Assignment5

Intellectual Property Rights

Question 1

Your uncle owns a sandwhich shop. He asks you to write an inventory program for him. You are glad to help him and do not charge for the program. The program works pretty well, and you discover later that your uncle has given copies to several friends who also operate small food shops. Do you believe you should be paid for copies?

Answer:

Given that situation, I believe I should have been paid for the copies given to other shop owners. Excluding the original program I gave willingly to my uncle, I deserve a payment from those who copied copied my program for my effort, time and skill in making the system. Though it is possible that my uncle assumed that the program is for free, that assumption is only true to him and not to other shop owners. The payment that should have been given to me could be in the form of money but necessarily. It acceptably be in the form of respect and acknowledgment. My uncle and those who copied the program could have at least informed me first and asked permission from me on copying the program and should have not simply invited themselves and copy my program.


Question 2

Read articles by Esther Dyson and Lance Rose from Wired (http://www.wired.com/wired.archive/3.07/dyson/html and http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/rose.if.html). Write a short essay telling which author's view about the future of intellectual property in "digital age" are more convincing to you and why.

Answer:

Reading the article of both Esther Dyson and Lance Rose, the idea and concept of Esther Dyson about the future of intellectual property in digital age convinced me more than the view of Lance Rose did.
I agree with Esther Dyson's view that gradually the contents in the Net will become free of charge and that IT companies will make money not out of the content itself but out of the follow-up products and services to the free product initially released . Other than that, her ideas about the business strategies on the Net holds true to the present state of e-commerce. Even software developers today tend to follow the trend of giving out their softwares and yet they still make some profit out of it. Big profit actually.
Esther Dyson seems to imply also that information security in the Net cost high and even higher in the near future. Complete confidentiality, copyrights and intellectual property will take so much time, money and effort to implement and maintain and on which I agree.