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Lessig On IP Protection, Conflict
cdlu writes "According to NewsForge [part of OSDN, like Slashdot], Stanford University law professor, author, and Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig sharpened the definition of the ongoing legal struggle over intellectual property while talking at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday. According to Lessig: 'Contrary to what many people see as a cultural war between conservative business types and liberal independents, this is not a 'commerce versus anything' conflict. It's about powerful (business) interests and if they can stop new innovators'."
Hence, if we in the so-called "developed nations" don't fix our legal systems, third-world countries, where "intellectual property law" cannot be enforced for lack of a functional legal system, will become the leaders in creative industries, including IT, right?
long term implications. What is going on with the corporations will, in the long run, turn america into a third-world nation -- while the economic infrastructure will follow the IT industry to somewhere more freindly to innovation.
Can you say 'brain drain'?
Lessig's ideas are revolutionary. Before Stanford's Creative Commons project, nobody was seriously talking about bring the ability to create non-software media licenses to the masses. It was available only to those who could afford attorneys.
Revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean coming up with a different system -- it can be a revolutionary use of the existing system which is what Lessig has done.
In fact, he is even more of a genius for finding creative ways to use existing IP law to meet his ends (of course taking enormous inspiration from Stallman et co. in the software space).
the problem is that people need to be able to protect their work and profit from it if they wish. with out this there is no real incentive for most people to do anything much. patents are a good thing when given out under very strict conditions, and should never be used to kill compeditors in an already developed market. eg. patenting gif files. licensing can also provide a steady and secure income for a company allowing further development of products which can benifit us all. the key is not so much that licensing and patents are bad, it's how they are misused. unfortunately this is a symptom of american corperate culture.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I can understand the argument for compensating the creator of an original work be it an invention or an artistic work, since otherwise there would be little incentive to innovate.
I do not understand why individuals and companies consider it a right to be able to control the use of their invention or demand extravagant or prohibitive compensation for its use. An idea or work of art, once formulated should be equally available to everyone to build upon. Determining what is or isn't prohibitive is trickier though I think we'd be able to do better than the current broken system.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
According to this wiki Hollywood was built this way:
during the antitrust trial:
"Microsoft is just one good idea away from oblivion."
I may not have the quote exactly right, but the idea expressed is correct.
Therefore, to protect one's future, if one is a power player, one must protect innovation from outside the company. Excessive innovation from inside the company is, more often than not, antithetical to profits.
As an example from outside IT, a Trinity factory oval racer who used to practice at my track once told me the story of his first race for the team. He not only won, but he broke the track race record by two seconds.
When he got off the driver's stand, glowing with pride and accomplishment, the team manager stormed up to him and said, "Don't ever let me see you do anything like that again, or your fired. We came here with seconds in hand. You only needed to win by one second, not half a lap. Now every other team knows how fast we are, and they're all going to go home and figure out how to go just as fast before they come out to a major meet again. You just threw away a full season's advantage by showing off. And a full season's sales advantage that goes with it."
There is no advantage to an established company in offering too much "advancment" to the public. Especially if they can get the public to buy chrome as advancment.
Anybody from outside who offers advancement when the public is willing to buy chrome simply needs to be stopped.
A large and powerful corporation, again using Microsoft as the obvious example, by necessity becomes conservative. They have little to gain. They can live off of the the return of their outside investments, effectively, for eternity. They can only lose.
They don't like losing.
If they can create a conservative general atmosphere in society and at law that favors them, well, they don't have to because they can't have any real competition.
Other powerful corporations aren't real competition in innovation because they're all playing by the same rule sheet. Only try to win by one second, so you can sell the other seconds you've already got later, when people get tired of this year's chrome.
KFG
[Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and publicity rights have] always been an artificial concept. That doesn't make it necessarily a bad one.
I agree with the principle behind copyright, that giving an author an economic incentive to create can promote Progress, but I disagree with its implementation in the U.S. Code as of today, such as the effectively perpetual term of monopoly, the breadth of the monopoly on musical works given that there exist a provably finite number of melodies, and the breadth of the monopoly on derivative works that in the end prevents authors lacking deep pockets for a "fair use" legal defense from creating some satiric works.
I agree with the principle behind patents, that giving an inventor an economic incentive to invent can promote Progress, but I disagree with the poor job that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has done with respect to examining patents for obviousness given prior art.
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Open Standards Portal
I was at the OSBC and heard Lessig talk. A few things to relate:
/. posters said this is the way the system currently works. That's wrong. You don't have to register your work to have copyright. In current law, the right exists implicitly in the creative act. If you register it, you are just making it easier to demonstrate ownership in the case of a conflict.
;)
1. He actually talked about developing nations, pointing out that although in theory these countries are given lesser constraints negotiated via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in reality the U.S. is apparently creating bi-lateral agreements with these countries to strong-arm them into falling in line with U.S. IP practices. To hear Lessig tell the tale, this may result in some backlash on the economic front, as some of the countries are banding together to try to stand up to Uncle Sam
2. Lessig said in the Q&A that he's tired of hearing his words played back to him with the implication that he's against patent and copyrights. His talk actually reinforced them as a good thing, IF properly applied, i.e. in a balanced way.
He pointed out that the retention of IP rights gives the creator the ability to provide clear guidelines about the acceptable use of the work. He countered that, though, by pointing out that in the 70's IP law changed so that everything was by DEFAULT protected, vs. works having to be explicitly registered. One of the
3. The argument for limiting the duration of copyright of course builds off the whole notion of 'balance.' There was an interesting point Lessig made about the goal of well-managed businesses... that they basically try hard to be boring, i.e. to avoid major disruptions. It was interesting because the ending keynote speaker of the day wasClayton Christensen (Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution) from Harvard Business School who had models that showed why this kind of business behavior ultimately leads to innovative startup's 'killing off' the big guys. Seemed to reinforce Lessig's point that the 'boring companies' need the crutch of artificial (& ridiculous, IMHO) constructs in the law to prop them up.
C'mon, you goliaths, what are you afraid of? Can't take a little honest competition without the help of your legal teams? Now that Michael Eisner's powerbase is weakening, maybe we'll see some movement on this front?....