[p2p-research] CAD files at The PIrate Bay? (Follow up)

[Kevin Carson]

On 10/27/09, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

>  It may seem dogmatic, but I think that usually for the problems we are
>  focused on, patents and traditional captial (with it's traditional
>  expectations of very rapid money ROI) tend to be non-appropriate for
>  localized economies/commons based business models.
>
>  Removing patent gives rapid ROI on many forms of wealth, including
>  money. A group of people on local scales may not invest in technology
>  development solely as a capital venture. Often, it is an investment to
>  gain the capacities the technology affords (food, energy, physical
>  object and rapid prototype produciton). Patents block the flow on this
>  scale, and the costs associated are a barrier to entry. The business
>  model on this scale is at the point of consumption (but one person may
>  be producer, processor, distributor, and consumer. This is not a role
>  based economy, it's an activity based economy)

Good points.

It also just occurs to me that many of the pro-patent arguments based
on R&D cost assume a particular model of R&D.  Modular design, with
stigmergic efforts to create modules for a common open-source
platform, would greatly lower R&D cost per product: spreading out the
R&D for a platform and for modules by making the basic designs
reusable over a wide range of different configurations.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy

http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html