Quote from: maxcpow on May 11, 2017, 09:52:35 AM

IP seems necessary, but for example I don't think Mickey Mouse should be IP forever.

This IP needs a reasonable use period but not one that makes it unusable in the Public Domain parody works can get around that but the rule should be for active usage to a reasonable period of time.
Mickey Mouse being an IP forever or songs from mainstream artists from 20 years ago or 1997 like the first Britney Spears songs etc should be fair game for public use.

As it is corporations have an incentive to stifle creativity for profit so on practice against IP as it is used currently but not in principle.

As an example when it is applied to medicine .... our current system is broken when it comes to alternative medicine.
If a new drug must be certified every-time using our current system it would severely limit the real world applications of phage therapy and customized treatments which can save peoples lives.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/how-doctors-could-use-viruses-to-kill-drug-resistant-bacteria-1.3412045

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The World Health Organization estimates that antimicrobial resistance will kill at least 50 million people per year by 2050. Researchers hope Pattersons remarkable recovery story could spark renewed interest for mainstream medicine to explore phage therapy as a treatment against drug-resistant bacteria.

Were going to need an additional alternative method of treating deadly bacteria, and so I see phage therapy as a front-runner for that alternate medicine, said Jon Dennis, a microbiologist with the University of Alberta.

Dennis said Pattersons case was extraordinary because it was the first time in North America that modern science paid attention to phage therapy as a viable treatment.

There has been difficulty getting funding to do basic phage therapy research. The problem lies in that a lot of the phage therapy data that we have is historical, its anecdotal and it hasnt been performed in the modern era, he said.

But phage therapy is hardly a one-size-fits-all solution. Doctors need to create a unique combination of different types of bacteriophage for a patients particular case.

Theyre not simple to use, Schooley said. They seem to be relatively safe to give, but theyre going to be difficult to develop from both the research perspective, and also from the regulatory perspective, because each patients phage cocktail is a different cocktail.

Despite the challenges, doctors are optimistic that the century-old method could be one way to fight the growing global threat of antibiotic resistance.