Rant on.

 

Yes, you read that right.  I, Andrew Walker, also known as ShadowKatmandu, am running for president in 2016.  I have high hopes of going nowhere with it.  However, the political climate is ripe now–mostly for the 2012 election, I admit–to start my campaign.  For those wondering why I am not aiming for 2012, there are 2 reasons:  No time and I like Obama.  I am a liberal, and if I actually got any votes they would likely be folks who would have otherwise voted for the president, and I don’t want to weaken his chances even in the tiniest amount.

 

I do have a platform I am formulating.  I call it the Freedom platform.  I have ranted about a few of the things I am going to spell out here, so this isn’t necessarily new stuff from me, but maybe I will make a point or two I haven’t made before.

 

1.  Freedom to Innovate:  Intellectual Property reform.  This is a big plank and one I am likely to get heavy corporate opposition to.  Copyright and Patent laws keep ideas under wraps for far too long.  As I see it, a copyright or patent serves two purposes:  Authorship and Profit.  The first should be the primary goal of a copyright or patent.  It’s important to know who first invented something, whether it’s a song, a piece of software, or a piece of technology.  Somebody deserves that recognition, and a copyright or patent is an excellent way to officially demonstrate that acknowledgement.

 

Profit is also important, but it has become the focus of copyright and patent laws.  The “Happy Birthday” song is a great demonstration of this, as it is still under copyright.  There’s a group of investors who make money from it every time it is publicly performed.  This is one reason why restaurants who like to sing birthday songs to their customers don’t use the Happy Birthday song.  In short, a ridiculous amount of profit is made because of ludicrous laws allowing people and corporations to charge royalties for nearly a century after an innovative work is created.

 

I would propose that the time limit on patents and copyrights be shortened to–avert your eyes, corporations–twenty years.  This is more than enough time for a healthy profit to be made from a new idea.  The ability to profit from an idea is important, but not to the extent that it prevents innovation and progress on that idea.  Think of the Wizard of Oz for a moment.  The classic movie was made in 1939 but only vaguely resembled the L. Frank Baum book which inspired it.  For example, the whole “Dorothy was knocked out and dreaming” thing is a movie concept.  In the book, she really did go to Oz; Oz really existed.  The copyright on the movie finally expired, and now there are several productions in progress which promise to be more faithful to the original story.

 

Anyway, this is an important part of my platform.  Copyrights and patents are important, but not so important that they should hamper innovation.  I would make at least one exception to the twenty-year thing, and that’s logo/name trademarks.  This is one concept which continues to hold value and for which expiration can cause damage to company.  Trademarked logos/names don’t prevent innovation; in fact, they may be the only thing in copyright law encouraging it.

 

I had originally planned to go into all of my Freedom ideas today, but I think I will spread my platform out a little bit.  If nothing new comes up worthy of ranting, I’ll go off on my second platform plank next week.

 

Rant off.