There is a very real cost to society to provide patent and copyright. We have to have additional law enforcement, court, and prison capacity. It’s not clear at all to me that society is getting its money worth in defending essentially rent seeking behavior from big business. It’s also not clear that either patent or copyright in their current form actually “promote progress in the useful arts”.
I hate the terms “intellectual property” and “piracy” because patent and copyright are not much like property at all, and because actual piracy is a crime of violence and nothing like infringement. And it’s not clear to me that the punishments inflicted are reasonable given the impact of the “crime”.
Given that, I believe that we would be better off without patent or copyright, or with only a very modest time period of a couple years.
I hate the terms “intellectual property” and “piracy” because patent and copyright are not much like property at all, and because actual piracy is a crime of violence and nothing like infringement. And it’s not clear to me that the punishments inflicted are reasonable given the impact of the “crime”.
Given that, I believe that we would be better off without patent or copyright, or with only a very modest time period of a couple years.