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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?"
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.
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.
Well... I agree with you, but you really come off as damned pretensious.
The problem with this ask slashdot is the poster isn't asking for a new word for intellectual property. He's asking for a word that exemplifies the Thomas Jefferson quote. Well I've got news for you. That's not how most intellectual property holders feel about it.
I think it would be great if we could all follow Jefferson's example, but we can't just change the word to imply that intellectual property should be shared rather than hoarded. If you want that you need to convince people that it's worth giving their ideas away.
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.
I think it's very relevant because usage makes the language. I don't like this either, but it's a fact. I've observed the following instances of people fighting against this.
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ESR's attempts to reclaim the word "hacker" when (to the non computing public) it clearly includes "crackers." This is probably mostly do to the fact that they are the only ones doing anything that would appear interesting on a silver screen. Can you imagine a movie about kernel module development? I'll take Battlefiled Earth thank you. But I digress.
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Liberals true to the ideals set forth early in US history are quite different from Socialists, and in conversation they will point this out and attempt to reclaim the term, unsuccessfully for the most part.
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Bugs, to most people, seems to include any non-aquatic invertebrates that crawl. If you use the term around entomologists, you'll get a speech to the effect that "True bugs belong to the order Hemiptera" and they go on about leathery based hemelytra in much the same helpful and nourishing fashion as CdotZinger above.
The ugly fact these three observations have in common is that common usage adds meanings to words. In some cases these connotations are objectionable, and it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to look for new terms that lack the objectionable connotations.I consider patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets to be what I'm referring to when I say "IP." As such it's a very convenient term to use in conversation.
SCO and other large companies before them have attempted to add an additional, non-legal, but purportedly moral connotation to this term. They have been selling the public on the idea that they do in fact own "ideas." That this ownership is called "IP" and that it is their legal right. They are specifically selling the concept that if they do something first in their software, that every future piece of software that serves the same function is in part their "intellectual property." A term they use very much in the sense of "owned ideas" and not at all in the sense of "products primarily of the labor of the mind."
Even though he elsewhere acknowledges that the parts of Linux that were allegedly copied can be replaced, (thus eliminating the application of Copyright's derived works section), Blake Stowell (SCO spokesman) still maintains: "Linux could still be used; it just wouldn't be free," Stowell said. "These people are upset because they've been enjoying a free ride for some time. They're upset their free ride will potentially be gone."
So exactly what gives him the right to tax our cup of tea?
He doesn't have a patent on SMP. He won't have even have the desperately weak copyright claim 24 hours after the "offending code" gets published. He doesn't own the Trademark, and it's clearly not a Trade Secret.
He is convinced that we who use Linux owe him money based on this nebulous 5th category based on the principal of "idea ownership."
I think femto is very right to want his/her conversations to lack endorsement of this stupidity, and I wish him/her good luck in coming up with a good replacement. Till then when people refer to IP, I will gently and without a hint of corrective authority ask them to clarify which aspect of IP they are referring to, and we'll talk about it "long hand" until such time as someone answers femto's question with a catchy, Jefferson compatible, substitute.
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
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"
But, how can you call a property of the universe intellectual property? That's as bad as patenting gene sequences that have existed in nature for millions of years. Archimedes owns the process he used to determine that formula - and genenetic researchers own the processes they use to discover gene sequences.
They both also own process where application of that knowledge is used to acheive an end result in the real world -- whether that be calculating the volume of oranges, or curing a specific disease. If someone else can use the formula to do something you hadn't forseen, like calculating the volume of grapefruit or curing a different disease, then good for them - they were insightful and should rightly profit from it.
The assumption of unowned Intellectual Property is called (brace yourself): an idea. When it is associated with a person it is my idea or Jim's idea. If its useful then its a useful idea. OK, go ahead and start work on getting this magical wonder word introduced into the dictionary. I'll talk all the lawyers into changing all the IP law.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
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.
The term "protected" is no better than "intellectual property." Privileged is more accurate. The holder of the privilege can exclude others from using the same expression so the holder is "protected" from competition but that obscures the nature of what is going on. Rights are protected, privileges are granted. Monopolies are granted to those priviliged enough to get them. It is right to grant some privilege to authors but we should be clear about what we are doing and why so that we do not grant too much. Macaulay says it best:
If I own a hammer, I can control who has access to it. I can prevent you from using it. So the important point is not that I can use it, but that I can prevent you from using it.
JWL.Freakwitch.net
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
If its such a narrowly defined legal term (it isn't) why are there no laws dealing with it?
Answer: Becausec copyright, trademark, patent law all try to deal with intellectual 'product' differently based on what the thing is (original work, marketplace differentiator, innovative idea). Intellectual property does not appear in laws because there is no such things. Copyrights are copyrights, trademarks are trademakrs, and patents are patents.
"IP" as a term was invented not so long ago as the Joe Sixpack term to attach to works covered under either of those laws. The fact that you think its a legal term is exactly what companies want; an all-encompassing rally cry to rouse the support (or opposition, of course) of people like you who dont know any better.
"Old man yells at systemd"
No. No no no.
.. ) to earn his or her keep. Patents, same. How do you encourage innovation if you reward the current status-quo so heavily?
Copyright law, patent law was ALL created to *prevent* people from owning things. (Like the secret guilds, etc where historical scientific processes were lost.)
The very reason we introduced these laws was to ensure that ideas became available to the public at some point.
Some people wish to retain what you call 'property of the universe' (and the process) forever. See any number of monopolies, both capitalist and feudal over the previous centuries. Copyright laws, patent laws, laws that deal with ideas are *always* created in the first place to ensure that the author does NOT own that idea until they die without telling anyone. They are incentives (via short term gain) for people to publish their ideas because they offer a certain amount of proection from the government. Certain. Limited. Key words. Otherwise companies would push to drop the laws altogether if you truely feel that ideas are intrinsicly ownership. We'd have one rule, that said: ideas are yours, and you have the legal basis to create whatever usage contract out of that work that you want to. But this would be bad. Public rules over private interest. Yadda yadda.
The people championing the whole intellectual property thing are simply those that have the most to gain. As a musician (whom many say does pretty cool electronica stuff: http://www.sirsonic.com), yes I love copyright, but I'll take a 20 year ownership and create 50 great songs instead of the current 90 years after the death fiasco that encourages a system that only needs a one hit wonder (helped nicely by advertising, of course
"Old man yells at systemd"
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'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.
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?
in the physical sense, i'd say you don't own something unless someone tries to 'steal' it. it's a callback function -- when someone tries to take it, your ownership is manifested. the rest of the time, the rock's just sitting there. do i known it's "owned" by anyone, just by looking at it? unless you paint it all over it, no. (and even then, that's a layer of paint on top of the object -- the object itself, really, doesn't have a marker of ownership.)
unless someone disputes your ownership, you have no reason to control it physically. in fact, it's meaningless to do so. ownership is purely based on action/reaction.
multiple people own an item at the same time if attempts by one person to use/control the item are not countered by others in the group. if a wife uses money from the account without any attempt by the other owner to stop the transaction (if it's known, and not some sort of concealed transaction) then the wife owns the items just as much as everyone else on the account.
that's why you don't get to keep your trademarks, etc. if you don't defend them -- if it's not worth it to you to try to defend your exclusive rights, then it's not worth enough to you for anyone else to care. you no longer own it, basically, because you gave up on defending it.
in the same way, ownership of an idea only manifests itself when someone tries to use it. just thinking it generally does nothing for them. and we don't care. do i care what you think? nope. but if you act on an idea that i control, then my ownership is manifested by me defending my virtual turf.
(when you 'own' the rock, you're just controlling its uses. nobody else owns it until -they- control its use. control is the issue -- ownership, as such, is just a concept. which maybe you can own?)