[Patents] patent pools enforcing per-copy-licensing mode of software development

[Bernard Lang Bernard.Lang@inria.fr]

On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 10:38:41AM +0100, A +W Endres wrote:

> One final remark for Bernard Lang: I appreciate and share his concern
> for individual freedom. But if scary people demand that police be visible
> in cities and on highways, this certainly limits the freedom of normal 
> people
> who want to draw money from banks and want to race on the German
> Autobahn. Maybe the police catches some robbers or drunken drivers
> also.


I suspect you missed my point.  I am not against restricting freedom
and the use of a police to stop robbery and speeding, or IP
infringement.  All I am saying is that such restraints to freedom have
to be justified.  That is part of the social contract which is the
founding principle of social life.
  Now, if you want to restrain some freedom, you have to establish
that society as a whole will benefit from it, in a way that balances
the loss for some individuals (who are assumed to benefit in return
from other aspects of social life).
   Recall that it is society in the first place that ensures that IP
is protected.  This is at cost for everyone (my taxes pay the police)
and to the benefit of IP owners.

   Now, just to make matters more subtle. Assume that creators could
protect their creation on their own, through technical means, without
the help of society.  Society would still have a right to prohibit
them from doing so, on the basis that it can only exist effectively if
those who can do contribute to the general good, from which they
benefit.  In a democracy, this has to be settled on a fair legal
basis.  It is in no one's interest to despoil gratuitously the more
productive members of society, if only because that in itself would
entail a cost for the general good.

   But I am still waiting for a fair study on the economic and social
effects of software patents ...  and I can only notice that those in
favor of such patents never bothered to ask for one.

Cordialement

   Bernard Lang

Reference: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social (1762)

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