"How Copyrights Suppress Innovation"

[applegrove]

How Copyrights Suppress Innovation

By Brian Fung at Next Government

http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/04/how-copyrights-suppress-innovation/62232/?oref=ng-channeltopstory

"SNIP...............................................


Heidi Williams is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a forthcoming paper in theJournal of Political Economy, she argues that copyrighted content enables some discovery, but it doesn't lead to nearly as much learning as content that's governed under a free and open license.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, for example, scientists at the Human Genome Project were trying to comprehensively sequence people's DNA. Every gene they identified was plugged into a giant repository and made available to other researchers. Partway through the process, a company named Celera decided to start sequencing genes, too. But instead of adding its findings to the public domain, wrote Williams, Celera walled off its data with copyright protections:

This IP [intellectual-property protection] enabled Celera to sell its data for substantial fees and required firms to negotiate licensing agreements with Celera for any resulting commercial discoveries, even though it was publicly known at the time that all of Celera’s genes would be sequenced by the public effort, and thus be in the public domain, by 2003.

Celera probably made a lot of money between the time it completed its genetic research and when the Human Genome Project caught up


..............................................SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. The government freely gives these copyright and patent 'regulations' to business. Business owes

it to pay taxes for the privilege. They are a part of society. They are dependant on government. Why should they get to destroy the part of government that don't benefit them but keep the stuff that makes them rich?

[hepkat]

2. Thaks for the article

IP is a huge issue hardly anyone is talking about.

Energy companies are buying up patents to green energy to suppress the development of green energy.

The whole area is fascinating and in need of radical change!

Occupy IP!

[Faryn Balyncd]

3. Intellectual property law now MOCKS the intent of the framers of the constitution,

It no longer advances the general welfare, it no longer encourages innovation.

The framers of the constitution would be embarrassed by the perverse distortion of the constitution.

Free enterprise, and the American people, would be better off to totally abolish all patent and copyright laws.

[onenote]

5. I suspect a number of musicians, artists and authors

including a number of them here on DU, might disagree with you regarding the idea of completely abolishing copyright laws.

[hepkat]

6. umm overgeneralized

There are huge problems with the system. But abolishing copyright is absurd.

[Lizzie Poppet]

9. Because by golly, musicians and writers should go get REAL jobs!

Well, you're largely gotten your wish: only pretty damned successful successful musicians actually make a living at it any more.

[Faryn Balyncd]

11. To clarify, RETROACTIVELY extending copyright protection to 70 -120 years MOCKS the constitution.

Last edited Wed Apr 3, 2013, 12:58 AM - Edit history (1)

Also, to clarify, in stating we would be better off if we were to abolish copyright and patent laws is in comparison with the current law, which, in the case of copyrights, is the Sonny Bono monstrosity passed by the Republican controlled Congress in 1998, with the support of corporatist Democrats.

If we were to have the option of sensible copyright and patent law, as the framers intended, with sensible limits guided by the principle of promoting the general welfare by granting time-limited monpolies for the specific purpose of promoting innovation as a means to promote the general welfare, then that would be an entirely different matter, and would merit support.

But the current copyright law was passed for the specific purpose of extending monopolies to corporations who came into ownership of copyrights to works that were created without any expectation of a 70n - 120 year monopoly.

So yes, it is a mockery when Happy Birthday, which first appeared in print in 1912, after existing for an unknown period before then, and was used for decades as a presumed public domain song until copyrighted in 1935 by an entity that had nothing to do with its creation is valued at $5 million when sold to a division Time Warner, which now claims ownership until 2030.

It is a mockery when Disney bribes Congress to extend terms that were already generous enough for Walt, when he created Mickey without the terms of Sonny Bono's 1998 Act.

Current law does not function for benefit of artists any more than it does for the general welfare.

Current law functions to protect monopolies of the thieving corporations who have bribed crooked politicians.

Reasonable intellectual property law would be another matter, but that is not an option.

Current law is worse than nothing at all.

[Phillip McCleod]

12. yep. that's it exactly. \n

[onenote]

4. Not absolutely certain, but Celera probably relied on patent protection, not copyright

I'm not sure one can "copyright" a gene.

[hepkat]

7. They are trying patents

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml

[hepkat]

8. And the chickens

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/jul/31/genetics.internationalnews

[hepkat]

10. Federal circuit court said sure you can patent a gene

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/business/gene-patent-in-cancer-test-upheld-by-appeals-panel.html?_r=3&