CompuServe Messages

Hmmm. The argument goes, the reason a company "should" be able to prevent others fromusing technology they developed is because they paid for the development of the format, in one form or another in order to secure a specific advantage for the company. We're not talking about the 10$ or 20$ you might have provided them (indirectly by purchasing the product) but many, many thousands – or more – of dollars worth of research. When the technology is then freely available to another company as you suggest, they get the benefit of that research for nothing, that is, some customers are likely to provide them with a 10$ or so income based on that additional functionality which the *original* company developed and paid for; yet that original company does not benefit except in an extremely peripheral way (name recogfnition if they're lucky, though usully not, and some amount of additional sales as the technology reaches more users and they realize the original company "also" supports the format in question). What I think many people have yet to realize here is that most research done by commercial enterprises is done with the goal of eventually benefiting the company in a substantial manner; substantial enough to repay the investment of the research itself and also, hopefully, make some amount of profit. When the playing field is such that entity A pays the price and does the research, and then has to split the benefits with company B, C, D… etc, the odds of repayment of the research go down significantly, unless the product is major, major successful. It goes without saying (well, it should, anyway) that most products are not aall that successful, regardless of the intrinsic worth of the product – markets are fickle as all get out and will often ignore the "better" alternative despite the damage it does them. In fact, some companies depend on the basic myopia of the consumer in this fashion… otherwise, they wouldn't be able to compete. Unless the prospect of companies not embarking on a project unless they are _certain_ of a major market hit to the extent that they would be certain to receive repayment as they would with exclusive rights to "the development" is encouraging to you, you might well think some more about these issues. I don't think you can draw a line and say "this side, data… this side not data" and derive an arbitrary conclusion about whether you should, or should not, have all the "rights" to every possible manipulation, storage format or other verb with regard to that data. It's not a reasonable conclusion and smacks of non enlightened self interest, to me.