Think in terms of public accounting and freedom of the press. Accounting - If investors have a more transparent view of the companies they want to invest in, they can minimise risk and increase investor confidence. Now, if the news is filtered, how does that effect consumer confidence and commerce? I for one will avoid the untrustworthy. freedom of the press - systems are improved through feedback (critical analysis). The free press can provide this feedback if unhindered by political agendas. Additionally, the press can expose corruption. Corruption undermines any type of free trade, Internet commerce included.

Bingo, we have a winner! It is about how we (tax payers / voters / consumers) spend our money! The amount of money spent on patenting anything software related is a huge waste. If this money was spent on free software development copyrights and open standards, the entire human race could move forward in a positive manner. {sarcasm starts here} But hey, why not continue to allow monopolies to waste human resources re-inventing the wheel? It is not like we need to stimulate the economy with competition and new technologies that benefit everyone. {sarcasm ends}

I thought it was reasonable to go with their own software, Isn't that why Microsoft purchased Switzerland in the first place?!

The Lesson here is not to be intelligent, learn, and share. Consoles are for being stupid. You are supposed to rot in front of your proprietary hardware. Never learn from it. Think of all the great things society could fail to accomplish by going to prison for 10 years instead of being innovative. What would be the alternative? We could all just wise up and stop buying proprietary hardware, start purchasing open source hardware and tinker with that. Then we could learn, share and sell ideas for things like the Arduino and Lemote Yeeloong laptop. Naaahhhh, give all his money to lawyers, and make him rot. After all, he did spend his money on a proprietary counsel, and no one should do that unless they are willing to waste money and time.