On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Phares Kariuki <pkariuki@gmail.com> wrote:
“One of the most common misunderstandings regarding intellectual
property rights, particularly copyright, is that the actual creators
are the main beneficiaries of the grant. In reality, it is the large
companies that employ creators and then strip them of their copyright
through contracts who actually benefit from the grant society intended
as a reward for authors.
Through this premise, we should get rid of the concept of a corporation and share profit's equally with the employees. The problem I have with this is that, while working for corporation x, employee a used all off corporation x's resources, but want's to happily keep the spoils for themselves. When doing research and even in ordinary work, the employee will use vast resources to achieve his end, and the employee *willingly* signs over the gains of the research to them. We also forget the numerous times that an employee will come up with a "brilliant" idea, pitch them and management bears the loss, in that case, we don't go for a "loss sharing mechanism" in which the same employee can lose his retirement benefits do we? But said mistake can easily cost the shareholders tones of money. If you want the profit, be prepared to make the loss. We are only analyzing the cases where the employees actually succeed, forgetting that in many cases, the same employees cause tremendous losses.
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You describe human development very well- incidentally which was never a corporation in the first place. Unfortunately, you then proceed to call for human development privatisation? Would folks here be aware that today there are people in Developed Countries who sit all days combing through dictionaries and patenting words? There is now a matured "IP Industry" trading on those names out there and don't be surprised if soon you wake up only to find out that you cannot use your name on the internet - because someone patented or registered it as a trademark. It's baaad! This is not a joke!