Jon’s Network

Steve Jobs was right when he said DRM doesn’t work and is bad for consumers.  I think most people realize that the increase of freedom would improve the market for online music.  Most can’t imagine that eliminating patents would also spark a flurry of innovation and advancement by enabling quicker adoption of new ideas and technology.  Patents are supposed to stimulate innovation by granting the holder a monopoly on his invention as a reward for his work, right? Right? Well, maybe people can imagine life without patents now that we have seen open source software thrive without out the protection of a patents.  Read this article in The Freeman that discusses the open source phenomena and it’s implications regarding intellectual property. If you want to delve a little deeper into the arguments against patents and copyright, read Against Intellectual Property (direct download pdf) by Stephen Kinsella or read his blog here. The short explanation:  The purpose of private property rights is to prevent conflict over scarce resources.  Since IP isn’t scarce, you can’t grant a right over it.