An IP Environmentalism for Culture and Knowledge?

An anonymous reader writes "An article by James Boyle in the FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a 'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology. Apparently there will be a (free) conference at Stanford on the subject soon, organized by Larry Lessig's Center there."

Comments

beautiful analogy...

[Daneurysm]

I've never thought of it in quite that way... It really is a wonderful analogy... the only difference being that the 'IP-ecosystem' was created by us.
 
...and indeed both sides of the issue have been polarized in nearly the same ways.... the "whacko environmental extremists" and "evil big business" who will destroy anything in the path towards profit.

Is this dichotomy a natural progression of such issues or is it truely the way things are.

I know what I believe...and I've picked my side.
 
~Dan

IP environmentalism.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Ahh...I can see it now...

• IP environmentalists chaining themselves to the doors of the Patent Office and singing 'we shall overcome'.
  
• IP environmentalists zigzagging down the street in a VW microbus, blocking an IP lawyer from getting to the Patent Office while jamming his cellphone.
  
• IP environmentalists hurling red paint at Patent Office employees while chanting 'Patents are Murder! Patents are Murder!'.

Re:IP environmentalism.

[CyricZ]

While we might see things like that, what we will likely see is innovation just end up moving outside of the US. If the patent and copyright laws really begin to take a financial toll on research and implementation, it may become economically beneficial to move such business to foreign nations with more reasonable laws.

Even though an ever-increasing copyright term benefits Disney, it concurrently causes much harm to many other (potentially far more important) fields. Soon enough companies won't want to develop products in the US due to the cost of ensuring that their products don't violate obscure patent or somebody's copyright (in the case of software). A situation like that might have to happen before truly beneficial changes start to occur in the US

Collective licensing

[tepples]

while most of us behave in a contradictory way - 'I want artists to get paid, but I like free downloads'

How about "I want artists to be paid, but I don't want to pay inflated marginal costs for works, nor do I want to be shut out of works completely." Thinking like this is what let collective licensing programs such as those offered by BMI and ASCAP take off, and the EFF has expressed interest in extending collective licensing to other media.

Re:It is good

[plasmacutter]

As an economist I have to say what you are proposing is scary, not just scary scary but truly chilling.

You want to take the most efficient information distribution mechanism ever seen, practically an economist's wet dream, and do everything possible to hinder or destroy the features which make it great.

Face it, copyright was designed in an age when corporate muscle and physical copies were REQUIRED in order to distribute information. Now distribution on the same or even greater scale can be achieved on a $50 a month boradband line with bit torrent.

I understand about legal documents and keeping them private, but that's not about DRM, that's about using point to point encryption and only passing it to people you trust. It's not as if you pass your social security documents to random people over the internet, youre sending it to a specific person. Well encryption of emails is NOT drm, it is encryption.

DRM stands for the corporate spun term "digital rights management" which involves some external party controlling the products you bought. It's not document protection like is achieved with pgp encryption.

the whole point of DRM is to exploit the lack of technical knowledge of both consumers and lawmakers to rob them of their god given right to personal property, and to undermine the advancement of the internet and its tremendous promise of greater efficiency just to line your own pockets on an outdated model.

no, It is Not good.