I’ve seldom been an Apple user, but I always held both the company & Steve Jobs with utmost respect… until this past week. I now consider Apple with the likes of every other greedy company gone awry.
Why, you might ask?
First is their filing of patent infringement lawsuits against HTC & Android phones (article 1; article 2; article 3). Aw… gee… is Apple afraid they won’t be able to survive with some competition?
Next is the pressure Apple is applying to the music labels concerning Amazon MP3’s “Daily Deal” promotions. Aw… gee… isn’t Apple satisfied with their previous & still current monopoly of online music? Screw ’em!!!
No, I’m not naive. I know many, many (TOO MANY) companies are filing patent infringement lawsuits on a daily or weekly basis. Foolish me — I just thought Apple was ‘above’ this idiotic behavior. I guess not.
I feel the same way about patents as I do about copyright — they should both be scrapped! If more people would read up on the history, including a couple of the latest books — “Against Intellectual Monopoly” (by Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine) and “The Gridlock Economy” (by Michael Heller) — they’d realize that all patents & copyrights do (among other things) is eliminate competition and stifle both innovation & creativity. With the exception of possibly a couple extreme cases, patents (& copyrights) are NOT needed. (And, oh, BTW – expanding patent law to cover software & business processes was a BIG MISTAKE! Yet another means to stifle innovation.)
Will they ever go away or be modified? Not unless the public gets involved. There’s already way too many lawyers making way too much money on way too many patent & copyright disputes. And, uh, oh yeah… who runs our government? Lawyers, anyone??? Patent & copyright law is big business, so any modifications to this mess are going to be difficult and ugly.
Just my two cents worth… (actually.. it’s probably only worth half-a-cent, if that much)