How Extending Patent Protection For Antibiotics Creates Perverse Incentives To Render Them Useless

We take antibiotics and their ability to kill practically all bacteria for granted. But scientists are increasingly warning that we may be about to leave what might come to be seen as a golden age for anti-bacterial drugs, and enter a post-antibiotic era. As the World Health Organization’s Director-General said, quoted in an article on the Citizen Vox site: 

On Techdirt.

Wolfram Alpha Does Not Understand Copyright

Remember Wolfram Alpha? That super-duper search engine - sorry, "computational knowledge engine" - that was going to change the way we looked for and found information, and also cure the common cold (OK, I made that last one up)? Seems to have disappeared without trace, no? I'm not surprised, if it misunderstands copyright as badly as this post suggests:

Try cutting and pasting from the results page. You can't, and with good reason. According to Wolfram Alpha's terms of use, its knowledge engine is "an authoritative source of information," because "in many cases the data you are shown never existed before in exactly that way until you asked for it." Therefore, "failure to properly attribute results from Wolfram Alpha is not only a violation of [its license terms], but may also constitute academic plagiarism or a violation of copyright law."

Copyright, as Wolfram seems not to understand, is a bargain between creators and their public. As an *incentive* to create, the former are given a time-limited monopoly by governments. Note that it is *not* a reward for having created: it is an incentive to create again.

Now consider Wolfram Alpha. This is essentially a computational process - remember, it's a "computational knowledge engine". So, it is simply a bunch of algorithms acting on data. Algorithms don't need incentives to create: outputting is what they do if they're useful. So copyright is completely inappropriate, just as it would be for the output of any other program processing information on its own (obviously, if that information is words fed in by a human, copyright would exist in those words because they were created by someone).

Wolfram's ridiculous claim to copyright in its results does have the virtue of providing a nice illustration of the real limits of this intellectual monopoly. For the rest, it might try finding out a bit more about copyright so that it can amend its licence accordingly - I suggest using a good search engine like Google.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca.

No FT, No Idea

The FT seems not to understand copyright:

Brussels is expected to push ahead next week with reforms that would allow European singers and musicians to enjoy proceeds from their work for many more years.

Proposals to extend copyright protection for performing artists from 50 to 95 years were first outlined by internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy in February and could be approved by the European Commission at Wednesday’s meeting.

If so, Europe would move into line with the US, and musicians – from ageing rock stars to session players – could enjoy a boost to their pensions.

Copyright is supposed to provide an *incentive* to create, not a *reward* for having created. Increasing the term of copyright protection will not suddenly make ageing rockers more creative. Moreover, the prospect of an extra 45 years' protection is highly unlikely to make young rockers rush out and create more. So this is a pure loss for the public domain. Thanks for nothing, Charlie.