Boing Boing: Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies
Ok, using Commies was a bad term. But have you ever noticed how people who support creative commons and the lack of all patent and IP rights tend to be the people who do not own any of those rights? The same IP and patent rights that protect "Ashlee Simpson's" "new" "song" from being shared on Kazaa also protect the memory model in the Linux kernel from being modified and used in Cisco's new router without being rereleased. The real problem with patents, I believe, is that EVERYONE is not applying for them. Because you do not have equal behavior on both sides of the market (a kernel hacker who designs a new i/o driver model for Linux does not patent it; an Apple engineer who does the same work a short time later (without seeing the original work) does patent it), you get inequity and half the people say "Bad other side, you're cheating!" It's like you had people playing basketball only with one hand, and the other team decides to use both hands. It's not their fault for following the rules!
As far as abolishing all software patents and IP laws, that seems extreme. Let's face it, like it or not, corporations and individuals DO invest a lot of money because they can make it back on the other side. Whether or not 17 years is the right number, or the cost of getting a patent is set correctly, or the dynamics of the system are appropriate (especially around prior art and extension of patents into new areas based on application time) are all up for discussion. But, the right behavior now is to employ patent auditors who can tell what is obvious or not and for people out there to attempt to patent everything and let the market figure it out.