Intellectual Property Laws bad for business

mshiltonj writes "The NYTimes has a story called "Report Raises Questions About Fighting Online Piracy" that talks about how the stringent enforcement of current Intellectual Property laws (see: RIAA) may acutally be bad for business. It's the not EFF or FSF saying this, it's professors at Harvard Business School and Cardozo Law School. The professors say, "The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support, It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace." and "Bits are not the same as atoms. We need to reframe the legal discussion to treat the differences of bits and atoms in a more thoughtful way.""

Comments

wired article

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an article like this in this month's Wired too.
It is pretty clear that an idea is not something that someone can "own", because it doesn't exist in space and time. Property laws were developed because there is only a limited amount of material objects in the universe, but everyone can "own" ideas without "taking" anything from anybody else. In fact, it is better to spread good ideas around, for the same reason that it is better to live in a good neighborhood than a bad one.

The term IP itself is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

The use of the word "property" in "intellectual property" is itself misleading. It is similar to the common lie of calling copyright infringement "theft". I prefer the term "copyrighted material".

It is just hard to apply the term "property" to something that is so easily duplicated and propagates so easily.

Fear for the future

[IamGarageGuy 2]

The mainstream press and acedemics are now saying what /. has been ranting about for years. This is not necessarily a good thing. I believe IP should be reformed, but great care should be taken lest we shoot ourselves in the foot. There are a lot of programmers as well as artists here that could stand to lose their livlihood. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

IPR isnt a problem in itself...

[D-Cypell]

Its a double edged sword this one...

A startup requires some kind of protection from companies that are bigger and more established from taking their idea and using their extra resources to get the product to market first. The IPR laws were orginally designed to protect the small guy and give him a fighting chance... in this case they add competition to the market.

The problem is that they are being used as bargining chips by huge global-hyper-mega corps as the corperate equivilant of a nuclear deterant (You sue me for this and i'll sue you for that!). This is absolutely NOT what they are designed for.

It would be great to come up with some hard and fast rule that prevents this abuse, but I cant think of one. Perhaps some kind of patent lifespan restriction based on company net worth (to prevent a company with ample resources to develop a patented technology from just sitting on the idea).

Any other suggestions?

Correct term is Intellectual Monopoly

[NZheretic]

The term Intellectual Property is a misnomer, a more correct term would be intellectual monopoly
Adam Smith and *Intellectual monopoly* (Score:5, Interesting)
by NZheretic (23872) on Fri 18 Oct 12:11AM (#4467943)

From

The Relevance of Adam Smith by Robert L. Hetzel.
With added commentary by yours truly...

MONOPOLY AND GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES: The principal theme set forth in The Wealth of Nations is that a country most effectively promotes its own wealth by providing a framework of laws that leaves individuals free to pursue the interest they have in their own economic betterment. This self-interest motivates individuals? propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another and thereby leads them to meet the needs of others through voluntary cooperation in the market place:

...man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. (p. 14)

Everyone realises and acknowledges that Microsoft is a business, there to make a profit to share with it's marjor stakeholders, from it's shareholders to it's employees. However ...

Smith also argues that the harmony between private goals and larger socially desirable goals promoted by voluntary cooperation between individuals in the market place is interfered with by monopoly and government subsidies. In contrast to competition, monopoly and government subsidies cause individuals to devote either too few or too many resources to particular markets:

....the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stock towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead to divide and distribute the stock of every society, among all the different employments carried on in it, as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.

All the different regulations of the mercantile system, necessarily derange more or less this natural and most advantageous distribution of stock. (pp. 594-5)
Every derangement of the natural distribution of stock is necessarily hurtful to the society in which it takes place; whether it be by repelling from a particular trade the stock which would otherwise go to it, or by attracting towards a particular trade that which would not otherwise come to it. (p. 597)

.... sometimes, because of the overiding profit motive, the end consumer can be put at a disadvantage, and the natural model can become unbal

If there were no copyright ...

[mst76]

I estimate that the iTunes music store holds around 500.000 songs, which requires about 2TB storage. At the moment, it costs only around $1300 in harddisks for consumers to store the entire iTunes collection. It is likely that in a few years, it will only costs about, say $300 bucks. Another few years and it will be affordable (in terms of storage) for consumers to have the entire library of songs ever published in their pocket. Does having copyright on music still make sense then?

The primary motivation for copyright is to stimulate more output by giving creators limited-time protection of their work. But do we really need stimulation for more musical output if you can a million songs with you at anytime? If copyright were to be abolished, the amount of new works will undoubtly fall, but it's unlikely to dissappear altogether. The benefits is that everybody can, for little costs, enjoy about the complete published musical output of the past with them. Is this a good tradeoff?

So you want MORE coercion through force...

[dada21]

Copyrights and Intellectual Property are protected through the use of force by the only monopoly legally allowed to use force: our government.

Copyright makes sense in some ways, but if you look at copyright historically, much of the greatest art and music was produced with no protection for the author. Great literary works and poetry also had no protection under copyright until recently.

In the past 300 years, we decided in order to protect the "rights" of a creator, we need government to step in and threaten anyone who wanted to steal such creations and use them without compensating the artist. Fine.

Our Constitution gave very limited protection (7 years, extendable for another 7 years maximum). To many free thinkers, copyright was a great concern, as it now gave government a new power it didn't have before. As many of the free marketeers here know, every new government power is a slippery slope towards ultimate government power.

Copyright has been made into a monopolizing power for corporations, and now capitalism and the free market is blamed! Capitalism would never allow copyright -- if you create something, don't release it until you have the best way to market or distribute it. Should I have a better tactic, I should be able to move it too. Creating a product or art is only part of the profitability -- marketing, distribution, and other parts of selling the item are just as important.

Copyleft is no better. In the end, you still need some entity to enforce it. If its a free market entity, people will have no reason to support your copyleft as they aren't forced to. If you allow government the ability to enforce it, they will only use coecion through force to protect it, and that again creates a monopoly.

When it boils down to software, there might not be any reason to copyright or copyleft or protect the software through the monopoly of force. There are free market protections in place already!

If you were the author of Windows, and someone wanted to promote the product without your consent, you could submit to the buying public that they should buy your product as they'd get your support. They'd get your updates (as you have the source code) quicker than through your competitor. They'd get the support of knowing they can submit new ideas to you that might get into the code (your competitor wouldn't have that ability, no source code). Your customers would also have the knowledge that they'd be supporting you to continue to make better products.

Where does copyright fit into this? Is copyright preventing rampant piracy? Not a chance. If you want to protect your software from getting copied, force your software to register itself online at every use. Fixed. No pirating.

If you want to protect your software from getting copied, how about hardware locks like in the past? Sure, some have been worked around, but in the end, the pirates would have to work extra hard to do so. If you price it properly, business would have no incentive to pirate.

Copyright and copyleft are both automations created that can only work through force. Only government has the legal mandate to initiate force. And once we allow that power, we have no power to restrain it should it get out of hand.

Science Friday

[Anonymous Coward]

I was recently listening to the NPR archive of a recent Science Friday. The guests were some folks from Xerox PARC who were there are the beginnings of it all. Some happened to be working for Microsoft now and their viewpoints were in line with that. One person (don't remember his name, unfortunately) did mention that Open Source ideals, though it was not called that then, was what allowed all those emerging companies that sprang from the Xerox research to blossom. It was the freedom that created this little industry of the Internet.

So I'd definitely agree that this travesty of laws that have sprung up at the behest of media companies is indeed harming the economy.

Re:radical rethinking of IP?

[bruce_the_moose]

While these acedemics may be doing the hero's task of rethinking IP, I'm also concerned about this comment by a copyright professor who read the report:

Jane C. Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia University and a copyright expert, had a more mixed view of the report.....it "makes unsubstantiated, misleading, or misinformed statements about copyright law." In fact, she said, "A little less preaching to the technologist 'choir' might have made this a better 'sell' to copyright owners and, perhaps, to lawmakers."

Sloppy scholarship helps no one. Given how much bad research, lack of fact-checking, and fabricated hearsay (Jane Fonda and John Kerry photos anyone?) floats around on the net, the moment I encounter anything that I know is untrue or wrong in any piece, I stop reading and file the whole thing in the Intellectually Suspect folder.

The Committee for Economic Development has a spotty track record. Marshall Plan: Good. World Bank and IMF: iffy. Setting standards for public schools through testing: bad (and, yes, I am a parent).

Re:Yes, stringent enforcement is bad...

[orthogonal]

I have no problem whatsoever with treating everybody as a friend [for the purposes of sharing copyrighted materials via p2p] (yes, there are different 'levels' of friend, like all other friends.), and I have no trouble sharing with all my friends.

Great! Friends, I need to "borrow" $20.

Unfortunately, this time you'll have to share your own money, not an evil record company's money, and I don't actually plan to give it back to you.

I mean, as long as you can re-define "friends" to mean "people I've never met who share my musical tastes and my ethical blind spots", can't I be as intellectually (dis)honest and re-define "borrow" too?

(I am reminded of the Cowbirds in Walt Kelly's Pogo, socialist agitators whose motto was "To share! To share what others' have!")

Compare with 19th C England

[Mikkeles]

During the 19th century, England tightened its patent laws to the point that reverse engineering was disallowed (cf. DMCA and some EULAs).
The main result was the decline of new invention and improvement originating out of England and a surge of advancement of invention in the US.
(England continued to 'coast' as a world power by expending its capitol (i.e.: the empire) for another 50 - 100 years before precipitous decline was obviously evident.)

The major problem is

[FullCircle]

The major problem is that copyright should not be transferable.

The person who created the work should retain all rights to the work. Not some global megacorp that can monopolize on the giant mass of copyrights they have bought or taken from employees.

If you can only monopolize what you have actually created then the power and wealth would be spread much more evenly. An individual is normally much more likely to license or sell a product at a reasonable price.

The idea that a corporation has the rights of a person but no way to be held accountable for its actions was not taken into account when these laws were passed or when the US Constitution was originally written to grant copyright.

IMHO, returning a corporation to its original status of a group of accountabe individuals with individual rights and copyrights, rather than the current status of an untouchable person, would correct many of our current problems.