Well yes and no, patent protects innovation because you have a monopoly on your idea.
While I agree with most of what you have said, I have to make a pedantic statement about a common mistake that you have made that infuriates me - you can not patent an idea! You may patent an implementation of an idea, otherwise known as an invention, but you are not supposed to be able to patent the underlying idea.
You're never forced to patent your idea tho (see Coca-Cola, never patented, receipt never given).
This is true, although you've used a bad example since recipes are not eligible to be patented. But otherwise, you are correct - unpatented ideas can be protected as trade secrets.
The biggest issue I have with Verizon Fios is the TV service. All of the video channels are so compressed that you inevitably get pixelation and tearing
What are you comparing this to? The television signal on FIOS is superior to almost every other cable company since FIOS is one of the only services that sends the original stream and not a recompressed video. If you think the FIOS video signal is bad, you should try Comcast or, even worse, one of the satellite networks.
This is particularly infuriating when it happens during playback for video on demand shows that you are paying extra for.
That is different from the television service and you're right in that there is no excuse for this on a fiber network where the files are hosted by the ISP.
But the 75/35 is pretty flash.
As long as you're not using it for Netflix or YouTube, but who does that?
it doesn't mean that people shouldn't have a right to be forgotten in the public eye as far as possible.
Who are you to determine what the public has a right to focus their attention on?
You may personally believe free speech is an absolute right (it's not, try committing libel, or professing in public repeatedly that you want to blow up the president or something) that overrides all other rights but it's just not that simple.
Nobody is arguing that free speech is an absolute right, but libel and threats are already covered by different, more reasonable laws.
What Google is receiving requests for is the fact that they're in breach of data protection law, and like every other company on earth, have an obligation to adhere to the law.
I'm not arguing that Google should be given a free pass to violate this law. I'm arguing that the law is foolish and shouldn't even be in place. If you have a problem with the data being broadcasted about you, take it up with the people doing the broadcasting, not a third-party that simply indexes whatever information is publicly available.
By your logic Microsoft never had a monopoly with Internet Explorer because Netscape existed. Monopolies are not determined by amount of competition, but by amount of marketshare held
As swillden said, Microsoft did not have a monopoly in the browser space. They were convicted of using their monopoly of desktop operating systems to exert undue influence in the browser market. Google did not use an existing monopoly to gain marketshare in the search engine, so your analogy is bogus.
So what you're saying then is that it's okay to manipulate results if you don't like the law? Interesting.
They are following the law, just in an exaggerated form to protest the burden this is placing on them.
It's censorship in the exact same way that pulling your curtains closed when you get undressed is censorship.
If that was the case, then I would fully support the law, but it is nothing like that. Google is being forced to take information that is already publicly available out of their search results. This does not work - the cat is already out of the bag and the law makes it Google's problem to try to put the cat back in the bag.
Tell that to every company that's been fined for breaches of data protection law. I'm sure despite being down thousands they'll be happy to here that what they did was impossible to enforce.
When I said it was impossible to enforce, I didn't mean that some companies wouldn't be fined. What I was saying is that there will always be services that fly under the radar that will provide that information. People will inevitably gravitate toward those sources which will eventually garner enough attention to have this law enforced on those new services. When that happens, another small company will take their place and the process repeats. The point is that the information is public and there is a demand for the "forgotten" data, so there will always be someone to provide that service even if it doesn't comply with the law. That's the way the internet works, hence the analogy to piracy on P2P services.
Recent investments will yield a slight profit.