47 comments on Of rigs and pipelines
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The US software industry flourished for decades with no patent protection.
Computers have provided the first manufactured good that's literally too cheap to meter: the transmission of data by the megabyte around the world. Business models that take advantage of the unlimited-sum nature of data copying will do better than those that try to fight it. For example, some book publishers are finding that putting complete books online for free increases sales of those books, and Megatunes.com is doing the same with music.
For more of my thoughts on intellectual property, click here.
Chris
John Perry Barlow of the Grateful Dead would seem to agree with you in this. He's said that their open policy about bootlegging was a boon to their success, not a drag on it. I have been looking at the increasing amount of art that is finalized as 'Data', and therefore doesn't exist as a unique material object. There is no 'Original'. What does that do to Arts Auctioning, and then what does that mean for 'Ownership' of art at all? Would people who could have just 'one of an unlimited number' of copies of a great Cezanne, a CB DeMille or one of Mozart's or Shakespeare's Manuscripts, etc, without ever getting to be that 'King of the Hill' who has 'THE ONE'..
.. and is universal access to one's very own source of power-generation (Solar, Wind, etc) just as great a threat to the 'Selective-Ownership Society' as that of our Art being so 'unownable'.
It's unfortunate that parts of Capitalism tend to succeed from conditions of imbalance, because it creates a demand by the capitalist society FOR imbalance. It's a disincentive for cooperation, trust and peace. Now sure, to do business with each other, these same conditions have to be present to some degree, but PROFIT is won by leveraging divisions. Feeding from low cost supplies, offered to places with high-priced demand. War Profiteering has never had it so good, and it's hard to keep the labor costs down if population gets too plentiful.