Thought and Freedom

Our patent system was originally designed to encourage innovation. Therefore, we gave people legal protection against their works being copied for a short period while they recouped their investment.

The thinking behind it was that this would allow the inventor a time period to open up his distribution channels and establish himself as the market leader before the more established companies came in and copied his idea.

Since communication and transportation systems were in their infancy, governments granted longer durations of patents and copyrights. After all, your new widgets might take months to just make it over to the other side of the country. But today we have the internet, we have airplanes, we mass ship merchandise in shipping crates. The fact is that distribution channels are much faster and more efficient than they were a couple hundred years ago.

Unfortunately, the patent system has not kept up. In fact, it has turned into a method to force out the little guys. There are entire patent trolling law firms (when malpractice laws went into place, many lawyers chose to move to “greener” pastures like frivolous patent suits). There are even very large companies that make most of their money by enforcing frivolous patents.

Almost every tech firm in Silicon Valley gets sued for some type of patent infringement. Companies are sued for simple things like using a double click, or creating an easy to use interface on a digital music device. The fact is, the IP system (intellectual property) has morphed into something it was never meant to be.

There are a few things that can be done to reform intellectual property laws. Here are a few:

Patents

• Shorten Patent Length – 3 year term from filing date (10 year term on medicine due to FDA approval process)
• Limit standing to sue to companies who actually have a product fulfilling their patent (No real product? Then you cannot sue).

Copyright

• Shorten term to 10 years since modern printing and digital distribution methods are faster.
• Cannot sue for more than the market price of distributed material.
• No renewals. After term, it goes to the public domain.
• Derivative works are considered unique.
• Repeal DMCA and exit the World Trade Organization (since they require U.S. laws to comply with their regulations)

Trademarks

• Should be limited in nature.
• Very specific, not general. (i.e. A white swoosh looking exactly like this)

Another option

Of course, companies could choose not to copyright or patent at all. Instead they could hide the “trade secret,” making it impossible for other companies to copy their idea without reverse engineering.

Conclusion

These reforms would give inventors that initial edge without being too restrictive on innovation. We need an IP system that accounts for reality. People will only respect a system as long as the demands are reasonable. Perpetual copyrights and  patents on general ideas are not reasonable. This is a better way that will not only encourage innovation, but will cause it to flourish.

Here is something, umm, funny in a Weird Al sense of funny, for your Tuesday!

Unfortunately, the best humor is made from things that are mostly true.

While surfing the net, there are a number of times that you don’t want to give out your real email address. For example, you come across a site that says you must enter an email address to view the content of a help article. Why do they need your email address?

Now, there is an easy solution: Disposable email addresses!

Just enter any address at mailinator.com, then go to their site, type in the address, and presto, your mail awaits.

1. Make it unique: Of course the catch is that none of the email is password protected. So you may want to choose a unique name that someone will not guess. Don’t choose bob@mailinator.com. Instead, choose bobddcc8888d3df@mailinator.com. That way,
2. Don’t use for private information: Someone could view the email besides you, so don’t use it for private information.
3. Delete the message: It works when camping. Leave the site as you found it! You can delete the messages. So if you really want to hide your trail, just delete it.

I just finished watching an amazing short documentary (about 30 minutes) by Ray Comfort. He interviewed several people, asking them a series of challenging questions.

In one of the first difficult questions, Comfort explains that the Nazi’s would bury people in trenches after an execution, even though some were not dead. He asked person after person if they would run the bulldozer if someone pointed a gun to their head and ordered them to.

Watch this video to find out what their responses were…

After the video, check out this website for a more detailed description…

A tradition of the American public school, has been to hold a referendum vote on new taxes every few years. A classic political discussion on new funding will hit on issues such as how important it is for the children, how those who reject new taxes on local families to pay for education do not care about the children, and how public education must be protected and nurtured to blossom into this yet unrealized dream.

Usually, the promoters of “more funding” tend to gather around the idea that new technologies are about to revolutionize the system, making it cheaper and better for all on board. Their solution; Just give us a little more money now so we can reform the system, then you will see savings and improvements down the road.

I may get into the idiotic nature of such logic in another article, but today, let’s just focus on what education really is.

When one says a person recieved an education, this is usually to imply that the person attended Kindergarten through 12th grade and now has a diploma to show for it. Unfortunately, a diploma is nothing more than the participants ribbon of the education system. Employers, seeing right through the charade, ask for more. They want experience or evidence that you had the drive to actually finish something on your own (like college).

I would like to challenge these assumption. Here are a few common myths and their rebuttles:

1. An education is simply a thirteen+ year journey that you take with your local peer group: Nothing could be further from the truth. As edusceptic argues, “the school system absolutely needs to accommodate families who are wise enough to know that learning is a whole world activity, and not restricted to a classroom.” Education is about learning, whether this comes from a trip to a museum, Nick Jr. TV, a Sunday School lesson, or a traditional classroom.
2. Cutting dollars to public schools diminishes the effects of education: This is a silly statement considering the above point. Sitting in a classroom can be a tool to help children learn, but we also need to look at the opportunity cost. What activities and what lessons are they missing?  Are they slowly having the burning desire to learn leached out of them by boredom and lack of challenge? By the public demanding more dollars from the student’s family, we could be siphoning off dollars that would have been used for valuable out of classroom educational opportunities. See myth #4 on this site.
3. We need standards. Without such standards, children would fall through the cracks: A one size fits all education system, fails most in the name of uniformity. Tell me if you truly believe that “no child left behind” or “profiles in learning” really made your kids smarter. The truth is that standards testing templates tend bureaucratize the education of children. What we really need is a system of local control where parents have measures to hold individual teachers accountable.
4. Education is too complicated to be handled by amateurs: The nature of how a person learns has not changed, only the subject matter has changed. In today’s world, technologies have made a K-12 education simpler, not harder. In the age of online encyclopedias, Google, and even post secondary education options for high schoolers, we are kidding ourselves if we believe that single teachers in classrooms can compete with the distributed forms of education that the internet brings. Ask most software developers (myself included) how they learned so much about computers. Guess what they will say. They self taught themselves by research and collaboration online. Sure I have a formal degree in computer science, but that only supplements my learning through other channels. Education is more about teaching people how to find and piece together the information and less about having an expert educator provide you with the information. He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn’t know.

Finally, I would like to leave you with the quote that has made me think many a time about how we educate our kids. (Thanks Bruce Little for the interpretation an critique of this quote):

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. -William Butler Yeats

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject or if you have anything to add. If you found this post interesting, please subscribe to my posts here.

P.S. As long as we are speaking of education, can you figure out the spelling mistake in the article above?

It would seem there is something of a national phenomena sweeping the country. People, from both sides of the aisle are declaring themselves to be “libertarian.”

One interesting factor in this movement is the rise of the Christian Evangelical libertarian. In recent history, these terms may have been as polar opposites as East and West. But today, individuals are deciding that the proper politics of an Evangelical Christian is to be libertarian.

One such person, Jay Polk, is a Bible believing Christian who also chairs the Libertarian Party of Tennessee.  See his story below.

Polk makes a point that Jesus would probably not endorsed libertarianism, or any other faction or political party in this instance. What Jay Polk is getting at is that the most moral society is one where they submit to Jesus on their own free will.

It’s always wonderful to find a website that is full of good, well researched advice on a subject. I came across one recently called RealSimple.com.

I read through a couple articles like “How to fake clean your house” which would also work perfectly for college students when their parents come over!

Another great read was entitled “Surprising uses for your dishwasher.” The article included everything from washing action figures and GI-Joe guys to cooking a salmon in your dishwasher.

I have to be honest, I am not about to cook salmon in the dishwasher. But, if you were in a bind, it might be a useful thing someone would try.

The point is, our lives are often needlessly complicated. We are easily distracted by a number of concerns and issues that do not matter. Our lives can be so busy that it is hard to get done with those items we are expected to do.

These tips can come in handy for me when a surprise guest ends up announcing “I’ll be over in five minutes,” or my kids toys are in desperate need of a bath. For me, my time is a valuable commodity and I will take every tip I can get to recapture some of it.

John Stossel once said “I used to be a Kennedy-style “liberal.” Then I wised up. Now I’m a libertarian. But what does that mean? When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.”

Most of us are in the same boat. Is the libertarian an Ayn Rand supporter? Are they a reader of Mises? Do they support anarchy? Are they in support of home schooling? Do they drink raw milk?

The answer to this series of questions is yes. And no.

The fact is that libertarianism is a rather vague term, which roughly means that you believe coercive power should be limited, whether that power could accomplish good or evil.

Most libertarian thinking individuals fear the “worst that could happen” more than they anticipate the “good that could be done” when someone hold a certain power over another person.

Historically, this aversion towards the collection of power has merit. Societies that amass power tend toward state worship and servitude. Such practices create a very powerful, yet very corrupt state, eventually leading to the downfall of a civilization.

Christians, like other people, have this temptation to use power to advance their causes because, after all, they “won’t abuse that power.”  And yet, nation after nation has seen the consequences of giving one man, or group of men so much power.

Jacqueline Otto, over at Common Sense Concept, has a very good article on Christian libertarians. She references a number of scriptures that show that Christianity is about voluntary submission to Jesus. The whole nature of a relationship with God is that the relationship exists on your own volition.

This meshes with the core concepts of libertarianism. The core belief of a libertarian is to reject the use of force on others. They also have a tremendous respect for logic and for the various intricacies of human nature. Jesus never commanded the Christian church to” go out and make subjects of the Christian mission.” He commanded Christians to “go out and make disciples of all nations.”

The only true relationship is one that is entered into by your own free will. As a Christian I choose to support liberty wherever possible because I believe that our message is strongest when our fellow Christ followers arrived there, not by coercion, but by their own choosing.

Do you have a blog and consider yourself a Christian Libertarian? If so, post a comment with a link to your blog!

On Wednesday, I read “Daniel and the Roaring Lions” to Abigail. It is a little Arch book of the story usually referred to as “Daniel and the Lion’s Den.”

I had read the book several times to her, with its nice rhymes and all, but she has began to ask questions about why things happen. So I took the opportunity to explain to her more details about the story. My explanation to our three year old went something like this:

Daniel knew that God wanted him to talk to God every day. So Daniel always did just that. One day, some bad people got the king to say that no one could talk to God anymore. If they did, those people would be put in a cage of hungry lions that would try to hurt them.

At this point, she seemed very concerned. I asked her what she would do. Would she still talk to God every day? Or, would she listen to the king and stop talking to God? She thought about it for a long time and eventually said that she did not know what she would do.

I had the opportunity to explain to her that we always need to do what is right. If anyone, even a king, tells you to do something that God would not want you to do, you should not do it.

We then talked about how God protected Daniel because he did what God had told him. But even if God did not protect Daniel, he still would have done the right thing.

She pondered this for a while. I could tell she was deep in thought.

It is tough lesson for a three year old to comprehend, but an important one. I want my daughter to understand throughout her being that God gives you rights as an individual. He also gives you responsibilities.

While we should obey our “kings” whenever possible, they are not the final word on right and wrong. If God has given a right or a duty to a person, no man or government has the right to take it away.  Our founders knew this and chose to acknowledge these rights to be derived from our Creator and not from a state.

This is an inspiring reminder of what we should do, and how we should act, by Thomas Paine. (Thanks David Allen for the excerpt)…

I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon…if I can,

I seek opportunity…not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen,
Humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build,
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the state of calm Utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout.
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect,
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done.

All this is what it meant
To be an Entrepreneur.

Quote by Dean Alfange – 1922 (Some mistakenly attribute this to Thomas Paine)