November 17th, 2013 Issue Meeting

Discussions on platform issues:

Patents. There should be no patents on software, on life, or on math. Eventually, we'd like to see all patents go away -- they no longer serve the purpose of protecting individual inventors. But we'll focus on ending patents on software and life.

Copyright. We believe that shorter-term copyrights are more reasonable than the current terms. We'd support 5 year terms for intangibles and 14 years for tangibles. Both would have an optional five-year renewal. Derivative works should be allowed. In particular, non-commercial derivative works should always be allowed.

Transparency laws. The Mass. state legislature should not be exempt from open meeting laws. More broadly, no government body should be exempt from transparency laws.

Health care. We believe there should be no penalty for not having health insurance. Health care should be a public service, not a for-profit venture. If you're worried about things like getting health care, or finding a place to live, then you're less likely to innovate. If everyone had basic health care, then businesses would not be burdened with the requirement to provide health care to their employees.

Health care and education should be basic things that society provides, like police and fire departments. The issue is health care, not health insurance. In our country, we pay the most for health care, and get relatively poor service.

People should be able to own their own data.

Climate change. We support the development of renewable energy resources. We support improvements to the efficiency of the electrical system. We should subsidize clean energy innovation to (at least) the same extent that fossil fuels are subsidized.

Gun laws. We need good data in order to make good decisions. Right now, there's not a lot of good data on the effect of gun control laws.

We'd like to develop a roadmap for what we hope to achieve over time, and how we plan to achieve our goals.