So from what I have gathered from the lecture and tute this week is that the topic of copyright and patents to protect an original idea is a very blurry topic with plenty of grey area.
I find it hard to believe that people have come up with an original idea, completed the final product under the presumption that they would be under some sort of protection from plagiarism and copy cats to then find that the some one has foxed the idea from them. I believe that we if there is an original idea that could really benefit society it could be presented to a sort of judicial council who could determine how much compensation its worth and then pass it on to the general population who could adapt the idea and better it. This is hard though, because who is going to be on this council for starters, how can they decide if an idea is worth $10 or $10 million, and if they get paid for the idea and then someone only uses a small part of the idea and makes a fortune out of it then the person with the original idea will be pretty annoyed.
So you can see that the topic is very hard to find a solution to, and as money is a pretty powerful agent in corrupting peoples moral compass it will always be hard to find a balance of protecting innovative ideas and letting others build upon basic concepts.
When we think about it we all are copy cats, and thats how society has progressed so far. If Einstein didn’t let any one use his life’s scientific work where would we be now. I think it really comes down to morals and ethics to give those who deserve recognition and proper financial gains for their ideas.
A funny vid about piracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
Haha - IT crowd's pretty gold sometimes. It's funny that we are all aware stealing music and videos off the internet is illegal... and yet we all do it anyway. And it's true we do do that, but we wouldn't steal a baby. It does kinda seem that the line has been drawn on "things that are available on the internet" vs. things in real life.
ReplyDeleteWhich sorta goes back to one of our past topics about whether or not the actions we take online are equivalent to the ones we do offline and should the consequences be the same.... I don't really have an answer for any of that...