
In a recent yahoo blog post about Apple in the hock for patent infringement here. The story itself is fairly typical of the growing nuclear destruction that’s going on in the technology world, as meaningless patents are created and enforced on purely mental and mathematical designs and not inventions in the useful arts as was originally bargained for in that sort of Faustian way societies do sometimes.
What gets me is the language and manner of the commentators. Yes I know I shouldn’t let someone on the internet who is wrong keep me up all night. But these people are not just wrong, they’re wrong headed even when fighting each other.
Firslty we have the Apple fans. People who don’t just buy Apple products, they believe in Apple’s reasons for existing in much the way Simon Sinek describes. They don’t want to hear about Apple offending anyone or being immoral or perhaps even doing something as base as stealing. These comments are blandly giving Apple a pass for no other reason than them being Apple and the maker of the beloved products. No other reason.
Then we move onto the other set of people. The “every idea is owned” brigade that think that patents are for “encouraging innovation” and that using ideas or inventing similar ideas in the process of working on problems are somehow theft. Parents aren’t for encouraging innovation, they’re for ensuring inventions are documented in the public domain so progress isn’t locked away behind trade secretes.
It’s also not theft. Stealing is the re-appropriation of a fixed property, the possession moves. Copying ideas (even if you DID copy ideas instead of just inventing the same ones again) can’t be stealing because the idea is still in your head and not just in mine. The copying process means it _can’t_ be theft.
Patents are a social agreement who’s time is past. Society no longer gains anything from them and I have no faith in their original purpose. No inventor or programmer reads patents, they don’t ensure the progress of inventions any more. Sure software patents shouldn’t have ever existed, but more than that patents in all other areas have caused major problems and just silly regressions in progress and standardisation.
You thoughts?