Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

On 8/5/2000, Roland J. Cole <cole[_at_]spi.org> wrote:
>
> It is getting the balance right that is important -- arguing that
> life plus 70 is too long is not the same as saying all copyright
> is bad.

Roland,

Software patents are interesting in this regard. Symantec dropped Norton Commander for Windows, claiming it didn't sell enough copies. This left many people who used it heavily quite distraught, including, say, a scientific institute in Jerusalem. Although Symantec has no intention of reissuing or upgrading this product under any circumstances, neither will they release it to the public domain so that those who want to work with it can have a shot at adapting or upgrading it. I must say this somewhat surprise me. Were Symantec to turn over the patent to the scientific institute, I assume they'd be entitled to a substantial tax deduction for a charitable contribution.

A similar situation occurs in book publishing, where a particular book can be of great importance to a small specialist audience. Yet the publisher drops it because it isn't of interest to a very wide audience, and therefore isn't a top money-maker for the publisher. So all those books on weight loss -- a topic that interests vast numbers of people -- crowd out, say, the best book of the century of Milton's Lycidas, which interests far fewer people. I'm not sure that the anti-intellectualism this fosters is really good in the long run.

pat sloane
<patsloane[_at_]aol.com> Received on Sat Aug 05 2000 - 16:27:15 GMT