iOS app Android app More  David K. Levine  David K. Levine
Posted: September 15, 2009 09:26 AM  Save the Whales! Abolish
Patents!  What's Your Reaction:  Want to lower the cost of
health care? To conquer breast cancer? To make green technology
work? To revolutionize entertainment? Concerned about free
speech? Want to reduce income inequality? To break the
stranglehold of the multinationals over political power? To
unleash a wave of innovation that will make the establishment of
the Internet look like a calm summer day? A Utopian pipe dream,
obviously. Yet all it takes is a majority vote in both houses of
Congress and the signature of the President to abolish the last
impediments to creativity left over from the medieval period:
patents and copyrights. Sound absurd? Read on.  Abolishing so-
called intellectual "property" (IP) won't solve all social ills
-- and it certainly won't save the whales. But it would be a big
step in the right direction for solving a range of problems from
the high cost of health care,