I'm not trying to say they're interchangeable, but I am saying that the race made those things possible. The competition is what drove those technologies, not the openness of government works.
To put it another way, are you arguing that, say, we wouldn't have as much image processing ability had the Hubble processes been patented? I'm not sure that's true.
I think it's a lot less certain. I don't know that you can say that the Hubble processes, in particular, weren't driven by the openness of government works. I mean, we can trace these things back infinitely - the space race never would've happened if Hitler didn't need rockets to hit England with, and that never would've happened if... and on and on. I'm saying that this particular tech, the image processing used in breast cancer screening, was uniquely enabled by the lack of patent protection. It might've come about anyway (although likely later, at a higher cost overall due to the need to license or litigate), but the patents add that "might," that element of uncertainty. They're supposed to dispel that. This could be a problem.
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Date: 2/4/12 16:18 (UTC)To put it another way, are you arguing that, say, we wouldn't have as much image processing ability had the Hubble processes been patented? I'm not sure that's true.
I think it's a lot less certain. I don't know that you can say that the Hubble processes, in particular, weren't driven by the openness of government works. I mean, we can trace these things back infinitely - the space race never would've happened if Hitler didn't need rockets to hit England with, and that never would've happened if... and on and on. I'm saying that this particular tech, the image processing used in breast cancer screening, was uniquely enabled by the lack of patent protection. It might've come about anyway (although likely later, at a higher cost overall due to the need to license or litigate), but the patents add that "might," that element of uncertainty. They're supposed to dispel that. This could be a problem.