monopoly

Linux User & Developer: "Every other year there is a fresh commitment that open source solutions will be preferred for government funded projects.

The logic for these decisions is well understood, but is soon forgotten when the monopoly comes calling."

It is said that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. In the case of the copyright industry, they have learned that they can get new monopoly benefits and rent-seeker's benefits every time there is a new technology, if they just complain loudly enough to the legislators.

In recent weeks, we've discussed how drug companies are freaking out because they can't find anything new to patent, and their popular drugs are about to go off patent.

All too often, we hear the copyright lobby talk about theft, about property, about how they are robbed of something when someone makes a copy.

This is, well, factually incorrect. It is a use of words that are carefully chosen to communicate that the copyright monopoly is property, or at the very least comparable to property rights.

TechRights: "Summary: Novell's project that's complementary to Microsoft's illegally-obtained monopoly on the desktop is being advertised in a site whose target audience is Ubuntu GNU/Linux users"

One of the major problems we have with the way copyright law today is developed is how much of it is faith-based -- with supporters insisting that more stringent copyright law is obviously "better," without presenting any evidence to support that.

The history of copyright law is filled with examples of this sort of argumentation in favor of stronger copyrights.

Acrossad: "The Russian government recently made a surprising decision: to create a national operating system based on GNU/Linux.

The motivation for this development is crystal clear: escaping the Microsoft Windows monopoly"

sola's blog: "It is an intriguing question whether smartbooks will widen Linux adoption and erode the often criticised monopoly of Windows on pc-like computing devices."

Against Monopoly: "Does filesharing reduce profits of the music industry? This paper claims so, and that should not be that much of a surprise."

Guardian.co.uk: "Microsoft is right to warn about the danger of a serious monopoly in search because of Google's dominance.

Its own revamped search engine, Bing, is a welcome addition and has some interesting features that should earn it more followers."