I love Techdirt and read it everyday. One of it's founders is Mike Masnick, and he is one of the most articulate opponents of the concept of intellectual property I have ever read. He thinks it should be abolished. Here is a recent post of his on Techdirt. This set off a little exchange between the two of us. The thread is below.
Limelight Level 3 Gears Up For Patent Nuclear War
from the wasted-money dept
Update: Made some updates to this post as I misread the original article, suggesting that it was Limelight, not Level 3, that bought the patents. Earlier this month, we wrote about Akamai's patent lawsuit against competitor Limelight. Akamai had dominated the content delivery network space for many years, but Limelight and others have made serious inroads lately, putting a ton of competitive pressure on Akamai. Akamai's response to sue for patent infringement is exactly the sort of societal negative that shows how the patent system harms society. To reinforce that, it appears that, rather than just further innovating, others are now spending money that could have (and should have) gone to research and development on buying up its own patent portfolio to act as a nuclear stockpile to fight off Akamai. In this case, Level 3 (not Limelight, as originally stated in this post), is buying up patents from IBM. End result? Lots of money wasted on patents and patent infringement lawsuits, less innovation in the space and less competition. How can that possibly be a result that promotes the progress?
New version of Techdirt at www.techdirt2.com by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 7:52am
If Mike believes his own twisted logic on copyright and patents, it would be OK for someone to copy Techdirt everyday, post it on a separate site, and monetize it by selling advertising or consulting or whatever at a cheaper price than he does. Is that OK with you Mike?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of Techdirt a by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 11:41am
So the large marketing company gets their reputation trashed because they do not respect copyright. OK, that makes sense. So in the case of a very large software company that is using a smaller software companies' inventions its OK for them to do that as long as they sort of admit it, however if the do not, the smaller company writes into Techdirt or ITSlime and "trashes" their reputation. Hopefully you would agree that this was happening and write a missive about how bad the very large software company is to be using the smaller software companies inventions, such that their reputation would be "trashed all over the place". This would be sufficient protection for the smaller software company to continue to invent things without the fear of them being stolen...because they could sleep well knowing the thieves will have their reputations trashed on Techdirt and every site that steals from Techdirt. I can see how this would encourage innovation....yes, now I am convinced...let's get rid of patents.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of Techdi by Mike on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 12:02pm
Sarcasm aside, Chip, do you have a point?
If you don't think the reputation of a large company is one of its most important assets, then I don't know what to tell you.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of Te by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 12:17pm
My point is that reputation alone would not keep inventions from being stolen. I am not going to name names, but there are several large technology companies that do quite well..even with a bad reputation. Its because their sheer size and marketing power trumps any small companies' cry of foul. Example: If techdirt decided that xyz software companies' invention had been stolen by IBM or Microsoft, and you wrote about it...and there was even an outcry...do you think it would stop people from doing business with them?
BTW, I apologize for the sarcasm, because I consider this a serious subject. ;-) And I do appreciate your attention to it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of by Mike on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 4:33pm
My point is that reputation alone would not keep inventions from being stolen.
You can't "steal" an idea...
But, you're saying that it wouldn't stop companies from copying ideas. And I say that's fine. Those companies then need to compete, and if you have a good idea, you should be able to compete with companies, no matter how big their marketing budget.
Example: If techdirt decided that xyz software companies' invention had been stolen by IBM or Microsoft, and you wrote about it...and there was even an outcry...do you think it would stop people from doing business with them?
Again, you say stolen, but if they copied it, and they did a better job of selling it, than so be it.
But history has actually shown that the smaller, more innovative companies are also a lot more nimble (especially early on) and they have access to capital markets that are more than wiling to bet on nimble, smart, innovative startups.
So, you see things like Microsoft outrunning IBM. Google outrunning Microsoft. YouTube outrunning Google (until it got bought). History shows this time and time again.
The smaller, more nimble startup often has a much better idea of how to serve the market. So even when the large company comes along and "copies" the idea, it's not so easy to take marketshare. Yes, there are cases where it happens, but usually there are other problems there, such as the smaller company made bad business decisions (for example, Netscape).
END OF THREAD
Thankfully Mike's views on intellectual property are not in the mainstream....but it is scary that they could be at some point. Congress and the Supreme Court are currently trying to gut the patent system...and if it was not for the monies that the pharma industries are pumping into lobbying, (to counter the dollars major tech companies are pouring in), small inventors would go the way of the dinosaurs. I guess under Mike's logic...that would be good. BTW, Mike says I can post anything from Techdirt to this site I want.
Re: New version of Techdirt at www.techdirt2.com by DanC on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 8:01am
He doesn't care. Go ahead.
As per Mike from April 2007
"Yup. And as we've said repeatedly, we have no problem with people taking our content and reposting it. It's funny how many people come here, like yourself, and assume you've found some "gotcha." You haven't. There already are about 10 sites that copy Techdirt, post for post. Some of them give us credit. Some of them don't. We don't go after any of them."
Re: New version of Techdirt at www.techdirt2.com by DanC on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 8:11am
Of course, since you're apparently working for a company that sells DRM solutions, your position is hardly surprising. Artificially restricting and controlling the customer experience with annoying protection schemes is your business model.
Re: Re: New version of Techdirt at www.techdirt2. by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 8:25am
Thanks for taking the time to visit our site. However, we are not a DRM solution. We provide ecommerce for file based business models such as P2P. If someone wants DRM as part of our solution, they can get it from other vendors.
Re: Re: New version of Techdirt at www.techdirt2. by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 8:34am
Dan, That is different. I should have been more precise. The new version of techdirt...lets call it ITslime.com would have all of techdirt's content but would not have any attribution as to the writers or any other sources of the content. The new site would essentially pretend it was their original content. In the case of patents being violated, the violating company would never say that the technology had been created by someone else, otherwise they would have to compensate that company somehow. So they just claim to have not copied it at all. If ITslime.com had the exact words and articles from techdirt but someone else claimed to have written them.....is that ok?
Re: Re: Re: New version of Techdirt at www.techdi by Mike on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 8:55am
Dan, That is different. I should have been more precise. The new version of techdirt...lets call it ITslime.com would have all of techdirt's content but would not have any attribution as to the writers or any other sources of the content.
Yes, that's fine. Go ahead. About a dozen sites already do this. They don't attribute us at all. Go right ahead.
If ITslime.com had the exact words and articles from techdirt but someone else claimed to have written them.....is that ok?
Yes, it's perfectly ok. In fact, go ahead and use our RSS feed to do so. As I wrote here:
http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20070412/183135#c612
Yup. And as we've said repeatedly, we have no problem with people taking our content and reposting it. It's funny how many people come here, like yourself, and assume you've found some "gotcha." You haven't. There already are about 10 sites that copy Techdirt, post for post. Some of them give us credit. Some of them don't. We don't go after any of them.
Here's why:
1. None of those sites get any traffic. By itself, they offer nothing special.
2. If anything, it doesn't take people long to read those sites and figure out that the content is really from Techdirt. Then they just come here to the original source. So, it tends to help drive more traffic to us. That's cool.
3. As soon as the people realize the other sites are simply copying us, it makes those sites look really, really bad. If you want to risk your reputation like that, go ahead, but it's a big risk.
4. A big part of the value of Techdirt is the community here. You can't just replicate that.
5. Another big part of the value of Techdirt is that we, the writers, engage in the comments. You absolutely cannot fake that on your own site.
So, really, what's the purpose of copying our content, other than maybe driving a little traffic our way?
So, if you really want to, I'd suggest it's pretty dumb, but go ahead.
Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of Techdirt at www.te by Chip Venters on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 9:47am
So ITslime.com is owned by a very large company who has tremendous marketing clout. Using this clout, they drive more and more traffic to ITslime.com such that a huge community starts to develop there as well. Perhaps they even add more content to the site because of their willingness to take from everyone, making their site even more important. Eventually, they have built the best tech site on the internet using everyone else's material. With these growing numbers even your best fans (and I am one) start spending time at ITslime.com because it has not only techdirt material...but everyone else's as well. (Everything I need at one location...none of this time wasting clicking any more). As you know, there is technology that will suck up everything on your site real time...including comments like this, so people would barely know what was happening. Under your view of the world, this would be fine?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: New version of Techdirt at ww by Mike on Mar 21st, 2008 @ 9:53am
So ITslime.com is owned by a very large company who has tremendous marketing clout. Using this clout, they drive more and more traffic to ITslime.com such that a huge community starts to develop there as well. Perhaps they even add more content to the site because of their willingness to take from everyone, making their site even more important. Eventually, they have built the best tech site on the internet using everyone else's material. With these growing numbers even your best fans (and I am one) start spending time at ITslime.com because it has not only techdirt material...but everyone else's as well. (Everything I need at one location...none of this time wasting clicking any more). As you know, there is technology that will suck up everything on your site real time...including comments like this, so people would barely know what was happening. Under your view of the world, this would be fine?
Yes. Actually, there are wonderful products that do that already. Try Bloglines or Google reader for example. Both collect our content and many others in one convenient place.
Though, both of them, of course, also link back to Techdirt and help promote us.
In the case you describe, where ITSlime doesn't credit us, that's fine too. Because the news would quickly get out that ITSlime wasn't giving credit to us or any of the other sites. And if they were owned by a very large marketing company, then that company's reputation would be trashed all over the place for not giving due credit. The overall damage to that company would be tremendous... and the fallout would also probably get more people interested in Techdirt.
So, yes, that would be great.
Are you planning on helping to promote us in this manner?