The alternative is that you come up with something, a rich guy sees or hears what it is, the rich guy screws you over because he doesn't need the loan to patent the thing.

As opposed to the current systen where the rich guy has a thicket of patents ready to block you from doing anything useful. Patents are a weapon that anybody can use, rich guys have more of them, and patents don't change the balance of power at all, just escalate the damage.

The superficial thinking of patent proponents is just incredible. Not to mention the endless spamming of naive view points to drown out much more sophisticated alternative points of view. The PP post has been spammed on slashdot for years. Tto this day patent proponents still pretend the sophisticated view points that many slashdotters have from years of discussing this topic don't exist.

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Has the Least Patentable Unit reached zero yet?

Just because theft leads you to enjoy a product later on doesn't mean your still not stealing.

Fanatics like you who can't cope with even the simplest discussion about what ownership is and is not, and thus what theft is and is not, are either barefaced liars or delusional. Which are you?

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Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.

but why such the hate lately?

There appears to be an astroturf campaign going on. Multiple hysterical slashdot story submissions and numerous idiotically "fake angry" posts suggest somebody is trying to spam mud at Canonical hoping some of it will stick.

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There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.

That's not really a justification.

It is actually. Those kids are harming no one and they are better off. The world is a better place. Really.

Uptight content "owners" need to get their head around that fact. The amount of broken law making being done in the name of "controlling" those harmless kids is a travesty of the democratic process.

Content "owners" need to understand what "ownership" is; simply the right given to them by we the people to control most, though not all, uses of some object or entity.

e.g. Owning some real estate allows you, with planning permission, build a house on it and restrict access to others but, depending on the country or area, doesn't give you the right to build a shop in a residential zone or dig a big hole endangering neighboring structures. These seem reasonable restrictions on this particular style of physical object.

The concept of "ownership" maps fairly well to the physical restriction that only one person can use a physical object at a time but when it comes to non-physical entities there is very little that's natural about "ownership." "Ownership" of non-physical entities is a very messy concept with no clear definition or boundaries. Vendors are able to "sell" copies of bits and give only very restricted access to those bits while still calling it a sale. First sale doctrine and free speech just some of the many traditional rights that vendors are trampling all over with DRM and broken law at the moment.

Personally, I'd like to see "intellectual property" law that recognizes that artificial scarcity is an artificial, harmful construct that should be structured and kept to the bare minimum necessary to encourage people to create. Copyright terms should be drastically reduced (e.g. 7 years) and not apply when something is DRM'ed. There should be many exceptions for socially useful activities (e.g. education, third world, the poor, reverse engineering for compatibility). Contravention of such laws should be a misdemeanor only. Patents should be very restricted and require significant proof that it took a lot of time and effort to research, not develop, something. etc.

Artificial scarcity blocks billions of peoples' free speech and drastically limits the spread and use of ideas so that a very small number can have an increased profit. That's not right.

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Copyright rewards distributors (copiers) far more than creators.

Interesting how I've seen this news on so many sites, and they all report it with overwhelmingly positive headlines

Many of those websites are not exactly unbiased.

That's been a problem with the entire "intellectual property" discussion; main stream media with extreme vested interests framing the debate (e.g. Don't think of an elephant). Not to mention compromising democracy in general for their own profit.

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Like software, "intellectual property" law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.

Hi MR FOSSie! ...

And the rest of your post goes downhill from there. You haven't responded substantively to anything I've said; just content free emotionally loaded words trying to distract the reader. You're not an honest broker. Ever thought of getting a real job and contributing to the community rather than being a parasite? You might earn less money but you'll be richer in the things that matter.

I didn't make those numbers up friend

I'm your friend? That's just sad.

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Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.

with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand

Actually the zealot here is you who can't cope with alternate points of view. Time for you to grow up I think.

Linux supporters are well aware of the numbers and desktop challenges. The fact that you like to pretend things like android don't exist, that embedded linux is not everywhere, that preinstalls and the economic network effect are not the main reasons Windows is common, that an Ubuntu install disk doesn't work as well as a Windows install disk if the user hasn't been FUD'ed, that for naive users the linux GUI is as easy/difficult to use as the windows GUI and that server sales numbers equate with all server numbers etc. shows you are a dishonest broker worse than the people you are attempting to accuse.

M$ marketing is attempting to keep a bandwagon effect going by claiming that windows is the be all and all and that people will be using it until the end of time with no reason to consider alternatives. Quite simply, that's bullshit.

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Paid marketers are the worst zealots.