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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.
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.
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 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
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
Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.
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".
I suggest "intellectual content", to talk about bits and ideas, since it doesn't carry any hidden notions of control or ownership.
>;k
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.