(Well Written) Essay Against Copyright

rts writes "A well written article about how copyrights and patents are anti-free market is running in the Canadian paper "The National Post"." The backdrop to the story is, perhaps inevitably, the Napster case - but it's much better written then most of the other bazillion Napster editorials. Update: 01/28 04:48 PM by S :The article refered to this paper by Stephan Kinsella.

Comments

I'd hardly call this a good argument against IP

[FallLine]

First, the author wastes a good part of his time on Napster. Napster is not intellectual property itself, it's secondary to intellectual property. What's more, he glances over the legal minutia, while ignoring the bigger picture. The legal minutia may be important in the lawsuit, but it's not to napster's morality and, especially, not to the relative cost and benefits of intellectual property. He ignores the fact that, while napster may not be able to discern users (though that is debatable itself), there is little doubt that the vast majority of its use is for copyright infringment. On the balance, I'd say the current design and actual use of napster has far greater costs for society than any benefit it presumably brings about.

Presumably, according to Napster, lesser known artists will use Napster to get an audience. Though I have serious doubts about this (in terms of numbers), the fact is that it could design a system in such a way that the artists ENUMERATES what songs they want to share and submits it via some checksum (or what have you)--rather than rely on some algorithm to divine the artist. Alternatively, they could solve this problem entirely and simply create a massive server where artists can upload their songs, complete with web pages and the like. In reality, this offers virtually all the benefits of their purported "use" [ sometimes even more (e.g., a web page, faster downloads, assured quality, etc) ] without the costs.

Second, (back on point) the author attacks a few specific instances of IP and one or two of the minor (but poorly accepted) arguments for IP, but completely or mostly ignores the well accepted arguments for it. The first argument is that innovation is risky and expensive; the only way you secure difficult innovation is by granting the innovator the exclusive right to the innovation. The second argument is that one should be entitled to the product of their own mind. When those "products" might be indepedently reinvented, then there might be cause for complaint. But when we're talking about a recording or a book in its entirity, it's simply not going to be indepedently reinvented. My creating that product or idea and restricting its usage does NOT detract from your life, unless you take the fact that I generated that product or idea for granted.

Anti-free-market? How ironic..

[multipartmixed]

...considering how The National Post is owned by Conrad Black.

If you don't know Mr. Black, he's trying to buy up 100% of the news media in Canada. The idea is so that you only get "News for Robots - Stuff that matters to Mr. Black."

--

Technology and realistic politics

[bcrowell]

The article seemed silly to me for two reasons:

(1) None of the arguments relate to technology at all. Abolishing copyright was tried before the internet existed, during the French revolution. The result was a distaster -- all publishing ceased except for pornography and cheap scandal sheets. To convince me that the results would be different today, I'd have to see an argument that relates to changes in technology.

(2) The abolition of IP is just not going to happen, so why even discuss it? I'd consider it a great triumph if the U.S. government would just stop extending copyright terms the next time the 1923 batch came close to going PD. But even that is extremely unlikely to happen, since, e.g. Disney owns the 1923 Winnie the Pooh copyrights, and their lobbyists managed to get the latest extension passed without even having it debated.

I can think of some realistic political goals in the U.S., but they're a lot more modest. For instance, I'd like to see the federal government force all academic research they fund to be published electronically and copylefted. Arxiv.org has already shown they're capable of replacing traditional scientific journals completely in some scientific subfields, e.g. string theory.

The Assayer - free-information book reviews

Flip side of copyrights

[Alien54]

well, the article advocates removal of the copyright system. I can see a flip side to this.

Imagine your proverbial Incredibly Rich Software Company (tm). Imagine that it spots a neat and useful idea that has been created by a bunch of Talented People(tm). With no copyright, the Incredibly Rich Company can become and Incredibly Bad Company and simple copy the ideas, reverse engineer it, and with the forces of Superior Marketing(tm) can produce it and out produce it take over the market, wiping out the competition.

Netscape is an historic example, even with the protection they had, because there was no copyright on the idea of browser. (I doubt that one could be arranged)

So the removal of the idea of copyright removes protection for the Little Guy. Some Big Bad Company with lots of big bucks can come in and steal people blind.

So Copyright might need to be kept around, but in a form that protects the little guy more than corporations.

off the top of my head, maybe copyrights by corporations could only be held for a shorter peroid of time than by an individual, so that the actual artist could profit vs corporations.

I need to think on this more

The real problem with patents

[DaSyonic]

While I dont agree with patents, I can see some good uses for them. But a few things should be done to prevent people/corporations from patenting things that just should not be patented.

The ammount of time that a patent lasts is way too long in todays world. A patent lasting 1 or 2 years seems more fair to me, but any longer than that basically prevents anyone from using the thing patented for a very long time.
I would like to see the USPTO gotten rid of all together, but this will never happen, regardless of how much it makes sense to get rid of it. Corporations want control of products, and patents give them that right to that control.

I think the best sollution would be to have a seperate entity to decide on technology patents. Hopefully with something like that we could stop the future Amazons from patenting outragious things. Trademarks are a little differant, I think you should be able to protect your name, but again, things like :-( shouldnt be trademarked, as it should be considered free-use.

But can we honestly ever expect things to change? The average American doesnt see anything wrong with what we have now, what politician would ever try and change anything? Who cares?

And can anyone clear up international patents? What stops a Japanese company from doing '1-click-shopping'? Especially on the internet, a US only patent doesnt seem to do much good.

Great Debating Point

[Bluesee]

The author proposes a world in which protections for non-scarce items do not exist. In the same spirit as the Home Recording Act could not ban tape recorders, so Napster cannot be seen as intrinsically illegal. Well written, and a real challenge to the RIAA lawyers, et al.

I was discussing this very thing to colleagues yesterday: they had seen the PBS special by Ken Burns - Jazz - and remarked as to how music used to be literally free. A musician wrote a song and played it in a bar and got paid. Early recordings were produced in small shops, and profits were local. Then entrepreneurs moved in because they saw the profitability (nothing wrong with that) and reamed the artists (again legal, though possibly not moral).

Well, they have had their fun, and they have had their day. The One Thing that record producers had that the average guy did not was the Ways and Means of Production (i.e., record-making machines) and Distribution. Now, in the digital age, we All have the ways and means. We can all make recordings, try to sell them or give them away, and distribute them.

The RIAA has had their day. It is time to step down. May free art prosper. I think their proper attitude might well be 'screw them, Im not putting another thin dime into promoting one more artist.' Then they can take their wax cylinders and go home.

And you know what? Aside from the pretty CD jewel cases, I don't think I'd miss them a bit.

Bonus: no more 'NSync, Spice Girls, or Backstreet Boys! Yay!