I can't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of this whole software patent business, so I may come off as patently (haha!) stupid and uninformed. However, this software patent business seems like a ludicrous thing to me. People talk about earning back invested research, but is there really that much research involved in normal software development as opposed to some creativity and a lot of work?

I work at a software company. I cannot imagine our continued existance if we kept having to check patents for every feature in our product, or pay for every flash of insight of myself or one of my collegues cause someone else had it first. Perhaps it won't be quite so bad, but that is what the whole thing sounded like. I just don't see the supposed advantages to the European software industry, except to some very, very large players.

Apparently, at least at some point, the European parliament agreed with me. I find it odd that it apparently had no actual power to stop this thing.

But at least now, apparently, when people complain to me about Poland being let into the European Union, I can point out at least one thing they have done for us. *l*

- Arno (who has no LJ).

Yes, people complain about Poland being let in quite a lot. They fear Poland would just cost the EU money and that Polish workers will all move to our country to still our jobs at half the pay. I think they would complain in similar fashion about other the Eastern European (read: 'poor') countries being let in if it weren't for the fact that Poland is also big enough to have some serious power and thus influence.

Personally I'm not too sure if opening the EU up for Eastern Europe is such a bad thing. Economic prosperity is not a set property of a nation. It may go up and down at will. One day these countries, which since the fall of communism here in Europe have experienced growing prosperity as it is, may become prosperous enough that people'd WISH they'd let them in when they still had the chance. *l*

As for the large companies putting preasure on governments, it may not be the only tool they have. I remember when the Dutch government invited -Bill Gates- to talk to them about the Y2K problem. Cause, you know, Bill Gates would be the best man to talk to about these matters. He owns the biggest software company of all.

It may very well be ignorance that makes them an easy target. *l*

- Arno.

I could be misinterpreting what Poland blocked, but should I take this to mean that you are no longer as strictly capitalistic/objectivistic as you once were. It seems that objectivists, as a rule are, and should, be very hardcore proponents of copyright protections, and that violations of copyrights, whether they be in the form of proprietary code or file-sharing, are no different morally than theft. The same holds true for capitalists whose foundations rest on the enforcement of propriety rights.

Just curious.

What is a trade secret if not intellectual property? You are contradicting yourself.

A physical item is only a manifestation of the ideas it took to produce it -- that is a central idea behind objectivism.

I do not believe that private parties can be compelled to disclose their methods of creation.

But can they be taken without their consent (and I'm not talking about government here)?

For some quick-n-dirty examples:

Software reversed engineered and reproduced, partially or entirely, without permission (Remember, when we are talking about software, the method of creation is the code itself).

Generic cheaper copies of a drug produced by a competitor after its privately owned lab figures out what that drug is made from (or bribes a technician from that company to give them the formula)?

After all, its just information and the companies in question are not being compelled to give up any info... in fact, others are doing that work for them.

Maybe I'm confused, but you are going to have a very hard time forming a market-based capitalist society without property rights.

Furthermore, movie or music CD may not be a trade secret, but the disc it is on is simply a storage device, you're paying for the information.

And as I said before:
A physical item is only a manifestation of the ideas it took to produce it -- that is a central idea behind objectivism.

copyright protects that information, because a rip is a direct copy of the bits that make up the song on the CD. An MP3 is thus a derivative work.

People don't listen to the bits, the copyright protects the music itself. The example you painted would allow someone to convert a music cd into mp3 format, then convert it back to a playable music format. Ta-da, they now have a music CD they can mass produce and sell without violating the "copyright". At the very least, this violates the spirit of the law and objectivist morality.

As far as software goes, in my example I was talking about decompling (but I'm not familar with the differences between that and "blackboxing").

I've never used OpenOffice.org, so I don't really know its look and feel, but under the strict moral interperation of properity rights in an Objectivist society, Microsoft might have a case if OpenOffice can be shown as an intentional attempt to make a cheap-knockoff of an existing product.

btw, non of the above positions are my own necessarily, just playing devil's advocate ;-)

No, I didn't miss that.
Something converted from mp3 to CD format no longer has the exact sound quality of the origional CD. Alos, it is definitely not a direct copy of the bits of the origional CD.