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By Mr. Meister (anonymous) | Posted January 22, 2009 at 02:28:58
What you're talking about is abolishing patents and trademarks. Anybody can download and use linux for free, one of the computers in our house runs it. There are many good things about it but it also has drawbacks not everything is compatible and some of the things can take a while to figure out(new MP3 player or video card). Many such things being beyond the average consumers abilities. With Windows much less is incompatible and then there is always customer support. Windows was a real breakthrough from the old DOS type everything way of doing things. There is no real customer support with linux just online chat rooms and friends. The other alternative is to pay for support with something like Redhat(which made Young very rich). This is a terrific choice for people who really know what they're doing like server operators but really isn't viable for most consumers but is available to all. Again nothing stops you or anybody else form using an alternative it just stops you from copying and selling Windows. Why don't more people go the alternate route? Do you use windows? Protecting intellectual property doesn't stop somebody else from coming up with a better idea or product. QWERTY keyboards were never patented the typewriter was, many times in many forms. Nothing stops you or anybody else from using a DVORAK keyboard they are certainly available.
Many things are easy to do once somebody else has figured it out and shown you how to do it. Not protecting somebody's intellectual property will result in less time and money being spent on new ideas and that translates into fewer new ideas and products not more and we will all be worse off.
Drug companies spend huge amounts of money on marketing because after you make it you have to sell it. That doesn't make it bad. There are more then enough problems with drugs already and you want to abolish the FDA and Health Canada? Really? You must be joking.
Like I stated earlier sometimes companies are better off not imposing their patents. Sony invented the Beta which was a better system than VHS but they wanted to charge a royalty to any company using their system. JVC invented the VHS system and made it available to all. The result was many different companies made VHS machines and the price of them came down very quickly. Consumers bought the cheaper machines even though they were not as good as the BETA ones. The result was that consumer BETA use pretty much died out though industry like TV stations used it for years.
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