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Replying To:
Means and Ends[ Parent ] (none / 0) (#26)
by Anonymous User on Fri Apr 15, 2005 at 06:23:26 PM PDT

Sorry, but your mind-reading skills are not very well developed. I was quite conscious of the relationship between means and ends as I wrote the posting. You can challenge whether or not IPRs are "necessary" for optimal promotion of the public good (simple inspection of the success of various systems suggest that they are), and you can debate whether or not they are "evil" (to the degree that Burke, Jefferson, and Madison were merely engaging in the rhetorical fashions of the day, they can be excused; to the degree they thought that IPRs are actually evil, well, they were wrong. No shame in that; even the great ones get it wrong sometimes. Paraphrasing Jefferson, "error of opinion can be tolerated where reason is left free to comabat it.").

The real (i.e. practical) point of debate is to identify the length(s) of exclusivity best able to optimize the public good (i.e. the end) without jeapordizing the pre-requisite (i.e. necessary) means of IPR. I realize that this is perhaps not the most commonly articulated argument in certain circles. That doesn't make it wrong, and it doesn't mean that I am ignorant of my own logic.

PS. I'm not a regular reader of this site (just passing through), so I'm not sure if I'll remember to take a look for any responses or if I'll post again.



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