Gates calls Free Culture fans commies

Prediction: this Boing Boing post is going to be the first of many you’ll hear in the blog world about Bill Gates’ latest comment:

Q: "In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform
and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a
few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, ‘We’ve got
to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.’ What’s driving
this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: "No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s
more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are
fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new
modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for
musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises.
They don’t think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I’d be the first
to say that the patent system can always be tuned–including the U.S.
patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But
the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating
jobs, because we’ve had the best intellectual-property system–there’s
no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the
most competitive economy, they’ve got to have the incentive system.
Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the
future."

Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies {BoingBoing}