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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.
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.
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.
{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.
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.
"Mine!"
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.
Amazing. You make an excellent case for saying intellectual products , and then without even noticing, you immediately identify product = property .
"Area of the unit sphere = 4 \pi" is a product of Archimedes' intellect. Is it ipso facto "property", with all the connotations of the word in our ambiant ideology?
(Example of such connotations: trespassing your neighbor's property is a crime; in Swiss culture it is a right.)
So no, "Area = 4\pi" is not Archimedes' property. But he has an inalienable right to it, namely to be recognized as the author. What the French legal tradition calls Author's right (droit d'auteur).
Different name, different connotations. Thus for instance, being inalienably yours the author's right cannot be sold in French law. Compare the U.S., where the first thing publishers demand of aspiring songwriters is to sell them the copyright as part of the deal.
Which of course, is the very mechanism through which untalented businessmen end up thinking they own 20th century culture, or UNIX.
Note that this leaves open the question of what material rewards law may, or may not, be attached to Author's right. Certainly one may argue for a mechanism to compensate authors when their (recent) intellectual products are traded in books. Indeed French law has something to this effect.
But to immediately declare it's going to be treated as property, as part of the very grammar, is trumping the cards from the get go.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
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
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.
"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:
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.
How 'bout: "Knowledge Restrictions And Permissions" or long for "KRAP".
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
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"
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.
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.
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?
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.
.. as a term currently used in accounting for exactly this sort of thing.
I'd call it an interesting start for the next Lesiure Suit Larry....
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."