Patents and Copyrights

    The idea of copyrighting material and punishing people for distributing it without permission is a hot topic, especially among the younger generation. Because of it, things like Anonymous, Pirate Bay, and Wiki Leaks have popped up to make a point. I have mixed feelings about these sort of things.
    The way I see it, Copyright law is here to protect people's ideas and products. The flip side of that coin though, is that is also drives up the price of consumer goods dramatically. For instance, say you wanted to make a phone that used common, logical technology. The only issue is that say, Microsoft owns a patent to that tech. You would have to buy licensing from them in order to use their patented invention. What your left with is extra cost in developing the product. Since companies are here to make money, they have to find a way to pay for these extra charges. That money comes out of your pockets when you buy such a product.
    A wonderful example of this in recent news involves a company called Motorola, and a fore mentioned company named Microsoft. The OS heavy weight (Microsoft) holds man patents, some of which a court recently ruled were infringed upon by Motorola. Apparently Motorola, now owned by Google, hadn't acquired a license from MS before using their tech in Motorola phones.
This is what made me thing about Copyright Laws. I personally come up with hundreds of original ideas every year. If I were to ever try to make one of these inventions, would I be able to without running into some patent issues?

    Our economy is crap right now, and we don't need great ideas, small businesses, and consumers hammered by large coperations.