. I realize that some people want that, but when you have an unregulated stock market, unregulated banking system, or unregulated health care system (I'm thinking of people who have died recently from meningitis after treatments from supplies from a barely regulated pharmacy) sometimes things get out of hand.
Look at the history of asbestos. People were dying from asbestos-related cancer for decades before something was finally done about it.
What if I'm an atheist in Small Town America, and someone doxxes me and I am ostracized by my community? It's easy to say "don't say anything bad", but it's much harder to agree on what defines "bad".
You've hit upon the issue and the Internet continues to be an experimentation around the concept of community. It depends on which community sets the standards for itself and how those standards are enforced. Often communities can be insular enough that everyone knows the rules of behavior within that group, everyone follows them, and those who don't get shunned or kicked out.
But sometimes communities leak into each other. So you may have one community that believes everyone can say whatever they want without consequence and you have another community that overlaps the first one and has members who are offended by some of the freewheeling communities. Unless you have closed communities where every member understands the rules and outsiders are kept out, you are going to have at least a few battles over which standards are going to take precedence.
After looking at the mess that is national politics and looking out how relatively cohesive life here in Boulder is, I have come to appreciate the value of small communities where people can come together on a lot of issues and when there is conflict, people can come together face to face to work that out.
Yes, the elected Representatives for the district that includes Boulder tend to reflect Boulder's concerns pretty well. Issues important to Boulder are the environment and healthy living, technology and startups, scientific research, and to a lesser extent legalization of marijuana and women's and gay rights. We're a college town with lots of government-funded research, lots of startups and tech companies, and lots of healthy people and athletes.
I know Jared. I worked for an online business publication that his funding launched. We've been in meetings together and at events together. I'm not in touch with him these days because I am not currently writing about CO startups, VCs, and tech companies, but we do know many of the same people.
Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
It will be interesting to see if people rally around the next exposed person if the exposed person is someone they don't like. I'll be watching to see how much consistency there is on the issue.
We'll see far how privacy protection extends and whether the tech community as a whole will throw its full support to it. Not just against government. But also against any company/group that tries to know more about people than the people have actively given permission for. Let's have user agreements that clearly explain what info is being gathered and how to stop it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I Dont See Anything Wrong Here
That's what happened here - Adrian Chen does not like someone, but he can't turn the guy into the cops because the guy has done nothing illegal, so instead he digs up some nasty dirt and gets the guy fired from his job. That represents an attack on an innocent person's welfare (innocent, in this context, means "not convicted of violating any laws, civil or criminal").
Given this I hope you are supporting candidates that protect workers' rights and don't allow them to be fired at the employer's discretion. Have you seen the articles about employers who are telling their workers that if they support Obama they may lose their jobs?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
You know what is funny. Sites that let (and even encourage) anonymous trolls often do so in order to drive traffic to the site (trolls can stir things up and get lots of page views for a site). And then these sites allow advertisers to track all the visitors to the site. So trolls are the bait that allows companies to track visitors.
Jared was one of (or perhaps the first) Internet billionaire. He sold bluemountain.com reportedly for close to a billion in stock and cash (probably didn't get that much).
He's been able to fund a lot of his campaigns himself. I haven't looked at his records to see what donations he has gotten, but he is a wealthy guy.
I, too, am skeptical of proposals that are put forth primarily out of corporate self-interest. To counter the "corporations good, government bad" biases I see, I often point people to this site.
P2P Foundation: "The P2P Foundation is an international organization focused in studying, researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices in a very broad sense. This website is our knowledge commons and it's collaboratively build by our community."
Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
I lean more toward privacy than making everything public, so fundamentally I agree with you.
However, as I said, when I bring up invasive practices by companies who make their money by selling consumer data, I often get the "then don't use the Internet" response.
Here are two recent examples of how invasiveness is built into commercial use of the Internet.
D'OH! Even Microsoft's Own Lobbyists Oppose Microsoft's 'Do Not Track' Plan - Business Insider: "Microsoft intends to launch IE10 in a default anti-tracking position, leaving consumers to allow tracking — via cookies — if they so choose. Advertisers oppose the plan because they need tracking cookies to target their ads properly; they also point out that much of the entire web economy is cookie-based, and thus Microsoft's plan potentially wipes out any revenues web publishers might gain from IE users. Up to 43% of users surf the web with Internet Explorer."
Hacking The Future: Anonymity Matters | Techdirt: I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down... I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.
"In July 2011, Randi Zuckerberg, then marketing director of Facebook, uttered the words above during a panel discussion hosted by Marie Claire magazine. She couldn't have anticipated the firestorm those few words would generate among those already uncomfortable with the direction the Web had taken in the preceding year.
"Two years prior, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, gave the downright schoolmarmish advice, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' Schmidt, who once led an antitrust crusade against Microsoft, has claimed that Google will avoid Microsoft's missteps because the search giant faces compelling incentives to please a customer base that will seek services elsewhere the moment Google does anything shady. But what if Google's been tracking your search results for your entire life? Google, just one of dozens of companies that mines user data, knows your favorite foods, your sexual proclivities, and your medical history, to say nothing of the personal information they host in the form of e-mails and other documents. Would it be as simple as just walking away?"
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: free speech, privacy and law
On the post: Nobel Prize Winning Economist Eric Maskin: In Highly Innovative Industries, It May Be Better To Scrap Patents
Re: Re: Let me toss this out
I'm a bit confused. If patents don't stop copying, then what's the problem with them? Let's ignore them and move on.
On the post: Nobel Prize Winning Economist Eric Maskin: In Highly Innovative Industries, It May Be Better To Scrap Patents
Re: Let me toss this out
Eliminating IP protection is appealing to me if it is accompanied by significant flattening of ownership. Let everyone share in everything as much as possible. What's different than the communism days are digital networks, digital products, and increased productivity due to technology. That which couldn't easily and equitably shared in the past is more doable now. Of course, we'll still be fighting over land, water, minerals, and fossil fuels until we figure out how to reduce scarcities of those, but in other areas, maybe abundance can be achieved.
On the post: Nobel Prize Winning Economist Eric Maskin: In Highly Innovative Industries, It May Be Better To Scrap Patents
Let me toss this out
One negative potential of dropping patents altogether is the possibility that a small company or impoverished inventor might come up with an idea and then a big company with huge amounts of resources will beat it/him to market. No protection for the little guys.
But let's say we reinvent the world economic system so that it is so decentralized there is no longer any competitive advantage to scale. As much as possible every household, every small company, and every small community can deal with their own needs without using the services of major corporations. With each small unit meeting its own needs, the corporate system declines in usefulness and there is no longer a fear that corporations will "steal" ideas and the idea creators won't be properly compensated.
Again, if you want to see where this kind of thinking is headed, follow along with what gets posted here.
P2P Foundation
I plug this organization so much that many of you might assume I have some connection to it. I have none. I'm just looking at new business and economic models and this has proven to be the best single source of info and discussion I have found.
On the post: Nobel Prize Winning Economist Eric Maskin: In Highly Innovative Industries, It May Be Better To Scrap Patents
Re: While I don't disagree with THIS opinion, that's all "economics" is.
On the post: Jared Polis Tells FTC To Back Off Google Antitrust Investigation
Re: Re: Re:
Polis's district, which includes Boulder, has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, so he isn't considered to be at major risk of losing his seat. So Google may have felt it should donate to other candidates who need the money more.
On the post: It Is Easy For People To Miss Disruptive Trends
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Fully-customized, modular solar house is 3D printed prefab - videos - *faircompanies
On the post: Why Regulations Aimed At Technology Almost Always Suck: Or Why Reading Someone's Gmail Isn't Reading 'Stored Communications'
Re: Re: But haven't laws always involved some sort of technology?
There's a paper by economist Paul Romer that addresses this. Here's a bit of a summary and you can find a link to the paper itself.
Romer on rules - NYU Stern Economics: "Rules aren’t 'one and done.' As the world changes, the rules need to change with it. Advances in technology and globalization have made this more difficult in two ways. One is that the pace of innovation requires more rapid change. The other is that the scale is so large that traditional social mechanisms for controlling behavior don’t work as well — and changing more formal systems is harder to do. ...
"Principle-based systems work better in some settings. His example is the FAA, which 'approaches its task of ensuring flight safety with rules that specify required outcomes but that are not overly precise about the methods by which these outcomes are to be achieved,' … Examiners have 'a large measure of flexibility' but 'are held responsible for their decisions.'"
On the post: It Is Easy For People To Miss Disruptive Trends
Re: Re: Re:
The small printers for home use are limited, but the technology is already being used for a diverse range of products. The expectation isn't that everyone will necessarily have their own printer, but there will be ones available within communities.
The big economic vision is that these printers will allow for cost effective short runs. Economies of scale will be less important.
On the post: It Is Easy For People To Miss Disruptive Trends
Re:
I sort of agree with you, but in a different way than your point. I think the shelf life of just about anything is short these days. I've been expecting the decline of Facebook from the beginning of the hype because I've been involved in lots of online groups/communities since 1993 and none of them has staying power. Anything that can quickly replace the past can itself be replaced because there are no significant barriers to entry. (Remember during the first dotcom boom when people actually tried to sell the concept of first mover advantage? So much BS.)
The churn cycle of much technology today is short. Combine that with a stock market that no longer seems to understand buy and hold and you've got the makings of an economic revolution. What I like about 3D printers are the disruptive possibilities. Will they come to pass? Well, it will be interesting if we get to a point where the printers can replicate themselves so there isn't even a market in selling them. Again, the only money might be in the liquids that the printers consume because those can't be reproduced digitally.
On the post: It Is Easy For People To Miss Disruptive Trends
I like to project the disruptive technologies for music
The 3D printers are part of that continuum. If you can make your own version of music merchandise, you have less need to buy it from a musician.
It's not that I want artists to continue to lose sources of income, it's just that I expect it to happen. And as people cut back on the things that they own (and if in addition they have less money to spend on events like live shows), the money goes out of the system or to other places. For example, the real winners in the 3D printing industry will be those who supply the plastics, metals, etc. that are squirted out of the machines. The ideas of what can be created with the machine will pretty much be free. The digital instructions will be widely shared. There will be mass duplication or modification for anything that people find cool.
I look forward to the disruptions because I think the world economy needs it. The more we can meet basic needs for everyone, with the fewest resources and the least environmental damage, the better.
On the post: Why Regulations Aimed At Technology Almost Always Suck: Or Why Reading Someone's Gmail Isn't Reading 'Stored Communications'
But haven't laws always involved some sort of technology?
Seems if you want to avoid writing regulations because you might stumble upon changing technology, you'd banish all regulations. I realize that some people want that, but when you have an unregulated stock market, unregulated banking system, or unregulated health care system (I'm thinking of people who have died recently from meningitis after treatments from supplies from a barely regulated pharmacy) sometimes things get out of hand.
Look at the history of asbestos. People were dying from asbestos-related cancer for decades before something was finally done about it.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Trolling is a public activity
You've hit upon the issue and the Internet continues to be an experimentation around the concept of community. It depends on which community sets the standards for itself and how those standards are enforced. Often communities can be insular enough that everyone knows the rules of behavior within that group, everyone follows them, and those who don't get shunned or kicked out.
But sometimes communities leak into each other. So you may have one community that believes everyone can say whatever they want without consequence and you have another community that overlaps the first one and has members who are offended by some of the freewheeling communities. Unless you have closed communities where every member understands the rules and outsiders are kept out, you are going to have at least a few battles over which standards are going to take precedence.
After looking at the mess that is national politics and looking out how relatively cohesive life here in Boulder is, I have come to appreciate the value of small communities where people can come together on a lot of issues and when there is conflict, people can come together face to face to work that out.
On the post: Jared Polis Tells FTC To Back Off Google Antitrust Investigation
Re: the vote
I know Jared. I worked for an online business publication that his funding launched. We've been in meetings together and at events together. I'm not in touch with him these days because I am not currently writing about CO startups, VCs, and tech companies, but we do know many of the same people.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
We'll see far how privacy protection extends and whether the tech community as a whole will throw its full support to it. Not just against government. But also against any company/group that tries to know more about people than the people have actively given permission for. Let's have user agreements that clearly explain what info is being gathered and how to stop it.
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I Dont See Anything Wrong Here
Given this I hope you are supporting candidates that protect workers' rights and don't allow them to be fired at the employer's discretion. Have you seen the articles about employers who are telling their workers that if they support Obama they may lose their jobs?
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
On the post: Jared Polis Tells FTC To Back Off Google Antitrust Investigation
Re: Re:
He's been able to fund a lot of his campaigns himself. I haven't looked at his records to see what donations he has gotten, but he is a wealthy guy.
On the post: Jared Polis Tells FTC To Back Off Google Antitrust Investigation
Re: Corporatized Freedom
P2P Foundation: "The P2P Foundation is an international organization focused in studying, researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices in a very broad sense. This website is our knowledge commons and it's collaboratively build by our community."
On the post: Reddit, Trolling, Doxxing, Free Speech & Anonymity: Whoo Boy, Is This Stuff Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: But what about the "don't put it on the Internet" philosophy?
However, as I said, when I bring up invasive practices by companies who make their money by selling consumer data, I often get the "then don't use the Internet" response.
Here are two recent examples of how invasiveness is built into commercial use of the Internet.
D'OH! Even Microsoft's Own Lobbyists Oppose Microsoft's 'Do Not Track' Plan - Business Insider: "Microsoft intends to launch IE10 in a default anti-tracking position, leaving consumers to allow tracking — via cookies — if they so choose. Advertisers oppose the plan because they need tracking cookies to target their ads properly; they also point out that much of the entire web economy is cookie-based, and thus Microsoft's plan potentially wipes out any revenues web publishers might gain from IE users. Up to 43% of users surf the web with Internet Explorer."
Hacking The Future: Anonymity Matters | Techdirt: I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down... I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.
"In July 2011, Randi Zuckerberg, then marketing director of Facebook, uttered the words above during a panel discussion hosted by Marie Claire magazine. She couldn't have anticipated the firestorm those few words would generate among those already uncomfortable with the direction the Web had taken in the preceding year.
"Two years prior, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, gave the downright schoolmarmish advice, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' Schmidt, who once led an antitrust crusade against Microsoft, has claimed that Google will avoid Microsoft's missteps because the search giant faces compelling incentives to please a customer base that will seek services elsewhere the moment Google does anything shady. But what if Google's been tracking your search results for your entire life? Google, just one of dozens of companies that mines user data, knows your favorite foods, your sexual proclivities, and your medical history, to say nothing of the personal information they host in the form of e-mails and other documents. Would it be as simple as just walking away?"
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