He must be hoping no one will actually read it. (Score 1)

This is a rebuttal to "Opening Doors and Smashing Windows: Alternative Measures for Funding Software Development", a white paper by Dean Baker, dates October 2005, and published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with which I have deep fundamental disagreement. - - - You know, it's been a long time since I took an economics class. But I did take a few, and got a degree in economics. The author of this piece has, it appears to me, never taken one. Or, if he did, he may have decided that the poli-sci classes were more fun. Perhaps he thought Marx and Lenin were Groucho and John, not Karl and Vladimir. He has a PhD in Economics, so I can only assume his article is intentionally disinformative. I have a LOT of problems with this ... even the first few pages. First of all, he proposes that the government create a "Software Development Corps" to create new software, and release that software to the public domain. Imagine the DMV workers reassigned to coding in Java, with all the drive and motivation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the incentive to win customers of the U.S. National Archives. That is not the worst part of his proposal: He suggest the government stop protecting patent and copyright owners from infringements of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) 'because it is inefficient' for distribution of the value of the goods. Substitute "Personal Property Rights" (PPRs) for IPRs in his argument and see how it feels. Think of apartment buildings instead of software products. He believes the owners of IPRs have a monopoly, and that the monopoly only makes sense if it "provides incentive to innovate". Where do I begin? They don't have a monopoly, any more than the owner of the film "Top Gun" has a monopoly on any movie about flying. Exactly the opposite is true: for example, the existence of the copyright on the successful film "Top Gun" provides the incentive for other movies about flying / personal conflict / close relationships, such as "The Aviator", "FireFox" etc. Arrrgggg... [O.K. ... analogy #2: the existence of an apartment building as a successful, commercial, private property enterprise gives an incentive for someone else to build an apartment building with similar or different features that are attractive to renters.] Monopolies, by nature, have no incentive to innovate. A good example of a bad monopoly is the garbage collection monopoly of most municipalities. The contracting firm pays fees to the municipality, for which it receives a monopoly, and the right to collect fees (and garbage) from residents under the control of the municipality. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in unincorporated areas of a county have the unique experience of 'competition' and 'choice' for garbage collection services. One container once a week for $50/quarter? how about two container twice a week for $75/quarter? how about one container every two weeks for $25/quarter? Is there an incentive for me to reduce the packaging waste I produce each week if i can save money? Hmmmmm. But, I digress. Cable television is a good example of a municipal monopoly, but not a perfect one. Not everyone in the municipality is required to have cable television, and there are alternatives providing competitive choices (antenna or dish). The reason the cable franchise was granted was to encourage the cable provider to build the infrastructure necessary to deliver cable television to each home. The author misses the entire point of the Open Software movement, that there is NOT a need for government intervention and sponsorship of software developers. There are already free and open software that will already do what the author suggests. The government [or industry, or individuals] could certainly discover a desired feature missing from software, and commission the programmers to create that feature. If the software was IPR protected, the IPR owner could decide whether or not to do the work; if the software was Open Software, a variety of programming firms or individuals could compete for the work, and the government or industry or individuals could release the work as open source software. In most cases, that release would be required under the open software licenses. The author's analysis showing that IPRs have deadweight efficiency loss and comparing that to the benefit of tariff-less trade ("Free Trade") competition is equally ignorant of the concept of a commercial incentive to develop and support changes in software and the false protectionism (shifting burden to captive consumers) that government tariffs have. The author's clumsy analogy of a shirt, manufactured overseas to sell in the U.S. at a price of $20, and the imposition of a $2 tariff, omits the reason for the tariff: a domestic manufacturer who cannot make a shirt that can sell for less than $22. The purpose, valid or not, is to level the playing field so that the domestic manufacturer can sell her shirt for $22 and the importer must sell her shirt for $22 and the consumer has a choice, but also a burden of $2. The author's assertion that "certain types of software are proprietary" is just false. There are certain implementations of software such as IBM's DB2, Oracle's 9i database both compete against free software MySQL for data base business. Microsoft Office is proprietary, and it competes against a free OpenOffice. The types are not proprietary, but the instances are. Take, for a further example, the authors suggestion that the market value of software is near zero misunderstand the concept of value. The fact that you can make copies of a movie for nearly zero cost, using peer to peer pirating software does not mean that the movie is worth zero dollars. If it were legal to make copies of IPR protected movies or software, and share them freely, there would be little incentive for movie producers to make $100M production cost movies, or $10M production cost software. Surely, "Titanic" could have been produced with a hand held VCR, a rowboat and a bathtub, but would it be the same? Likewise, some very capable, SUPPORTED software is created by industrial giants because they have Intellectual Property Rights and can prevent, with the power of governments, theft of their work. In China today, the government does not enforce Intellectual Property Rights, and you see a wonderful environment for copying the good work of others, but an astounding lack of 'invention'. The engine of invention is the expectation of property rights over those inventions. The author must be hoping no one will read the article. I notice that it does not appear to be copyrighted, so I am considering changing the name of the author on the cover and correcting the mistakes, misunderstandings, incomplete explanations and misleading statements and re-releasing it. Oh, wait ... perhaps that was his point.