@JJ - Note that the second quote in Post #20 is attibuted to me but it is actually someone else's. If you can, please correct that. Thanks.
The whole issue of property protection, particularly IP, is by it's very nature highly convoluted. Depending on how you phrase the argument, diametrically opposed positions can both seem perfectly rational and fair.
Having said that, there are plenty of aspects of not only current law but also common opinion that baffle me. We put "artists" up on some pedestal and talk about how their work, be it a song or a painting or whatever, should be protected for huge lengths of time (or even forever) and how no one else that is involved in the production and distribution of that work is really doing anything, yet the person (people) that designed GPS, Blu-Ray, Bluetooth, the MP3 standard, (continue with a list of several millions of items that we all benefit from) didn't deserve any more than getting paid for the time they actually worked on the project. But who actually contributed more to society?
Now, while I might feel that it is a shame that some actor or musician or football player or author makes millions while a doctor, engineer, soldier, or firefighter makes a pittance in comparison, I don't have a problem with it to the degree that it is the result of a free market. If someone can get millions of people to pay to come see their concert or buy their CD or watch them play, then more power to them. I'm don't want to see the government declare that such-and-such band can't play any more concerts or has to cut their ticket prices for future concerts because they have already made enough profit.
The whole issue of property protection, particularly IP, is by it's very nature highly convoluted. Depending on how you phrase the argument, diametrically opposed positions can both seem perfectly rational and fair.
Having said that, there are plenty of aspects of not only current law but also common opinion that baffle me. We put "artists" up on some pedestal and talk about how their work, be it a song or a painting or whatever, should be protected for huge lengths of time (or even forever) and how no one else that is involved in the production and distribution of that work is really doing anything, yet the person (people) that designed GPS, Blu-Ray, Bluetooth, the MP3 standard, (continue with a list of several millions of items that we all benefit from) didn't deserve any more than getting paid for the time they actually worked on the project. But who actually contributed more to society?
Now, while I might feel that it is a shame that some actor or musician or football player or author makes millions while a doctor, engineer, soldier, or firefighter makes a pittance in comparison, I don't have a problem with it to the degree that it is the result of a free market. If someone can get millions of people to pay to come see their concert or buy their CD or watch them play, then more power to them. I'm don't want to see the government declare that such-and-such band can't play any more concerts or has to cut their ticket prices for future concerts because they have already made enough profit.