Can someone explain why copying is bad? Do people really believe that a marketplace is so fragile, that unless an omnipotent actor interferes with trade, consumers will become victims to "copying"? Or that the poor consumer won't be able to distinguish between the box that says "HP" and the twice as expensive box that reads "Apple"?
Copying can be good and bad. I think most people would say that a copy that beats the original would be good. A knock-off or plagiarism would be bad.
It's bad for the original creator, but long term it's probably bad for the copy-cat as well. How are you going to keep and foster top notch design talent if their assignment is to copy the competition instead of working on making something better?
And if you don't have good designers, you're at a disadvantage if the market starts to appreciate good design (as they seem to be doing more and more).
I think many people are surprisingly untechnical. Samsung had many tablet returns from customers who thought they had bought an iPad. I wouldn't be surprised if many companies would buy this computer because it "looks about the same" as the more expensive iMac.
It seems like IP exists to empower corporations to monopolize segments of the market. Does anyone actually believe it's to empower consumers? Because that's the argument I typically hear.
Edit: I just want to know if we're all on the same page that IP exists to monopolize the market, not benefit the consumer in any way.
Obviously, not everyone here is on the same page, but there is a general consensus that patent laws are being used to suppress rather encourage innovation. Apple's suits against Samsung are an egregious recent example of the patent system harming innovation. There is room for nuance though; saying that the system is being abused doesn't mean that no ideas should be patentable.
>It seems like IP exists to empower corporations to monopolize segments of the market.
It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google-- a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market- started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.
>Does anyone actually believe it's to empower consumers?
The really unfortunate thing about this propaganda campaign is that it has been so successful that it has gotten people to close their minds off to not only other viewpoints, but the very nature of the system.
Patents allow the advancement of science to occur more rapidly by incentivizing disclosure. When someone invents something really new, they could keep it a secret and have a monopoly on that product for as long as it takes their competitors to figure out how to do it-- which is often many years. The patent system gets them to reveal it so that the competitors can start with the state of the art, and then extend it.
Google, et. al. want to perverse this system by, instead of extending the state of the art, simply copying the state of the art and then hoping to get away with it in court. To provide cover they've got legions of people clamoring that "patents are "bad" and stuff like that".
The reality is, getting a patent is not unreasonably difficult. Thus small startups (like google once was) can patent their technologies (like google once did for page rank) and get protection from major existing players (like google once needed from Yahoo, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Wired Search, etc).... and leverage that protection into investment from Venture Capitalists (like google did.)
If you have any question about googles hypocrisy, note that they only say patents are bad when it comes to other people's patents-- they viciously protect PageRank and they sued Apple with motorola patents they acquired for that specific purpose... and are trying to reneg on their agreement to license patents under FRAND terms in order to get leverage to force Apple to license its patents.
Patents do empower consumers, when the system works- when companies abide by the rules and use them to get a leg up in advancing technology.
We are not all on the same page, though HN may seem like a monoculture because there are a lot of Apple haters here. But if you look at these discussions you'll notice they are generally uninformed about the history (eg: bringing up Xerox) and don't even know what patents are (eg: confusing design and utility patents, thinking 2001 or Star Trek are "prior art" or citing the LG Prada, or claiming Apple is claiming a patent on rounded corners.)
One thing you'll never see an anti-IP person do, in my experience, is consider the ramifications of getting rid of all patent laws.
For instnace, consider how locked down devices would be when there was no such protection. Companies would hermetically seal devices to make it difficult for competitors to get inside them to understand how they work-- this would be bad for consumers.
Plus progress would be retarded. Most drugs that have been invented never would have been, and technology progress would be much, much slower.
It's popular to hate patents, and that position comes from taking for granted the benefits patents have provided, and focusing on perceived (and hypocritical in my opinion) problems with them.
Due to the contentious nature of this position, and the fact that every time I've expressed it on HN, I've been personally attacked, this will be my one comment on this subject, Sorry. Your question seems genuine, so I took the time to respond.
It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google--
a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market-
started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and
rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.
This is incorrect. There have been written concerns about software patents being monopolies at least since the year 1990 (http://deoxy.org/swpc.htm), not to mention the Free Software movement spreading the word against patents a lot earlier than 2008, the first Pirate Party was founded in 2006, and I bet I could dig a lot more examples of "prior art".
There is a whole lot more than Google versus Apple in the software patents story, please read some more about it.
Made a quick search. Couldn't find a single lawsuit that Google had brought upon on a smaller or a bigger player. They protect Search technologies using Trade Secrets not Patents.
> they sued Apple with motorola patents they acquired for that specific purpose
Well technically it was still Motorola that sued Apple using it's own patents. And that was after the patent war had already consumed most of the tech media.
> get leverage to force Apple to license its patents.
Which is something that should be done! Why is it that technology that is essential for building cellphones has to be licensed (and at a pretty cheap rate) but technology that is selectively applicable like the dozens of patents including Swipe-To-Unlock, Unified Search, Pinch-To-Zoom etc are okay not to be licensed and yet be used to ban devices altogether?
> Most drugs that have been invented never would have been, and technology progress would be much, much slower.
Straw-man. Most people who are Anti-IP (I am not BTW), are against software patents NOT patents in general.
I should have known my distaste for IP was out of historical ignorance and susceptibility to propaganda campaigns! Only a fool would ignore the self-evident and empirically observable benefits of the Courts! I have since shed my contemporary principles of non-violence and adopted "the central planners know best!".
Without copying, design and implementation and business practices become bundled, reducing my options in a different way. If I like the kind of industrial design Apple encouraged but not the prevalence of non-commodity components or the aggressive deprecation of ports and interconnects or their policies towards independent developers, I can't get the product I want. I'd rather have commodity hardware that's beige and commodity hardware that's shiny and boutique hardware on the market, rather than have to choose one or two. It'd be one thing if Apple were willing to produce a wide variety of price/perf/design selections, but they're deliberately not.
The only similarity between these options are aesthetics. To argue they're the same product is to say all red coups are the same. No, they just happen to be red.
This is why copying is sad not why copying is bad. One of the coolest things is to look at personal computers built before the IBM PC and then look at computers built after the IBM PC. You can do this if you go a Vintage Computer Festival [1] at some point.
Prior to the PC there were lots of different kinds and styles, and post PC there were 'beige boxes' everywhere. Now true there were still outliers like the Epson QX10 and some others but they were quashed by the larger market.
Mathematics aside, you would've hoped that they could come up with an improvement over the iMac, instead of a copy. Perhaps the port access on the side of the base counts?
Damn right. Plus: way to get the quote wrong. It's about stealing some concept and making something of YOUR OWN with the inspiration, vs copying somebody else's work verbatim. That is, it applies exactly to this situation.
When you thought it was damning of Apple or ironic that people accuse HP, didn't it trouble you that the quote presents copying in a worse light that stealing? I.e didn't it occurred that stealing, as defined in the quote, must describe something much more creative than mere copying?
Sorry if I didn't explain my point with the quote. It wasn't obvious to me when I wrote it that it could have several interpretations.
Artists commonly quote Picasso to refer that when practicing you should copy another artist that you admire. In the process you would develop you own style and in a sense you stole that from the original artist.
My point in this case (and I am not an Apple fan), is that HP didn't differentiate enough in this product. I was being literal on the quote, they should steal the iMac, no just copying it.
