wdb Allow me some political notes. It does not matter whom we give our sympathy and whom not. But. As the German magazine c't mentioned, the case mattered of software patents. Software patents are contra-productive. Software patents should be removed from the world. Software patents have no legitimation of existence.
Larry Smith That's "legitimate existence". They have no "legitimate existence." And I can vouch for that. The only thing I can conceive of that is dumber than software patents is effectively immortal copyrights.
In a fast-moving world there is less and less need for such long periods of "protection". Rather than furthering theory and fact in science and the arts they instead become ways of forbidding such progress - always for good business reasons that have nothing to do with serving customers. Copyright and patent should be good for ten years and not renewable. If you haven't made money off your patented idea or copyrighted work in 10 years then you probably aren't and the material should go into the public domain. If you have made money with it, congratulations, your material should now pass into the public domain anyway.
And most of all, violations of patents or copyrights should be a tort, not a crime. The United States in particular have the dubious distinction of having a larger percentage of its population in prison than even the most repressive regimes in history. We have problems enough with putting minor criminals into toxic prison conditions and having them come out worse and more violent than when they went in, we do NOT need to start tossing non-violent offending p2p downloaders in and having them come back with much more lucrative and violent ambitions learned at the knees of the masters we introduced to them. Non-violent people can only survive prison by becoming violent. Prisons are now manufacturing centers for the most violent and evil people one can imagine.
Thank you for your patience.