recent linkedin forum question: why do some people really hate IP. my response:
1. As technology has changed the way content is distributed, the distributors - not even the content creators, by and large - have relied on copyright in a vain attempt to fight change instead of evolving. Maybe evolution is impossible, but IP has been the tool t-rex and brontosaurus industries have used to stomp on a few mammals on their way out.
2. the stated objective of patents is the incentive to innovate, but open source developers have proven that copyleft is a far better tool for innovation while patent holders are more and more often gatekeepers to innovation. They're less concerned innovation than extracting licensing fees from real innovators - fees priced liked parking tickets: just cheap enough to make payment preferable to litigation, no matter which side justice is on.
3. Look around any market place: nearly any claim, slogan, or description indicates its trademarked. It gets silly.
4. When somebody you know gets cancer or HIV or some other terrible disease, your glad IP creates an incentive to innovate those wonder drugs - until you find out they're outrageously priced to make the most out of the 'desperately afraid of dying' situation the products' consumer is in. Then when you see the efforts those patent holders go to to perpetuate and exasperate that situation - and how they stagger inventions to suit their business needs - while your loved one is crying because they don't want to die . . . yeah, that could make somebody hate IP
5. and when a company dumps a bunch of junk in the gulf to clean up an oil spill, but nobody gets to know what that junk is because its a trade secret - you have to start wondering, isn't there a point where a reasonable person concludes that the public good is best advanced through the free flow of information (how small r republican!) and that the public policy justifications for IP are really just an attempt to justify the pursuit of profit at the public's expense?
