Pirates Of Carrebian- Dead Man's Dogma.

I can imagine a day, not too distant in the future, when we will say that IPR was a good idea which died before it took roots. Yeah. I am pretty sure about the demise of IPR in its current form.

IPR was institutionalised in the 1995 Doha agreement, when the countries agreed for a uniform regime of Product Patent. Under this patent regime, the products and not processes were covered under the patent regime.

Now, what this IPR regime did not consider is 1. Situation in the third world countries, where singular proprietorship is not an ancient idea. Community, as a whole shared benefits of many of the inventions in these societies, for long. 2. IPR did not take cognizance of the ensuing regime of a Free Information World. This will be the major factor for demise of IPR.

On the virtual web, it is next to impossible to establish identity of an IPR culprit and equally impossible will be to stop the rise such culprits in any obscure part of the wired world. With increasing competition and ever increasing opportunities to communicate, it will be erroneous, at least impossible to prevent some people from doing what they can do. Creative Commons, Google tools and other infinite entities on web prove this point day after day. They represent an alternative model to the revenue based on 'All Rights Reserved' policy.

The effects, socio-economic and cultural, of these changes, however will be for time to tell.