It’s when independent experts say that extending terms hurts the economy and stifles innovation that people should sit up and take notice. All too often though, such experts are ignored because they are just people that know the subject, rather than fund politicians campaign contributions. Moreover, they focus on facts and case histories, rather than vague associations or made-up figures.

Two such experts are Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, economists at the Washington University in St Louis. Boldrin, chairman of the university economics department, points out that what goes by the name ‘Intellectual Property’ is in fact “an intellectual monopoly that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps.”

“From a public policy view, we’d ideally like to eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether,” says Levine, the John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics. “There’s plenty of protection for inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for creators. It’s not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and copyright.”

In a short video clip, Levine states that copyright shouldn’t been seen as a charitable act, which is a lesson Commissioner McCreevy needs to learn. Also, he states that Intellectual Monopoly is the more appropriate term, and that the property label is a recently-given propaganda title, a subject Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has covered in the past.

The views of the economists are presented in their new book, “Against Intellectual Monopoly”, where they suggest that the copyright and patent systems in the US should at least be brought back into line with their constitutional establishment – that of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. In the book, they put the case quite simply – “In the decades to come, sustaining economic progress will depend, more and more, on our ability to progressively reduce and eventually eliminate intellectual monopoly.”

It might be that the Pirate Party has some intellectual support for their positions, and perhaps a Missouri party will soon be in the making.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, after we published the article, Viralg responded to an email we sent earlier. It appears that they believe that the value of the sale doesn’t necessarily lie in the technology.

This section from the eBay auction gives a clue:

3. If your business is involved in developing and/or selling a P2P program, you can make it better and avoid any problems that this technology can give to your network.

A brief email from Viralg suggests that they feel that a ‘p2p related community’ might want to buy the patents – but why would p2p’ers want them?

Here are some details from the Canadian patent:

1. A method for limiting the use of unauthorized digital content in a content-sharing network in which digital content is distributed as files, wherein each file comprises content information and is associated with characteristic information and verification information, the method comprising:

(a) determining a first file whose content information is copyrighted;

(b) repeatedly distributing a second file in the content-sharing network, wherein the second file is associated with characteristic information and verification information that match the characteristic information and verification information, respectively, of said first file, and wherein the second file comprises content information that does not match the content information of the first file.

It seems that Viralg feel that their patent gives them the monopoly on a particular type of file corruption and that if these patents were bought by a pro-p2p outfit, they could get legal protection if anyone ever tried to use this technique against them.

Viralg told us: “Let say at some P2P related community buy those patent applications… after that no body can’t mess with hash codes…”

Maybe one million p2p’ers will put $1 each for these papers?

Ok, maybe not.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.