Surellin: I’m not sure either how contract enforcement fits in with the non-aggression principle. But I imagine it might involve everyone agreeing what the restitution will be when the contract is signed.

I.e. see comment #2 in this thread

One of the Samsung lawyers to Californian court (pointless Samsung even appearing in California where the courts are so biased, but….)…..

“What Apple is really trying to do is patent or copyright a rectangular box with rounded corners”.

Perhaps unfair – I do not know the details.

But I do know that, in the end, such companies as Apple are going to have to compete on PRICE and QUALITY – not on how many court judgements they can get.

“Thank you for calling Soverain technical support,” says Wolanyck, if you press option 2. “If you are a current customer and have a tech support question, please call us at 1-888-884-4432, or e-mail us at support @soverain.com.” That number, like the “customer support” number on Soverain’s contact page, has been disconnected.

Soverain isn’t in the e-commerce business; it’s in the higher-margin business of filing patent lawsuits against e-commerce companies. And it’s been quite successful until now. The company’s plan to extract a patent tax of about one percent of revenue from a huge swath of online retailers was snuffed out last week by Newegg and its lawyers, who won an appeal ruling [PDF] that invalidates the three patents Soverain used to spark a vast patent war.

I can see the untility in the plea bargin.

Well, of course – there’s a reason it was invented in the first place: utility.

Still, I’m not thrilled with the shotgun approach that prosecutors use of charging a defendant with everything under the sun and then hoping the wrongly accused with plea down just to inflate stats.

Of course – that’s what happens when we only concern ourselves with immediate utility, and disregard long-term consequences, including the unforeseen ones.

Theft is theft, no? Does it matter if the thief steals my car or the intellectual work I sell?

Yes, it does matter. If somebody takes a car, or a book or a CD, it is theft because you no longer have that item. If somebody copies your idea, it is not theft, because you still have everything you started with.

If I am a musician and make my money selling my music, when someone distributes my music for free to 1 million of his closest friends to enjoy, I’m losing out on sales.

That you are losing out on sales is an assumption on your part. Those 1 million people may not have bothered acquiring your music had it not been free.

He’s stealing my customers from me by giving them my work without me ending up with money in my pocket.

You don’t own your customers. Customers are people and we have long since rejected the idea that people can be property. In any case, they are not your customers, merely potential customers.

If I’m a musician or author or filmmaker or what have you, how is it an infringement on someone’s liberty to want to protect what is mine by demanding theives end up in prison?

Because what you want to be considered yours can only become yours by violating the liberty of others. It’s akin to arguing that there’s nothing wrong with slavery, because you own your slaves.

If it was a person who kicked in the door of the local bookstore and was physically handing out copies of a book, there would be no discussion on prison beaing earned, so why is electronic rights to IP so much different?

As per the explanation given above.

Very astute. Well done, that man.

@all

I’m surprised no-one has mentioned WikiLeaks in the context of all this; or is that a dirty word these days?

However, the journals have two things in their favor. 1) They can claim, and rightly so, that the money the journal brings in pays for these conferences and that the organizations, who typically own the journals, depend on. Normally the journal and access is part of the dues and the money charged for access is charged to non-members like libraries which do provide those texts to anyone who walks in the front door.

2) With some journals, there is a ton of prestige attached to being published in a particular journal. Having a paper publish in Nature, or Science, or JAMA, or the Lancet is a big deal. Papers in the big journals are the most cutting edge research and/or paprdigm shifting papers. Not having those kind of major journals might mean that majorly important papers get lost in the shuffle and noticed by almost no one, but the ego question comes into play. Scientists aren’t in it for the money, but having multiple publications at that level might be the difference between getting funding or not getting funding based on track record (or getting tenure or recognition for one’s facility).

Personally, I’m angling towards Open Access, but maybe a slightly modified version like giving the journals exclusivity rights for a year or something and then allowing the work to become open to everyone. There’s a pretty good (and short!) video about the issue from PHD Comics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY