The irony is strong with this one. Firstly your spelling and grammar is so bad, I can only conclude you're a sock puppet of drsigmund (who probably isn't even a doctor - I'm disappointed). There's nothing wrong with pirating (in my opinion), but you were a dick about it. Like you were making a point. Which you weren't.

By the way, Kony isn't in Uganda. You might want to change that "from" label.

It's the perfect example to prove that this shit doesn't even help the little guy in many cases. You said the Tetris guy moved to the US for all our great IP protections, all I did was say he was a bit naive in doing so.

Hollywood wouldn't even exist if they'd paid their royalties to Edison. We have a grand tradition in this country of pointedly saying "fuck you" to any random "little guy" who gets in the way. The system isn't working out so well for the little guy and we have decades of data to back it up. Comparing the relatively few successes of the little guy it should be a no-brainer to just trade away copyright and patent protections for the massive benefit in terms of content and innovation we'd suddenly see.
The fact is an entire industry grew up without paying him royalties and it's hardly the only example. Edison's patents were ignored, not paid, the patent protection didn't help him get rich (though they did help him stifle innovation locally, so it certainly screwed a few entrepreneurs over).

I can't exactly remember or find the statement I'm looking for, but didn't Edison say something like if ten movie cameras were allowed to exist so people could have a lot more content to watch and use, it was going to ruin the entire film industry? Maybe the whole economy?

That's entirely possible, though I don't recall it specifically myself. I do know Edison was a control freak with some sort of freakish control freak super powers. The dude seriously needed to chill and let go.

LOL.

It's driving me nuts. I'm going to look through all of my bookmarks now to see if I can find it. I could just be making shit up though too.

When Edison initially started inventing things he had absolutely no clue about patents. What got him his start was basically that another inventor he was working with, Franklin Pope, partnered with him and showed him the ropes. In today's IP environment he instead probably would have been taken advantage of to the greatest extent possible by whoever he was working for. Ironically, once Edison's career took off he then pretty much became a herald for the kind of IP douchebaggery that pervades the world today.

It's also very important to understand that in today's environment copyrights and patents in particular do not protect the little guy. Large companies either use their greater bargaining position to extract lousy deals out of artists and inventors, or just outright screw them over (infringe on their IP, refuse to pay royalties owed, etc). And unless the little guys have some big guys backing them up there's often not much they can do, due to massive costs of any protracted litigation. Basically IP laws more often are used as a cudgel to knock around the little guys rather than something to protect their interests. Ironically, the same technology that allows many forms of IP to be trivially infringed has also proven the greatest tool for the little guys to actually profit off their work rather than just getting shafted by the big middlemen.

Now, ultimately, I'm not going to claim that I think having no IP laws would be superior to having some form of greatly improved IP laws, but when it comes to comparing the prospect of no IP laws to our current IP laws... when, in my opinion it's a pretty close call.

I do not defend Edison and as I said earlier he end up as evil one, but it prooves that copyrights need to be imrpoved not to be removed.

If there will be no patents or copyrights why would any company invest hundreds of millions dollars on some innovation that can be later copied by every other company for free? It would stop most of innovations because every company would wait until others will invent something and they will copy it later.
Why would anyone make a game if anyone else could copy his game and sell it cheaper for his own profit?
Or you live in dream world and belive that everyone will play fair if there won't be any rules?

Just because you don't get a window of exclusivity on an invention doesn't mean that you can't still make money off of it. Other people making money does not preclude the original inventor from also making money. There are also alternative funding models that don't rely on copyright, plus the fact that there are many people who create regardless of the financial incentives. Things got invented and creative works made for thousands of years before copyright ever existed. If copyright were gone it would certainly mean a change to how things were done, but it would by no means be the end of creative works.

But things never were that complex, especially in hi-tech sector. To invent new device you need dozens, if not hundreds of technicians and scientist and it cost tens of millions of dollars and without copyrights or patents any other company can copy your invention for free. So why any company would even bother spending such enormous amount of money if they can just wait until someone else invent this? And what will happen if everyone will wait? Do you really think that all those innovations sponsored by big companies are for sake of humanity? No, they sponsor it to make money on it. If they can't make a money on it, then they gonna stop financing it.

But even funnier thing will happens with games, books, movies and music. You make a game and try to sell for 10$ and someone else just copy it and sell it for 5$ keeping a whole profit. Without copyrights he can do that. So Rockstar spent 50kk $ for new GTA and random shop can copy this on discs and sell it for 10$ and keep all profits.

Yeah, perfect world.

The situation could be compared to socialism. I don't know if the notion of copyright as we know it existed in socialism, but at least the profit you could make out of your own work was very limited. People didn't get rich. If people invented something it was for good of all.

And did people invent a lot?

Only the best.

Actual socialism? As in true socialism? That doesn't exist and has never existed.

Companies would spent large amounts of money if they expected to see even greater returns as a result of that expenditure. Again, being able to profit off of an invention does not require exclusivity. A company could see gains through their research resulting in a process at the company becoming much more efficient; other companies could copy the invention and realize similar gains in productivity, but this would not diminish the gains that the original company saw. Even in the cases of inventions intended to be sold as products, other companies selling it doesn't preclude the original inventing company from selling it, plus the initial time advantage on tooling up production, along with the advantage of in-house expertise (from having invented the thing) would still grant the original company a natural competitive advantage for a period of time. Then there are alternative business models for things that are easily copied, such as selling expert support rather than the product (like Red Hat and Canonical have done).

Also, before you argue further, you should know this about me: I currently work as a research chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. If there were no patents the pharma industry as it currently exists would not be able to continue and I'd be looking at a major shake-up in my employment opportunities. However, while the pharma industry as it currently exists wouldn't be able to continue this doesn't mean that no new drugs would be made- as long as there is demand people would find ways to fund new drug development efforts (whether this meant government funding or something else entirely). Also, I think there's a good chance that any new system could end up being quite a bit more efficient than the current system that pharma companies operate within (which I can tell you, from an insider's view, is a fucking mess).

Now, I think I need to emphasize yet again that I do think copyrights and patents can be a net benefit and can be a good tool for spurring innovation, but that the current system of copyrights and patents is so fucked up that it's causing a tremendous amount of damage, to the point that I don't think there would be a big difference in the overall effect on creativity and innovation between the current system vs having no patents or copyrights. I think that a heavily reformed system, with greatly reduced copyright lengths, a much narrower scope of what can be patented, and greater allowances for fair use would be far superior to either the extreme we currently have or the extreme of not having any copyrights or patents.

You are appealing to my property sensibilities. The problem I have is that I can find no justification for calling 'intellectual property" property. Copyright is a right, not property. It is a limited time monopoly, which I think has been abused. I see copyright as a restriction on property rights. If I purchase a product, to say that I cannot do what I want with it would mean that someone else is part owner of my property, which I see as a redistribution of property.

I actually compare copyright to Bastiat's "Candlemakers Petition." Especially with all this talk that people must be able to get rich.