Framing – Benkler

Benkler talks about inventors and /or companies innovating less when they get more protection because protection “increase the costs that current innovators have to pay on existing knowledge more than it increases their ability to appropriate the value of their own contributions.” I understand this to a point but isnt this why patents expire? Drug companies want to make money so they come up with some drug to make money and get a patent. Then when the patent expires other drug companies make the same thing and sell it for less. Isn’t it just a circle? The original drug company can use the profits they made from holding the original patent to come up with a new drug and make more money. Is this really an issue of less innovation as a whole or just a delay in new innovations?

Before this statement he said that “any new information good or innovation builds on existing information, then strengthening intellectual property rights increases the prices that those who invest in producing information today must pay to those who did so yesterday, in addition to increasing the rewards an information producer can get tomorrow.” It seems like as cost goes up so does innovation? Is this the way we shoud be innovating or is there another theory that would be cheaper and more productive?

Benkler says that daily newspapers are not copyright-dependent although they are a market-based information production industry. If companies are making less than 3.5% of profits (on the high side) from syndication of people’s work then why give people contracts where they want to won everything? Wouldnt it be a better economic model to let the content producers benefit from money that could be made from syndication making them happier employees and allowing information to be spread through alternative means?

Tags: framing