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The Demise of IP?
meetmeonaholiday writes "CNet has an interesting article on why intellectual property owners should worry. Melanie Wyne explains how open source and open standards will lead to the downfall of IP and hurt competition rather than aid it." From the article: "As part of the discussion between Massachusetts and software developers who would be affected by the state's mandate, the designer of the OpenDocument Format policy, Eric Kriss, flippantly stated: 'Here we have a true conflict between the notion of intellectual property and the notion of sovereignty, and I'd say that 100 percent of the time in a democracy, sovereignty trumps intellectual property.' This sounds positively pre-Boston Tea Party to me ... It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further 'develop' it."
So are we going to see a real-life Boston tea party all over again?
Are we going to (hopefully) see thousands of people throwing boxes of Microsoft products into the harbor?
Who can organize this and when can we have the party?
(I'm serious!)
and bring your x-box 360s too!
This is simply stupid - more spew from those that hate Open Source!
The reality is that Open Standards/Open Source will foster competition rater than stop it -
M-
This is not 'pre-Boston Tea Party', it's just that the sovereign state doesn't feel like being held hostage by proprietary formats - in this case, MS's .doc files
because we all know competing on the basis of the quality of software (in the massachusettes case) instead of proprietary format lock-in is really anti-competitive...
The Initiative for Software Choice is backed by Microsoft.
Yet another shill decrying the evil of sharing information.
There's no logical outcome to the situation at all unless it's more of the same.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
The theory that we've all been taught is that copyrights are "intellectual
property" rights that protect creators, and give them an incentive to make
creative works that provide personal and public benefit. The truth is that
property rights exist to allocate finite resources, not to artificially
choke supply for the sake of incentive. Rather than protection, or a free
market property, copyrights are more like a regulation that micromanages how
people can use information. In practice, they are dangerous to rely on and
lock out more opportunity then they promote.
History has shown that just protection of property rights leads to strong
incentives, but coercion of incentive does not necessarily lead to just
property rights. Simply because an institution calls something a property
right, doesn't mean that it is. If, for example, an industry used the
government to artificially restrict the natural supply of food and called
shares of that monopoly a "property right", it would be very easy to see
how the artificial distortion of markets would not only cause opportunity
loss, but harm to society. Copyrights are a way for some industries to
use government to artificially restrict the natural supply of information
and force the market to center around information control rather than
service value. That causes opportunity loss, harm to society, and a burden
of enforcement that is too heavy to bear in the information age.
Normally copyright concerns would not be so eminent as they have been
effectively used for hundreds of years without failure. However, things are
different this time and faith in the copyright system is rather dangerous.
Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor
market and the ugly death of the plantation system. The information age is
forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of the
copyright system. It is not a coincidence that the speculative stock market
crash around 1857, regarding industrial technology is very similar to the
speculative stock market crash in 2001 regarding information technology. It
is not a coincidence that the slavery issue created a raging debate about
artificial "property rights" as copyrights have today. It is not a
coincidence the disproportional prosperity of the plantation system then and
the disproportional prosperity of the copyright industries today (That is,
unless one thinks hollywood is underpaid). Things like the harsh
punishments for merely teaching a person of color to read, vs copyright
crimes having punishments worse than rape today. These are all symptoms of
drastically changing markets and entrenched dying industries trying to
prevent change. As for those industries that thought that the entire purpose
and meaning of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the
cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit - they
were deadly wrong in spite of all the money and intellect behind them. Those
industries today whom believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the
information age is to leverage inventions like the Internet to expand the
influence of copyright controls for vast growth and profit, well?
Well, over the next several years, the copyright system will not only be
changed, it will become effectively dead. All industries that center on
them will change or die a protracted death, and all institutions that rely
on a proprietary information infrastructure will be stuck in the mud as
they suffer numerous opportunity costs. The information age is doing for
information services what the industrial revolution did for production.
However, the copyright system doesn't center around the supply and demand
of service, but an artificial supply restrictions on information that
services bring about. Over the coming years as information becomes
commoditized and service value becomes more important than th
Hey man, ;), maybe capitalism is just a transitory stepping stone along how we go about doing things... A future where we don't have to eat soma would be nice too... Now, if this dang IntarWEb would just work all the time...
Shh.
TCP is Dying! IP is near demise, and Iraq's insurgency is in its last throes.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Replace "IP" with "government mandated monopoly" (which is what "IP" really is) in the article to realize just how silly it is. "Confiscatory government policy thrusting privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners"? Sounds just like what the government does when a patent is enforced against someone who has independently developed a piece of software.
There is a time and place for government protectionism, and some forms of "IP" do serve a greater good. But what the government grants, the government can take away. Ms. Whine^H^H^H^H^HWyne would do well to remember that.
Massachusetts wants their documents in a format that they can guarantee they will be able to use 10, 50, 100, 500 years from now. They could have used a patented standard except that no suitable patented standard even exists.
In that case, we might as well listen and start switching to IPv6....
or is that article so full of shit that it's hard to know where to start?
All together now: "Intellectual Property"* is a privilege, not a right.
Your patent does not make you a unique and beautiful snowflake. The gov't does not usually invalidate patents outright. More often than not, they force you into a compulsory licensing scheme.
OMG ITS COMPULSORY!!!111
Calm down. Some governments won't even bother to license it.
Asian bird-flu example.
If the government feels that its national security is more important than your patent, it can and will take your "IP". In a small fraction of cases, the government says "You can't patent that idea. It is to sensitive." And guess what... you can't file a patent.
Ultimately, patents are a gift from the government to you.
*In this case I'm not including copyright...
even though its a privilege granted by Congress,
it has the word 'right' in it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Of course IP people have to worry this is why Copyright now goes on pratically for ever, why patents are granted for the bleeding obvious and why no actually owns anything they buy these days they just license it.
The Economist had a more interesting, and realistic, section on this a couple of weeks back, they were saying there would be MORE IP economy not less, but that things like opening up IP often helped areas.
To imply that the US Goverment, the creator of the world's most corporate friendly IP regime is in-fact loosening the controls is about as barking as it gets.
To then follow that up with a complete misunderstanding of the importance of standards for communication and information sharing (802.11x anyone?) and imply that specifying open standards is a constraint on IP put this article right in the "honey-nut fruit loops" category of journalism.
Specifying standards is about creating commodity marketplaces and reducing the cost of entry, and as any free-market economist (as opposed to close market politicians pretending to be economists) will tell you, reducing the cost of entry increases competition, standardising a market has the ability to decrease the cost of an individual good (product) but raise the total value of the market. 802.11x is a great example of this, and so is Apple v MS in terms of how the protectionism of Apple created a SMALLER market for them as they insisted on total control of their IP.
Releasing IP is often smart for business. Morons who have political opinions masquerading as journalists really irritate me.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I see...
So having standard electrical plugs, standards for phone jacks & POTS destroyed creativity and wealth. I see...
When I think of the number of coroporations that benefited from ignoring patents in the 19th century, like Nestle, I find this argument of stronger IP = stronger economy a lot of bull[crap].
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Right now, you need to understand that if you use proprietary, closed document formats, your data is being held to ransom. If Microsoft bring out a new version of Office, your choice is: buy it, or get everybody else in the whole wide world to save their files that they want to send you in the older format. Which really doesn't sound to me like much of a choice. Finally, someone who gets it: some things are more important than money. The right of all the people to access government documents is more important than the {supposed} right of one company to make money by charging the people a fee -- no matter how small -- to access government documents. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and the needs of the few outweigh the whims and caprices of the many.
As for mentioning the Boston Tea Party
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
maybe he meant to say that IP hinders competition. The sentence sounds like Open source is the one hindering competition. This latter interpretation contradicts the context of the whole submission, i got a bit confused by it, too.
I seemed to vaguely remember something about ISC and MS so I searched and got this explanation of Initiative for Software Choice.
Why doesn't cnet not point out a connection like this? I can't remember every damn organization and who they're affiliated with.
IP protect file formats means MS is taxing us for the right to communicate. Every email containing a word document I receive is tantamount to saying I can't communicate unless I pay MS (and by that token, contribute to the US economy :-) ) for the privilage. Every JPG copied to a FAT formatted solid-state drive which is taxed by MS represents a limitation on Free speech etc.
That's why OpenStandards are the opposite of pre-Boston tea party, in fact they are the Boston tea party.
Chuck the tea in the river, let's brew our own!
Would there be an Open Office without Microsoft Office?
Open Office and many other open source projects are modeled from
intellectual property.
If there was a Boston Tea Party of sorts and people threw away
or refused to use or own software that wasn't open we would
rely on open source to lead the way. I wonder if advancements would
equal or match those from for-profit software companies.
ANY CUSTOMER should be in the same boat: they should be picking a product based on THEIR business requirements, not Microsoft's wants. That they've been able to dictate formats for this long only reinforces their monopoly status.
Second, "traditional" retail software companies (e.g. Microsoft) wouldn't be able to survive in that environment anyway. Very quickly, companies would be forced to adopt business models that don't require selling the software per-copy. Instead, companies would have to sell services and support -- take IBM, Red Hat, MMORPGs (with their monthly access fee), etc. as examples.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What Melanie Wyne doesn't get is that it takes government effort -- and tax dollars -- to enforce IP. Physical property can be guarded by the owner, but aside from having a government police force and court system to prevent intellectual property from flying around on P2P networks, how does one protect IP? And the costs are rising every minute as the internet becomes more pervasive.
There are other ways for content producers to make money for their work. They may not be as potentially lucrative as today, with an effective subsidy provided by government's artifical intellectual property rights, but there will be lots of opportunity -- especially once money stops going towards enforcing the current IP system and is instead spent directly on entertainment.
GRATUITOUS SPAM: I'm personally involved with one agency that is using alternative economic models for paying content producers. Check it out here.
"It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further "develop" it."
"confiscatory government policy" ??? Mandating a standard (open) document format for government use is "confiscatory" policy? What in heavens name is "confiscated"? Not the holy IP anyway.
What is "confiscated" is the possibility for the currently dominant Office software vendor to maintain a lock on office software through proprietary document formats. And how is that bad? Every software writer on the planet can use the Open Document standard for free. Including the current heavyweight. Funny thing is ... if the document format becomes standardised, then you loose an argument for buying the next version of MS Office. Competition will be more on price and performance. Bad news for Mircrosoft, the firm wich currently has market dominance, good news for everyone else. If that is "confiscatory" then I can live with it.
But who is this Initiative for Software Choice anyway? According to the Economist, the Initiative for Software Choice, is a Microsoft-supported lobby group that also made itself heard to decry the adoption of Linux in Munich. (see http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=2054746)/
Ah, now it starts to make sense. If you want to villify something in US public perception, call it "Socialist", or even better "Communist". "Anti-property" will do nicely too. If you can make that stick, then you have them on the defensive no matter what. In the absence of credible evidence try the next best thing ... and call it "confiscatory government policy".
What better way to try and rub off a scary association onto Open Document than to have an innocuously sounding "initiative" worriedly denounce it as "confiscatory". It doesn't make sense but that it doesn't matter. PR pieces don't have to make sense, they have to make a splash.
Well done Initiative for Software Choice, and well done News.Com for publishing it without comment or research!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not about stealing ip for the greater good.
MASS isn't stealing anything.
MASS is saying "we will buy your product if you meet this standard".
Governments spec out contracts all the time.
MS arguing they won't support the MASS requirement is like arguing in favor of building a government vehicle with custom bolts and nuts that require custom tools vs building it with standard nuts and bolts that use standard tools.
Because MS was the biggest nut and bolt company- they have gotten away with murder over the last 10 years making things more and more custom instead of more and more standard.
----
As far as libertarianism goes- Microsoft is not John Galt. Microsoft is larger than many governments while John Galt is an individual. This is the failure of libertarian philosophy- it breaks down when one party can destroy the other party with impunity because of wealth differences. I personally think libertarianism is a good basic philosophy but it breaks down when more than 10 to 15 million dollars concentrates under any one person/groups control. Without many competing small groups, you basically collapse into nobility and peasents.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
having standard electrical plugs, standards for phone jacks & POTS destroyed creativity and wealth. I see...
Standards are useful; but yes, they do also stifle creativity and invention. With all the electronic equipment we have these days, running 60Hz 120V AC (or whatever your local standard is) through our walls is rather suboptimal; if we could supply 12V DC to our equipment instead of having an AC/DC converter inside every box, we could obtain significant savings in equipment costs, reductions in power usage (those wall warts are horribly inefficient!), and improvements in reliability.
Now, in this particular case the benefits of having a standard probably outweigh the costs of limiting innovation; but this certainly isn't going to apply in general.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
That's because it doesn't work for any practical density of people.
The moment you get enough people together, sooner or later someone is going to disagree about "what's fair". Eventually, people will conclude that they need to write down "what's fair" in as unambiguous language as possible (putting aside the ridiculous obfuscation of the current legal language).
People will, of course, still argue about what that "unambiguous language" actually means. They will need some sort of abitration mechanism to try and clarify the meaning of "what's fair" in a manner that other people will understand.
Then someone else will decide that they don't want to play by "what's fair", whether it's written down and unambiguous or not. People will inevitably conclude that there needs to be some kind of enforcement mechanism to keep people-who-don't-follow-what's-fair from destroying the society.
And of course, often forgotten, is you need some kind of mechanism to make sure that elements of the other three mechanisms don't abuse their purposes for their own benefit.
I'm deliberately using the word "mechanism" to indicate that a strong central government isn't absolutely necessary to provide these societal services. If you can figure out some individual-based set of rules that implement these "mechanisms" in such a way to cause an overall stable society, then congratulations: you're a genius! You're going to have to be a little more specific than "if you get rid of government, people will automatically play fair" though, since that gets proven not to work quite frequently throughout world history.
Phrases like: "failure by the EU Parliament this summer to pass patent legislation" (which I would formulate as "success by the EP to block patent legislation) show just how biased this article is.
And then she jumps straight from open standards (who could possibly object to that?) to piracy and the threat to copyrights and that sort of crap. Even open source software is still copyrighted (which is why Sony's use of it is illegal).
However the fact that such applications exist does not demonstrate that copyright is benign, anymore than the abuses of the RIAA (for example) are sufficent to demonstrate the malignity of the mechanism.
What is required to evaluate the benefit to society overall of copyright, and to reform or remove it if it is fond necessary. I'm not yet convinced that copyright is irredeemably broken, but it'll take more than the example of the GPL to persuade me that it works well in its current form.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
"Melanie Wyne is executive director of the Initiative for Software Choice, a global coalition run by the Computing Technology Industry Association"
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t eam/2100-7344_3-5942913.html?tag=nl
"Microsoft is a member of the Washington-based Initiative for Software
Choice, that has written to Australian MPs asking them to oppose open
source preference Bills
http://www.sam.org.au/club_news.asp?clubid=4685&n
"In August 2002, Microsoft became a member of the Initiative for Software
Choice. The ISC has close associations with the Computing Technology
Industry Association (CompTIA) based in Washington DC
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/6927/print
"One editorial labeled Massachusetts' OpenDocument Format plan as the "domino" that will cause other governments and private parties to follow suit," Melanie Wyne
There *is* no mention of a 'domino` or any phrase to that effect on the linked to article. There is this quote thought:
"Heck, it's just standards...Outside of some politicians and some Microsoft-backed industry groups, there's an overwhelming support for this thing," he said. "It's kind of hard to argue against it." Bob Sutor, IBM
http://news.com.com/OpenDocument+format+gathers+s
"Through privately owned and developed IP, American and European IP companies have given back untold public benefit" Melanie Wyne
This is nonsence. It was because of the lack of IP legislation that companies prospered by utilising a common pool of knowlege. If it had been locked down we would have no national electricty grid, television, radio or a car industry.
What you are trying to do with your IP legislation is get a lock down on the developing markets. So they pay you to use their own software on their own computers.
this melanie wyne is the classical exemple of what anrchists and comunists like to call "capitalist pig"...
she takes something perfectly innocent and beneficial (a government demanding open file formats), equals it to a criminal activity (large scale piracy. and i mean the industrial level piracy we see in chinese sweatshops, not P2P) and distorts completly another fact (the eminent domain issue. a clear case of a corrupt government selling itself to real estate corporations) to paint a completelly wrong picture of the whole IP situation.
let me explain.
Massachusetts government IS NOT stealing IP from anyone, is not overcharging anyone, is not opressing the people or the corporations, it's only doing what it's suposed to do, protecting the people's right to access data in the future by adopting well documented file formats. if she feels microsoft was wronged here, is microsoft's own fault. they don't have to pay royalties to implement the OASIS file formats in their products.
it's not, as she says, "confiscatory government policy (...) used to even the score". it'd be confiscatory policy if Mass. had forced MS to open source MS Office at gun point, and this is not the case.
fortunatelly, i live in a country where being socialist (or in my case, anarchist) is not seen as a deadly sin, so i don't have to cope with trolls like melanie.
What ? Me, worry ?
I prefer the term minarchist. Yes, there are some social rules of order which shoudl be observed. The formal government should have the minimal role possible.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
If there is no copyright, then only secret information has any value. No copyright means less sharing of source code, because why would you surrender your secret information and void its value?
I am aware of the FSF's position, but I have never heard a decent response to the above argument.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...often convey meanings or philosophies exactly opposite of those actually espoused by the organisation?
The Initiative for Software Choice is backed by Microsoft.
It is indeed. Also note that they are strong proponents of software patents (which are totally inappropriate--the solution to any problems with software IP should be addressed with copyright reform) and have lobbied for the retention of Microsoft formats as standards in government. Apparently merely the ability of non-MS employees to see the specs without paying a boatload of money for the privlege is as open as any of us deserve.
The issue is really being badly distorted. No government in the world has brought forward legislation to shut closed source applications out of competition--the closest any policy comes to that ANYWHERE is to simply require that at least one open source alternative be included in a bid/selection process. State legislation mandating the use of officially open-standard file formats makes no mention of open source at all. Microsoft, Corel, Sun or any other corporation is still welcome to provide software to governments under such a policy. All it requires is that import and export filters be available to support proper file format standards. This INCREASES choice and makes industry competition MORE open and fair. One would think that an organisation named "initiative for SOFTWARE CHOICE" would embrace such a policy.
Instead, this supposedly "capitalist-friendly" advocate of "choice" is fighting hard to preserve strong IP laws and shut out open standards. This is neither democratic NOR capitalist. Ms. Wyne and her compatriots at the ISC are really against choice and are essentailly promoting communist/socialist ideas: they advocate the protection and promotion of business models that perpetually rely on protectionist government legislation, and attempt to block legislation that threatens the position of protected monopolies by exposing them to genuine competition.
Really, it isn't like the government is forcing Microsoft to hand over all the specs to Office file formats so the govenrnment can use taxpayer dollars to develop compatible software to distribute to every citizen for $0. THAT would be "communist" or "pre-Boston-tea-party". I'd like to know what MS is so afraid of. With their resources it would be trivial for MS to make OpenDocument filters for its Office applications. Are they so insecure about their products that they need special legislative conditions to assure their market position? I happen to think that apps like MS Word and PowerPoint are great in terms of features and usability that can compete on their own merits without lock-in. Yes the competition would be more challenging if it were more easily made compatible, but is there something wrong with Microsoft that they cannot survive without 80 percent of the price of their software being profit margin and even higher percentages in market share?
The "Initiative for Software Choice" indeed...the choice of software vendors to lock-in users as they please perhaps. It is certainly not about true choice.
RMS wrote the GPL because the only way the GPL could be invalidated is by destroying copyright. It's a hack of the copyright system. He does want to get rid of copyright and I think he is prepared something in case they replace it with something more draconian.
evil is as evil does
You're going to have to be a little more specific than "if you get rid of government, people will automatically play fair" though, since that gets proven not to work quite frequently throughout world history.
Oddly enough, this is precisely what the Communists originally claimed. "State Capitalism" was supposed to be a transitory phase leading to a society ruled by perfect brotherhood. All you had to do was get rid of the evils of capitalism, and everyone would live in perfect harmony. Communism was pure Castle in the Sky bullshit; real pretty, nice to dream about, but absolutely no way to get there. What the Russians got was Stalinism, which was just more of the same old tyranny.
It's amazing how often the people on extreme right mimic the old extreme left. Subsititute the word government for capitalism in old communist rants, and you could pass a lot of them unchallenged on libertarian sites. But then, it shouldn't be too surprising, given that most of the neo-cons are ex-Marxists themselves. Same utopian shit, different bucket. The pendulum swings to the extreme yet again.
Wouldn't it be nice if we actually took the time to understand and solve our problems instead of coming up yet another utopian panacea doomed to failure?
Just a quick bit of history: a society without a government is called anarchy. It inevitably ends up being ruled by the guy with the most guns and the biggest gang (see Stalin.) People would rather recognize one big tyrant who robs them in a systematic fashion than a whole army of little tyrants who just kill them indescriminately. This is how kings and governments came to be in the first place.
A good government is one that rules the least because it recognizes where the society is going and works with it rather than against it, enforcing the social contract but not trying to dictate it. A bad government tries to impose an unnatural or outdated social contract. Successful revolutions happen when the society has moved on but the government hasn't--the "new order" already exists. Unsuccessful revolutions happen when some revolutionary group seizes power and tries to create a new order by destroying the existing one. What this means is that things can get much worse very quickly, but they usually don't get much better very quickly. Progress takes a lot of time and effort.
In the case of copyrights, a new order is taking shape. Large corporations are attempting to use government enforcers to oppose this, and even to roll back existing rights (people have been taping each others albums for 30 years now.) This will fail. The only question is whether there will be anything left of copyright when the dust settles. The longer it takes for the elected leaders to pull their heads out of their asses, the harder the fall will be when it comes.
Which makes more sense?
Shooting her. We have enough idiots in this world.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Intellectual Ability should replace the concept of Intellectual Property. IP law blindly assumes that creativity is limited and there is nothing that count be wanted from the creator after the product of their creativity is available. Today that isn't true at all. Often IP isn't as valuable as the minds that created it. The change from putting value on creations to putting value on creators is a major economic change and such changes are always a little painful but for the good of all. The industrial revolution was a painful economic change but I doubt many would say it hurt the world economy in the long term. Doubtless people who produced their products and couldn't adapt to the changes went out of business during the industrial revolution. So it will be with the intelligence revolution.
As a tax payer I don't want my government paying for any IP to be produced that isn't available free of cost to the tax payer. That means research, software, and all other IP not of a sensitive (for national security) nature. If we're spending millions of dollars on software then we should be spending it on something that everyone can use freely.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.