The Guardian rips Bill Gates a new one - WOW!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1387575,00.html

The war on copyright communists
Bill Gates wants software patents to protect his profit, not the public

Andrew Brown
Tuesday January 11, 2005
The Guardian

Bill Gates is an intelligent man who has done a great deal of good in the world. So when he gets caught out in a bare-faced lie this should matter to all of us; and last week, when he called the opponents of American intellectual property law a "communist" movement he was encouraging a mistake that could impoverish the entire world.

He said: "Of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."

The argument in principle that Gates makes against "communism" starts in exactly the right place. But his vested interests lead him to drag it in the wrong direction. It is as if the Sheriff of Nottingham were to announce that it's enormously important that your property was protected from criminals - so he'll take everything you have that might be stolen and lock it up for safety in his castle. (...)

Software builds on other people's ideas. Claiming royalties on certain fundamental ideas looks like an easy road to endless riches: BT attempted to patent the clicking on hyperlinks in the world wide web. Microsoft has applied for 1,500 patents, some of them nearly as ridiculous. If these were granted, or enforceable, it would stifle innovation and work against the beneficial effects of copyright. (...)

Read the whole article at the above link.

[no name no slogan]

1. One of his favorites insults is "COMMUNIST!!!"

I hear he often yells that at employees who mention giving things away for free. During the browser wars, he used it quite frequently around the Redmond campus.

"Internet Explorer: The Browser of Red-Blooded Americans©"

[punpirate]

2. If I recall correctly...

... a prominent Microsoft executive officer went to Congress saying that Linux was communist and anti-American, too.

I guess it's only legal and honorable and American unless Microsoft can make money on it.... :P

Twits.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. Yeah, that would be Ballmer... quite the hero, he is

another Chicken-Hawk.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. Did he say that while doing his monkey dance? (nt)

[redqueen]

3. I wish mainstream papers here would tackle this issue.

Wasn't some British news co. planning on starting a paper here?

[Mr. Blonde]

4. So if the guardian is right

does that mean I can download new music for free as long as it is unoriginal? Shouldn't be too hard to find those songs.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. This article has nothing whatsoever to do with downloading music.

It's about the concept that there's such a thing as TOO MUCH copyright and patent protection. Unless you fell for Mr. Gates' straw men.

In mid-20th centusy, artistic works couldn't be copied for 50 years or so, and that was OK. Why does it have to last 160 years?

In the 70's, software couldn't be patented, and the software industry thrived in that environment. Companies sprang and prospered. Why couldn't it stay that way?

Mr. Gates (and others) wants to stay rich by government fiat. It's as simple as that.

[patcox2]

11. There is no such thing as intellectual "property."

The whole term and the whole idea is a recent invention and it departs radically from hundreds of years of legal tradition.

You cannot own an idea. Noone can. Ideas happen, they are repeated, they are rediscovered independantly. Besides, they don't exist corporeally and noone can exercise the traditional elements of "ownership" over them (in case you don't know, the essence of ownership is the exercise of exclusive possession and control over a thing.)

We all benefit from the ideas of those who came before us. All human advancement consists of each generation starting with the ideas of those who came before and building on them to leave their ideas to the generation after.

You can own a Copyright, but the copyright does not give you ownership of the idea. What it gives you is an exclusive franchise on the idea, the exclusive right to make copies and sell them for profit. It is a government granted monopoly. Not a property right. There is a difference. For sound policy reasons (encouraging and rewarding invention), our society chose to enact laws which grant a temporary monopoly to inventors and artists, to reward them for their ingenuity. There has never been a "property" right in an idea in western law, it is a temporary monopoly granted by the government, this being an exception to the general rule that monopolies are abhorrent.

Calling it "intellectual property" is a dishonest framing of the issue. And its worked very succesfully.

[Solon]

13. Yep, and the "Mickey Mouse" law isn't helping at all...

Every year since the '60s or '70s I forget which, Mickey Mouse, and every other Copyright from that time period is up to expire, and it has been renewed every year since, it ridiculous.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. Fact of life #923,487: There ARE such things as fucked-up laws. (nt)

[redqueen]

5. Kick!

[Solon]

7. Bill Gates and his evil empire can shove it...

We're not only communists, we're PROUD OF IT TOO!!! :evilgrin:

[Solon]

8. Here's another pic...

[miss_kitty]

10. It slays me

I had No Idea that practically everthing needed to run a computer is free and legally so somewhere on the internets. My state (which owns the computer I use) pays loadsa money (they are running out of) for shit, when they could get the really good stuff for free

[Solon]

12. Yep...

I was thinking about trimming down the distro of Linux I have now, and start a company that sells "Internet Thin Clients" with a read only system, for an extremely low price. The software is Free in more ways than one, Free as in Beer, and Free as in Freedom. I can modify this OS all I want, burn it on CD's and then distribute it with the hardware, and no licensing fees. Just got to make sure all the software on it is free.

[miss_kitty]

16. hey. Congratulate me. I just uninstalled AOHell

Now I wonder-I did a search on aol, and a lot of files still come up (I also removed aolextras file from me Start menu thingy, and the viewpoint spyware media player)

Can I just delete those leet bastards too? Some have pics, which I'll keep. But some are part of their system. I assume ok.

[Dogmudgeon]

29. Beer isn't free

You really only rent it.

Kinda like software is, in America.

--p!

[WMliberal]

15. maybe he should've stayed in college, so he'd know what communist really

means. :eyes: So respect for intellectual property explain Microsofts tactics in restraining others from developing such property.

[Zero Gravitas]

17. Bill Gates is a Republican

He gave $2,000 to the Chimperor's "re" elction campaign.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. Makes sense. Microsoft depends on crony capitalism to survive. (nt)

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. Who was the bloke

invented the Internet (I mean apart from Al), and didn't want any copyright or profit from it?

He must have been the mother and father of all Communists, mustn't he...! At the very least, a terrible fomenter of Communism. Wow! Come back Joe McCarthy... All is forgiven!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. MAY have been Vint Cerf but I'm probably wrong. Anyone knows? (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Perhaps you're thinking of the World Wide Web/http inventor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

And also note he invented it while working for CERN, an international scientific collaboration.

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. That'd be him.

How sinister to allow the likes of Gates to make such enormous profits on the back of his genius and hard work. If that's not a pinko ploy to bring about anarchy, I don't know what is!

[sendero]

22. Gates...

... has always had the character of the average circus con man. He built his company on deception, bullying, and other unsavory tactics.

People think he is some kind of tech genius, that is utterly laughable.

Oh well, he's not going to find the EU as easy to steamroll as our justice department was. I mean, when you are caught in lie after lie and faking demos and still pretty much get your way, somethings not right.

[ghostsofgiants]

27. "Buy him out boys!"

[Deja Q]

23. He's intelligent, but how has he done ANY good at all?

Especially that he only does things when it benefits him.

Being in IT, he's caused more problems with his unfettered greed. One of his many MO's is to have his wretched software reprogrammed so competitors can't make their programs compatible. (this started in the OS/2 days, after IBM won the right to use Windows code in OS/2 after the divorce as M$ had stabbed their 'partner' in the back... and yet companies still want to team up with M$. DUnno why. Every time M$ teams up with someone, they stab 'em as hard as they can at some point.)

M$ gives nary a fuck about society. Only its own paycheck. And brimstone will do to them for the same reasons brimstone took care of a certain biblical city: Selfishness, inhospitality, and greed. (not homosexuality, which is the popular (mis)belief.)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. And don't forget the bogus error messages in early Windows

In the day you installed it over DOS. If you installed Windows over a competitor's DOS, it'd show a scary-looking error message for no reason whatsoever, even though it worked perfectly.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

24. Of course, he made his billions on selling something he DID NOT

write, only re-sold to IBM and neglected to tell them he did not have the rights to it, so he knows all right.

Oh, he knows.

[solinvictus]

28. Go Mac!!!

And say goodbye to the blue screen of death.

[Joe Chi Minh]

31. His "reds under the bed"

petulance reminds me of an exchange I once had with a Republican poster on the now defunct Policy.com.

She was determined to nullify the clear implication I had pointed out of Christ's parable concerning Lazarus, the rich man and the street dogs, who, in their hapless stumbling compassion licked Lazarus' sores.

Ah, so that's what those street dogs had been up to I replied! They'd been reading too many books on liberation theology! (I still haven't read any of them, though I imagine I'd be very inspired).

The next evening, instead of admitting that she'd been very foolish, she apologised and said that she'd been very tired! Pass...

[Cerridwen]

32. . n/t