Keith Moore wrote: > Let us dedicate ourselves to the worldwide abolishment of the > provisions in intellectual property laws - copyrights, patents, and > trademarks - which stifle the freedom of expression and the development > of a gloabl marketplace of ideas, to reinforce the upward spiral of > real value (not to be confused with money) that the citizens of the > world can create with the Internet's help. The solution to the IPR problem is to make it so that everybody can have and generate as much of their own IPR as they wish, rather than to take from those that already have it. In an information economy, information is currency. The benefit of an information capitalism is that everybody who wants to participate can generate their own wealth. The direction you are heading is information communism, where nobody has the ability to get beyond zero wealth. This is not a defense of extensions. I also feel that Disney et al should have been investing in new assets rather than working to lockup old assets. Rather, this is the counter-point to your specific statement above. Having billions of pieces of IPR is better than having none. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/