"Williams, COM-CINC-PAC, RAM-SET, M-O-S 92, H-TAC, OFSPEC, Pattywhack"... "Pattywhack?" " Give a dog a bone, sir."

Actually the concept is 300 years old and the term was introduced in 1818... thats a bit longer than 25 years. Your focus on the terms 'excessive' and 'extension' is a focus on IP excesses of length, while the article focuses on protecting ideas of a certain type, deeming a certain category (medicine) to be a right, and therefore morally repugnant to allow profit to be made.

But I love the idea.

Of course it reinforces inequality. Not everyone has equally valuable ideas. Not everyone equally pursues to exploit those ideas. Not everyone executes a functional strategy to exploit those ideas. It would be a travesty to force Intel to share their schematics and fabrication designs with me or anyone else, just in the interest of 'equality'. Equality in the eyes of government recognition of rights=good. Equality in that all people have rights to your ideas=not good. That is theft, or servitude... neither of which is acceptable in a free society. The entire concept of 'equality' through abolition of IP seems to be balanced on social justice due to there being only one 'right' solution to a given situation. That is a fallacy. In the event I am prohibited from knowing how an Intel chip works, I am yet free to design my own if I have the ingenuity.

For 33 years the government has been trying to replace the 60 year old air traffic control systems. Three different systems have been tried. The first was a complete write off, meant to be an IBM designed Unix based system, it went overdue by years and billions and was killed off in 1994. http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/The-Ugly-History-of-Tool-Development-at-the-FAA/ The Second named CARTS began in 1996, meant to be a replacement for the aging radar systems the program did replace the older systems in some airports, but again the program was killed for cost overruns and stalled production. http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/tracon-air-traffic-control-modernization-faces-prospect-more-schedule-cost/2013-06-02 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-31/air-traffic-upgrade-over-budget-facing-delays-report.html In 2003 they revived the project with compartmentalized implementations of an integrated system in order to see short term improvements. The first system, a replacement for CARTS renamed STARS) went in in 2012 and it is costing 60% more than expected, with the remaining systems set to be developed and implemented over the next 13 years. The next system to be implemented, ERAM, is already overdue by 4 years, over budget, and according to FAA reports, subject to critical failures and instability. http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2013/06/nextgen-over-budget-delays-certain-report/http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/eram-continues-undergo-critical-failures/2012-10-02 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System

This question seems to want to avoid the ethics of the situation entirely. Would I want to be a security admin that prevented, knowing or unknowing, what has been widely considered a heroic act which revealed the scale and depth of intrusion and recording of guiltless individuals' activities? Even removing the massive scale of this issue and Snowden himself... Would I want to build a security system to protect a person or corporation which hides any number of illegal activities a company can do? The concept itself shows a lack of ethical fortitude. The question should be "Do you now feel compelled to create backdoors and loopholes in your work by which the truth can be discovered and revealed to the public about how your employer breaks the law and hurts people?" Besides. the fact that the NSA, a branch of the US spying agencies, in 2013 doesnt understand about information protection what my local community college understood in 1996 (disabling USB access) is both ridiculous and hilarious.

What alternative platform could compete in a market where for the last x years the software has been completely free?