Reply To: Political Statements
Understand what you mean. However, the above confuses patents (which are the root of the Apple/Samsung conflict) and copyright. The two are very different. Patents are intended to encourage not only the development of novel technology but its publication so that others can learn about it. (The word “patent” means “in plain sight” or “open.”) Copyrights are intended to encourage authorship by giving the author a right to demand payment for his or her work.
If there is to be any sort of market for intellectual property and related products (such as books, music, etc.), restrictions such as copyright are necessary. (You can’t, by definition, have a market of any kind if you can’t deny the product to someone who does not pay for it!) The only alternative to a market-based system is a patronage system — for example, one in which everyone is taxed and the proceeds are distributed to creators via a formula akin to those used by performance rights organizations such as ASCAP. Would centralized control of compensation to artists, with one organization judging the worth of all artists’ contributions, be a good idea? Could it possibly be defended against political and religious interests seeking to suppress certain materials for their own selfish reasons? Don’t know about you, but I don’t think so.
In any event, what’s at issue in the case of EFF is a self-proclaimed “public interest” group that in fact is a corporate PR and lobbying shop. We see a lot of these nowadays; they serve to flout laws restricting lobbying, to disguise corporate lobbying activity, and to fool the public into believing that “what’s good for [big corporation] is good for the country”. Corporations have discovered that current laws do not require nonprofits to reveal where their money comes from (as they should!) and that nonprofits’ activities are so poorly supervised by the IRS that they can get away with all sorts of political activities in which they are prohibited from engaging.These loopholes should be closed, but today’s deadlocked, ineffectual Congress — which relies on contributions from those same corporations — doesn’t have the will to do it. So, the public must remain vigilant and skeptical.