Microsoft is a monopoly.

[Juan]

@Ryanpatgray

Clone isn’t the right term.

I was a bit sloppy. What about clonning window’s API ? : )

[Spideynw]

@ryanpatgray

@Spideynw

However, Microsoft is the sole provider of Microsoft OS because of the government.

If we had an anarcho-capitalist or minarchist society and patents (or whatever the free-market equivelant might be) were enforced in a free-market way (i.e. reparations or refusing to do business with violators or use you imagination) would you still oppose them? I agree that the current patent system is broken. Government breaks everything it touches. Is it the fact it is government that bothers you or is there something else?

Patents would not exist in a free market. No one should simply be given a monopoly through force.

[BlackSheep]

@ryanpatgray

wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine is Not an Emulator.

It was initially an acronym for “WINdows Emulator”. For instance, see this old document: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows-emulation/wine-faq/

For some reason people are really touchy about that though, and go into extents to claim it is a “translator”, or a “compatibility layer”. In fact, its Wikipedia page doesn’t describe it as an emulator, but as “a program that allows Windows programs to run under other operating systems”.

I don’t think this is because of legal issues, there are plenty of other similar emulators, such as Win4Lin, and even Wine-forks have no problem to call it as such. I think its people trying to rationalize these terms after marketing; I had similar discussions with other computer science ppl with regard to what defines a virtual machine.

[Spideynw]

@BlackSheep

@Spideynw

As to intellectual property itself, if you really think there is such a thing, then you would have to agree that intellectual property rights should not expire, just like real property rights do not expire

I’m not sure if defining it as property does any good to understand the concept. I don’t like the term intellectual property myself, and I agree that having an expiration limit makes sense. In the case of books, it gives the required incentive for editors to pay for their writers, since they know they’ll have a monopoly on distribution of that work for a certain time frame. After a few years, people already know the book, and the original editor may have already stopped distributing it, so you let all editors do so, whether they contributed to its development or not. Evidence shows that a lot of more creation and distribution of information was originated with such a system. It may not be optimized to software, I agree with that. And the time limits don’t make sense to be so long as they are for some of the mediums.

It is either property or a monopoly. And patents and copyrights fit the definition of monopoly, but hardly fit the definition of property.

[BlackSheep]

@Spideynw

It is either property or a monopoly. And patents and copyrights fit the definition of monopoly, but hardly fit the definition of property.

I guess you can qualify it a monopoly, though that’s a bit misleading since it sounds as if noone can compete with them, or build upon their work. There are people that also find property qualities in it.

Either way, they are social constructions; contracts between the people. We recognize the work the producers put on them, so we respect them to stipulate a price at distribution. I think its more efficient to have a global agreed contract, but these kind of contracts could and would also arise in an anarchist society.

Whats your alternative? Say, how would a holywood movie be financed in your society?

[CurtHowland]

@Spideynw

A monopoly is not defined as whether or not a company can force people to buy its product. It is defined as whether or not competitors are allowed into the market.

There is a great deal of competition in the OS market. The same PC hardware can run MS Windows, three different BSD, hundreds of Linux distributions, Solaris, Minix, ReactOS, FreeDOS, and I have no idea how many others.

There is no monopoly in computer software. Even Microsoft’s ubiquity is a carefully contrived creation of their marketing department to try to maintain their market share in the face of competition on all fronts.

I won’t try to argue that Microsoft does not have a dominant position, nor that merely having a dominant position in a market is not and has not been grounds for “anti monopoly” prosecutions by government.

But if you’re posting to an economics forum, expect for “monopoly” to be defined in economic terms, not government terms.

[Spideynw]

@BlackSheep

@Spideynw

It is either property or a monopoly. And patents and copyrights fit the definition of monopoly, but hardly fit the definition of property.

I guess you can qualify it a monopoly, though that’s a bit misleading since it sounds as if noone can compete with them, or build upon their work. There are people that also find property qualities in it.

No, it is not misleading at all. No one can produce the same product. Again, just because you let one company produce all of the apples, does not mean they do not have to compete with other fruits.

@BlackSheep

Either way, they are social constructions; contracts between the people. We recognize the work the producers put on them, so we respect them to stipulate a price at distribution.

They are legal constructions, not social constructions. And it has nothing to do with recognizing their work. If it were, it would not cost millions of dollars to enforce them.

@BlackSheep

I think its more efficient to have a global agreed contract,

It is not a “contract”.

@BlackSheep

but these kind of contracts could and would also arise in an anarchist society.

Not likely.

@BlackSheep

Whats your alternative? Say, how would a holywood movie be financed in your society?

My alternative is no monopolies.

As to hollywood movies, I have no idea how they would be produced. You are asking me to conceive of all the possibilities of the human imagination.

[Spideynw]

@CurtHowland

@Spideynw

A monopoly is not defined as whether or not a company can force people to buy its product. It is defined as whether or not competitors are allowed into the market.

There is a great deal of competition in the OS market.

As I already stated. However, there is zero competition in the Microsoft OS market. Again, Microsoft OS is just like giving one company ownership of all the bananas in the fruit market. Sure, the banana owner still has to compete with other fruits, just like Microsoft has to compete with other operating systems, but the company would not have to compete with other banana growers, just like Microsoft does not have to compete with other Microsoft OS producers.

@CurtHowland

The same PC hardware can run MS Windows, three different BSD, hundreds of Linux distributions, Solaris, Minix, ReactOS, FreeDOS, and I have no idea how many others.

But there is only one distributor of Microsoft OS.

@CurtHowland

But if you’re posting to an economics forum, expect for “monopoly” to be defined in economic terms, not government terms.

If you are posting in an economic forum, maybe you should first study up on monopolies so you can better understand them.

[Juan]

But this is real competition to MS’ OS.

http://www.ReactOS.org

I’ve just tried the live CD…and doesn’t work very well. But it still is competition.

[Len_Budney]

Patents would not exist in a free market. No one should simply be given a monopoly through force.

I agree with you–but I think a free market could invent a reasonable approximation of patents. For example, judicious use of non-disclosure agreements could achieve similar results. A maker who only rents his product, never sells it, can argue that reverse-engineering is vandalism. Etc. Of course some things would be harder to “patent” than others.

–Len.

[Len_Budney]

But there is only one distributor of Microsoft OS.

But so what? I’m reading this on a Mac. I haven’t had recourse to a Windows machine in years (except for running Quicken, sigh).

–Len.

[gplauche]

Spideynw,

Would you qua libertarian have a problem with Microsoft if it was the sole distributor of its OS but sought to do so not by government-granted monopoly in the form of copyrights or patents but only through keeping its source code secret and binding those who do business with it through contractual obligations?

[BlackSheep]

@Spideynw

No, it is not misleading at all. No one can produce the same product. Again, just because you let one company produce all of the apples, does not mean they do not have to compete with other fruits.

In the case of copyright, it only applies to the wording, not really the concept behind it. Newspapers can run each others stories, as long as they word them differently. The standard is more tight for fictional stories, and maybe that shouldn’t be the case…

With regard to patents, they are to be passed to technics, not actual inventions as a whole. For instance, the morse code can be patented, not the concept of translating messages in symbols to make them more suitable to transmit. There have been plenty of cases where some other guys circunvent some patent and implemented a similar invention.

Plenty of people have pointed you here to alternatives to Windows. But maybe because so many people ignore its copyright claims, or because its cost is internationalized by many PC brands, there isn’t that many people using alternatives. At least in PC computers, there are plenty of Apples around.

@Spideynw

@BlackSheep

I think its more efficient to have a global agreed contract,

It is not a “contract”.

Contract simply means mutual agreed terms. Whether they are in the form of signed contracts, or common law. If there wasn’t a copyright law, you’d see a lot of contracts you’d had to sign everytime you go buy a movie. If you don’t allow for that, you’ll see a lot less big budget movies, and you’d only have youtube quality stuff, because no-one would invest so much into something, only to have someone else get the returns for it.

I understand the sentiment of wanting the information to be free. But you’d have a lot less information-like material being produced without a framework like copyright. Whats the biggie of allowing them some time to offset that cost at distribution. Its what allowed the masses to have so much entertainment and information like no king had before.

[ryanpatgray]

@Juan

But this is real competition to MS’ OS.

http://www.ReactOS.org

I’ve just tried the live CD…and doesn’t work very well. But it still is competition.

I have not tried them yet but I am interested. As much as I love linux it does have a compatability problem in the sense that most programs will not run on it (sans Wine). ReactOS has the promise of going around that problem. It is still in Alpha though - give it time and it will improve.

[ryanpatgray]

@Juan

@Ryanpatgray

Clone isn’t the right term.

I was a bit sloppy. What about clonning window’s API ? : )

Sure You could say that.

[ryanpatgray]

@Len Budney

Patents would not exist in a free market. No one should simply be given a monopoly through force.

I agree with you–but I think a free market could invent a reasonable approximation of patents. For example, judicious use of non-disclosure agreements could achieve similar results. A maker who only rents his product, never sells it, can argue that reverse-engineering is vandalism. Etc. Of course some things would be harder to “patent” than others.

–Len.

I think the free market WOULD, if given the chance, invent a reasonable aproximation of patents. And they would be more flexable to meet the needs of consumers and the programers, inventers, artists etc. There is a market for a patent-like-device. Under true capitalism something will fill that market.

[mak]

The difference is the market place for MS OSs is the PC desktop in a company. IPod or wii are not business tools. If MS dominates the desktop within the enterprise..it will remain so for a long time witn no competition, this is a bad thing.

Free Markets do need regulating at some level surely? State enforcement is bad but still some form of authority making sure everyone plays by the rules is necessary?

[Grant]

There are many people across the political spectrum who are otherwise in favor of IP, but think its a complete disaster when applied to software. I’d say most software developers probably take this stance, because software patents are obviously extremely destructive. Microsoft takes advantage of the patent system, as to many large businesses, to bludgeon smaller competitors who cannot afford the incredibly high litigation fees of patent suits.

[MacFall]

Microsoft is a monopolist. Not a monopoly. The only real monopoly in existence is the government.

[wgeary]

@gplauche

there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about being the only provider/seller of something. What is bad/wrong is getting the government to enforce it.

I have to admit, I’ve never understood this viewpoint. It seems 100% contradictory to other Austrian beliefs. Do you agree that the government should enforce physical property rights? If some one damages or steals my property, isn’t it appropriate for the government to step in?

Life, liberty and property. That is what the government should protect. Why does intellectual property not fall under the property category? Why do you think its okay for the government to enforce some property rights, but not others? What about illegal file sharing/downloading? Is it not stealing to download a ripped CD from the internet instead of buying it from the artist?

A lot of questions, I know