I think one of the takeaways from the survey may be that formal intellectual property protection isn't always valuable to most businesses, even though intangible things like reputation may be very valuable.

You do realise that trademark protection exists with or without registration, right? Registration confers additional rights to your trademark, but even without registration, other businesses are not permitted to imitate you.

Therefore, even without taking the step of registration, there is still formal intellectual property protection, which the GP is correct in saying that businesses that trade on their reputation rely on. If a business wasn't able to have exclusivity over the name tied to their reputation, such a reputation would be very difficult to foster in the first place. It's easy to take things like the concept of a business's reputation for granted when we are so used to the idea of a trademark.

Grades are about quality control, if that's what you mean. Some students simply don't know the material that we teach them, and it would be unfair, stupid, and reckless to testify otherwise.

(I know it's not what you mean, but you're clearly an idiot, so I don't really care.)

If you can not get that out of a meeting, fire the participants.

I think my boss would be angry if I fired him. :-(

sI4shd0rk's response cuts through the BS but you've chosen to ignore it

I chose to ignore it, because it's a bad point, made without any substantiation. I don't see why a person making a good point, making sure to carefully justify what they're saying, needs to answer to every person who asserts nonsense without evidence (hint: they don't).

So I can infer that you're more interested in semantic arguments than arguing the central point.

You may infer whatever you like, but look at this from my perspective: I have a an anonymous coward, responding multiple times to my various posts, trying to argue against me primarily by dishonest means which are (lamentably) traditionally quite effective. You've nitpicked at my argument, from a couple of angles, missing the point each time, choosing to take an ultimately irrelevant part of my comments, make it look wrong, and hope that people will also miss the central point, or believe it to be wrong by association. You've also, in I think all of your replies, tried to personally insult me, and tried to paint me as someone who is not worth replying to (but you charitably do anyway, so that others don't have to). Maybe it's deliberate, or maybe it's just for yourself, to ease your own insecurity of failing to address the point, over and over again. Either way, you and I both know that it works, and I, at least, know that it's a reprehensible tactic to take in a debate. That's why I'm replying to you. (That's just about all the summary that a "curious third party" needs for our particular debate.)

Having said that, you've now actually decided to reply to the actual point. Good work. It's about time.

Entitlement isn't just "if the law says you get it, then you're entitled to it". There is a human rights aspect to entitlement too - you can be entitled to something without it being legally protected, like the right to share information. You can be legally granted things to which other people are entitled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entitlement

I love how you link to a wikipedia page that spends the first couple of paragraphs contradicting you:

"An entitlement is a guarantee of access to something, such as to Social Security, Medicare or welfare benefits, based on established rights or by legislation."

You claim that entitlement cannot be decided purely on what's law. I'm happy enough to roll with that assumption. I would like to counter by asserting that, if the law guarantees you something, that no-one else is entitled to in any other sense, then you have entitlement to it. Would you at least agree with that? (It's difficult to make arguments for this assertion, because since we're not taking "entitlement" to mean its well-defined legal meaning, there's not much I can do other than simply make sure we're referring to the same concept.) Well, if this is indeed the case, then in order to claim that, in spite of the law saying completely the opposite, artists have no entitlement to copyright, you would need to find someone else who is entitled to copying artistic works more than the artist. So, the burden of proof currently rests on you (or sl4shd0rk). I don't believe such a person exists. Prove me wrong.

Appropriately-named TheVelvetFlamebait

Thank you?

If you had spent as much time trying to understand his point as you did "fixing" it, you'd realize that he was referring to copyright and patents.

I thought of that, but people don't have entitlement to patents. They have to be vetted and approved by government bodies, and meet various criteria. It seemed more likely he was referring to copyrights, given that this was what the thread was about.

Besides, it doesn't affect the fundamental point here: if the law says you get it, then you're entitled to it. Perhaps you ought to try countering my point, or simply concede I have one and be done.

The US didn't join the Berne convention until 1988. The EU changed the duration in 1993.

In the US, there have been copyrights since colonial times. The point is, this is not a concept we are all just now getting used to. Practically every person in the west knows that, with a creative work, comes a copyright. Why shouldn't artists feel entitled to one?

With "all of us" I will have to assume that you are younger than 20 years old, or at most 25 with a view of the world that is limited to the US.

Well fuck, then I have no idea where I've lived my entire life! :-)

Um, they are. It's the law, and it has been since before all of us were born. Our government promises a government-enforced monopoly over artistic works (FTFY) to anyone who comes up with them. Until that law is changed, then they bloody well are entitled to a government-enforced monopoly!

Ugh. Can you not just call Microsoft, Facebook, and Youtube by their names? Isn't the cleverly parodying brand names in order to make a clever and substantial point against them gimmick wearing a little thin now?

Or are you just another Slashbot drone, who just wants Linsux to be used everywhere, who would love to see Blandroid dominant, and every GPU produced by NShittier? :-)

That's a source of data, not information.

Well, we now use "Luddite" more generally to refer to a person who opposes various, to use a politically neutral term, "updates" to our lifestyle. A Luddite by no means has to oppose everything modern (they might let the odd medical breakthrough off the hook), just enough so that people see them as being at odds with current trends.

"Luddite", as a word, has evolved beyond its original meaning, in much the same way we now use the word "irony" to mean something other than the rhetorical device of pretending to be ignorant in order to illicit an explanation from your opponent that proves them wrong. I think the term fits here.

"Its alabaster wall is a prison in which the inmates scrawl their wishes and dreams, announce their likes and disklikes, and pass the time with games and witty reparte while a recumbent warden looks on intently."

It's called a "timeline" now. Get it right.

"copyrights hinder innovation by game designers seeking to build upon such games, and shortening copyright would breathe new life into games who have long since passed into obsolescence."

It's a good argument, but a crappy example. Nintendo's not a great company to point to here, because they tend to release and re-release anything popular they've made. Mario Bros, I know, is available on the Wii and Wii U at least via the Wii shop (maybe also on the Wii U's virtual console). It's also been re-released in several incarnations before that. It's still pretty popular for a game of its age.

Why not point to the forgotten gems? I just heard that there was to be a remake of Day of the Tentacle, that was canned. I wasn't even aware such a thing was in the works until it was gone. :-(

I'm hoping you're not making an entirely serious point here. Digital storage has many advantages, including copies of perfect fidelity, ease of duplication and transfer that is completely unbeatable, as well as a terrifically convenient method of searching and storing.

I have to say, I do get a little fed up with pedestal upon which we place books. Don't get me wrong: it's a worthwhile pastime, but people develop such elitists attitudes towards reading. People judge others, and judge themselves, by the quality and quantity of their reading material. They lament how people are reading less, and how this will destroy intelligence in the average person. If you don't read, or worse, don't enjoy reading, then it means that there's something wrong. Your imagination is underdeveloped or malformed; a product of all the worst bits of society.

The fact is, while reading is indeed an intellectual activity, it's an intellectual activity that appeals to people to varying degrees. Some people simply do not find intellectual nourishment from books. Now, perhaps it's because they are stunted in their intellect or imagination, but often, there are other ways they stimulate their brain. Indeed, social situations can be very mentally stimulating, requiring complex thought processes to navigate successfully. I myself have found that mathematics holds far greater mental stimulation than reading (and I used to read all the time). Juggling apparently is a very good way to improve your brain, and caters for the more kinaesthetic learners.

I'm glad you enjoy books Neil, but please don't make the mistake of thinking they're for everyone.

... did anyone else just nerdgasm? I mean, I know, given the way we interface with any electronics these days, it's going to be difficult to find applications for this stuff, at least initially. But, with technology like this, I doubt it will us long to find some use for it so that, in 20 years, we'll wonder how we did without it.

Kudos to the university of Bristol for developing such an exciting and original idea.