Neither Intellectual Nor Property

Techdirt's Mike Masnick is writing a series of short articles on topics around intellectual property. His latest focuses on the term itself, exploring the nomenclature people have proposed to describe matter that is neither intellectual nor property. The whole series (starting here) is well worth a read.

Comments

So like Military Intelligence?

[The Ancients]

Actually, anything with that many lawyers has gone way past intellectual and we all know the lawyers end up with more of the property than anyone else...so yes - I'd say he's right.

I better go RTFA now

When I say "make some", you say "noise"

[tepples]

I want to start a band that makes music that is actually not music at all, but poor quality recordings of terrible noises. A lot of people would cry prior art, holding up a Nine Inch Nails CD. NIN fans would claim that Trent Reznor's music isn't noise and that people should be looking at real noise instead.

Not to mention that playing it back would probably damage any good speaker. Citation needed. I can pipe /dev/random into any decent stereo system and not damage the speakers, as long as the DAC's volume is turned down below half of maximum line level.

Re:When I say "make some", you say "noise"

[Chris Burke]

Citation needed. I can pipe /dev/random into any decent stereo system and not damage the speakers, as long as the DAC's volume is turned down below half of maximum line level.

Dude, /dev/random is so much better when you crank it.

Re:Hmmm

[name*censored*]

what I generate with my brain is MY intellectuall property and thus, I can choose to share it, protect it or commercialize it

But, FTA, there's no way you can protect it without involving the law/other physical enforcement. It's not like physical property - you can't just hire a security team to make sure no-one trespasses, because once they have the idea they can't give it back. If you explained your idea to me, I'd then know what it was, and you would no longer have sole domain over it - without the intervention of law. And just like money, the idea is useless to you if you don't do anything with it. Therefore, it's impossible to maintain complete control over an idea without taking some very drastic, paranoid steps - in fact, I don't think you could possibly produce an idea by yourself that's complex enough to not already be prior art.

That's (one reason) why people get so upset over IP law - there's nothing stopping them copying ideas EXCEPT the law (it's so rare that something is produced by one person that it may as well be discounted), and there's no harm done by copying IP (RIAA/MPAA might argue that, but you could just as easily argue that their business system is based solely on the law, which means that it would be different/redundant without that law).

That's as succinctly as I could manage to summarise the article, and none of it seemed like intellectual wankery - this argument has serious ramifications IRL, and looking at the fundamentals of it seems as good a place to start as any. So, what you generate with your brain IS your property, but just like your money, it's completely useless if you don't SPEND it.

Re:Hmmm

[Original Replica]

So you're saying that you owe society nothing for providing the stimulus to your amazing brain?

I thought he was saying that he owes the estate of Aristotle for his use of that idea, and he owes some money to various Germanic tribes for their contributions to the English language. I'd imagine that is keyboard is illegal, as it didn't include any payment to the estate of Christopher Sholes, inventor of the QWERTY keyboard layout. Does his power company pay rights to Tesla's decedents for their use of alternating current to power that computer? Is there anything that we as humans can make or do that doesn't utilize the ideas of other people?

Re:For heaven's sake...

[moderatorrater]

But we know that there is no scarcity on the bits themselves, and the copyright only creates the scarcity. What bothers me, and probably a lot of other people, is that they act like we're taking a physical object when we're not. If I download a song that I will never buy anyway, they've lost nothing by that download, unlike someone stealing a car, or a dvd off the shelf, or any of the other ridiculous bullshit analogies that they use.

The scarcity's in the time and talent of the artist. Rick Astley put time and effort into his songs, and he's considerably more talented than most singers. If he wrote the music and lyrics, then that's even more time that was put into the song. It's not property in the tangible sense.

Also, our law recognizes this, because you're not charged with felony theft when you download a shitload of music/movies off the internet, so try again.

Re:For heaven's sake...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Calling us "idiots" was your first mistake.

Your second is jumping into a philosophical debate with something that doesn't make much sense -- the whole point of calling it "intellectual property" is so that there can be a concept of theft, right?

Well, I didn't steal the copyright, and can't.

Richard Stallman may have told you that it's thoughtcrime to think such a thing

I disagree with Stallman about many things. He did point out that Intellectual Property isn't a completely sound term, as it covers two or three completely separate branches of law.

But he didn't have a problem with the concept of copyright itself, which makes you an idiot for bringing him up in the first place. The GPL works through copyright. It could not work without copyright.

the fact is that in our legal system it *is* property.

It ever occur to you that our legal system might be wrong? And that this might be the whole point of these discussions?

All this sophistry about scarcity is completely missing the point.

All this "sophistry" is very relevant to the point, which is this:

You can post as many Slashdot comments as you want. You can let the RIAA and the MPAA sue as many people as it can. You can pass as much legislation as you want.

But all of that is pissing in the wind. Piracy is a fact. It is real, it is happening, and it is not going away.

So, the question of whether or not to legitimize something that a large portion of the population is already doing anyway is a good one. Think Prohibition.

And think very carefully about how you'd like copyrights, trademarks, and patents to work.