Bradley M. Kuhn's essay compares complex financial instruments, real estate, poker playing and proprietary licensing and their pros and cons to the society.
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lozz
13 years 46 weeks 5 days 8 hours ago
How to get rich
I've sometimes thought that if I could talk the dysfunctional US Patent Office into granting me an IP copyright over the usage of 1's and 0's for the purpose of creating algorithms, then I could become quite fabulously wealthy.
Naturally, I'd need to force all computer users to install digital counters to record every time they used one of my 1's or 0's, for billing purposes. This would slow their computers down to a crawl, but what the heck! The Ballmers, Gates, Jobs and Ellisons of this world get away with pulling similar capers, all the time.
I'd need huge teams of lawyers and investigators doing spot checks on everyone's computers to make sure no pirates were stealing my precious 1's and 0's, but I'd be so stinking rich that it would be just chickenfeed to pay them all.
Then I could form my own foundation and advise the UN on how to flog GM wheat to the starving Africans. A true benefactor to all humanity.