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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?"
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
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
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.
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.
Because you are apparently incapable of seeing the dots that were connected to arrive at those conclusions?
No, because those conclusions have been stated *without any supporting evidence*. Hence, they are an example of "Proof by assertion".
Some examples of things that might be considered "evidence":
* An examination of major medical discoveries pertaining to cures and treatments of disabling sicknesses and injuries over the last ~200 years or so, showing that for-profit private industry has been the only significant contributor.
* Proof that culturally significant contributions in art, music and literature have only commenced since the invention of copyright.
* Data demonstrating people who do not purchase their first copy of a particular instance music subseuqently never purchase a copy.
* Data demonstrating people who download movies subsequently never see those movies in the cinema or purchase them on DVDs, or other personal media.
Independent, scientific, peer-reviewed studies demonstrating these sorts of things would go a long way towards supporting the argument that "Intellectual Property" - both as a concept and *especially* as practiced today - is "essential" to the existence of modern society.
If IP isn't respected, it won't be profittable for corporations to spend multi-millions discovering new drugs, or making big budget movies, or writing hugely complicated commercial software.
These are the assertions that are lacking evidence. Waving your hand and saying "because they will", is not evidence.