Corporatism run amok

I am beginning to think that corporatism is the root of much evil.

It starts by focusing on profit above all else. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, as I even try to do this, so that I can feed and clothe my family. The problem begins when you do this “above all else”. When corporations were granted rights of persons, without any social or moral obligations, we started down a slippery slope as a society. Now we have too many people making their livings on behalf of a disembodied entity that only wants to make profit.

Add to this amoral mix the notion that ideas can be owned and patented. For instance, software programs, consisting of nothing more than lines of code, are ideas. So now we have an information society, moving into a knowledge society, where some greedy people think that corporations should own ideas and make profits off these ideas for a very long time. The problem is that we cannot grow as a society without the free flow of ideas. Patenting ideas will slow down our collective ability to learn. However, the US Patent Office thinks that it is a good thing to protect ideas, as do other national patent offices.

Take for instance a software company that has bought and borrowed ideas from multiple public sources (processes, code, how-to) and put a brand on it and called it a unique idea. So far, no one has taken the idea to patent the concept of zero and stop further development of any computer programs (see The People Who Owned the Bible, for another analogy). In the case of computer code or ideas, it is impossible to say where the original idea started. In the case of ideas, pretty well everything is based on some prior art.

I have been accused of being an “open source evangelist” for several years. My support of open source as a system for innovation and sharing of ideas stems from my short, but intensive period in the corporate world. Here I saw many cases of greed and arrogance wrapped in the corporate flag. I saw little original thought and many corporate entities had the capability to suck the humanity out of those who climbed the ladder. The open source community is transparent, rewards merit and gives everything back to the community. That cannot be said for any corporation.

Last year I asked, “Is intellectual property an oxymoron?“. Using property laws for ideas only serves the lawyers and the existing power structure. It does not advance individual freedoms nor the public good. Now I am certain that intellectual property laws must be changed if we are to advance as a knowledge society. We cannot have corporate interests defining the direction of our society by patenting ideas that belong to all of us.

This is a big issue; but we citizens, voters and taxpayers have to frame the conversation with our elected officials. Let’s start with one fundamental concept – Ideas cannot be patented.

Update: here is a new site, No Education Patents! that may become a rallying point for the learning community.