Facebook Gets Patent On Phototagging

Via John Gruber, the US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Facebook a patent for photo tagging.

I think it's difficult to maintain that absent said patent there would be insufficient economic incentive for programmers to want to create "the next Facebook" or for venture capitalists to invest in it. What this kind of promiscuous patent-granting does is stifle competition and massively complicate any new innovative firms. A big existing company can easily hire lawyers to deal with intellectual property issues, but as you'll recall Facebook was founded by a couple of college students in their dorm. That's how businesses get started, and that means you have to be able to do it without an army of lawyers.