PATENTLY ABSURD

"The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on." --Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Information is ideas--these are the products of the human mind. They are thought. Thus, copyright and patent enthusiasts believe that it is in the power of the state to license and control the disbursement of ideas themselves! If this isn't a big step closer to an Orwellian future, I don't know what is! There are several reasons why this is a sham:

  1. All ideas are intangible: What, then, is being possessed? Is it the paper and ink upon which the idea resides? Is it the electrons within a computer database? The biochemical synapses within the innovator's head? To view ideas as mere commodities is to cheapen them and is akin to claiming possession of the air that we breathe. The air exists for all of us--we all benefit from its presence and no one can claim ownership of it. The same applies to ideas, which is why censorship is so evil: it attempts to KILL ideas. And remember that there are two ways to kill ideas, the latter used when the former proves unable to squash the human spirit: 1) destroy the sources of the ideas; 2) destroy the people who hold them. That's what people mean when they say, "when you burn books, you'll be burning people next." Censorship remains one of the most treasured powers of authoritarians. Kill the ideas and the people who hold them, and then you may eventually destroy the thoughts themselves. The hostility many Americans have to socialist ideas is a result of nearly 40 years of unrelenting propaganda--idea-killing, if you will. They don't even know WHY they are against socialism. They just are.

  2. All ideas are the process of building on what went before: No idea simply comes about full-blown from someone's head. Rather, ideas come from studying and understanding what came before and adding your own insights to it. To claim possession of an idea is to freeze it in time, to deny the work of the people before and cut it off from the free exchange of ideas that marks all true innovation. Everything that exists today exists because of the toil of countless people, and is not simply the product of one person's exclusive effort. A cursory glance at history will reveal the intricate and ornately woven tapestry of thought that has produced the world we see today. Propertarians would rend this seamless tapestry and take "their" chunk.

  3. All ideas thrive in a free atmosphere: The free exchange of information forever broadens the realm of thought. Ideas only grow when they can be freely expressed--they stagnate and die when held as commodities. Thus, we will never have solar or wind power until the owners of the patents of this technology decide to put it to use, despite the fact that the technology exists TODAY to put these clean, cheap, and above all, decentralized power sources to use! So, until then, we can expect more smog, more greenhouse gases, more oil spills, and other pleasantries until the "owners" of the technology decide they want to profit from it. Patent law gives them, in effect, ownership of the sun and the wind, by preventing people from using the technology to generate power from these limitless and clean resources.

  4. Innovation comes from dedication, not profit motive: The whole copyright and patent law process benefits only those who seek to profit from someone else's work (like all good capitalists). The genuine innovators rarely receive equivalent compensation for their efforts--whether it be music, or stories, or technology. The key point here is that innovators create because they love what they do; NOT because they forsee a profit on the horizon. That's why they are innovators: they are on the frontiers of thought, weaving new patterns from older ones, creating something beautiful. True innovators create without even thinking about what they can gain financially from their creations. What motivates them is their dreams, not expectations of financial reward.

In short, patent and copyright laws are very good for the owners, and very bad for everyone else. These laws turn ideas into just another product to be bought and sold on the market, whether it is a work of art or science, which doesn't benefit the innovator, but instead further fills the pockets of the owner. The very things that have made civilization great are viewed as commodities with a market value. Like everything associated with the market, it cheapens and destroys what it touches by putting a price tag on creation and innovation.

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