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RE: Intellectual Property: A doomed philosophy based on laziness and greed
" Is it ethical to patent a DNA test for a cancer gene that you might carry and charge an extreme price for the rights to the test? How about suing a farmer for saving seeds that were pollinated by your GMO soybeans the next field over?"
Both of these are crazy, the monsanto one is an example I've known about for a while and just makes my fucking head explode.
It's tricky though - I do think there are some potential benefits for IP in the world of art.
It's a hard sell to suggest that for example if an author writes a book, someone else should be allowed to copy and sell it or give it away for free. And that seems to be the hard-libertarian stance on that, which I find pretty hard to agree with.
It's always interesting to think of real-world examples like book piracy. On its own, a very small issue. Usually people purchase the physical book, which has to be printed on paper and has value in itself. On e-readers, the price is drastically reduced to compensate for the lack of quality physical material.
In fact I know people who have pirated books in university, the textbook companies gouging the students because they know they can get away with selling $120 books every semester being the main reason. Cheaply-printed paperback copies of the real thing in all blue ink were ordered from India for $25 instead.
If that's hard-line libertarianism then so be it, screw those greedy authors and long live the free press!
I fully support piracy of textbooks. Anything that pulls money away from the bloated, abusive private education system is a huge win. Glad to hear your and your friends were able to get cheaper copies of those books.