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Intellectual Property Discussion in the Classroom?
Nick M asks: "I'm a TA for a Computer Ethics course at Lehigh University. My professor is currently in China, and I'm charged with the task of teaching the chapter on Intellectual Property. I have read the book (Cyberethics, Spinello, 3rd Ed.), and can see that this could be the most boring 75 minutes of their lives. What topics, examples and questions do you think would stimulate a heated discussion on intellectual property rights which would display the complexities of both sides of the issue?"
This could be a good starting point (an article listing some pioneers in inventions, and some of their fates).
Also, this article is a synopsis of Robert Kearns' battle with Ford over his IP/patent rights for the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper.
blahblahblah
Make sure none of the students is able to carry out any of the classroom handouts unless each page is clearly marked with a copyright warning on both sides.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Don't take people's IP without their permission. Class dismissed. You all can thank me for saving you 74 minutes of your lives.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Just dose the class up with Rohypnol.
Afterwards, you can claim fact that the course you gave was, in facty, stunning, but that due to licensing constraints, the students weren't allowed to take a copy of the information away with them.
Sorry, I don't have any great ideas on what to put in an intellectual property lecture.
But would you be able to ask your professor to bring back bootleg copies of X-Men 3 and Microsoft Office for me? Thanks!
Just role play a common shareware marketing mistake.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Students love music, and it's a hotbed of IP issues, with sampling (play excerpts of a few rap tracks and the songs they sample from at the start of the lecture for dramatic effect), the split between copyright of the song and the recording of the song, moral objections to the RIAA's music copyright cartel, atrists rights, copyright extension, airplay fees vs payola, rights to make cover versions and parodies, the right not to have derogatory cover versions, the 'happy birthday' copyright fiasco, the way Tony Blair just accepted a free holiday on Cliff Richard's private tropical Island just before the music business is going to push for a Disney-style copyright extension over here to keep Cliff's early work in copyright... I could go on... for at least 75 minutes!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
What topics, examples and questions do you think would stimulate a heated discussion on intellectual property rights
"Copyright violation is stealing". It leads to all kinds of false excuses why this is not case and it's all bad to make the students pay for their games and software and ensures long-lasting fun for the lecturer.
Take a look at www.groklaw.net for the current issues of the day. There is lots of discussion over the corporate slime-balls who are unethical, even if their actions are not provably illegal(yet). Take a good look at the page for Microsoft and discuss the methods employed for dealing with their competition.
The most common and fundamental disagreement I hear with regard to intellectual property ethics is a disagreement about why people have intellectual property rights and to what degree they should have them. Most educated individuals understand in abstract terms that intellectual property rights are artificial rights, granted in an effort to engineer a greater common good by restricting the rights of "consumers" for the profit of "creators." A fair number, however, do nto yet grasp this concept and most do not really understand how it applies in the real world.
I'd use books as an example. Bring in a really new book and a really old book. Ask the class if it is ethical for them to make copies of each for various purposes and why. By using a very old book (the bible, shakespeare, or the like) you can demonstrate the harm to society of restricting free access to copying works. By showing a new book you can demonstrate the value to society for legally restricting access to a work for a short time in order to motivate progress.
Then ask the class to create the ideal copyright system that maximizes the benefit to society while minimizing the harm to society. You can do this same exercise with patents, trade secrets, or trademarks too, but copyright is one of the easiest to understand. Aspects of copyright law discuss, how long the monopoly should last, what conditions should invalidate it, what exceptions should be made (fair use, noncommercial?), opt-in verus opt-out, and if reference copies should be kept.
If you want a good and interesting anecdote, look to the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" which was a box office flop and would never have reached the public or had the copyright not expired and PBS subsequently aired it. It illustrates well the concept that works are often not recognized as valuable to society by copyright holders or the general public until long after they are initially offered to the people.
I hope you can take some ideas from what I've written here. Good luck.
"What topics, examples and questions do you think would stimulate a heated discussion on intellectual property rights which would display the complexities of both sides of the issue?""
I'm sorry. Did you just ask SLASHDOT! about a balanced look at IP?
first, it would be good to see what they think about intellectual property. What do they think it is?
I would teach the class based on the current topics: file sharing, copyright extension (make sure that they understand the differences between copyright and trademark) public domain, gpl's philosphy. But also bring up issues such as Turnitin.com which has been discussed here (i'm too lazy to look it up) and the fact that this is a business founded on taking student's intellectual property. I wouldn't be afraid to introduce them to copyfighting, copyleft, or creative commons.
Ask them who benifits from ownership of intellectual property, who is supposed to benifit and who actually does benifit.
Show them one of those commercials that say downloading music is stealing and ask them if copyright infringement is the same as stealing.
If they are college students they are undoubtably familiar with downloading music films and programs. A discussion of the ethics of that would be an excellent place to start.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/not-ipr.xhtml
You can teach them that "intellectual property" is actually a vicious malapropism.
If you really want to get their attention, make sure you run down all of the stuff Fair Use and Copyright allows you to do. The chances are good that at least some of the kids will be hit with a Cease and Desist for doing something that is actually legal at some point in their lives. If they know the law they can be in much better shape than they would be otherwise. Sampling of music for instance is a good topic area to cover, as is parody, and educational use. Make sure you stress the importance of the public domain and why neverending (or exceedingly long) copyrights are such a bad idea. Remember that the work of the greats was built on the shoulders of everyone who came before them, overly restrictive copyright laws stifle innovation in the long run. The Public Domain is probably the most important resource the world has.
I read the internet for the articles.
"Most educated individuals understand in abstract terms that intellectual property rights are artificial rights, granted in an effort to engineer a greater common good by restricting the rights of "consumers" for the profit of "creators." A fair number, however, do nto yet grasp this concept and most do not really understand how it applies in the real world."
You do realize that the first copyright (queen anne) had nothing to do with commerce?
Allowing one to profit from his effort is certainly a method of promoting progress. But absurdly long copyright or patent terms promote coasting, not progress - a fact that our legislators seem to have ignored.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Teach them about copyright, patents, trademarks, and service marks. Teach the intended purpose and the modern day usage. Intellectual property implies this silly notion that someone can own an idea like property, it is not property but an artificial monopoly enforced by laws.
Please... someone teach them. They are not the same thing and they are *NOT* about how to make sure you paid or that you have some right to get paid. It is about giving people protections by law to encourage innovation in a world where otherwise people would not vest money into items which offered no or little return, at least in theory (another topic all together).
Straight Talk about Copyrights
A violent protest against Patents
A Bitter protest against copyrights
Item 1: Fair Use - When is it OK to hack a DVD?
-------------------
If I wanted to do a report on the cultural influence of Star Wars, would it be OK to download from the Internet a screen capture of the Death Star to compare to the AT&T logo, also downloaded?
Would it be OK to break the encryption on a DVD to get a picture of the Death Star to compare to the AT&T logo?
What about the sounds that Jar Jar Binks makes versus an historical African American portrayal such as Gone with the Wind? Can I get those?
What about a video of his walk when compared to the same figures walking or dancing? Can I get those?
Does the law allow this? (DMCA - probably not)
Item 2: What about copyright terms in different countries?
--------------------
IIRC Australia has a 50 year limit on copyright. Is it OK for an Australian to post for free scans of 51 year old books on the Internet?
What about 51 year old movies? 51 year old songs?
Is it OK to listen to those songs in the USA or Canada?
Should the ISP block that access?
Who gets to decide what's on that block list?
Item 3: Sharing - Where do we draw the line?
---------------------
Is it OK to make a mix CD or mix tape for a friend?
Is it OK to rip a CD to make MP3s on my computer?
How many copies of those MP3s can I make for personal use?
Is it OK to keep the MP3s if my original CDs are destroyed in a fire?
Is it OK to make a mix CD with some of my friend's MP3 songs and some of mine?
Is it OK for both of us to back up that CD as MP3s?
Is it OK to mix my entire MP3 collection with my friend's entire MP3 collection?
Is it OK to do that with everyone I meet on the Internet?
Is it OK to do each of these things with movies?
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
The negative side effects of intellectual property for society would bring a lot of good debate.
And artificial scarcity of digital goods intellectual property owners attempt to combat. When really once a company achieves a safe profit threshold on a product any piracy does not really do "hurt" them economically at all for digital goods. I think artificial scarcity is one of the biggest issues that really needs to be discussed, and the whole supply/demand economic reasoning of capitalism goes out the window with infinitely reproductive works that cost nothing to reproduce, but only cost money to PRODUCE once.
1. Is profiting too much from intellectual property theft?
2. Is profit in certain context's of intellectual property a form of theft?
3. If one could potentially generate infinite revenue from a finite amount of work using intellectual property, why or why not would this be bad for society in terms of social control of ideas and works? i.e. see indefinite Copyright extensions, etc.
Lastly, lot's of good idea's and fan projects (remakes) get killed by copyright owners who have no intention of profiting off future works of the property, and this is in fact a tremendous disservice to customers and fans who PAYED for the product. A fantastic looking Chrono trigger remake on the NET that SQUARE killed, I'm looking at you.
I do believe that the biggest problem is that when customers pay for a product they shouild gain some measure of ownership of the work and freedom for the work, after all, the success of the product occurs because of those who supported it with their hard earned money, just as much as those who produced it, both producer and customer (fan,consumer) have a stake in product. I think the whole concept of property and ownership needs serious critique and rethinking.
What a coincidence, most computer TAs only speak Chinese!
Well, I think it's better to stay clear of the established arguments and get students to work out their own positions. The shrill responses of both sides really isn't helpful. Build up from the bottom along the lines of:
1. What are the goals of an information economy? What do we want to achieve?
2. Why does copyright exist in the first place? - the incentive model of IP, the programmers must eat argument. Does this incentive actually work?
3. To what extent does IP protection devalue the information it protects?
4. Comparison of protected and unprotected copyright systems.
5. Alternative models of incentivising production.
Know any economics? Can you talk about externalities? Consider a Positive Externality from the production and consumption of various things (computer programs, algorithms, movies and music, literature, Culture). Is there a deadweight loss from the underproduction of these things?
"1. Is profiting too much from intellectual property theft? 2. Is profit in certain context's of intellectual property a form of theft?"
One dictionary and 30 seconds at the very beginning of the class will put this question to bed very quickly.
Where were you when the voynix came?
There has been quite a bit of discussion with anti-plagerism teaching aid sites and their effect on Intellectual Property.
Is it violating IP laws to post students papers without their permission on these sites in order to prevent plagerism? In academia, which is a larger problem plagerism or IP violation? Isn't plagerism just a term to depect violating IP? Are we allowed to break a law to protect that same law? (I.e. violating IP to protect IP)
There are plenty of great questions which should relate very well to students.
If you want a heated discussion, get into the prevailing argument that if you invent something related to your employers line of business completely on your own time it still belongs to your employer. Combine that with many employers that have intellectual property clauses as part of the employement contract under which they expect you to assign to them all rights to inventions made on your personal time even if it is not related to your business. And, the topper for that is that sometimes you won't be asked to sign over IP rights until during your orientation (this happened to me personally -- I refused and kept the job anyway.)
Play devil's advocate and side with the employers. Their arguments typically revolve around you not having sufficient knowledge of the problem space if not for your employment, therefore the work belongs to them. It's your basic fruit-from-the-poison-tree argument: Even if your work is entirely on your time, you used our intellectual property as the basis for the work. Also, an employee is hard pressed to make the argument that they didn't spend part of their time at work thinking about the work they were doing at home.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I'm in a college CS ethics class right now, and the day we talked about IP was one of the most interesting days we had. The teacher barely had to say anything, and the class took the discussion from there. I think that most CS students tend to care/know a lot about IP. If you have any slashdot readers in your class, then you're also in pretty good shape because they will probably bring up some good examples.
On the other hand, if you are just planning lecturing about the law and what defines IP for 75 minutes, then you are in for a rough ride. Give an outline of what is IP and what is not and let the class take it form there. I gave a presentation on the Professor who sold lectures which really started some good discussion regardless of what your school's policy is on the subject.
Invite Lessig to speak for the day. Or at least read up on some of the issues he commonly raises.
Spend fifteen minutes describing the cultural myths and legends and parables which existed in many cultures, and how Disney cherry-picked them to build its corporate empire. As soon as Disney made it big, they continually bought legislation to make it impossible for other people to build off this generation's cultural bedrock in the same way. (Not to sound too biased, heh.) Then open up the discussion there as to what ethical issues are involved.
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This is just an idea, but I think that it might really help students to get the idea of some of the problems with IP laws anyway.
First come up with a simple task, something that has one or two fairly obvious solutions- maybe use some of those logic questions that were really popular in IT interviews a while back, like how to tell which of three lightbulbs goes with which of three light switches from another room when you can only look once, etc.
Next, break the students up into teams. Give each team the project individually (don't tell them the other teams are working on the same one) and tell them they need to figure out how to do it. Tell them it's worth 100 points or something.
After all the groups have finished, tell everyone that nobody gets any points, because another group from a class earlier in the had already worked out how to do it. Of course, this group has an A right now and doesn't need the points, so they aren't actually going to do it for the credit, just stop anyone else from getting credit for it. If the students' don't want a 0, they can pay this group 70 points out of the 100 points for the assignment for the rights to be able to use it, or they can come up with an alternate and worse solution to the problem - wich will cause them to be docked points.
This should give them a pretty good understanding of how patents and copyright work- especially as it's related to software patents.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
How about Copyright Sock Puppet Theater? Really they should be teaching IP law fundamentals from an early age. If enough of those kids see something wrong with it, they might actually change it at some point in the future...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Would you want it taken from you?
That question leads to three possibilities:
Richard Stallman, who gives and takes
The average person who sells and buys
Microsoft, which steals and sells
How can you not argue about that?
And maybe also debunking some of the copyright myths :)
;) W.A.Mozart's widow Konstanze later one was well off because of the money coming in from her late husbands work, also without current copyrights.
- For instance: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart indeed was dying poor, but not because of missing protection of his works: He just spent too much money. Michael Jackson is also broke, and he has the full protection of copyrights
- Copyright in the U.S. at first protected only works of U.S. origin. British works like the novels from Charles Dickens were printed in the U.S. without permission from Charles Dickens or his editor, and only when the first U.S. writers like Mark Twain became famous all over the world (not that he was the first U.S. writer. Just one of the first becoming famous outside of the U.S.), and British printers started to print their works, the U.S. agreed to expand copyright protection also to non U.S. citizens.
- Most developing nations with a strong economic growth have to deal with accusations of mistreating intellectual property. It was so with the U.S. in the mid-19th century, with Japan after WWII, later with Taiwan and now China. The time when protections like patents, copyrights and trademarks get fully developed is often correlated with a new period of a more "normal" economic growth. But at that point the developing nations often have accumulated enough own IP they consider worth protecting. Knowledge that has not a single entity to be attributed to, like old folk myths, songs, traditions, medical treatments, never gets protected, and is considered free for plundering by everyone.
Their arguments typically revolve around you not having sufficient knowledge of the problem space if not for your employment, therefore the work belongs to them. It's your basic fruit-from-the-poison-tree argument
Of course, there's a presumption that knowledge of the field in general is not specific to a single employer, so it isn't really valid to say that. Put another way, if that argument was allowed, then the employer could prevent you from seeking employment based on experience with them, since you wouldn't have that either if you didn't work there.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
When really once a company achieves a safe profit threshold on a product any piracy does not really do "hurt" them economically at all for digital goods.
Sounds like someone drank the karl marx koolaid. The basis of IP rights is not whether you've profitted sufficiently (which is impossible to measure anyway), but the advancement of the arts. By setting a bar based on how commercially successful a product is, you punish the successful and deny them the funds to do their next big thing.
Lastly, lot's of good idea's and fan projects (remakes) get killed by copyright owners who have no intention of profiting off future works of the property, and this is in fact a tremendous disservice to customers and fans who PAYED for the product.
So what if you paid for the product? If you want to do derivative works, you should first negotiate with the copyright holder. Nobody owes you anything if you do a lot of work and infringe someone's copyright, thus rendering it useless.
I do believe that the biggest problem is that when customers pay for a product they shouild gain some measure of ownership of the work and freedom for the work
Based on what? This doesn't advance the state of the art or enrich the public domain, nor was it in the contract. Are you planning to erode one of the bases of this society in order to do something because it 'feels right'?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"Based on what? This doesn't advance the state of the art or enrich the public domain, nor was it in the contract."
There is NO contract. When something is bought, people barely understand anything beyond knowing that money gets exchanged for a good. Not to mention we're talking about intellectual works here who's supply is infinite.
"So what if you paid for the product? If you want to do derivative works, you should first negotiate with the copyright holder. Nobody owes you anything if you do a lot of work and infringe someone's copyright, thus rendering it useless."
The success of any product or business depends on those other people existing in the first place, you act like these people operate or produce in a vacuum, they do not. Take for instance if all gamers died tomorrow the game industry would go out of business, you have to realize that our current thinking about property and ownership is out of date when we consider infinite supply and negligable reproduction costs.
I haven't seen this discussed yet, but consider the downstream impact of patents: New development discovery A is begins where old development discovery B left off. Old discovery B is patented.
Does the patent holder on discovery B effectively have a license (monopoly profit) on any developments which use B as a stepping stone? Should they (Such rights arguably increase the economic incentive to research and generate patents the same way that an Amway distribution chain creates an economic incentive to be higher up the chain)? However, as soon as a patent is granted, it also arguably reduces the economic incentive for further research in the area because any further research results would end up paying "rent" to the B patentholders. Does it decrease the incentive to further research B areas more than it increases the incentive to research in non-B areas?
If you think deeply enough, you will have no single direction for your outrage.
"Sounds like someone drank the karl marx koolaid. The basis of IP rights is not whether you've profitted sufficiently (which is impossible to measure anyway)."
This shows me your ignorance. No it is in fact a damn important question whether someone has profited sufficiently considering the economics, of both scarce and non-scarce goods whose supply is not limited and the social effects of of what happens in markets. I'm not saying that people who produce IP should be punished or we should live in communist fairy fairy land, I understand the value of markets, but I do believe new round of thinking needs to be done on economic doctrine, the concepts of ownership, contracts, compensation, etc. You need to not let your economic knee jerk reaction of your economic doctrine color your thinking. Optimum rate of profit is not impossible to measure, in fact many serious economists look into the optimimum rate of profit and how markets operate in such ways that I have described.
Personally, I'd start off by making the students aware that this whole concept of intellectual "property", is a marketing gimmick that attempts to apply a fictitious "value" to something that doesn't physically exist. While people should be credited for their ideas, they shouldn't have the ability to claim "ownership" over them once they share them with others.
Just as the perception of reality is relative to the observer, so are ideas. Eventually a shared idea will be improved upon, time and time again each time it's passed on to others. At some point, the new version of the original idea will individualize itself and become original in and of itself.
By assigning these fake "values" and "ownerships" to people's ideas, we are doing humanity a great disservice. It places artificial boundaries around how new ideas can be formed and ultimately inhibits the progress of mankind as a whole. Eventually, we'll become so wrapped up in preserving these fake intellectual property "rights", that our race will stagnate and will ultimately drive itself into extinction.
8==8 Bones 8==8
A bad example (IMHO) was that The Verve made the song "Bittersweet Symphony" which uses a sample from a Rolling Stones song, which allowed them to sue The Verve and take over their song rights. "Bittersweet Symphony" credits today are for Mick Jagger.
I don't recall a good example right one, but I'm sure there are some out there. Can anyone provide?
There seems to be 2 choices to stop the 'copyright infringement '. We 'adapt to the new business model' (or something), or we find a way to stop it.
So is 'finding a way to stop it' a valid option? Does education work? Is there a way to enforce the law that does not require giving total control of the internet to some organization, to decide what information you can and cannot access at the moment the request is made?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
This very well could be the driest subject, but it can also be quite fascinating. A good approach might be to lead the class with a little background and cover a case or two about how programming IP has been litigated, then launch into the Socratic method.
Once they are attempting to decide for themselves what is acceptable and what isn't you should get a lively discussion. Link it back to music, paintings, books as well as the topic we discuss here the most, programs. If you only pose questions it will spark the debate and you will have to guide the discussion a little, but this could very well turn out to be the most entertaining 75 minutes all semester.
The speech/article Courtney Love Does the Math is an excellent look at music piracy from a musician's point of view and why most artists aren't anti-piracy. Beyond that, University of Colorado professor Lynn Schofield Clark did a study a couple years ago on how the music industry percieves piracy which included major labels, indie labels, musicians, retail workers and all walks of people in the music industry. I'm not sure if music piracy is what you're interested in disucssing, but both these resources are good ways to start a discussion in general.
I'm planning to teach writing at the college level once I've finished my career change, and I have no doubt I'll be facing a similar challenge as you are. So, let's see - how would I approach this?
Well, I recall Stephen King once saying that the key to creating terror is to take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary. Perhaps this would work with teaching intellectual rights and their issues.
I guess if I was doing it, I'd start with a CD, a DVD, or a book - something that everybody knows and takes for granted. Then I'd separate the physical disc/book/whatever from the intellectual property on it, pointing out the difference between selling, say, a CD at a used CD store, and making copies of the CD and selling them, and stuff like that. Once I've done that, in theory the class should be hooked and thinking about it - that could lead to a discussion of the Berne Convention, and then applications of the principles of copyright, and then abuse of copyright (for example, the RIAA lawsuits, which should get them hooked right off the bat - it seems to me that a good way to approach it is to begin with the rights of the artist, and then question whether the RIAA's actions are actually related to them, or just using them as an excuse, and go from there).
The one thing I would suggest is to avoid taking a side - let the students do that. Before writing this I read a lot of replies that involved pushing one side in exclusion to the other, which would turn the class from something thoughtful into indocrination. As a teacher (and I've done some teaching here and there, and my mother is a teacher, so I am talking a bit from experience) you need to be able to make the students examine both sides, and determine where the ethical standpoint actually lies for themselves. Playing devil's advocate can really make them think, and keep the class lively. I guess for a class like this, the best result is to end with the students questioning the implications of what they've always taken for granted.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
One thing you might want to talk about is intellectual property and international relations/development. China has been able to do well for itself because it hasn't cracked down on piracy. That is important because without modern computer software, how could China have caught up with the world? Smaller countries don't have that option -- they will be dealt with much more harshly if they don't respect foreign intellectual property. Trade deals, etc, won't be as favorable.
It isn't just software, it is genetically modified grains, irrigation techniques, and other technologies. These technologies often allow much more efficient use of resources. Again, not having them is an impediment to development.
There are also cases of foreign companies coming into countries and doing one of two things: taking local "intellectual property," like indigenous medicines, etc, and patenting them, or funding local scientists and other professionals but with the condition that whatever they develop is the intellectual property of the foreign company. And if someone local wants to use it, they have to pay the foreign intellectual property premium.
So that's something interesting to think about.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Hit your students with this one:
The terms of use for the "anti-plagerism" site turnitin.com (used by many colleges and universities) allows the company to retain the use of any IP included in the papers submited to it. Since students are almost never giving the chance to opt-out of using the site they are, in fact, being forced to give away their IP rights over their work free of charge.
I'm a college librarian and I hate this but it is popular with those faculty too lazy to craft assignments that are less prone to plagerism.
...he's giving a lecture series at USC on this. Do a search on "cory usc" on http://boingboing.net/ and you'll get links to short posts on what he's been lecturing on.
One of the most interesting points might be how DRM is fundamentally incompatible with free software - if you, the user, are free to view your software's source code and modify it, you are inherently able to disable or otherwise modify the DRM. Then again, this may be a bit much for anyone who isn't already familiar with the concept of software that gives the user the freedoms that geeks always wanted to encourage.
I mean, on the one hand I can see how some people - and especially corporations - want to stop others copying their hard work freely, but on the other hand, is it worth giving up free software to protect the rights of authors, musicians and directors?
Just keep this sort of stuff in mind, and be realistic... and don't go off about the eeeeevil drug companies trying to enslave us to their treatments.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If it fits in with your discussion, you should talk about how Hollywood has just created an anti-piracy merit badge for the Boy Scouts, and the BSoA has gone along with it.
If IP isn't respected, it won't be profittable for corporations to spend multi-millions discovering new drugs
I'd like to quote a bit of page 99 of Naomi Klein's No Logo if I may (hopefully I may, otherwise I guess I'll be sued next):
And on the next page:
Maybe corporations don't have public interests at heart?
There is NO contract. When something is bought, people barely understand anything beyond knowing that money gets exchanged for a good.
That's a contract - goods for money.
Not to mention we're talking about intellectual works here who's supply is infinite.
Irrelevant.
The success of any product or business depends on those other people existing in the first place, you act like these people operate or produce in a vacuum, they do not.
That's how it is for everything. You haven't said anything that hasn't been true for 10,000 years.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Tell the class about the times when the hunters/gatherers would sit around the fire and swap stories songs and music for free.
Speaking of which, I believe many aboriginal societies still do so.
Still, though, the decision whether to be derivative-friendly or not is, and should be, in the hands of the person who created and controls that work. If you use the stepping-stool of someone else's claimed-copyrighted work to achieve, then you have an obligation to see if they're willing to give you that boost, or else you're under the threat that they might not permit it. Them's the rules, and there's always the path of making something totally original.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
This is something, though, which should be negotiated in employment contracts. This is talking out my ass here, but I don't believe that there're any states in the US (your nation may vary, void where prohibited, see law for details) that implicitly consider off-clock/off-site work as "work for hire". This is less a matter of copyright as an issue of you freely signing away your rights in an employment contract.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
"That's a contract - goods for money."
Of course people who make/own IP/software and write EULA's for such software would disagree with you that the above is the 'true' substance of "the contract" or "agreement" they have between their customer and themselves when they make the purchase.
"Irrelevant."
Infinite supply and negligable reproduction costs is certainly not irrelevant. It enables new aspects of economic distribution impossible under traditional scarcity based models. Do you think current economic theory would survive if humanity found a way to infinitely produce at low cost anything they desired? You're still stuck in old pre-internet one dimensional producers-as-sole-source of success and therefore 100% ownership (which means total and absolute control) based economic thinking.
I agree that people should be paid for their work, but I disagree on the models currently in use when in reference to digital goods, especially with regards to infinite supply goods with negligable reproduction costs.
Ideally, if you could maximize profit even more by charging dynamic prices to customers based on a percentage of their income maximizing both "legal" exposure/use and profit.
Although one can see "loopholes" in such an idea, stores already do things kind of like this where they drastically reduce the price of an item so much that it could be sold for a profit to someone else in another market and hence limit the amount of items sold per individual/family (a protectionist measure I might add).
Yhinking outside the current about concepts of ownership and success, co-operation, etc, need to be looked into. Old economic doctrines simply don't apply when the nature of a product changes in such a radical way as to permit perfect distribution without penalizing creators. The most pirated works are also the most successful, since market failures need to reach a quality or impulse buy threshold to maintain economic viability.
In theory maximum distribution of such goods for dynmaic price of ratio of a persons income making it affordable to those on the bottom ends of the economic scale is a good thing, therefore maximizing profit to those who would otherwise not buy it based on it's percieved expense relative to their income.
I do not know how anyone interested in economic theory and society, would want to hold back the new possibilities infinite supply opens up for the benefit of others beyond the typical producer, domination instinct based self-interest arguments rooted in scarcity.
Ownership as it is currently thought about is justified when resources are limited, but when such goods are effectively unlimited, the nature of ownership and the benefiting others need to be rethought.
It's both in the interest of the producer to have maximum exposure of his product while reaping benefit, and it is also in the interest of the market to have the maximum distribution of the product. The market SUPPORTS the producer by consumers voting with their dollars, the producers existence is dependent upon the consumer of his work. This is an act of co-operation, consumers act in co-operating in the success of a product by investing their money in it, in fact if you look at consumption in IP as a form of investment by both the business producer, and the consumer the success of which is entirely dependent upon the producer and the consumers investment.
The idea that producers "own" exclusively or succeed exclusively is an illusion, if the person was populated by 1 person or all the people there existed a market for his product died, how exactly would the producer benefit without other people their to support him and enable his success?
Either way I think more thought needs to be done and new essays and works need to be written, and critiques about ownership, success, merit, etc, and its relation to society especially when it comes to intellectual property and infinte supply goods.
Of course people who make/own IP/software and write EULA's for such software would disagree with you that the above is the 'true' substance of "the contract" or "agreement" they have between their customer and themselves when they make the purchase.
who cares? The Supreme Court has given weight to the notion that you can trat shrinkwrap software similarly to buying a CD.
Infinite supply and negligable reproduction costs is certainly not irrelevant. It enables new aspects of economic distribution impossible under traditional scarcity based models. Do you think current economic theory would survive if humanity found a way to infinitely produce at low cost anything they desired?
Absolutely. It may, in fact, look like the Diamond Age - Economic Theory cares not one whit what is scarce. It just shows what happens with that scarce thing. Right now, bandwidth is free, but connections cost money. The Tier1 guys have come to terms with that, and it'll trickle into the rest of us eventually.
You're still stuck in old pre-internet one dimensional producers-as-sole-source of success and therefore 100% ownership (which means total and absolute control) based economic thinking.
And you're stuck in the new economy hype. Things change on the surface, but the ocean remains unmoved.
Ideally, if you could maximize profit even more by charging dynamic prices to customers based on a percentage of their income maximizing both "legal" exposure/use and profit.
No, you charge based on willingness to pay, and their called price points.
I do not know how anyone interested in economic theory and society, would want to hold back the new possibilities infinite supply opens up for the benefit of others beyond the typical producer, domination instinct based self-interest arguments rooted in scarcity.
That doesn't mean anything. The theory describes how things work (but doesn't address abundance too well), but isn't a prescriptive thing - you can't really confirm it until you try stuff with what is basically an educated guess. You first have to try something and see it work before building theory around it. anything else requires coercion by force of arms, which I will not support.
Ownership as it is currently thought about is justified when resources are limited, but when such goods are effectively unlimited, the nature of ownership and the benefiting others need to be rethought.
Goods ae still unlimited. Write a song and there is now one more song. Whether you can infinitely reproduce it or not, there is only the one song. Come back when I can xerox my pistons and head gasket for when I overdo the racing.
The idea that producers "own" exclusively or succeed exclusively is an illusion, if the person was populated by 1 person or all the people there existed a market for his product died, how exactly would the producer benefit without other people their to support him and enable his success?
Bullshit. You've asserted this multiple times without supporting what you think the reality is or why producers should go along with you.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
All your students use LimeWire. They should be interested in why RIAA is suing them, how LimeWire is trying to defend itself, and, for the grand climax of the lecture, how the software will live on even if LimeWire loses.
Amaze them by finding / discussing
why a company -might- be pursuaded
to share a good idea w/competitors
without seeking license fees from
them...
Swedes are / were / have or had ex-
amples among them, who are or were
real Mensch[en].
Wallenberg & Volvo's decisionmakers
stand among them, as would Alfred
Nobel, despite his explosive inven-
tion(s).
I think Eyes on the Prize would be a great way to motivate the role of IP in our society. It is a historically vital documentary describing the US Civil Rights movement and extensively uses archival footage from television broadcasts of the 1950s and 1960s. It won Emmy awards and yet is in legal limbo because of copyright issues with the archival footage it contains. The Wikipedia article suggests that some of these rights issues have been solved - it would be interesting to find out how and at what cost.
The bigger picture here is that much of our contemporary history is documented by TV, music and other media productions which are covered under laws like the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. This law suggests that copyright holders may lobby for indefinite copyright extensions and essentially defeat the purpose of the public domain. Using these media sources for historic purposes requires obtaining rights essentially indefinitely - and documentary producers typically don't have the funds for to do this (potentially in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars). Of course there are situations where the rights holders are unclear or cannot be reached - should this material be off limits?
Another issue appears with "abandoned" copyrighted material - such as out-of-print music albums or vintage movies. Fans often have interest in this material and distribute it amongst themselves - this is illegal but is often the only way the material is kept "alive". In the case of vintage movies, the source reels have often deteriorated and the only known copies of movies are those possessed by fans. Because of simple economics, many of these items will never be commercially released again - yet who knows when they will enter the public domain.
I'm rambling, but this seems like a topic that would be easy to fill a number of hours discussing - especially if you start citing court cases and the arguments presented therein.
Back in the early 20th century, Edison was the Bill Gates of the technology world. And, like Gates, he wasn't above stealing his "innovations" from the actual innovators. And, one of the things he "invented" was movie technology -- cameras, projectors, etc.
So, that's interesting enough, but the IP aspect is: once Edison, by hook or by crook, managed to get the US patents for the movies, he formed the Motion Picture Patents trust, and tried to leverage this to a monopoly on movie production, distribution, and performance...
Ultimately, this effort failed, but one of the consequences was that the companies that actually made it big in the movie biz set themselves up all the way out in California, because that made it harder for them to evade the MPP peoples' attempts to enforce their legal IP rights.
In other words, the same organizations that are trying to crack down on filesharing are the ones that made it big by ignoring the intellectual property of others...
One example: Andreas Pavel - 'father' of the portable personal stereo cassette player.
hany
A lot of people have talked about the incentive purposes of copyright, which is the constitutional basis for copyright protection in the US. Other countries have started from a different direction, which is the author's "moral right" to control his work and what happens to it. My favorite example of this is something Gary Larson wrote about people putting up Far Side comics on the web. I think this is something most people can appreciate.n .html
http://www.creators.com/index2_anotefromgarylarso
We all know that it hasn't to be at all intelectual (look at rap music), nor it is property, it is mererly time limited monopolies granted by goverment. You can't own text, you own rights setting rules for copying and distribution of it.
I know that this term is specially crafted and created to push law makers into thinking that it must be property, but let's not give up yet.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Are you sure that that's safe ? After all, if his student comes up with the position that copyright is bad, he might be accused of contrabutory infringement or some nonsense like that.
Intellectual honesty can be very dangerous in times of war, and copyright battles look more like war to me every day.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
People always have their own version of ethics and right and wrong. Focus on business ethics. Plenty of cases of businesses getting caught in either grey or outright black areas of software license infringement. Explain that suing individuals for "scare factor" and deterence is only part of what is being discussed. Explain the liability of the average small company and how software piracy can be a detriment to their profitability and the bottom line.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling