re And there's the rub
Biotube, you are a bit off the point of patent and copyright laws - they were intended to protect and encourage innovation, not stifle it. It is abuse of these laws that is causing issues and they need to be modified to suit modern life and business, not scrapped.
Patent law was originally set up (some) centuries ago when master craftsmen were developing new techniques and needed to train apprentices (think Renaissance) without risk that the apprentice would use the new technique to steal business. Patents expire after a few years (20 or thereabouts, quicker if you don't renew them); the original thinking being that the master would have moved on / died / whatever and the apprentice could then use those skills. Applied in this way, patent law really does promote innovation and should be applauded. The main problem with patent law these days is that when two people innovate in the same way, the first one to patent the tech. can prevent the second one from using it - this leads to massive abuse of the system by various megacorps from pharmaceuticals to software. The obvious change would be to change the law to prevent copying / reverse engineering - one reason this has not been implemented is that it would be next to impossible to police effectively. IMHO, the easiest short-term fix would be to force patent owners to license their designs for a reasonable fee but I do not know enough about business / economics to know if this is feasible.
Regarding copyright law, I fully accept that anybody who writes, sculpts, draws or otherwise creates something should be entitled to the proceeds of selling it and that third parties are entitled to take a cut for selling them. The only real argument here is the pricing of such things as CDs, DVDs, etc. which really does smack of price fixing. In this case, I think the law is fine as it is.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
