[extropy-chat] intellectual property again

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 11:34:41AM -0800, spike wrote:

> OK then.  I have listened to extropians debate intellectual property here
> for years, and haven't said much myself.  I know both sides pretty well:
> information wants to be free but information providers want to be paid.
> 
> I don't know how to call this one.  Would we call the original CD maker the
> good bad guy and the new CD seller the bad bad guy?  

IP protection issue is not clear cut. No protection whatsoever removes the
incentive to create, whereas overstringent IP protection stifles innovation.
To titrate the just right amount of IP protection for a society
is a hard problem. It seems the old industrialized places have
a very stratified IP ecology with way too much protectionism, whereas
newly developing places e.g. in Asia have very little protection, which allows them
to profit from R&D done elsewhere. Progress has always been associated
with frontiers of low IP right enforcement. It seems we better not
run out of frontiers. (The global networks are no longer a frontier,
because governments and industrial bodies have conspired to kill
anonymity and to control who accesses what when).  

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070127/31423202/attachment.bin>