getting paid...

Just read this rather amusing Chicken McNuggets bit [link at end] from HBO's The Wire, and it resonated because I was just signing away part of my intellectual property rights to the work I do...or rather trying not to. Of course, it probably took more than one guy in the basement to come up with the mcnuggets, but it's highly unlikely any of them getting paid for it. It wouldn't take much of a percentage, per nugget, to be rather well off.

Of course, there may be some associated guilt with creating an unhealthy food, but they do save a lot of time. I mean, all of that time saved not having to pull all of the skin, bone and fat off of the chicken could approximately be equal to the time shaved off of your lifespan by consuming the partially hydrogenated blended version of the skin, bone, and fat. (There may be some meat in there as well, it's hard to know.)

Anyway, don't be the McNugget guy. If you don't care about getting paid for your ideas, you might want to at least MIT-license them, so it's harder for other people to get rich off of them without adding their own special sauce.

Warning: Link from NIVI Blog contains offensive language. I am pretty sure this isn't really family blog, although Google Analytics doesn't tell me how old you are, yet, but if your every click at work is analyzed and the stream is then fed into the old raise-o-meter at the end of the year, it's probably good to keep the premium cable content to minimum.