Re:Overreactions -- Business as usual (Score 2)

2) Patents - most especially software patents - have nothing to do with the free market; they are artifical inventions of the state.

On the other hand, patents, copywrights, and the like provide a service by preserving the ideas and technology behind the inventions and writings. This is actually, AFAIK, one of the reasons these things were developed, so that inventions, books, etc would not be lost forever when they stopped being sold, or something weird happened.

Of course, there are a lot of people who make a living by developing new things, and I think they have a right to profit from the sale of those things.

I think that in our zeal for free software, we easily forget that legal protections of IP do serve a purpose.

Of course, I think this whole GIF thing is total BS, but that is, as you say, because of the "bait and switch," not because they are trying to charge for their patent.