On 17/07/12 11:07 PM, Celejar wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:45:56 -0500 "Christofer C. Bell"<christofer.c.bell@gmail.com> wrote:On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Gary Dale<garydale@rogers.com> wrote:A company is not a person and cannot have rights. All it should have is the obligation to obey laws and regulations affecting its operations - just as an automobile, another construct, must conform to all regulatory standards. The notion that a car should have rights is as laughable as the notion a business should have rights.I see you're from Canada (hi, Rogers!) so this while it's an alien concept to you, welcome to the United States, the country that exports most of it's IP law, where nVidia is based, where ATI (ironically, a Canadian company) does most of its business, and where corporations are people. It may by laughable to you on the outside looking it. It's terrifying to us down here to live under it.Other countries do not grant corporations economic rights, such as the right to IP? Other countries do not allow companies that design hardware the right to their design?
Unfortunately they often do. That's why we see Sco still trying to sue IBM, why we can't get Blu-Ray on Linux, and a host of other ills. The original justification for patents was that the government would protect your invention for a short period if you told the world about how it works. Today's IP legislation doesn't even pretend to be fair. It's strictly about giving people with money more ways to make even more money. And it provides healthy incomes for lawyers.
Business rights should extend only from the people in the business, not as rights themselves. Using Richard Stallman's old example, programmers should be paid to program, not for the programs they produce.
Most notably, algorithms shouldn't be subject to restrictions any more than a book's plot is. The artistry is in the telling, not the story. Can you imagine if Pythagoras had patented his discoveries then had them renewed to the present day - the ultimate aim of the IP crowd. Encumbering knowledge is simply bad economic and social policy.