Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Timothy Miller
2003-04-29T13:47:49Z

James Bottomley wrote:

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>As far as the DMCA goes, many people think it oversteps the
>constitutional boundary by giving to IP holders rights they are
>forbidden from possessing, and hence they come to talk about "ownership
>of intellectual contributions" rather than "my limited right to profit
>by my invention"...only time and the courts will tell.
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I believe that it's very important that an author have rights to profit
exclusively from their creations. It gives them incentive to create. I
mean, if every time you developed some cool new technology, some foreign
company took it, made huge profits from it, and left you with out a dime
for all of your effort, wouldn't that put a huge kink in your desire to
expend that sort of effort?

On the other hand, I don't believe people should rest on their laurels.
Limited rights is an incentive to get off one's behind and create
another thing.

I think patent periods should be very strongly enforced and SHORT. Like
most of these patents that we think of as frivolous should be allowed,
but the time limit should be at most a year or two. Many of these
'defensive' patents that companies like Amazon have are actually good
things because they ensure that these ideas go into the public domain.
If some patent is deemed particularly clever, then the limit should be
more like five years.

I have mixed feelings on defensive patents. "Since I know that you're
going to patent what I'm already doing and then sue me over it, I'm
going to beat you to the punch and patent it to protect myself." It
makes sense in a very sad sort of way.

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