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An Intellectual Poverty Law
Upon my research on 18th and early 19th century England, I stumbled upon a process that was taking place from the 16th to the 19th century in rural England. It’s enclosure. Basically, the medieval system is, that a village has, in addition to the fields of the individual farmers, a large commons, where all the…
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An Intellectual Poverty Law
Upon my research on 18th and early 19th century England, I stumbled upon a process that was taking place from the 16th to the 19th century in rural England. It’s enclosure. Basically, the medieval system is, that a village has, in addition to the fields of the individual farmers, a large commons, where all the…
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Competing against illegal copies
I was somewhat baffled about the success of Apples iTunes-Store. As I detailed in an earlier article Schwarzkopien und Marktwirtschaft in german, illegal providers of copies of works are effectively a competition to legitimate providers. In principle, they offer the same product for less money. Market says, in that case, people will acquire the cheaper…
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Lies, Damned Lies and Propaganda
Propaganda trumps scientific evidence everytime. Face it, there is nothing like propaganda, backed by some hearsay evidence and a few vivid examples. And science cannot offer anything to counter that. It used to be “Statistics” in that title-phrase, but that’s not true anymore, if it ever was. You don’t need statistics to make people believe…
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The “Moby Dick Support Device”
BitOBear wrote on Groklaw As a side thought, a device doesn’t lose its nature when applied to a particular purpose. If I buy a bookshelf and put nothing on it, or only put a single copy of Moby Dick, or I burden it down exclusively with copies of Moby Dick, it doesn’t become a “moby…
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Ways out of Darkness – Abolishing Patents
I not only wrote a lot on copyrights, but also on patents: A (Patent-)Law to promote the welfare of Lawyers Rent-seeking behaviour among patent lawyers. Patents kill Innovation The patent-system achieves in nearly all cases the opposite of what it was supposed to. Intellectual “Property” and other contradictions Rhetoric of proponents of monopolies. Sue Everyone…
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Ways out of Darkness – Re-Attenuating Copyright
I am a pretty verbose critic of todays copyright, and I highlighted several Issues in past blog-posts: Aufstand der Toten — per Urheberrecht On the consequences of granting rights beyond the death of the creator. Artificial Scarcity When old works compete with your new ones. Stealing from the Public Domain Indulging in Copyfraud by claiming…
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A (Patent-)Law to promote the welfare of Lawyers
I already wrote about it, on how Patents kill Innovation. If you’re looking for more background on some of the assertions in this text, they’re explained there. Right now the german Bundesgerichtshof decided that it would be a good idea to allow software Patents, even if the European Patent Treaty says in Article 52 “The…
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Zu doof für Ligaturen
Die Geschichte ist nicht neu, aber seit Jahrzehnten herrscht in Deutschland ein riesiges misverständnis über eine Ligatur. Auslöser dass ich nun darüber schreiben muss sind folgende Zeilen aus dem Buch “Generation Doof”: Durch Mund-zu-Mund-Propaganda haben sich zwei weitere großartige Missverständnisse festgesetzt: ß wird grundsätzlich zu ss, und Kommata kann ich so setzen, wie ich lustig…
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Conspiracy Theories
What does the official theory on 9/11 and so-called „Conspiracy Theories“ have in common? A whole lot. They’re all „Conspiracy Theories“.