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Against Intellectual Property
danny writes "Australian academic and activist Brian Martin has written
a detailed paper Against intellectual property. This is an accessible presentation that covers the area quite broadly." Excellent paper - more than the typical slogans in this subject area, and well worth reading in depth.
Spoken like someone who is truly ignorant of how the world works. Sorry to be so blunt, but I cannot understand how you could even come to your conclusions if you weren't clueless.
I honestly believe that people would spend billions of dollars to help other people
Okay, name how many people you know who have billions and billions of dollars? Bill Gates, Larry Elison, Steve Jobs ... there are probably quite a few. But you know what, even if they gave up all their money to help other people, they would not be able to come up with a fraction of the drugs that have been produced by 'greedy corporations'.
People don't have billions to spend. Corporations don't have billions to freely spend. The only reason corporations can afford to spend the money on research, to spend years throwing money down the tube hoping for a breakthrough, is because that when they do make a breakthrough, they can recoup their costs through IP.
Chuck out IP, and you can kiss goodbye to any research. Kiss goodbye to reseach, and you can kiss goodbye to drugs.
It would have sucked even worse if it had been shot in James Cameron's back yard.
You mean like the Blair Witch Project? Albeit, considerable sums were spent on marketing and advertising, but good films can be made on a tight budget.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I know, I know, here comes the flame, but I have some comments about this paper that I have to share and many of you may not like.
First off, I'll admit that I have not read the entire treatise, and mostly because of this:
The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting.
This is the third sentence of the second paragraph. I really dislike persuasive papers that delve into opinion so early in their arguments. Granted, most persuasive arguements have their basis in opinion, but good persuasive arguements go to great lengths to give basis to that opinion. Starting out the issue with a flat and unsupported opinion is bad form. There is no logic in nor attempt to explain the premise "The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting."
I've looked down through the arguements...here's one I don't like:
It(intellectual property) fosters competitiveness over information and ideas, whereas cooperation makes much more sense.
Why does cooperation make more sense? There is no support to that premise, and therefore, the statement is not using the correct logic that is necessary to support a valid arguement.
I would counter that cooperation does not make more sense, as proven that collective societies cannot compete with competitive societies by the fall of the collectively based governments in Eastern Europe. Take that further with China, which arguably has much more access to resources than the United States, but the United States has used competition to exploit the resources available to it in a more efficient manner and thus produce an economy and standard of living for its citizens that China will not equal for decades.
The neem tree arguement was taken from a publication about intellectual piracy. I won't argue that the patenting of the products of the tree is piracy, I believe that it is, but I certainly don't believe that it is a good arguement against intellectual property. All kinds of similar piracy goes on all over the world, not the least of which is IP piracy. Take DeBeers for instance. DeBeers controls much of the diamond mining concessions on the African continent, and the peoples of the countries that give/sell those concessions to DeBeers receive very little in return for the billions of dollars worth of diamonds that DeBeers pillages from them. The same thing happens with petrochemical resources in Africa. I always hear about Western oil companies operating in Africa, but I know of no "African" oil companies.
Perhaps some of the arguements presented in this paper are good arguements for reform of IP laws, but not the condemnation of IP itself. Companies like Intel and AMD would have little incentive to innovate if not allowed to patent their chip designs. That goes for just about every other major manufacturing industry in the world. Why should Intel spend billions of dollars on research when they are forced to turn that research over to AMD in the spirit of cooperation.
This paper takes a too altruistic view of the human animal. The arguements presented here assume that humans can be converted into honest and righteous characters. The truth is, people lie, cheat, steal and murder in order to better their own ends. Keeping a grasp on intellectual property is much less of an evil that the arguement presented in this paper would have you belive.
Sure, it was a well-written paper and it raises many interesting points. But I wonder just what this guy's grounding in the real world is?
:)
Now first, a disclaimer. I like to think I've done my part for the world of Free software. I want this to go to show that I have no qualms giving away intellectual property that I have created, but I want it to be my choice when I decide to do that. That, friends, is the real meaning of intellectual freedom.
At more than one point in my life, I survived as a writer, and to tell you the truth, it scares me to think of a world where my copyright means nothing. Stephen King just recently said it quite well, as I attempt to paraphrase him: "Please respect my copyright; as a writer, it's all I've got." Not bad, coming from a no-talent hack
Free software and other works certainly have their place, but it isn't something that should be foisted upon every author and programmer and artist.
yours,
john
At least not that kind of absurd egalitarian/Marxist view of fairness, where everybody's effort is considered to be of equal worth, whether it takes them an hour to tie their shoes or they revolutionize another field every week. It's not about guaranteeing people a "fair" reward, it's about giving them an incentive.
For that, the mere possibility of a reward will suffice. How many Edison-wannabes were inspired to follow his example by seeing how rich he got from it? Do you really think that Edison getting it before Grey discouraged people from inventing?
Sure, only a few novelists get rich, or even make a living. But looking at those few who do tempts everyone, and draws out those who are talented enough to succeed.
Scientific and mathematical research works just fine without IP, so there's no IP available. While there are a fair number of poems, essays, and short stories written with no hope of reward, it's a very unusual person who spends months or years working full-time on a book without expecting to get paid for it. Factories started to hide how they were doing things, so patents were brought in to give them a reason to share their techniques with the world. It's all about society's benefit, and freeing information.
Arguments about how it's "unfair" are utterly irrelevant. I would, OTOH, love to hear arguments about how other things could work better. Suggestions of something perfectly "fair" but ridiculously unworkable only serve to illustrate my point: the two don't go together.
I can't prove it anymore than the pro-IP can prove their system works.
No, you see, the pro-IP people know their system works, from experience. What they can't prove is whether it works better than an IPless system. What the anti-IP people can't prove is that their "system" works at all. Pre-IP society was so radically different from modern society that it doesn't provide any real evidence about the effects of dropping IP. For all we know, society could collapse into chaos.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Martin explains why its not at the end of the chapter that is online
No he doesn't. He mentions that it's a dilemna, then he plugs Freedom Press, but he doesn't provide any explanation. He gives guidelines for determining if copying is undermining Freedom Press, and he reccomends negotiations. He even says that negotiations will be important in a post intellectual property society, completely sidestepping the issue that whereas they are legally necessary as long as he holds a copyright, they would become instantly useless if he made his writing free.
An argument could be made that a legal system that makes it possible to produce and profit from a movie with a $200 million budget is not socially beneficial. Does society need $200 million movies?
What about drugs, something with more obvious social benefits? It costs a huge amount of money to develop, test and get approval for modern drugs.
What will the drug industry do when someone invents a cheap molecular synthesizer? Do you want 100 grams of the latest antibiotic (or cocaine)? Just type in the chemical formula and come back in an hour.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
This guy starts by saying that the original reason for patents/copyright was okay, but that governments having the power to grant this is totally corrupting so - let's throw it all out, there is no real justification for it.
That is so much nonsense.
If you were to argue that period of a patent or copyright should be limited in this day of the internet..okay. If you argue that the DMCA takes copyright into areas it should never have been extended...okay. But throwing the whole system out is even more rediculous than the problem this paper is arguing about!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I never met an idea that wanted to be free.....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Scottish newspaper, The Shetland Times, went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. If hypertext links made without permission were made illegal, this would undermine the World Wide Web
I remember this example from when it was going around when it happened. The crucial point IIRC(which was ommitted from the chapter) is that it was not the fact that it had been linked that was the problem, it was the fact that it had been linked such that it appeared within the frames of another site and was made to appear as if it was their content. In essense the other site was claiming ownership of work which had been produced by the Shetland Times.
This comes to the crux of my feelings on copyright. As well as my computer work I am also a short story writer. I have no objections to people having copies of my work and distributing them, I distribute most of my stuff for free as it's just an interest for me and not a source of income. What I do object to and would invoke the law to prevent is someone else claiming ownership of something I have written or charging for it's distribution.
I suppose you could describe it as 'Freework', you can copy and distribute it so long as you don't charge for it or claim that it's anything but my work.
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
I certainly think that IP law needs a lot of rewriting (for example, why should copyrights last longer than patents? why aren't patent terms tweaked from year to year?), but I don't think it should be completely abolished.
Remember, the main purpose of patent law is to get people to disclose their designs, similar to opening your source code. Without any patent law, manufacturers will keep a lot more things secret.
I think we can move toward a system where IP is not necessary, such as Mass Market Busking, but we should let people demonstrate that the system works without it before we dump it.
If we demonstrate that we can support the efforts of producers without them using IP to force us to pay them, we shouldn't have any trouble getting rid of IP. If we can't demonstrate it, then maybe it's not such a good idea to drop IP.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
First off, I am a molecular biologist. I love science and the field. I am willing to do work for the good of all but I expect to also make a living. If I came up with a treatment regimen that would reverse or halt aging, I expect to be well compensated, given that such a thing would be in HIGH demand by everyone. If I stood to gain nothing for this, then guess what, I'll keep it secret and offer it on the sly to only those I select (family, close friends). I would quietly offer it for a fee to the rich but I would not release the information to the public if I could look forward to...nothing.
I do not and will not work for nothing. If I produce something that people find valuable, then I WILL be compensated fairly and I WILL make a living, better or worse based on the "value" of the product, be it a technique, a chemical, or whatever. If not, you all lose (except for the select few).
So, you have a choice, revamp copywrite and intellectual property law, NOT eliminate it, or lose out on a lot of good. Stephen King wont write stories for nothing. He expects compensation for entertaining you...quite rightly. It is simple, really. You don't toss out the baby with the bathwater.
Does ANYONE honestly believe that a pharmaceutical company, which spends millions or billions of dollars in research and development to produce drugs that YOU ALL USE AND NEED would continue to do this if they were not allowed to make a return on their investment, time, and effort? NOT! Those anti-cancer drugs do not produce themselves. There is a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money involved in saving your lives or keeping you living and healthy. If you want drugs to treat your INEVITABLE diseases, then intellectual property protection and patents are absolutely necessary. No protection, no drugs.
Property protection, be it intellectual or otherwise, is good so long as it is tempered with common sense.
All other IP issues aside, trade secret law should never have come into existence.
Patent law was made to encourage disclosure of the principle of mechanisms. Copyright was created to make it possible for authors to profitably distribute their work widely, instead of, say, memorizing their stories and knowledge and being hired to tell or teach them. Copyright was applied to software so we wouldn't all get stuck hiring computer time for running their secret programs from IBM. Trademark (the oddball of the group) was created so you can't stamp shoddy products with the name of a respectable manufacturor.
All laudable goals, whatever the practical flaws.
But trade secrets? What are those for? To protect the profits of people who invent something and hide it away so they can monopolize it?
IP laws are supposed to benefit society in general, by spreading information, not to help people hoard it for their own use. Trade secrets must go!
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
I know it's easy to bash Intellectual Property, in fact, the people responsible for perpetuating it are mostly to blame for this. However, the basis behind intellectual property is still sound. The whole point is that people should be able to receive compensation for their ideas, should their ideas be deemed worthy of compensation. In theory this is true, artists and thinkers deserve to be rewarded with their work and these rewards help ensure that their work continues.
Now, this also leads to the problems we're facing now - IP being taken to a far extreme of what it rightly should be. I think that patenting the human genome is explicitly wrong, I believe that software should be build at least to open standards and preferably to Open Source, and I think that people should have free access to governmental information. On the other hand, if we just ditch the whole idea of IP, then it is going to hurt artists and thinkers. Yes, the current system of IP is horrendously broken, but throwing it out is a bad way of fixing it. The simple fact is that artists need some kind of support for their work. Granted, a true artist or thinker produces their work becuase they love to do it, but the whole purpose of the IP system is that they can have the level of support they need to concentrate solely on their craft.
Already, IP is changing. Napster was just the first step, the old channels of IP distribution are falling down, and rightly so. However, we have to remember that we need to somehow support the arts. I think that a nice micropayment system would be a great first step. Already Steven King's begun his own experiment in decentralized IP. The fact is that the old gatekeepers of IP, the RIAA, the MPAA, the big publishers Microsoft, all of them are rapidly becoming less and less relevant. What worries me as a producer of art (I'm a musician, and I have released several 3D models into the public domain) is will this shortchange the artist? I think Napster can work for new talent, I've personally supported artists via MP3.com, but I still don't see anyone able to make a living off these services yet.
So, what's the compromise going to be? I forsee a new patronage system coming out of all this. Back in the early days of the first artistic revolution, just after the Renaissance, artists would be supported by wealthy patrons. These patrons would support the artist and many of them allowed them a great latitude in what they could produce. Look at VA Linux and Slashdot... VA Linux is a patron to Slashdot, they foot the bill in the interest of the community, and they give them editorial freedom.
But there lies the catch... even when Napster wins and music is cheap and/or free, are we really better off? Look at the people who see a conspiracy between VA Linux and Slashdot, imagine what they would say if all art is sponsored that way. Also, would that guarantee sufficient funding for the arts and sciences? Public TV works this way, and look at how they're doing financially. We certainly won't see any less pandering to popular interests, even if the RIAA and the MPAA and their ilk disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't mean that we'd lose crap like the Backstreet Boys. It would just come from a different source.
So, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one. The current IP system is screwing the consumer over through poor legislation and litigation, along with the content producers who are being held back in much the same way. Get rid of IP altogether and we're just as screwed, if nobody can make a living off their work, a lot of people aren't going to go through the trouble and effort to distribute it. Some will do it for the love of art or science, but they won't be able to popularize it effectively and will have to juggle a lot more issues, all of which will distract them from that creative process.
In the end, we'll have a compromise between the two. Art is always going to be around, but there needs to be a level of support. I think that artists like Chuck D and Steven King have the right idea, get rid of the middle man, go direct and leverage technology. That way you get the best of both worlds, consumers get freedom to choose, and the artist gets support. Of course, all this counts on that support emerging from the consumer. We'll probably see the status quo remain, albeit changed, for quite some time.
In other words, support your artists. If you hear a song you like, buy it. Go to concerts, attend plays, get off your ass and support people who actually care about their art. Nine tenths of the problems with IP could be cured if people just stopped giving into those who are corrupting the system. Support *good* Intellectual Property. IP itself isn't really the problem, it's the way in which it's been mishandled and corrupted. Through these steps, we can preserve both the freedom and choice we want as consumers without losing the ability of the artist to support their work.
The major point this article fails to acknowledge is that "intellectual property", whether or not it was called that, has always existed. Even before patents, copyrights, trademarks -- which are notable only in that they are government-enforced -- individuals devised ways to guard their ideas from being used by others.
Take, for example, the closely guarded secrets of medieval stone masons -- which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet, since it was the key closed-source metaphor behind Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Or take secret recipies, or any other trade secrets that existed just as well without government.
My point is that intellectual property is not something to be argued for or against -- for better or worse, it just exists. And, as the founders of the United States noted in the Constitution, it takes its most undesirable form when good ideas lay dormant for fear that they might be stolen. IP law is a trade-off: the government will protect your monopoly on your idea, under the condition that you allow the government to publish the idea after a certain period of time.
Why would this be desirable? Say, for example, I come up with Invention X, a remarkable discovery that will benefit countless millions. However, I don't have a factory to produce the product, and I fear that without government protection, Big Company Y would steal my idea and immediately begin producing Invention X in their existing factory more efficiently than I could, thus capturing the market for my invention. Why, then, would I put in all the effort to develop and perfect Invention X, when I would never have the opportunity to recoup my costs (let alone make a profit)? I'd be better off just keeping my ideas to myself.
By "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries," intellectual property laws prevent against this, the worst-case scenario: that a brilliant idea or invention might die with its creator, never having been passed on to contribute to the public good.
-IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Some of the most outraged comments in this discussion are the equivalent of no one will invent without IP. They forget that for a long time there WAS no IP, and people still invented, and wrote, and painted.
.24 cents to that one, and so on.
The ones that gall me the most are the ones who complain about how bad things would be without IP, and never acknowledge how bad things are *with* IP. I myself haven't a clue which would be better or worse. I simply do not believe the current IP situation is fixable, so I would be quite willing to try having no IP. But I don't claim to have any argument that it would be clearly better, only that those arguing against anti-IP are not arguing for IP, they are merely ranting with blinders on.
His thesis is in part that no invention stands alone. The most obvious is scientific discovery. How many scientific discoveries were truly years ahead of their field? How many were invented completely out of the blue and had no genesis in the ideas that came before?
About zero. In other words, all would have been invented by some other worker soon enough anyway.
As I wrote in a response elsewhere, the current IP rewards only a few, all out of proportion to their actual contribution. There is no allowance for those who contribute the pure math, or the drudge work trying to replicate other work, or who tested a million reagents or ran a million particle experiments. Why should the one who did the last little bit of work get the jackpot, and the hundreds, or thousands, or millions of others, get nothing?
Why should Alexander Graham Bell have gotten the patent on the phone, and the incredible monopoly riches which followed, simply because he beat that other forgotten man to the patent office by an hour or two?
Should Einstein have patented relativity? Or copyrighted it? Good gosh, there's an idea! Suppose Bohr had to pay royalties to Planck, who had to pay royalties to Maxwell, and so on?
The current IP is broken because it rewards so unevenly and unjustly. The only fix is to patent everything, and I mean everything. That biologist in the lab -- he will need a lab book next to him, and every single idea he uses, every equation, every drawing of a benzene ring, he will log that, and every month, he will cut checks for 13.5 cents to this patent holder,
But wait! Did he get permission to use that benzene ring? Oh, ho, no he didn't! Quick -- some one will sue him. Remember, copyrights are now good for 95 years after death. I bet that benzene ring is still under copyright protection.
Yes, that is unworkable. But that's the trade off you have to make to make IP fair and just.
I bet you could get exactly the same results and put a lot of lawyers and accountants out of work if you simply threw out IP. But I can't prove it anymore than the pro-IP can prove their system works.
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Infuriate left and right
It bothers me that people are confusing the world-changing nature of digital copying. It is not that digital copies are somehow new and fundamentally different from older methods of copying. The "perfection" of the copy is irrelevant. Digital copying is significant because it has reduced the cost of copying (which has always been determined not by the idea but by the physical medium in which it is expressed) to essentially zero, thereby exposing the grotesque flaws of the IP system.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach