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A Replacement Term for 'Intellectual Property'?
femto asks: "Every time I read the words 'intellectual property', I get peeved off. It is an oxymoron. A term loaded with invalid assumptions. To even use such words is an admission that intellect can be owned and controlled like a car, clothing or other thing made of atoms. Can anyone propose a replacement for the words 'Intellectual Property'? Something that implies intellect cannot be owned. Something that implies [what Jefferson once said]: 'He who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.' Once we have this term, we need to get it accepted. Use it in publications. Cite these publications to get it in dictionaries. Get the term into everyday conversation and writing. So far, the best I have come up with is 'Intellectual Controls'. Can Slashdot come up with something better?"
"Public Domain."
Ours.
I've always liked that. Free as in thought.
How to distinguish Manufactured Property from Untetherable Concept?
Perhaps it's just Hardware and Software.
Intellect IS a property.
Latin intelligere -- inter and legere -- to choose between, to discern; Greek nous; German Vernunft, Verstand; French intellect; Italian intelletto).
The faculty of thought
Better terminology would be commercial invention, process, or procedure. Emphasis on the COMMERCIAL.
"Information licensed by creator" "Copyrighted Ideas" "Licensed Original Ideas" "Protected Inventions" "Intellectual Progeny" "Monopolized Ideas" Ok, that last one was a joke.
Repeal the DMCA!
This seems about the silliest thing I have ever heard. The term is a narrowly defined legal term. Changing a term does not ipso facto change the underlying discussion. Call it "Ice Cream Dog" and you would still be talking about ownership of those things which issue from your intellect and which you should have a right to do with as you see fit. Please stop trying to "sanitize" the language and deal with the actual problems, not get caught up in whatever the term de vogue might be.
I assume you've seend .html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoi
Personally, I find it easiest to call a spade a spade - if you're talking about patents, call them patents, copyrights copyrights etc. The default nature of information and ideas is free - look at the past 4000 years or so of science. The idea of saying "so and so is mine" or "only I'm allowed to do this" with respect to ideas is pretty new, to the best of my knowledge.
"Intellectual Property" means "products primarily of the labor of mind," not "owned intellect." It is not a mystical incantation. It's a modified noun. Irreplaceable pieces of the communal cosmic meta-mind which your question presumes are not being stolen and hoarded away from you--as your Jefferson quote would tell you, should you choose to understand it. Those of us who live primarily on the labors of our minds already know that you, who would ask such a question, envy our baby-soft skin and want us to be the chained Princess Leia dancing for your favor in your Jabba-on-the-skiff fantasy, or, at best, to create valueless "content" to help you sell the invaluable packaging which your nobler labors produce. The language need not be further debased for the purpose of making that known. We invent the words for things, and you repeat them--that is the division of labor. "Intellectual property" it is. Thanks for asking.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
knowledge-sharing restrictions.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
{joke}
Erm, no. Sorry.
{/joke}
$smarty style
I don't think "intellectual controls" works well. "Intellectual property" is an intentionally dishonest term but only half the problem is with "property." Substitute your least favored pop culture expellers for my examples but I fail to see the "intellectual" property in the music of Britney Spears or a song like "I want to sex you up" by Five. If the assertion that much of what goes by the name of "intellectual property" is "property" is dishonest than the claim that it is "intellectual" is pretentious. Browse over to http://autopr0n.com and tell me if you think those copyrighted images are appealing to your intellect (they may be appealing but they are aimed at a different organ).
Stallman is mostly right when he rails against the conflation of copyright, patent and trademark law into "intellectual property." Right insofar as it is at best sloppy thinking to lump things together that are so dissimilar. Only partially right because the "intellectual property" field also includes things like publicity rights, right to privacy and moral rights. So if it isn't "intellectual property" or intellectual controls", what then? The most accurate term I can think of to cover most of this ground is "expression monopoly."
What copyright, patent and trademark have in common is that they all regulate who can use the expression of certain ideas. Copyright law assigns rights to who can make literal or derivative copies of a specific expression. Patents cover who can express an idea regardless of the the specific form. Trademarks are about who can use specific expressions in a commercial context.
The common denominator is the monopoly power granted by the government.* There are assertions in US law that patents aren't monopolies but it is safe to regard those claims as dishonest semantics (unless arguing before the dishonest judges who make the claims).
Even "expression monopoly" doesn't cover the ground perfectly. For example, moral rights have more to do with mandated expression rather than monopolized ones.
* For those (Americans) who insist on the "property" part of intellectual property, reread the copyright and trademark clause of the Constitution and tell us if there is any reason that Congress must grant authors a monopoly. I can see why the just compensation clause would prevent Congress from nullifying existing copyrights and patents but it would not be unconstitutional for the government could stop issuing new ones tomorrow. Unlike real property, "intellectual property" is a creation of the state and one which it is under no obligation to go on creating. When the government grants something that it is not obliged to, it is generally described as a privilege rather than a right.
I disagree. As a scientest, I do so have "intellectual property". It doesn't even have to be in the legal sense of the term. There are things I do that no one else does. They are my intellectual property, the property of my intellect.
Once you have done something that as far as you know, no one else has ever done, it's yours. It doesn't and shouldn't matter what the world says about it, as far as your intellect is concerned, you "have" that idea.
Think about the difference between when you learn something out of a book and when you learn independantly. There is a definite sense of accomplishment and personal ownership.
In the legal sense intellectual property should be used as a way of determining ultimately who is responible for the rest of the world knowing something. Recent political perversions of this ideal have nothing to do with the (in my opinion) justified concept of intellectual property.
... A secret.
We shouldn't be using "intellectual property" or any replacement at all. The term implies that such disparate ideas as copyright, trademark, and patent have an overarching parent idea enshrined in law, which they do not. It deliberately confuses them, with an intent to grant the most restrictive properties of any one to all three. That is to say, referring to "intellectual property" conjures the illusion that copyrights are perpetual as long as they are not abandoned, like trademarks; that patents can be used to prevent derivative works, like copyrights can; and that you can use trademarks to prevent a competitor from entering your line of business, like patents. Think about any of the cases in the last ten years that revolved around "intellectual property" rather than specific claims of copyright, trademark, or patent infringement, and you will see what I mean.
If for some reason you need to refer to copyrights, trademarks, and patents in one breath, the term you should use is "copyrights, trademarks, and patents!"
Right...
"Mine!"
It properly describes what copyrights, patents and trade secrets do, aka, shackle and enslave the mind.
Of course, that might be a bit loaded.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Author's rights it is. (PS: it's the legal Brazilian term to copyrights: "Direito Autoral")
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Work protected by a temporary monopoly.
I think this conveys the idea far better than "Copyright" After all, could you see Disney lobbying the government on this?
"So, you would like your government-granted temporary monopoly extended to 150 years? And how does this fit with the word temporary?"
A latent existence
Maybe you are looking for mind commons.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's funny that we would even be having a discussion about what to replace the rather laughable term "intellectual property" with, as it has been 5 years or less since it was forced into the popular lexicon by what were previously referred to as Copyright lawyers. The '79 OED hasn't even heard of the term.
You can't replace the term, because it implies a subtle change in the language, and any such drop-in replacement would also fall into that changed structure. Without that term, you are just talking about government - protcted copyrights and patents, all of which have existing terms. What you need to do is change the dialog whenever it comes up from amorphously rights-asserting terms like "intellectual property" to hard-and-fast real and limited rights such as copyright, inherent authorship rights, etc.
What should we use when we want to say "Intellectual Property?" Nothing: Not only are the connotations of that word wrong, but the structure of the argument is wrong if we're trying to use it. Don't legitimize the term.
The ______ Agenda
If you're thinking of "IP" as one monolithic clump, then the term "Intellectual Property" has already wormed its way into your thought process.
Use "copyright [law]", "trademark [law]" or "patent [law]" when appropriate, and explicitly recognize that they're separate things.
This notion reminds me of those inane /. arguments in which someone tries to score points by looking up the dictionary definition of a word: "See? The dictionary says I'm right?"
Changing the name of something doesn't change that "something".
Intellectual property is not about intellectual activity inside someone's head. It is about what is created when someone uses language and other forms of symbolic representation to record and communicate the results of that activity.
That is exactly what I am doing, right now, by posting to SLashdot. The activity in my brain determining what I want to say is not intellectual property; whatever's going on in there is completely, and forever, unknowable by anyone else if I don't record it in some fashion. That recording is intellectual property.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I have never before complained about the stupidity of some of these "Ask Slashdot" topics, but, this time, I cannot hold my tongue. Slashdot editors, please exercise better judgment.
A lawyer & digital forensics examiner. Also an expert on open source software (OSS).
"ideas"
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check
Intellectual Rights.
Yes, but then you'ld have to ask us permission to use it.
.
.
.
:)
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I don't much care for "expression monopoly", and I'm not sure if "intellectual monopoly" is better, but the distinguishing thing about "intellectual property" is that it is a legislatively created monopoly right (nobody except X may do Y).
Calling this legal right "property" is what's bad. Trespassing is violation of a (real) property owner's monopoly on admitting visitors, and nobody calls it theft.
There are some monopolies I approve of, mostly those which are basically anti-counterfeiting in nature.
But the copyright and patent amonopolies (ony X may do Y) are designed to encourage X to do Y (print books, make inventions) by letting them charge a fee for doing so which cannot (legally) be undercut.
There are two important assumptions here, which are being broken particularly badly by patent laws:
1) There is a market of available alternatives Y' if the fee X charges for Y is too high. There are plenty of other books on most subjects available, and if there is one too specilized to have an equivalent for which the price gets stratospheric, someone can write another one.
These days, people try to enshrine patents in standards and "platform" systems, taking advantage of network effects to ensure that an alternative would have a ridiculously high cost of entry (e.g. replacing all CDMA cell sites with ones using a different algorithm).
They try to ensure that there is no way to be compatible without infringing the patent. This sort of large-scale network effect was not not forseen in the slow-communication days when patents were first granted, when it was very plausible to use different infrasctructure standards in different parts of the same country, much less internationally.
2) The assumption that X makes Y. Especially with patents, the fact that there are so many overbroad and overlapping patents quickly forces large manufacturers into cross-licensing agreements.
However, in addition to squeezing small-time widget makers who don't have the leverage to force a cross-licensing deal, it creates a population of bottom-dwelling scum-suckers who don't make anything but just litigate.
There are companies of thieves^Wlawyers who do nothing but hold patents and extort money from anyone who tries to actually do useful things. The lawyers are immune to cross-licensing pressure because they don't make anything which could infringe.
They're like vampires whose blood can't be sucked because they haven't got any.
I agree to a certain degree. There however is a question that the original should prompt. Why is the question being asked? Political correctness? Guilty conscious? At least IMHO we should all take the time to educate the original poster (isn't that part of the reason people post here?)
Changing the name of something doesn't change that something, but it signifies that you believe it to have properties that weren't previously identified in the previous term. For example "small animals" refers to cats, dogs, and ducks. Calling them cats, dogs, and ducks doesn't change the properties of them, but it recognizes that there is something different between those creatures. Calling them small plants also wouldn't change what they are, but people would get a different idea of what you were talking about if you were to say small plants. In the same fashion, intellectual property doesn't describe the true state of the material, and calling it that is as bad as calling small animals small plants.
I 0wNz
"Copyright" is a propaganda term for our opponents, since rights are seen as good things. But copyrights aren't rights; copyright doesn't mean the right to make copies, it means the right to prevent others from making copies, so copy-restriction or copy-monopoly are more accurate terms.
If we want to stop our opponents benefitting from these propaganda words, we'd better use words that more accurately reflect the monopolistic nature of so-called copyright and other similar concepts such as patents:
Intellectual Controls is even WORSE than Intellectual Property; it implies that you can control what people think.
I agree that intellectual property is a bad term, but not for your reasons. It lumps together trademarks, patents, copyrights and trade secrets when in reality these areas of law have very little in common, and are often confused by people who really want to argue against one or the other making their arguments weak or flat out invalid. Patents themselves are such a broad area that you really need to restrict discussions about patents to particular types of patents, ie. composition, process, design, plant, etc.
The best solution is not the replace IP with something else, but rather recognize that these areas do not share anything in common and refrain from trying to lump them together.
for the coming revolution.
Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.
Not to mention that IP stood for "Internet Protocol" long before people ever used it for "Intellectual Property".
Those asshats need to get their own acronym.
Ultimately, all forms of "property" are abstract. Is your car still your car when it's in a public parking garage at the airport 6,000 miles away on vacation? Even though you do not have possession of it? Of course it is.
Let's take a simple question here: if an abstract principle cannot be property, why is it that the NJ Nets can trade Keith Van Horn and Todd MacCulloch for Dikembe Mutombo? What is the property here? Obviously it isn't the people, as ownership of people is a violation of the 13th amendment. They are trading the contracts - the property changing hands is the contract of Dikembe Mutombo, for the consideration of the property of the contract of Todd MacCulloch and the property of the contract of Keith Van Horn. And by contract, we do not mean merely the piece of paper on which Dikembe Mutombo's signature is written, but the abstract principle of that contract.
The real problem with the term "intellectual property" is that it conflates many different kinds of "property" - copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets, licenses - all of which have different spheres of significance, and all of which are treated differently under the law. So the replacement terms are obvious: "copyright", "patent", "trademark", "trade secrets", "licenses".
Femto also seems to be confused with a number of other issues regarding "intellectual property". A posting he made in another thread suggested that the EFF might set up some kind of database of prior art:
Maybe EFF/FSF's contribution can be to set up a wiki which can be used to make a permanant, easily searchable, record of all these ideas?
The problem here is that the wiki is by definition editable by any contributor, and therefore cannot be relied upon as a record of past events. This means it could not possibly be a useful tool to prove prior art. What one needs to prove prior art is a literature search - a search of published scientific literature, as the fact that it is published will provide proof of date and proof of widespread awareness. Ultimately, what Femto is suggesting here would serve precisely the same purpose that patent registration serves; the solution is not to have another registration that is independent of (and likely, unless sufficient resources are provided, inferior to) the government registry, but to invent a process which will reform the existing registry.
Later in the same posting, he writes:
If a patent is only gong to be used as a bargaining chip, it probably doesn't have to be particlarly strong, so it might be possible to D.I.Y. and eliminate legal fees. That way, it might be affordable to patent some of the 'better' ideas.
A DIY patent is very, very unlikely to be accepted. The patent application process is part of a specialized professional discourse, and a patent that is not written "properly" simply will be rejected out of hand. Sometimes I believe that the most important reason we have so many problems with the patent process is because the discourse of patents has become so specialized that the ability to read a patent is almost exclusive of the ability to create one - one can have time to be an expert in patents, or one can have time to be an expert scientist or engineer, but very few have the time and wits to be both. So a patent that describes a new process in a field in which the examiner is not familiar is not immediately recognized as obvious (most of the patents being complained about on Slashdot are invalid, if invalid at all, because they violate the necessity that an invention, to be patentable, be non-obvious), but is accepted because the form of the patent description is correct - everything is in its proper place, and everything hangs together.
Now, if Femto were talking copyrights here - that's easy; a copyright just involves shipping a couple of copies of the publication with a simple form attached. Copyrights do not require any form of specialized knowledge. But patents are much harder to write. Look at
Can anyone propose a replacement for the words 'Intellectual Property'? Something that implies intellect cannot be owned.
I always get annoyed when people rag on the patent system because people claim that "information or ideas cannot be owned." This, of course, is BS. Ownership is something that our society has created (and other societies), it was created so we don't go around bashing people to get things that we want. Since ownership is totally a societal convention, then society decides what can be owned and what can't, and what ownership entails. It does not have to be tangible, such as a car, a spot on the moon or a computer. It can be a thought, a word, a piece of air or a volume of empty space. Like with solid objects, it is then up to society to determine what "ownership" means. Intangible objects are more difficult to control, but that certainly doesn't mean that they cannot be owned.
-Sean
How do other cultures define IP?
American Indian tribes have many many different approaches to intellectual property. Along much of the Northwest Coast stories and artistic images are considered to be associated with specific clans and there are sanctions for use without permission. A family has rights to the myths and images that define them as a family. These are the same tribes that had the potlatch - an institutional way of ensuring that property was not hoarded.
Another approach was that of Chief Joseph, who although he fought to protect the land of his tribe still denied that his tribe "owned" that land or that anyone could "own" land. He prefered to say that he and his tribe had *guardianship* of the land.
So perhpas we could think about IG instead of IP, talk about the guardianship of ideas that *belong to everyone*. This allows for protection of author's rights -- they are guarding the ideas that they put forth and no one should be able to deny that the author is the guardian of their own work or that someone else should be able to mangle the work and distribute it as though from the original author. But it also allows for treating human progress as the property of all and provides a basis for insisting that laws protecting guardianship do not become a form of intellectual hoarding.
"knowledge property"
"information property"
'research', 'findings', 'discoveries', 'developments', 'creations', 'art' or even just get people to use 'intellectual achievements'. But i think it's wrong to lump all those in the same category. Someone who performs a song has done something tremendously different from a research group who finds out how to make buckyball tubes.
Liberty.
1) Whether or not it has commercial value, I don't believe the commercial is the point here(we give patents, trademarks, etc...) to encourage people to innovate for the greater good.
2) It enhances the idea that whatever the person did, was think of it first, and should benefit the most from it... As a reward for being the first
3) It reduces the emphasis on those ideas being sellable, hoardable property... The RIAA(or any other lawyer-box) wouldn't be so able to stifle other's innovations if it couldn't hoard the innovations of others, but had to invent them first. It's fine for an author to make millions from writing a book, or a singer for doing the same thing for their musical qualities and performance on stage, but letting them sell it? I can see a foundation as an heir to their copyrights(one per artist) as one thing... but I certainly object to commercial companies of any kind buying up rights left and right, and reducing distribution... Those II either artistic or technical, are limited rights given to encourage contribution to the public domain. Those limited rights should default after some period, to all of us. And yes, that means we should already own Mickey.
The term 'intellectual property' is merely that - a term. The term 'white paper' isn't too accurate either - the documents are usually electronic and aren't entirely white. The purpose of language is to communicate - if people know what you mean when you use certain words, then the purpose is fulfilled.
'Q' is for Dr. Tran
I suggest "intellectual content", to talk about bits and ideas, since it doesn't carry any hidden notions of control or ownership.
>;k
For legal regimes that restrict the use of information in the manner than copyright and patent do, I prefer "information monopoly", though "expression monopoly" suggested by others here is perhaps even better.
Abuse. Lie. Capitalist food for the 21st century. You choose. IP is actually an oxymoron, and the Jefferson (is it really his?) sentence sums it all. So much for all those who say p2p equals theft. Digital means sharing. Fuck the greedy bastards.
If we are referring to the existing state of play, then using the term Intellectual Property is the correct term - whether we like it or not, the existing laws and statutes make it clear that copyrights, trademarks, patents, design rights, and so on are indeed intangible property rights. The subject matter is a sort of property, and the mechanisms confer rights.
To look to a brave new future, then choose a term that is backed by a new framework or doctrine. It seems to me that for all the complaints about the existing IP system, there has been no tangible alternative put forward.
by what spade do you call the conglomeration of concepts known individually as copyright, patent, trademark, servicemark, and tradename?
By what name do you call the conglomeration of an apple, an orange, a DDR dance pad, a Van Gogh painting, and a bathrobe?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Intellectual property rights can be regarded as giving a "right of destruction" to their "owner", i.e. the right to destroy any item that infringes on that IP. Of course the legal term is not "destroy", it is "cease and desist". A patent holder is granted a temporary right to destroy, in return for their disclosure. The value of such a disclosure can be arbitrarily close to zero. In particular an inventor is granted a patent even if some other inventor publicly discloses the same invention after the patent applicant makes their application, but before the patent is granted. (The logic of this seems to be that it is a competition, and the patent office and patent lawyer fees are an entry fee, and so the valuable first prize has to be awarded to someone.)
The maximum destructive potential of a patent cannot be known at the time it is granted, because it involves the right to destroy other people's works that have not been created or even thought of yet. Nor can we know the destruction rendered by a patent afterwards, because projects that might have been are cancelled, or at least altered, in response to the threat posed by the patent.
Copyright holders are granted a right to destroy copies of their own work, but in most cases the size of the work being copyrighted is sufficiently large that noone else would ever have created that work. Thus in practice copyright never gives the copyright holder the ability to destroy works that would have been created independently of their own creative efforts. The destructive right granted to a copyright holder is limited to the amount of destruction that would have occurred if they had simply destroyed their new work before publishing it.
I think that Controlled expression pretty much says it. Not quite as 'pretty' It pretty much describes what Copyright and patents are intended to do -- control (as in limit) our expression of certain ideas.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
"Bob, we own that part of you now; wherever you go we dictate how you think about it, and how you can use it. Here's your check and have a nice day!"
think about it, you are not wholly 'you' anymore, part of you is own in perpetuity by someone else. :-/
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I've tried to explain this as well as I can, but I'm tired :|
Imagine I wanted to reduce pollution in an area where people were complaining. Let's say I gave you the right to pollute over your area of land, perhaps for a specific period of time (maybe 10 years or so), as part of owning land. You could sell that right onwards, or perhaps put further restrictions upon it. This would help to reduce the externalities from pollution. Each area would lose out by not allowing people to pollute.
This is what in economics is called a 'property right' - basically turning an abstract concept into a 'good' so that the market can allocate resources more correctly.
Intellectual Property Rights is a similar concept. If there were no restrictions such as copyright, trademarks etc, the market would work less efficiently. So a property right in certain intellectual endevours (marketing, literature (etc), patents) is designed to adjust an area where the market fails. The market fails to give an incentive to creation, thus by giving a property right over the area we can use the market to allocate in it.
I don't really think there is a better term to describe it in terms of economics. I'm not a fan of the term, as I think it lumps a lot of things together when people mean specific ones, but I think it fits neatly when discussing economics.
Whatever, honky.
Hear, hear! Or you could even say it's an Intellectual Prerogative, as in "it is the prerogative of the author/inventor/creator to designate appropriate uses (expressions) of their works by (ab)using a monopoly vested in/with them by the state" [a simulacra of legal language I whipped up at a moment's notice :P ]. And the acronym still applies! IMHO the term "prerogative" in this case confers a principal's strong interest in a copyrighted/patented/trademarked idea they hold. I think it's like jealously guarding a thing that cannot by nature be held exclusively and that's why you enter into agreement with the state to gain more control over it by way of coercion. This coercion then hopefully (for the principal that is) translates into remuneration in a form of private taxation. You are then said to be licensing the work(s).
On the other hand (and this is where I'm aiming at), the term "prerogative" also suggests that the principal can be whimsical about applying their rights. And as is/was the case with the Royal Prerogative, it is always the duty of us the stakeholders of this arrangement, to question the extent of the definition through time.
As others have pointed out, the above aren't strictly true. This doesn't exactly detract much from CiceroLove's point, though, which is that going after terms like this is the wrong battle to fight.
Then again, the original text by femto that started this article follows the standard "state opinion as fact" mantra. The law says that, under certain circumstances, intellect can be "owned" in a meaningful sense, and there are good reasons for that principle as has been discussed here numerous times before. If femto wants a phrase that implies that intellect cannot be owned, as he says, then it is he who is trying to come up with a misleading term to sway people's opinions away from the facts.
Perhaps those objecting would like the world to stop using "offensive" terms like "intellectual property" and "software theft", but these terms have been around for years, and while not strictly true in the physical sense, there certainly is an element of truth to them. If the best argument you've got for why these things are wrong is that the name is somewhat misleading then you really don't have much of a case at all.
Changing the terms "just because" is what leads to using "human resources" instead of the old-fashioned but perfectly acceptable "personnel" on the one hand, yet having "colleague announcements" instead of "staff announcements" over the tanoy in supermarkets on the other. (For those who didn't spot the irony there, consider whether each of these sounds more of less friendly than the other, and note that the answers are opposites.) The one thing they have in common is that they did away with perfectly good terms that have been in use for years, and replaced them with long-winded, irritating managementspeak.
In summary: if you don't like the ideas that terms like "intellectual property" represent, attack them on their merits (or not) and not because of the name someone happens to have given them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But this contradicts the very raison d'être of patents.
Patents are an exchange: in return for publishing the details of your research so that, in time, the whole world will benefit, you are granted an exclusive right to benefit from that research for a limited time. At the end of that time, your exclusivity stops, and the whole world can do with the information as they wish.
The alternative is that the big commercial R&D departments, academic researchers whose work is funded by industry, and others in a similar position would all try to keep their work as trade secrets. That would be the only way they could profit from it without aiding their competitors as well. Surely this approach would lead to more lost information than patents possibly can.
As with most IP regulation, the logic behind the current law is sound. The problems we have with some of it today is due to a very poor implementation, particularly in the US. If you took out the complex media monopolies who are fixing prices in spite of anti-competition laws, you'd get rid of most of the "problems with copyright". If you had competent people in the USPTO instead of people who are actively motivated to grant any patent no matter how absurd, then you wouldn't have patents used for infighting by big companies' legal departments, and the "problems with patents" are mostly gone too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Patents require the holder to share the knowledge. The point is how you are allowed to use that knowledge during the time immediately following the grant of the patent.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I prefer the term Shared Knowledge.
Think about corporate press: "XYZ corp. has been building on our Shared Knowledge portfolio for maximum return on investment blah blah."
vs. "XYZ corp. has been building on our Intellectual Property portfolio for maximum return on investment blah blah."
Which one is more inspiring?
Worthless.
Trade secret law has more teeth than it used to. It's now possible to make trade secret claims against third parties, which is new.
The DMCA created new kinds of property rights that previously didn't exist, leading to wierd results like the ink cartridge compatibility ruling.
There are also "proprietary rights in drug and agricultural chemical safety data", to prevent generic drug makers from getting approval for drugs using clinical testing data supplied by the original drug developer to get Government approval. This is in addition to patent protection. It's in the TRIPS agreement, so every country in the WTO has to implement this or the US stomps on them.
how about that?
-pyrrho
Remember, many Internet Cafes use Internet Explorer, WHICH SAVES ALL YOUR PASSWORDS BY DEFAULT OUT OF THE BOX.
Never forget that. Remember to clear the passwords and forms before you leave.
It is possible to switch that off but in the 50 or so Internet cafes that I have been in from South Africa to PRague and Bohemia to Germany and Mexico I have only once or twice seen that that option is switched off.
NEVER forget it.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
.. as a term currently used in accounting for exactly this sort of thing.
Once you get into the law that intellect is a
chattel that can be owned, then intellect no longer
exists. It becomes the stuff of lawyers who become
fabulousely rich by being egregiousely stupid in
public places.
Intellectual Priveledge
Most appropriate: Secrets.
Most enlightning: Enslaved knowlege.
Most commentarial: Withheld knowlege.
Most wordy: Ideas witheld from the etirety of humanity for the benefit of one or the few.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It seems to me that the pharse could be turned into-'artistic emblements' or 'intellectual emblements' An emblement is the harvest of a crop that one has planted on their land, it is considered personal property. When one sells that land they still own the corn, but not the land. They planted it, tended it, harvested it. But the can only sell it one time. They don't own the corn flakes, or popcorn etc.. If they want to make some more money they've got to grow some more corn. Technology brought about all of this nonsense about IP and I do believe that technology has ended it. Musicians will have to go back to literally singing for their supper, everytime. Gone are the days when you could make a few good records and retire. 'Recording Artists' are a thing of the past, they just have to face it.
Enough said.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sacred Knowledge
Sacred Wisdom
Thought Processes (I like this one)
Innovative Expressions (MS would love this name)
Owned BST (blood, sweat & tears)
Exclusive Expressions
Licensed Ideas
Idea Rights
Possessed Ideas/Thoughs/Innovatiuons
Reserved Thoughts
Reserved Ideas
ThoughtRights
IdeaRights
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
No... Don't use a posessive pronoun
...
Not Aaron's idea..
but:
Societies influence on Aaron...
Or nature refining a pattern through Aaron...
Intelect Control seems like a good description of what people mean when they say Intelectual Property.
But it doesn't work as a replacement...
Intelectual Phenomena
seems like it could work as a replacement and meaning...
or Intelectual Pattern
They are almost synonimous with idea... yet soften the possesive use of the terms...
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
why bother replacing it at all? The main motivation seems to be the usual slashdot self-righteous whiney "information wants to be free thesis". (preferably someone elses information, which I happen to want).
All the expression recognises is a legal structure which lets me say "I have certain knowledge which I don't want to share with you. If you give me X, then you can share it or use it on my terms."
Like land property rights, the right to stop someone speeding or the right to free speech. They're just consensually agreed norms which we sort of abide by for good or ill. You want to change that law - come up with a good case for it. I've never read one here yet.
Of course, if you don't want people to have any *rights* to their ideas, why not just say so? Then you can carefully explain the same thing to large corporates who spend a lot of cash on research and would quite like to have sole use of their endevours for a while to try and recoup some of that cash and perhaps make a buck. You can also try and explain it to the small inventors who want to be able to stop people (ie: the big corporate) copying the widget that they spent half their lives perfecting.
Of course there are toothless courts and unfair david and goliath stories, but you simply have to recognise that there is nothing inherent in a *right* to someone elses knowledge. If I know how to do something, why should I tell you? Why shouldn't I be able to sell or trade my knowledge? That happens every time Helmut Newton captures a particularly stunning image on film or some unnamed artisan in Asia creats a beautiful fabric design - intellectual creations - which happened to have tangible forms.
The expression "intellectual property" is about as apt a term as you're going to find. It relates to the products of our intellect and we treat it legally as a property right.
Renaming crusades just make people look foolish. In my view, it really only (badly) seems to try and obscure the political/philosophical nature of those who don't favour rights to intangible things such as inventions, designs, trade marks etc.