Apple sues Samsung over "copying" iPhone and iPad

If you honestly think right of artists and inventors to get rich trumps free access to culture and cheap access to lifesaving or deal-changing technology, we have nothing further to discuss.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:10:27 AM by SavageHeathen

: per defintion nobody has the right to deny you anything either, so you need more logical backing than that to make argument.
That said, Heathen is heading into strawman area generalis, so arguing back might not be fruitful..... Hmmmmm

edited 26th Apr '11 5:13:37 AM by del_diablo

That is, I believe people have a right to access anything they need to survive.

People have a right to deny you access to anything they own, actually.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:15:17 AM by CyganAngel

Free access to ALL culture is a legitimate demand. "That's actual culture" or "That's entertainment" is simply not your call to make.

Since technology makes you productive, and could bring the poor out of poverty, cheap access to technology is a legitimate demand.

Any economic interests that stand in the way should be bulldozed over without as much as a second thought.

Ideas can't be owned: They can be can copied without denying you yours. In fact, it is impossible to take your idea away. That's why the "ownership" of ideas, artistic works and inventions is an absurdity.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:23:25 AM by SavageHeathen

haha what

Tell me: How does a television make you productive? How would it bring the poor out of poverty?

By this logic- no, I'm not even going to respond.

You are strawmanning.

Think over what you just said, and realize how stupid it was, please.

It is not stupid at all.

You're acting like IP is a god-given right, when it's actually a very ugly privilege.

Heathen: But you have lost your arguments, and are left with throwing ideology, so yeah :(
Well, Heathen is right: The patent system is broken.
Removing it will however be worse than fixing it.
Hence we disagree with Heathen.

^ Okay >_>

Please, answer this question that has come up so many goddamned times.

If they have no rights to their ideas, why should people come up with more?

edited 26th Apr '11 5:29:57 AM by CyganAngel

: Because if people have more rights, why would they come up with more ideas?
But lets get back to the issue with patents: Firm A gets a parent, and then uses it to STOP firm B from developing a similar techology or a improved version.
Or when firm C decides for whatever reason to not use the tech of firm A, even if it would improve their product by tenfolds.
There are issues with the patent system.
BUT: Well..... solution to these problems? Will likely never exist, at the least for firm C here.....
Other issues included some poor section(see software patents in USA), and some related to the cost of mantaining a patent(different from country to country).
But we all agree a 100% abolishing would be a the worst outcome from current information.

Consider this:

Firm A spends, let's say, $130 million developing a new drug.

Firm B waits until the drug is released, spends $5 buying a dose, and $10,000 reverse-engineering it.

Firm A goes bankrupt, as nobody buys their product in favour of Firm B's, who lowered their prices to undercut Firm A.

Firm A will now no longer develop any more drugs.

I hope you're happy.

: That is irrelevant for my case and standpoint, because it is a flaw allowing plagiarism in the first place.

It was directed at Heathen.

Well, let's forget copyrights (they should die, no quarter) and focus on patents.

What about: A) Dramatically shorter time. Talk 2-3 years instead of 20. B) Submitting a patent means accepting price controls on the patented product for the lifetime of the patent. C) Mandatory non-discriminatory licensing. You cannot deny licensing to competitors you want to crush. D) Patents only bind other companies. The public is completely entitled to infringe them at will.

Would those reforms fix the system for good?

edited 26th Apr '11 8:18:25 AM by SavageHeathen

No. Namely in that, the products they're selling are usually long-term investments. That is, it can and often does take them a decade or more in which to get that money back.

I'd say either fifteen years with government-mandated prices, or nine to ten years with unrestricted prices.

And they are violating every principle of economics ever, so I'm ignoring them.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:21:03 AM by CyganAngel

There is a fundamental bit of crosstalking going on here.

Heathen is saying that ''Ideas cannot/should not be owned."

Those who are defending the IP are saying that "The particular expression of an idea can be owned."

All of the following are particular expressions of the idea "Portrait of a lady": Van Der Weyden◊, Victorian-style tapestry◊, Earle◊, Klimt, Nguyen◊, and Marshall◊

The idea cost the artists nothing. The expression of it that they created cost them time, effort, money and skill. The idea is not protected. The expression that each if them created is protected, the same as if they had taken the idea of "a table" and each built a table — would you hold that I can take that particular table at will simply because I like it? That the person who built it has no right to decide whether to keep it, sell it, give it away, sell the plans, sell a kit, or burn it?

edited 26th Apr '11 8:22:48 AM by Madrugada

Considering the current state of patents and copyright law, I'd be ever more specific and demand that only a specific instance of a representation of an idea can be owned. I mean, come one, people can patent and have patented such things as clicking twice in succession or using your eyes to guide an on-screen pointer. What does "a representation of an idea" mean in such cases?

Lawsuits.

Lots and lots of lawsuits.

^^ That's the sort of misapplication of patenting that even people who support IP protection find head-thumpingly stupid, particularly since in most cases like that, the person who gets the patent isn't the person who came up with it, it's an opportunist who realized that it wasn't patented and applied, on a "nothing ventured, nothing gained" basis. The worst that could happen is that the application would be denied.

ETA: put in the missing "n't" that completely changes the meaning of the sentence.

edited 26th Apr '11 1:19:23 PM by Madrugada

Cygan Angel: The fact you are against his point C and D(at the least C, the part about companies not being allowed to deny others to buy a license) makes me think of you like some kind of IP luddit.
If anything, everything that does something to avoid any form of scarcity in a society is against the core principal of economics. Image a plague, killing people, and a cure, being sold completely overprised at a gunpoint :P
While the example is a bit drastic, it sort of shows that economic is not a good measure here.

I believe that I have stated earlier that I am for giving things necessary for survival, such as medicine, to people for free.

del diablo, why should we take your extreme hypothetical examples seriously? A plague, and selling overpriced medicine at gunpoint? Really?

It does show how a given extreme can be a bad thing. Which is worth paying attention to, because way too many people want to think in absolutes.

edited 26th Apr '11 10:33:50 AM by blueharp

Doctorow?

I doubt he actually is Doctorow, but the circular nature of this argument reminds me of arguing with him, which I've done a couple times, after which I learned my lesson.

I can't recall what one was about, but the other was him arguing that the university I work at was ethically obligated to let their students torrent stuff through their internet, regardless of (a) the legal liability that placed on the university, and (b) considerations of network capacity and performance.

It strikes me that this argument is similarly difficult because for some, IP laws are wrong on principle, and there are no practical arguments that override that. Savage Heathen, you've argued that even if there are costs to it, even significant ones, freedom from IP law is worth it, if I characterize your argument correctly?

Oh, no, I was just wondering if he got that idea from «After the Siege», which has that plot.