Paco Bedejo
Master
Along with some of you other libertarian-minded folks, IP is one of the few areas where I see a lot of gray. I do pirate some films, songs, and games which I want to check out - but I purchase many others either upon media or via subscription/add-supported services.
Video games, for example, are typically $50-$60 each & often do not have a legal evaluation avenue. Once purchased, they cannot be returned. Therefore, I go ahead & download a copy, check it out, and then decide whether I would purchase it or not. Personally, I'll only purchase the game if I think it will deliver sufficient entertainment at around $0.25/hr. I have several games I play which come in under this cost.
I'm not a music connoisseur & typically listen to streaming services like Pandora or Slacker when I do desire music. If I wish to listen to a song on-demand, perhaps to point out some funny or poignant lyrics to a buddy, I'll quickly pirate it. I do not archive music, so that song would be deleted shortly after the single demonstration. I refuse to pay the going-rate & deal with the current distribution schemes for such a purpose.
With movies & TV shows, I'll exhaust all reasonably priced legal avenues before I choose to pirate something. Episode 201 of South Park (the Mohammad episode) is a shining example. I can watch all other episodes of South Park from their official website which is supported by ads. This one episode has been removed, so I pirated it. I use Hulu.com & my Netflix subscription to find most of my passive entertainment. Hulu is paid by me watching advertisements. Netflix gets a monthly subscription fee out of me.
I do occasionally greedily pirate some items, such as PC games my friends may want to play which do not meet my $0.25/hr mark, low-brow movies which come nowhere near being worth $15-$20 & cannot be viewed using Hulu or Netflix, or a few bits of music for single-time-usage.
Ultimately, all of these items are streams of 0s & 1s which are infinitely reproducible. I use my dollars to vote for the ones I wish to see sequels/improvements of & withhold my dollars from the ones I can easily live without. I only pirate the items which fall in-between & aren't accessible in an ad-supported format.
As far as non-media applications of IP law; I believe that a few years (3ish?) should be more than an adequate amount of time in order to take your invention to market & become the most efficient producer. Giving exclusive rights to an assemblage of parts/ingredients for an entire generation is ridiculous, counter-productive, and stifling in my opinion.
However, I think the issue most people focus upon isn't caused by the duration of patents, but rather by how willy-nilly they are doled out & how many of them are granted. User-interface patents are a great example. Apple (I think?) has a patent on pinch-zoom. Someone else holds a patent on scroll-wheels. Touch sensitive screens are another. I don't mean the method of manufacture or anything either, I'm talking about the features themselves. Most of these are not things I would call "innovative" and in many cases they would be quite obvious to anyone in the industries.
So...to sum up my ramblings...
Video games, for example, are typically $50-$60 each & often do not have a legal evaluation avenue. Once purchased, they cannot be returned. Therefore, I go ahead & download a copy, check it out, and then decide whether I would purchase it or not. Personally, I'll only purchase the game if I think it will deliver sufficient entertainment at around $0.25/hr. I have several games I play which come in under this cost.
I'm not a music connoisseur & typically listen to streaming services like Pandora or Slacker when I do desire music. If I wish to listen to a song on-demand, perhaps to point out some funny or poignant lyrics to a buddy, I'll quickly pirate it. I do not archive music, so that song would be deleted shortly after the single demonstration. I refuse to pay the going-rate & deal with the current distribution schemes for such a purpose.
With movies & TV shows, I'll exhaust all reasonably priced legal avenues before I choose to pirate something. Episode 201 of South Park (the Mohammad episode) is a shining example. I can watch all other episodes of South Park from their official website which is supported by ads. This one episode has been removed, so I pirated it. I use Hulu.com & my Netflix subscription to find most of my passive entertainment. Hulu is paid by me watching advertisements. Netflix gets a monthly subscription fee out of me.
I do occasionally greedily pirate some items, such as PC games my friends may want to play which do not meet my $0.25/hr mark, low-brow movies which come nowhere near being worth $15-$20 & cannot be viewed using Hulu or Netflix, or a few bits of music for single-time-usage.
Ultimately, all of these items are streams of 0s & 1s which are infinitely reproducible. I use my dollars to vote for the ones I wish to see sequels/improvements of & withhold my dollars from the ones I can easily live without. I only pirate the items which fall in-between & aren't accessible in an ad-supported format.
As far as non-media applications of IP law; I believe that a few years (3ish?) should be more than an adequate amount of time in order to take your invention to market & become the most efficient producer. Giving exclusive rights to an assemblage of parts/ingredients for an entire generation is ridiculous, counter-productive, and stifling in my opinion.
However, I think the issue most people focus upon isn't caused by the duration of patents, but rather by how willy-nilly they are doled out & how many of them are granted. User-interface patents are a great example. Apple (I think?) has a patent on pinch-zoom. Someone else holds a patent on scroll-wheels. Touch sensitive screens are another. I don't mean the method of manufacture or anything either, I'm talking about the features themselves. Most of these are not things I would call "innovative" and in many cases they would be quite obvious to anyone in the industries.
So...to sum up my ramblings...
- Digital media copyrights are unenforceable & media companies should instead use a blend of copy-protection & reasonably priced, conspicuous, and convenient distribution methods.
- Patents last too long & should only be used to grant a very limited jump-start to the market.
- Patents are given out like gold-stars in kindergarten. They need to be relatively rare & given only for truly innovative ideas. Not a new shape for screw-heads (screw you Torx!)