Wow. Bill Gates has sure said a lot of stupid, greedy, ignorant, self-serving, full-of-crap stuff in his life, but this one really takes the cake. When asked about all of the many people who want to reform our completely screwed up patent and copyright system, billg had this gem to add to the conversation: "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."

Over the years, billg (and his lackey & partner in crime - and I do mean crime - Ballmer) has engaged in all sorts of smears against those who don't favor locked down, screw-the-consumer, proprietary systems (the kinds of people who read this blog, for instance). They've compared Linux & the GPL to cancer, flat-out lied about open source, twisted numbers in reports, and so on. But tarring those who want to reform our screwed up IP system - people like Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and Siva Vaidhyanathan - with the so-old-school label "communists" is just beyond the pale. My only surprise is that he didn't call them "terrorists" instead. At any rate … what a jerk.