Thursday, June 17, 2010

Saw Prince of Persia the other day. Some story about a dude convincing people to invade a state after said dude claimed that state had dangerous and threatening weapons, so that the dude can take over that state and drill down the ground to access an immense source of power.

Movie was not so bad.

I learnt that having a movie ticket thrown in your face, then having the ticket-thrower come back 10 mins later, tail between legs, looking for the thrown ticket so he could ask for a refund, leaves you with a pretty satisfying feeling.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

How bad is IP?

Mike Masnick over at Techdirt has an article discussing David Koepsell's argument that intellectual property is unethical.

The question is the following one:
[I]f it's true that by doing away with the idea of intellectual property, you create greater opportunities for everyone, could you make the argument that intellectual property laws themselves are immoral or unethical in that they are actually what makes everyone worse off?

Thinking cases where individuals or corporations have abused of IP law, my initial reaction was that the argument made sense. Back when I took IP Law, the prof gave a few reasons why there should be IP protection, none of which made any sense. The main argument was that protection leads to more incentive for creation. If this premise is shown to be wrong, then wouldn't it make sense to say that the entire concept of intellectual property is wrong too?