Yes. However, the cost of health care is proportional to the quantity of the patients. We all pay for it.

In the case of music, once it has been paid enough to cover expenses and make a nice profit, the rest IS free. There is no additional cost nor reason to draw profit other than lining of pockets.

Let's assume you make AutoCAD in 15 dimensions. There are 4 customers on the planet that can afford it (and can use it). They pay, you get rich, because each customer pays 100 billion.

Nobody else has this kind of money not the use for the software. From the standpoint of the author, there is nothing more to gain. Releasing the software for free loses no assets. It is free, cost-wise. Averages don't apply.

But I'm reiterating. My point was, some things ARE free.

I guess what I'm asking is this: Is it OK for a company that has covered costs and made millions to hold information hostage with the sole purpose of milking it?



Right over information is there to protect the author (it doesn't, it protects the producers) and to give the author an advantage in launching the product so that even lower forms of business can compete if they have something to offer.

It is there so that any man, no matter how poor or how alone, can create beauty or add to the sum of human knowledge and have a shot at a reward in a world where a company presses a billion records a second.

It is there so that a small coffee shop that makes unique coffee would not be crushed by the giants.

Yet it now protects the company from the man. It might be music, or software or pants. But in these cases, it allows a company to patent coffee and then use the police from tracking me in my home, see if I make coffee and sue me for an insane amount for drinking coffee.

One might say that a million torrent users is not one man. True. But it's not the million that has to pay for it, it's Random Joe.

Isn't holding the rights to a song for 20 years abuse? Was this the spirit of the law? Help corporate suits to retire to Hawaii while money keeps pouring in with no additional effort?

Is a suture the creation of a doctor? Should you pay rent on a suture? A bypass? A transplant? Royalties for a life-saving maneuver? Poor doctor needs a new pair of Aston Martins?

If arrangement of notes is reserved, isn't an arrangement of flowers too a creation? Can I sue you for having a bouquet similar to mine? A house similar to mine? If I put oil on canvas it's a painting that's protected, but if I use a spray and a wall it's graffiti and public property?

There should be limits to what a patent or a right should cover. It should cover justifiable expenses and a healthy profit margin.

In some cases, patents and rights are a necessary evil. Pharmaceutical patents, e.g., can deny treatment of sick people, even allow them to die, on periods of 12 to 20 years, for profit (and coverage of costs). While I find this to be incredibly one-sided, at least there are research costs and one can argue that without these costs the medication would not be there in the first place. Though frankly, economy be damned. If someone I cared about was extinguishing before me when treatment was available and affordable but artificially inflated by five zeroes I'd spend my last few bucks on an automatic weapon.

Point is, that's what happens when rights are blanket-defined in time instead of a more balanced system, limiting abuse.

However, with many products, there are no hundreds of billions in R&D to cover.

This legal system has worked fine in the past, when the technology to scan an invention wasn't available, when recipes were secret, when things were done by hand. When economy was slow, research was slow and independent.

Times have changed. Replication is available for data and soon the same thing will happen to a wider variety of things. Research is no longer a singular effort, we have university networks, labs, international projects.

Data has pretty much broken barriers and it's not like the genie is going back into the bottle. Production has also pretty much broken barriers and it's not like there's stopping China. We couldn't if we wanted to but we don't want to.

Is it still wrong or illegal if not enforceable? Last I checked, non-enforceable laws were invalid.

So, is it "ok" to hold information hostage when there are no costs to cover? Is the letter of the law and an army of lawyers bigger than the spirit of the law? I'm hoping the balance will change for the better. In some places around the world the idea has been accepted. In others, people only seem to get denser.

I'm hoping it doesn't take too long for the world to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the next century.