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What's the Solution To Intellectual Property?
StealthyRoid writes "I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and a huge supporter of property rights, both physical and intellectual. At the same time, I find the current trend of increasing penalties for minor violations, criminalizing civil IP matters, anti-consumer technologies like DRM, and abuse of the legal system by the *AA's of the world really disturbing. You'd think that by now, there'd be a reasonable solution to the problem of protecting intellectual property while at the same time maintaining the rights of consumers and protecting individuals from absurd litigation, but I have yet to find one. So, I pose these questions to the Slashdot community: 1 — Do you acknowledge the legitimacy of intellectual property to begin with? That is, do you believe that intellectual property is a valid construct equivalent to physical property, or do you think it's illusory? If not, why? 2 — If so, how would you go about protecting the rights of intellectual property holders in a way that doesn't require unfair usage limitations or resort to predatory abuse of the tort system?"
Easy time limits to stop patent camping. For example if you apply for a patent and get you have 12 months to produce a "product" based on the IP otherwise it goes into public domain. Or another one, patents not licensed (to make a product) or used for 3 years automatically go into public domain.
farmers have shared seed for thousands of years. Now monstanto claims they own the seeds. When you start fucking with seeds and shit the entire paradigm of money for ideas breaks down. you are not god, we do not owe you tribute.. all IP is this way
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If we assume that technology and communications is improving, and the pace of progress is increasing then logically the duration of monopoly should get shorter and shorter rather than longer.
Nowadays if a movie is good it makes a profit within a few weeks of its release. If it's not good, stop making bad movies then.
It is ridiculous that there should be a monopoly for > 100 years.
Think about it, if copyright only lasted 7 years, do you think Microsoft would dare release something as crap as Vista? They'd have to make something significantly better than Windows 2000.
If Microsoft won't want to play by those rules, I'm sure Apple or some others will be happy to take over.
As for patents and people talking about drugs needing long patent terms, the AFAIK drug companies spend more money on marketing (aka bribing doctors with goodies and holidays) than R&D, and FDA approval.
The goal should be to encourage innovation and creativity. Copyrights nowadays just last too long. This encourages hoarding because you can make tons of money by collecting essentially endless copyrights. It encourages lawsuits because the value is in the ownership and money earned over time, not improving the product and giving something people want to buy right now. It discourages derivative works because building off the original costs so much, which, for instance, seriously harms hip hop music. It also discourages new works from going commercial since you can sell a proven product much more easily than creating a new one and teaching the public about it. An individual creator deserves to make money off their work because it gives them an incentive to make more and improve our lives. The current system does the opposite so the social contract is broken. Until balance is restored, I have no problem disregarding pretty much all claims of copyright, short of selling someone's product myself. Then there's patent law...
Intellectual Property = information.
If you want to control intellectual property, you need to be able to control the information exchanged between people. That is a very difficult thing to do, and may give you a totalitarian society as a side effect.
I lost my sig.
property and intellectual property are not similar.
property rights are important b/c of the problem of scarcity; if there were enough of everything, there wouldn't be fights over who owns what.
with intellectual property, there is no scarcity of the idea or musical recording or what not; it's free (or close to it) to copy.
IP (or some of it) can be arguably justified on purely utilitarian grounds to incentivize creativity, and certain rights are granted that are similar to property rights, hence the use of the word property, but the analogy is taken too far when people think of IP as actual "property"
1. No
Ben Franklin gave his inventions to the world, why can we not do the same? All IP is based on MINE MINE MINE and preventing people from building on your work as long as possible, under the self-interested characterization of other people as THIEVES until proven otherwise. All IP is based on rationalizations of this very selfish behavior.
We've had enough of compromise, all that has given us is unending nibbled-to-death-by-ducks as the lawyers extend and extend and extend the reach of copyright and IP and patents. Soon your great-great-grandchildren will be living off your IP which was never the intent. It always starts as "reasonable" laws passed to encourage innovation and then pass things into public domain as soon as possible.
Do people now feel OBLIGATED to send money to the heirs of the Shakespeare estate every time they quote the Bard? Do you send money to the heirs of Volta every time you use a battery? No? If you don't then you are a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Whenever a dispute arises regarding intellectual property, it is usually, though not always, rooted in physical property. For instance, disks, books, or other material holding that property. The laws surrounding intellectual property limit use of your own physical property. For instance, you can purchase a hard disk with the bits set randomly, but once you re-arrange the magnetic charges in a specific fashion, you are infringing upon someone else's rights. This goes to show that intellectual property is indeed an illusion. Shouldn't you be able to do what ever you'd like with that chunk of metal in your room?
You can also look at ideas akin to something like fire. You take a candle and light another candle, and nothing was taking from the first candle. Ideas are the same - they are not a limited resource and thus should not be analogized to physical property.
I live in China right now, and the concept of intellectual property is relatively new here. It's a more natural part of Chinese culture to take ideas from each other. Instead of innovating into uncharted territory, Chinese innovate in place, creating immense depth within a single discipline, for instance martial arts, tea drinking, and calligraphy. This is because there are no intellectual property laws retarding development of these disciplines, and people have been copying and improving upon each others' techniques for thousands of years, spreading across a huge nation.
Chinese culture's reputation for the mysterious and secretive also comes out of this. With no protection of intellectual property laws, valuable ideas are kept secret through guilds and lineages.
Anyway just a few thoughts.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
1. I do not believe in intellectual property. However, I do believe that creators must be compensated for their hard work, to, as the US Constitution stated, "promote the sciences and arts", or something to that effect. As such I acknowledge the fiction of intellectual property as a necessary evil, much as I acknowledge a corporation as a fictitious person as a necessary evil in order to better help commerce (though whether or not corporations should be manifest in the form they are presently in is another story entirely).
2. Simple. Flat-out time limits. They may have a limited ability to be renewed, but cannot be extended. Seven years is probably plenty for most copyrighted works, possibly with an option to extend to another seven, resulting in fourteen total. A similar system seems to have done well for patents - a little too well, as a matter of fact, from the way the patent trolls seem to have sway. I think that people would be FAR more sympathetic towards copyright enforcement if we knew for a fact that it was for a limited time. There might be ways to have a limited form of protection in the case that something is suddenly popular after being out for, say, 18 years - I'm not sure what that would be, though, and if need be, this provision could be discarded for the greater good.
The system worked fine before it was repeatedly "fixed" in recent years. Increasing copyright periods to ridiculous lengths, DMCA, allowing software patents, etc.
Our system worked FINE. The Internet actually brought no new cards to the table except speed. I could go on about that one for a long time, and bring up copy protection in the context of player pianos (which court cases also involved patentability of "software"). But that would take up a lot of time and space.
In a nutshell: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It wasn't broke. But they did it anyway, since the mid-90s, all in the name of corporate protectionism and profit. And in the process, they broke it pretty badly.
The solution is simple: put the laws back the way they were, when they actually WORKED and we had, arguably, the best-working set of "IP" laws in the world.
The solution to intellectual property is obvious. Get rid of the intellectuals.
Trev - used to be interesting. Honest.
Why do we have IP laws in the first place? Contrary to what many evidently believe, it's not so that people or companies with good ideas can get rich. It's to foster innovation by ensuring that there is adequate incentive for people to innovate. (Read: Not 100 years of copyright so your great-grandchildren can keep milking it.) Any IP law that impedes innovation should be pruned from the books with prejudice. While it would take a rather extensive amount of pruning to eliminate every IP law that stifles innovation, a simple exemption for innovators might be all that is needed.
Although it would probably be difficult to implement in such a way that the spirit would not be overcome by the letter of the law, I would like to see exemptions to all existing IP laws that apply to those who take copyrighted or patented ideas and produce something original and of merit. If some patent-troll firm amassed a bunch of software patents without producing viable products, real software companies producing actual software could use this exemption and use those ideas without paying ransom or getting sued.
Of course, it might be better to just prune away.
The concept has its merits, but RMS makes a good point here. Using the term "Intellectual Property" distracts from what we're really talking about: Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents.
And, within that, it's possible to break things down even more. Math should never be patentable. English prose should pretty much always be copyrightable. And so on. That is, do you believe that intellectual property is a valid construct equivalent to physical property, or do you think it's illusory? Oh, it absolutely is illusory. Big fat "duh" on that point. What you're asking is whether or not we should behave as though it's equivalent to physical property.
I do believe IP -- especially copyright -- is a valuable concept. It's not equivalent to physical property. Specifically, copying something to which you do not have the right is not equivalent to physical theft -- and, more importantly, the only way to "steal" intellectual property would be to obtain legal copyright for something you shouldn't have.
And I believe we're far too early in the game to even know what the ethics around this should be. If so, how would you go about protecting the rights of intellectual property holders in a way that doesn't require unfair usage limitations or resort to predatory abuse of the tort system? That's a bit over my head, but if your concern is things like DRM, that's absurdly easy to deal with: Just don't. It is entirely possible to make money without DRM.
In more depth: What I would do is remove DRM from the game, drop the minimum damages (whatever that's called?) for lawsuits, and try to educate the courts a bit on technology, so that real proof is actually required.
And then, I would let the content creators figure it out for themselves.
As a content creator, I would stop seeing piracy as anything other than a competitor, and start looking at what I can do to compete. For successful examples, look at real-world systems which don't have a serious piracy problem, and also don't employ any of the tactics we despise (DRM, etc). Big, obvious examples: Radio, World of Warcraft, most books, and some indie music sites.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
To save you 300 pages of reading "Against Intellectual Monopoly," basically patents don't spur innovation, not even the ones on concrete inventions. Case after case is presented where it is clear that the idea of spurring innovation through patents is flawed at best, and highly damaging at worst. They basically prove that steam engine development was slowed down by patents and only really began to chug when the patents expired. Inventors you thought were heroes finally come across in a more realistic light. They present lots of examples like this and you just basically see the light (at the end of the tunnel?). Now, if your goal was to slow down technological progress or science itself, then maybe patents would be a good idea.
Before reading some chapters from Boldrin & Levine I was somewhat convinced that copyright at least had some beneficial elements to it that should be respected and preserved, but they sure put the nail in that coffin too. They went through the origins of copyright as a *relaxation* to a censorship regime by the crown (IIRC), and it just went downhill from there. Now it just seems like copyright is extended to every damn little thing, and that wasn't the original purpose of it by far. While they don't prove that removing copyright would be beneficial to everyone, they take a shot at showing that it wouldn't be a total disaster to authors/artists. For everyone else, it wouldn't prevent new books from being written, new music from being produced, etc., and it would be a net gainer, by far.
If you have the time to read a 300 page book this summer, by all means at least read a few chapters of Boldrin & Levine. You will understand intellectual property much better and hopefully lose a few sacred cows in the process.
You can select what you may want to read from this landing page:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
> 1 - Do you acknowledge the legitimacy of intellectual property to begin with? That is, do you believe that intellectual property is a valid construct equivalent to physical property, or do you think it's illusory?
It is imaginary (aka: illusory).
> If not, why?
Because the "natural" root of "property" is that if take something from you, you don't have it anymore. This is why property have been a necessary evil in human society (because if I let you take my axe and go away with it, I won't have it when I need it to cut wood). Note that the extension of property rights to real estate is already slightly dubious.
In the Imaginary Property field, if I take an idea from you, you still have it, so it you don't loose it. What you loose it the opportunity of making money from it, but that is a vastly different issue.
To see why this is a different issue, let's compare Imaginary Property to Protection Racket. Why isn't that legal after all ? I can argue that I was the first to racket a specific road, hence I should have the right to extort money on businesses or people there. This is very similar to being the same having some specific idea.
The difference between Imaginary Property and Protection Racket, is that it is supposed that Imaginary Property gives society back some value, while Protection Racket doesn't (it could be argued that correctly implemented protection racket is similar to some private police and that it could be a Good Thing if properly managed).
On can argue that Imaginary Property is somewhat worse than Protection Racket, because you can be racketed multiple time for the same thing by different people (in the patents case). In general, racketeers offer a better deal: "you only pay me, and I take care of the others".
So I think that Imaginary Property is effectively a Protection Racket, that I can only find ok if properly managed. In particular, the racket should be temporary, the amount to be paid should be low and fixed, and stiff penalties should be served to abusive racketeers.
(Btw, that is a quite a nice flaimebait, slashdot. You've got a winner here.)
Physical property and intellectual "property" rights are incompatible. You simply can't successfully have both - the one necessarily undermines the other, as Stephan Kinsella laid out. See http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/, particularly "Against Intellectual Property" [PDF].
Since the choice is ultimately between physical property rights and intellectual "property" rights (and of course I already think the latter are rather suspect for a number of other reasons) I simply choose physical property rights.
When people say "but I'P' is valuable!" I say - of course it is, each EU or US patent granted steals value from literally hundreds of millions of people's physical property rights. A patent lets you usurp the value of everyone's physical property - A patent, by definition, says "you can no longer make your physical property into this particular form without my permission".
An I"P" system is death of a thousand cuts to the physical property system. "Anarcho-capitalists" who think they can support both should get a clue.
The purpose of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions in exchange for a temporary monopoly. It's a deal between the inventor and everybody else: tell us how you did it, and we won't compete with you for a set amount of time. The alternative is that the inventor attempts to keep it a secret, and the idea dies with him.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
1) Yes, I acknowledge intellectual property as a legitimate construct. More specifically, I acknowledge the exclusive right to the creator or sponsor of intangible content to derive income for a limited period of time.
2) As many people have said (and I am sure will continue to say), time-limits need to be shortened. Simple enough to make that statement without a discrete number of years, I know, but I don't have one as yet.
Usage rights need to be effectively unlimited - i.e. treat the purchaser of a "licence" to access/use intellectual property the same as a sole purchaser of tangible property. I can copy, backup, sell, modify, install on multiple machines, change hardware, do whatever I like. If the copyright holder grants/sells to me a right to use that intellectual property, he forfeits all other "rights" with respect to me.
This is talking primarily in the personal/domestic setting. I realise that in the commercial world, licences which are limited (both in duration and use) are commonplace and useful. These generally, however, arise from *signed* contracts. Don't try and BS us with this click-through, shrink wrap EULA business.
Outlaw any technology which impinges on a purchaser's right to access his purchase. DRM, TPM, etc, throw it out the window.
Establish *reasonable* penalties for infringement. Million dollar file for downloading a movie from Channel BT? Disproportionate penalties tend to encourage flouting of the law, IMO. If I were slugged $100 for a movie I downloaded illegitimately, I would probably say "fair cop". Set up an IP tribunal to stop the combative litigation style of the MAFIAA.
In the same vein, do not allow IP holders to act as police (a la DMCA takedown notices). Do not tolerate any conflicts of interest by letting ISPs and content producers to get into bed together. Ban any so-called "TOS" which permit your ISP to boot you off your service if they think you are serving copyrighted material. Provide safe-harbour protection to ISPs so they can ignore threats from IP holders. Packet filtering/inspection is and should be treated as a gross invasion of privacy.
This is just a start. I'm sure there are a good deal of other great ideas.
I'm very skeptical of IP, for the most part. Trademarks are legitimate because they prevent consumer fraud, one brand pretending to be another. If anyone could use the Nike name/label everyone would be ripped off all the time. However the law should not require trademark holders to zealously defend their names or be deemed to lose them. Why encourage, or even require litigation? Patents, for bona finde inventions, not derivatives, not marketing systems, not software, not combinations of inventions (a vaccuum cleaner with a lightbulb should not be patentable, but the first internal conbustion engine should be) are legitimate. However, these days there should only be about 1 or 2 patents per year. If even that. Maybe 1 or 2 every couple of years. A patent being granted should be a rare thing, newsworthy in and of itself. Nowadays, pretty much everything new and unique has already been made. I won't rehash patent abuse here on Slashdot - you all know better than everyone else how patents are abused. No more than 1 invention per year is truly unique and worthy of patent protection (for a limited time, of course). Copyrights have proven to be worthless. Copyright provides absolutely zero incentive for artists to create works - people with artistic talent will create works of art no matter whether they can have a financial monopoly on said works. In fact, as a rule of thumb, works made for profit are far worse than works made for art's sake. Copyright has been used for nothing more than to stifle free expression, to blackmail consumers, and to purge knowledge and art from availability. I don't mean just from the public domain. Everything should be in the public domain. I mean there are movies and books that are out of print and unavailable b/c they can't be legally purchased! Anything that reduces the available knowledge to mankind needs to be done away with. But on a more personal level, the idea that people have to pay to sing happy birthday in a movie, that a restaurant owner can't turn on the radio in his establishment (let alone play a CD), or that I can't make a mix CD for a friend is simply asinine and contrary to a free society. When you make something, the only thing you deserve is credit for the work. Plaigairism is bad. Nobody should be able to take credit for your work - but credit is all you deserve. Nothing more. In sum: Copyright has to go. Patent needs to be limited to, say, the top 5 submissions per year (and that's generous, it should be 1 per year at most). Trademark is legitimate.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
But corporate interests have been hard at work. Many creative artists no longer own what they produce; the new improved laws reduce their products to nothing more than "work for hire" for their corporate masters. The creators don't reap the profit of their labors anymore. And there's also been changes in the laws that extend the protections for these creators long, long beyond what was a fair exchange between the creator's interests and the public interest.
It's not enough that the whole "protect creators, protect the public interest" system has been perverted in the name of corporate profit. To further enrich themselves, they hired marketing and public relations experts. The false concept of "intellectual property" was created and used to justify even more perversions of our legal system. You can only infringe a copyright - but if you can call it property then you can say that someone is stealing your property. Bring on the draconian criminal penalties and secure the corporate interests from having to compete in the modern net-connected world.
Using music as an example: Record companies and their trade associations file lawsuits against their customers by the thousands to protect their copyrights. Those people didn't write or perform any music; where did they get their copyrights from? They say they're doing this to protect the artists - but those artists aren't getting much (if any) of the profits from their creative works. The real creators don't even own what they create; the copyrights were "stolen" by the record companies and the new improved laws mean they won't have to release the music into the public domain for a very, very long time (if ever).
The motion picture studios have been watching and they're starting to play the same games.
Note well: none of this is to protect the artists. It's to protect corporate profits, pure and simple. As long as they can get away with using "intellectual property" to get lawmakers to further protect their profit margins they will. But at the end of the day it's still nothing more than a phrase that means less than nothing. Ideas are not property; never have been, never will.
I'd have put it a bit more nicely. Something like "parse error" would have done better.
An anarcho-capitalist who believes in IP is like a libertarian who advocates for a monarchy.
The only priviso, that I can see, is that an idea that is described in *detail* with dimensions, materials and/or processes required to make it a product. Also if it appears obvious or even(especially) done previous, one should need to explain why it is different and better than what is already out there. I'm thinking of software patents in particular but there is no reason why it can't be. That takes far more work than coming up with a great idea. I've had heaps. Some if I'd worked at I may have even been the first to bring to market. I didn't (lazy) but it anecdotally demonstrates that it is possible for others to come up with a similar or even the same idea.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
In fact, by its very nature it would have to not be equivalent. For example, if I infringe your intellectual property, I haven't deprived you of the use of it, as would be the case if I stole your physical property. Since the natural consequences of infringement are different, it follows that the rights should not be completely equivalent. However, that's not at all the same as saying that there shouldn't be any intellectual property rights.
Intellectual property isn't even property in any real sense of the word. It's obviously illusory since IP doesn't exist in any physical sense.
That being said, a government-granted monopoly in the dissemination and exploitation of creative works for the purpose of edifying the public is a valid government objective and I support such a monopoly. I support the monopoly only to the extent which those goals are satisfied.
HTH
In a perfect world, where I was dictator, we'd have a 5-year commercial copyright with an option to renew for another 5. Copyright protection would require registration and a copy of the work in question would be deposited with the Library of Congress. For example, if MS wanted Windows 7 to have any copyright protection at all, they'd have to turn over the source code to the LoC.
Patents would work much the same way, but I'd have them only for physical processes where a working model of the invention exists. Business method and software patents need not apply. If someone comes up with the same process independently of another, the former need not pay patent fees.
Trademark law is, for the most part, acceptable.
Trade secrets would have no legal protections outside of standard contracts. No one would be subject to criminal prosecution for divulging company secrets.
Profits are up for cinema, DVDs, ringtones, etc., it's only the music industry which is currently suffering.
Maybe the problem is with their product, not the copying.
I think the way people listen to music has moved away from the "album" and more towards "top 40". Apple has partly responded to this and is making a lot of money from selling music. The RIAA OTOH has completely failed to respond, with inevitable consequences.
No sig today...
so why then do we have IP at all? because capitalism can only deal with scarcity: you can not sell sand in the desert. this shows a principal problem with capitalism. and if you look a bit closer then you see that this does not only happen with intellectual goods but with almost everything that capitalism deals with: it introduces artificial scarcity:
- advertisement: to create new demand for mostly useless things where there was no demand before.
- war: the most effective way to create new demand: destroy what was there before, create insecurity and create weapons that "protect",
...
- crisis: like the bursting housing bubble...
- ....
my employer pays me to filter out spam for him. other people are being payed by there employer to send out spam. etc..etc..the capitalist system is fundamentally broken. every year 10 million people are starving even though there would be enough food to feed them all... capitalism just does not cater to those with no money...
our so called "democracy" is becomming more of a farce every day: voters being manipulated by $$$-media... those with enough corporations behind them have more money for their election campaign... this all leeds to the fact that you can only rule if you represent the profit-interests of the big corporations...
greetings mond.
Many Slashdotters are adamant in their assertion that intellectual property is not a valid right or concept. They often cite legal history, and technicly they are correct. However, it seems they are doing this more for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to actually caring about how the law is constructed. The argument usually goes something like, "IP theft isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement". I always like to counter this with something like, "would you rather I steal $50,000 from you or embezzle it?". It is readily apparent that the effect is the same.
Therefore, I personally DO recognize IP as a valid concept and right. If I'm the first cave-man to discover fire after rubbing sticks together for months, and you light your fire from mine without rewarding me, you do indeed take something from me. The fire-maker deservers to be fed from the next kill, lest the wheel-maker observes that the fire-maker starved, and decides to give up on his endeavor.
OTOH, when the fire-maker stomps out fires and demands a portion of the meat in perpetuity, he shouldn't be surprised when he gets clubbed on the head.
In other words--common sense.
Therefore, software patents -- get rid of 'em. They dont't incentivise. They just make software developers worry. Everybody knows it.
*AA enforcement? None on low-quality encodings that get radio airplay. Why? because you can already time-shift broadcast radio. Pulling it off digitally is really just the same thing, format-shifted. Same deal for music vids, which you could have legitimately recorded off MTV 25 years ago with your VHS (in fact, WB and some other studios are putting up their own YouTube channels with classic MTV vids, perhaps they finally are realizing it's actually good for their PR and not taking away from new sales). High-quality encodings and/or lossless recording should be more restricted. The penalty should be ordinary restitution: steal 100 CDs worth of music, pay 200 CD equivalent penalty. None of this $30,000 business for downloading one song.
IP in the music/vid business can be a *good* thing. Bits don't go to landfill. Availability of high-quality recordings in a manner that ensures payment will help that.
Abandoned works should lapse into the public domain, but registration shouldn't be required for copyright on each work. I could go on and on...
The short answer though, is common sense. Isn't it always? Unfortunately, it always seems to be in short supply. The laws are written by lawyers who are paid by businesses. Hence, all the legal hang-ups.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
IP today? No
I beleive in the concept of intellectual property from an idea in order to ensure the original creator gets suitably reimbursed for their work. However, When intellectual property was first introduced the period was only 15 years (or close), since then it's been raised a raised untill we have this situation, of whoever patents an idea first keeps it for eternity (not quite, but the rate of IP being extended is actually faster than the time is running out, so with the trends of today, eternity) Of course that trend is completely the reverse of the intention of IP, because as the economy has grown, more money can be made in a shorter time, so surely the IP laws should shorten the time IP is protected?
As for outrageous settlements for the RIAA, I have easily enough songs to bankrupt me several times over, so why on earth would I stop taking the songs now? The difference would be between a fine of $1 000 000 and $1 050 000, either way, I simply don't have that money- if I can't afford to buy the music in the first place, why on earth would they presume I can afford a fine like that. Plus the out of court setttlements aren't proportional to the songs sold.
With modern pop music, no serious critic would claim that more than 5% of it's value remains after 5 years, by then all there is is small royalties for the odd CD bought, and most of the money has been made, that's when the IP runs out. This is just a side effect of teh type of music created now, and of course could be reveiwed if some music that aged better was produced.
I think the case with books is the strongest case for IP because its not obvious how a writer would make money without protection. Nevertheless I think that even in case of books there should be no IP. And I am a writer with two books published in the Netherlands and one in the US (http://usa.tiouw.com/content/index.php?/archives/19-You-Unlimited,-mind-reading-the-masses-with-NLP.html) First of all most writers hardly get published anyway. Second of all they wont make much money on the books sold themselves. So you need an alternative business plan to make money on books. So without IP Protection you still would have many books published and only a few of them would be copied without paying the author. So the difference for most authors would be very limited. It's only a very small group of writers that would get hurt. But that hurt is also limited, because ... ... without IP protection, a new book would be more like a trade secret. Take for instance Harry Potter latest adventure. It would be launched in secret, the public would buy it en masse. Other publisher rush to copy it and distribute it, but the advantage of being the first to rush it and sell it would still make more than enough money for any individual.
So the whole idea that artists need IP protection is nonsense. IP protection is just another form of monopoly that big companies love to have. Removing IP from the world would only change a little bit. Every art form would find a new and better way of existing.
So to sum up IP protection in case of books:
1) Nobody wants to publish your work anyway
2) If you get one publisher to publish it, it still means to no one else wants your book to copy even if they could do it for free.
3) If you are a succesful author there is enough money to be made by being first on the market anyway. Sure it is less than under a monopoly, but it is more than enough.
Conclusion: get rid of IP as fast as possible.
Ideas are not equivalent to tangible property because (among other reasons):
1) There is no natural scarcity of ideas. Taking a thing deprives the person it is taken from of its use. If two people share an idea, both have it and neither the less. The two outcomes are diametrically opposed, ideas are the opposite of property. They are not subject to property. Dissemination of ideas increases the sum of knowledge, whether for profit or not. The purpose of patent and copyright law is to maximize the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
2) To pretend that an idea can be owned as property suggests that one owns and has the right to exercise control over another's thoughts. This is absurd and unmanageable.
3) If an idea is property, there is no basis to suggest that ownership of an idea shouldn't be permanent and heritable as other property is. This would be an economic and social disaster.
etc.
The constitution provides a simple justification for granting a monopoly to an inventor on the use of their idea: "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." This is a noble goal, one I think generally embraced be even the opponents of the current copyright regime. This suggests a simple and obvious test for laws meant to regulate the temporary monopolies: if a given law can be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, we are fairly subject to the limitations thereof so long as we (We) agree with the goal of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. If a law regulating the free use and exchange of ideas cannot be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts it is wrong and unconstitutional.
That was sorta what I was already wondering.
In the west we already had a concept of, basically: you bought _a_ book, you didn't buy the rights to the novel. You bought _a_ record, you didn't buy the rights to that band's album. You bought _a_ (copy of the) newspaper, you didn't buy _the_ newspaper. Etc. It worked. Most people could already wrap their mind around that.
We had a first sale doctrine that worked perfectly well with that too. Yes, you didn't buy the rights to the novel, for example, but you bought a book and you can do almost whatever you want with it. Resell it, lend it to your friend, read it to your kid at bedtime, etc.
Then came for example software and tried to handwave in the fallacy that they need completely other constructs, for something that was already solved for everything else. See, you need to _license_ software, because, OMG, otherwise you'd think you bought the rights to that program as a whole! WTH? We already had the distinction between buying a book, and buying the ownership of a novel itself. You didn't need to "license" a book, or a vinyl record, or a newspaper.
Even after the loophole of, basically, "yeah, but you need to copy the program to memory, which is making a copy, and you need a license to make copies" was closed, we got stuck with the same stupidity as a before. Nah, see, it's _licensed_, not sold, 'cause if we sold it you might think you bought the rights to Vista as a whole!
Exactly wth is the fundamental difference between buying a copy of, say, Vista, and buying a copy of Huckleberry Finn? I'll go on a limb and say that people would have had no trouble using the pre-existing concept for software too.
And then based on the license stupidity, we had increasingly stupid stuff snuck in as licensing terms, that no consumer rights law would have allowed otherwise. E.g., you can't resell it. (See the recent AutoCAD lawsuit, but also all the software where you have to use up a serial number to use it, etc.) You can resell your old book, your old vinyl records, even your old copy of The New York times if you find someone interested in that particular issue, but you can't resell your old copy of AutoCAD. 'Cause it's licensed not sold. Some presume to unilaterally decide what else you can run on that computer. (E.g., it's quite common for game copy-protections to just quit or do this and that to you, if they think you have a CD emulator running on that computer.) Or what they can do to your computer. Or what you can use it for. Etc. Everything that consumer protection laws gave you for books, records, etc, the license took away for software.
And now unsurprisingly we see the guys from the other media, essentially go, "wait, wait, you mean we wouldn't have had to give customers all those rights, if we called it a license too? Damn, we want some of that too!" All the aberrations and stupidities built on that fallacy for software, we're now seeing trickling back to, say, movies and music. They too want a DRM scheme to prevent you from reselling it. They too want to unilaterally require your DVD player to phone home and spy on you, 'cause, hey, if software can do that, they want it too. They too want a say in what you can use the DVD for, and in which devices. (See copy protected CDs which actually play a reduced bit rate MP3 instead of the uncompressed music, if you play them on a computer.) Etc.
Heck, even Sony's infamous copy protection rootkit was, essentially, just trying to get the same control over that music as they have over software. In a misguided and flawed way, to be sure, but they didn't do anything much more underhanded than their copy protection already does for games.
And methinks it's about high time to say a collective, "WTF?" Or rather, a, "No, you don't. You software guys learn to live with what already worked for everything else, instead of everyone else copying your invented loopholes. Yes, you sold a copy, not the rights to the program. We know that. That already applied to everyone who bought a copy o
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The real WTF is that Capitalism - a system ostensibly designed such that innovation leads to the cheese at the end of the maze - is most efficient when a single corporation controls every product and service. Capitalism seems to be tending towards that eventuality, & the mechanism by which this will happen may just be intellectual property laws... :-)
The keyword is 'exclusive', meaning only 1 person can use it at a time. If I use a car to drive from A to B, you cannot use it at the same time to drive from C to D. All physical property works that way, somehow.
Now for IP, many people think it's the patented/copyright work that is the 'property' in IP. It isn't - you can copy things anyway, so they're not really scarce. It is the right to determine who is allowed to make copies and when, that is regarded as 'property'. And this is exclusive. Only 1 person or organisation can hold the copyright on a work at any given time. This right is the (artificially) scarce item that is used/inherited/sold and so on. Once you understand this, IP makes perfect sense from a conceptual point of view. I don't like this concept, but it's perfectly in line with how people deal with physical property.
Where IP doesn't make sense, is from a practical point of view. Copyright may have served a purpose 1 or 2 hundred years ago, but times have changed. I have yet to see a convincing proof that the world as a whole has benefited from past IP laws. That technological/cultural progress would have been slower without it. In todays fast-moving society, it serves even less purpose. Countless patents fall in the 'obvious' or 'bound to happen sooner or later' category. Without IP laws, these things would have been thrown onto the world for everyone to use for free. Nor are there any objective standards used to determine IP protections. Protection periods aren't calculated or estimated for optimal effect, but lobbied by greedy corporations for maximum profit. As a result, society as a whole loses.
And then there's implementation. Take for example DRM: you hand a million customers identical 'black boxes' with identical locks, with identical content inside, then you give those customers identical keys, and you tell them: "now go open your box, but don't share what you find inside". Aliens would laugh at how silly this is. Or a company invests millions into development of a new drug, then brings it to the market, but not everyone profits because the poorest can't afford the high price. All the hard work has been done, the company wouldn't profit less if there where a group of 'freeriders' who can afford production costs but not market price, but still: millions are suffering because corporate greed is deemed more important than curing sick people.
If it where up to me, IP laws would be scrapped from the books, so that companies can have succes by innovating faster or smarter than the competition, as opposed to having a bigger pack of lawyers. In the mean while, I just try to ignore IP law as much as I can get away with (like so many people, whether they admit it or not).
There shouldn't have to be complicated laws concerning IP, it should be very simple:
* If you profit from it, you have to pay the price; if you don't profit from it, you shouldn't have to pay extra.
* You can copy it, but only for your own private use; if you give it to someone else, you're risking having to pay a price.
* If you're attracting attention to yourself (i.e. you're being excessive) then you get in trouble.
Things like P2P could be construed as "being excessive" in my book. If you're giving away music to people on the other side of the planet that you haven't met and never will meet (and who you can't even communicate with because you speak a different language even), then that might be considered excessive. If you're copying a CD for your 5 best friends then that's not anywhere near as excessive. If you're making mix CDs and selling them then you're an idiot who's being excessive and you'll get what you deserve. If you're digitally recording a TV show and burning it to DVD so your freinds who don't get that channel can watch it, that's OK. If you're compiling a whole season of a show and selling DVDs of it on the internet, then you're going to find yourself in trouble with the law. If you burn a copy of a game for a friend who can't afford it because he's a student and is scratching to get by, then what's the big deal? If you're a warez dude and you're cracking that game and letting thousands of complete strangers download it to show how cool you are, then you're a moron and you get what you deserve when they break your door down. I could go on and on but I think I make myself clear?
Here's a recent post of mine on IP - excerpts of others follow below it.
...A sheet of paper is material property. A poem is intellectual property. Aside from the practical issues arising from ... to manufacture copies or derivatives of their own intellectual property unless they have obtained licence from the ... to a publisher. Without copyright, purchasers of intellectual property enjoy the restoration of their natural right to ... restoration of rights does not weaken respect for intellectual property, but strengthens it. There is still no right to ...
..., copyright makes people think that all intellectual property is a pretence, even private intellectual property ... because copyright is about pretending th
URL to first is: http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=116
URL to rest is: http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/?q=intellectual+property
Natural Intellectual Property Unnaturally Privileged
Potentially having high market value, an intellectual work must be regarded as property in its own right. Among other things, this is because its value, whether utilitarian or aesthetic, can be appropriated by theft (irrespective of the possibility that any number of copies may remain with its possessor).
Despite crazy definitions to the contrary, thieves do not have uppermost in their minds the concept or intent of denying a legitimate owner the use of their property, but rather the concept and intent of seizing valuable/saleable property without payment (where the effort of theft is expected to be lower than the amount expected to be recovered through possession/use/benefit/exchange of the stolen property).
One cannot simply have a statutory penalty for violation of someone's privacy right. One must also consider the market value of the intellectual property so appropriated, and ideally the cost of its return/repossession.
The fundamental flaw in most people's notions of IP is not primarily that creation confers ownership (this tends to be coincident even with a first-comer idea), but that one should continue to own one's IP even after one has parted with it (sale or gift). But for this, the legitimate owner of a book cannot be stealing its author's property by making copies of their purchased book, unless one sustains the idea that the author owns all copies of their book even after they've sold them.
So it's quite possible to accept intellectual property as arising out of natural law, e.g. you write a book, you have absolute ownership and control over that book (even without the state's support, an individual can expect to protect it). Similarly with copies: you make a copy, you have absolute ownership and control over that copy. However, the author has no natural right to control what people do with the copies they purchase, e.g. making further copies or derivatives. Privileging the author to the contrary (for the publisher's benefit) is the unnatural misstep, the state's attachment of strings that nature did not.
Copyright is unnatural. All state granted monopolies are unnatural, patent included.
However, despite the unnatural privileges granted to its creators, intellectual property is nevertheless natural. The effective monopoly over access to one's private domain and control over the material and intellectual properties within it is also natural, and thus to be protected by the state.
http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/?q=intellectual+property
Restore Everyone's Intellectual Property Rights - Abolish Copyright
http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=96 148 days ago
IP is Indeed Property
Remember when we said we did great things, but it was because we stood on the shoulders of giants? IP takes away those giants, so we have nothing to stand on anymore.
While IP is great for somebody or something in the short term, it harms everybody in the long term, including the people who want it so badly.
There should be a way to both have advantage for the 'owner' in the short term and advantage of everybody in the long term.
The best way is to have it 'short term'. 70+ or 100+ years is not short term. 5 or 10 years is short term.
Companies claim they need that long term, because they need to research so much. Well DUH! That is because you must re-invent the wheel over and over again. What would you save if you didn't have to do all the research yourself? What if somebody else already had done it and you can simply use it.
See how you shoot yourself in the foot by these ridiculous long IP times?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"intellectual property" is the 21st century's version of the victorian slave trade and other issues.
think about the phrase "intellectual property" for a moment.
intellectual. property. information. owned. intelligence. enslaved.
therefore, "intellectual property" is the "enslavement of intelligence".
this isn't some sort of waffly joke, the words "intellectual property" _say_ so.
the implications are quite straightforward: the use of the phrase "intellectual property" has behind it just as much enslavement and disempowerment as physical slavery.
* when you sign an employment contract, your "intellectual property rights" are taken away. you are given money, as a "sop". you cannot get any work anywhere else - you cannot get any money to live on - if you do not follow the "norm".
* when you come up with an idea, which you find that nobody is implementing, you are afraid to make money from it because there might be someone who will bully you into submitting to their will because there is a "patent" - a government-sanctioned right to bully - the owner of which has been waiting for someone just like you, so they can take money away from you.
ultimately, however, "intellectual enslavement" is driven by "maximisation of profit".
fortunately, there are solutions: read muhammad yunus new book, "creating a world without poverty", in which he describes "social business" as being "capitalism with non-loss, non-dividend" at its core.
if you have non-loss, non-dividend replacing "maximisation of profit" at the core of your articles of incorporation, then you do not have to suppress or own to "make money". you can cooperate with your former competition, working towards social goals.
it's a long story.
You mix copyrights and patents.
Neither of these concepts is inherently bad or evil.
I am a semi-pro photographer (meaning that I earn some good money from doing commercial photography) but it's a side-job. I like being in control of my work, meaning that if you want to use a photo I made, you should ask for permission - after all I had to invest in equipment and it took considerable amount of time to create that photo; if you want to use that photo in a magazine or for advertising, you better pay up. Without that protection, I may not be doing this. If anyone could copy my work with no consequences, photography would remain strictly hobby for me.
In other cases, IMO sometimes photographers abuse their position. For example, some wedding photographers would take photos at weddings for the customer, but retain the copyrights, so the client goes to the photographer each time they want a new set. A "work for hire" style of agreement would work better - the client pays a fee and then the photos (slides, RAWs, whatever) is their.
In the same vein, if I'm a publishing house and decide to print Harry Potter, it's perfectly fine for the author to be compensated. Same goes for Mickey Mouse. Things get muddy when we start talking about derivative works. If I want to write a book about the Adventures of Young Gandalf, should I pay up?
Patents are a whole different matter. Scrapping them completely wouldn't really work, but limiting the time to 2 years, requiring a working prototype, banning patents on concepts (algorithms, practices) would do wonders.
If you claim I do not have a right to my birthright, I consider that justification to kill you and take it by force.
You do not have a right to what you did not create. If you want something, you should make it yourself. It's my land, my idea, my property, and you can go find your own. Your laziness and lack of creativity does not give you a right to steal.
Oh please don't go bleat on about having the right to food, housing or medical. Those things are important, yes, but, if they are so important than shouldn't you be willing to work for them?
This is my sig.
hear me out, even though you might be hostile to what i have to say
i agree with you about ip, i hate it. i think ip law should be utterly destroyed. however, i object to your "i'm an anarcho-capitalist...". its your opening remark. and making it whiffs of desperation to be or feel different. i agree with your thinking, but the way you present yourself to the world is odious
your ideological self-description should be "normal". your radical agenda should be called "common sense". the point is, you are trying to appeal to other people, not distance yourself from them, and that's what you do, consciously, or subconsciously, you create a wedge, when you begin a sentence with this "i'm an anarcho-capitalist..." oh really? in other words, you're an average middle class suburban kid
do you want to destroy ip? or do you just want to tweak your ego? if you want ip destroyed, your job one is to make yourself appealing to the average joe. not drive a wedge against them. your ideology stands zero chance of succeeding in this world when you try to distance yourself from people rather than make yourself part of them. real politics trumps college aged identity politics
secondly, "anarcho-capitalism" is basically, somalia. sound superior? i thought not. so stop embracing ideology which appeal to college age kids with far too many textbooks and far too little real life experience. it is possible to destroy ip without becoming somalia. really. so lose the college age naivete
much like the college age girl who describes herself as a polyamorous bisexual and then becomes a suburban housewife with 2.3 kids and a dog in 10 years, you will be a cube dweller in 5 years if you continue calling yourself a bullshit label of "anarcho-capitalist". its not a real or valid ideology. its intellectual ephemera, fetishistic esoteric ideology, art house insularism. "anarcho-capitalism" is not a real, working valuable set of ideas. really. lose the bullshit label
i know you are going to be hostile to my words. i apologize if i sound too rough. i'm actually trying to be helpful and i don't know a softer way to say it. i think you will appreciate what i am saying one day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nothing is completely absolute. If property rights were completely absolute, then, western society would not exist because, a few hundred years ago, all of the land belonged to the King and the King had an absolute right for commercial enterprises as well. In western society, ownership of land became more decentralized due to a wide variety of forces - ranging from wars that weakened monarchs, to a demand for the king to actually act something like the religion he claimed to uphold, to political and revolutionary reform. But it is fair to say that decentralization took place because the crown's sheer greed made it necessary for the crown to begin to share power with other people in the form of king's charters and patents and grants, where the king got a cut in exchange for a transfer of ownership from "public" to private, and from that, we have the idea of taxation. The king still gets his or her cut, but, now, the ownership is private.
IF other countries haven't had that sort of chain of events take place, then, they aren't going to have that. In Kenya, for example, all of the good land is locked up by giant estates that are descendants of their colonial forbears. This arrangement was set up by the imperial powers to create products for export back to the mother country and on the cheap. So, in Kenya, you have thousands of acres of the very best farmland growing coffee for export to the West, all owned by a handful of people, while the vast majority of the country starves. The problem in these countries, is that, what happens is that a marxist revolution takes place, and the "people" wind up owning the land, but in practice the people are just another small gang of thugs and for the average guy, the situation hasn't changed at all, except what little he did have was lost in the revolution designed to liberate him.
Quite honestly, in those countries, what is needed is a redistribution of land into private ownership. You can't have an equitable system of property rights without everyone being able to own some sort of property!
This is my sig.
So you (and the moderators who modded you up) oppose the concept of inheritance? And what should happen after you die to the property that you created?
I think the essence of the disposition of a man's estate after his death is to ask, what's best for the people. I do not see property rights as an excuse to create a nobility, but I do think it is right to want to give your children -something- extra. So, could a man that builds a small company be able to pass that to his kids? Yes. But, should the likes of a Bill Gates be able to enshrine his or her children? ER, no.
Property is a muddy concept at least, and one-liner generalizations like "You do not have a right to what you did not create" (or "Your are just totally wrong") don't describe it with justice nor can't be used as moral guidelines, at danger of making a radical out of you.
Nothing is ever absolute, but when confronted with a radical threatening to hang people, then you need to be able to make polarizing statements back.
This is my sig.
The land is still not yours, you just own a piece of paper that the King will use violence to enforce on your behalf
Actually, I'm an American citizen, and as such, have a -natural- right to possess guns. I do not need a king to enforce my property rights. I have a gun to enforce my property rights, and by my act of agreeing not to shoot the "king", I consent to be governed and live by the laws of the USA. Thus, because I have a gun, I own my land, and the King (aka gov't), has no rights of its own at all.
This is my sig.
The problem with the concept of intellectual property is, that the term doesn't have any boundaries. Property has very well defined boundaries: The real estate boundaries are drawn down in maps, the house has a wall, the car has a tangible surface.
Everything intellectual is missing exactly those boundaries that separate the "owned" part from the "not owned" part. Mark Twain once told the local parish: "Your sermon today was magnificent, but at home I have a book that contains every word of it." The priest was offended, until he saw the book: a dictionary.
So what is the "owned" part in that sermon? The words are not. The sequence of words maybe? It surely contains lots of quotes from the Bible, so those quotes are not owned either. Many of the sentences have been told by other people too. Many of the conclusions were drawn by other theologists. The priest might have used the book of a philosopher or theologist as inspiration. So those parts are not owned either. What is owned is at maximum a certain individuality, of which we aren't even able to tell which part is just random chance and which part is the actual work of the intellect.
So in every piece of intellectual works we have layers and layers laid upon each other which are not owned by the intellect who created the work. 99% of every work is in fact owned by others. That's the famous sentence in the correspondence of Newton and Hooke: "If I've seen further than others, it's because I was standing on the shoulders of giants" (which itself is just a quote of a quote of a quote).
On the other hand intellectual creation is larger as the work itself (you could call it 'greedy' in the regular expressions sense). It doesn't just put well defined building blocks together. It redefines the building blocks themselves. A word once used in a famous quote will always have the connotation of this quote attached. So somehow this word is not fully in the public domain anymore, it has now an individual character thanks to the intellect using it. Case in point: No nerd will ever be able to use the number 42 anymore without having some Douglas Adams associations. So somehow the once public 42 is partly owned by Douglas Adams' intellect, even though he never invented the 42, and 42 is definitely not his work.
So there is no definable property in the intellectual work, because property is a way to define boundaries: Here is yours, and here starts mine. Intellectual works are missing exactly those dichotomy between yours and mine. Intellectual works are "blurred in the property space".
So I don't think the concept of
Well, the outcome was that the farmer in question got sued by Monsanto, and Monsanto won. Neat how this works, huh ?
IF, unlike the cases so far, you have not purposely gathered said seeds and planted them with the goal of avoiding purchase. The GP takes an abstract and acts like it happens. Read up on the cases.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and a huge supporter of property rights, both physical and intellectual.
I'm puzzled why an anarcho-capitalist is so quick to embrace monopolies handed out by the government to private entities, which is what IP is. Myself, I'm more supportive of free markets where anyone can compete.
I thick government-granted monopolies is something a Guild Socialist should support. Or maybe a Mussolini Fascist.
)9TSS
Monsanto creates higher yield per acre by making the plant immune to the total herbicide they manufacture, which allows for tons and tons of the stuff being dumped into the environment.
Here, fixed that for you.
I also think it's interesting that IP (generally) has absolutely nothing to do with birthplaces, birthrights, etc, and has not been completely staked (not even close). I.e. it possesses none of the characteristics that turned you away from property, yet you still oppose it. Why?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The U.S. Constitution is written from the point of view of protecting natural rights from government predation.
Copyright is different. It is a created "right." Really, it is more like a "deal" than a right: It is a limited term grant of exclusivity. No real right works that way, and no other right is explicitly created - they are assumed to exist with or without the acknowledgment of the government.
Therefore you do not need to be an "anarcho"-anything to reconsider copyright. The Founders themselves considered it less than a right.
Copyright isn't even a contract. It is a kind of charter that can be revoked or modified at the whim of the granting party. So reducing a copyright term isn't even a "taking."
Copyright was created by the government to benefit the people. If it stops working that way, copyright has no purpose.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I don't think IP is illusory, but it is clearly not equivalent to physical property. The low cost of reproduction is the difference. When you can fax me a piano or email me a lawnmower then we can talk about equivalence.
The main problem I see with IP rights is that the products are all, without exception, built on the combined achievements of the human race over many thousands of years. In the case of biological patents they are also based on the achievements of natural selection. No one individual or company or group of individuals owns these achievements.
No book, song, program, drug, seed, invention or production concept is possible without the information, knowledge, education, systems and resources that preceded it.
The combination of all human intellectual capital in the public domain is the birthright of the entire human race, collectively and individually.
Therefore, profits from products created using our collective intellectual property and based on the artificial scarcity engendered by IP laws should be taxed at a much higher rate, say 60 to 70 percent. This public income stream should be earmarked to fund public support for R&D. This won't, and shouldn't, eliminate private R&D. Private corporations should be eligible for R&D funding, but resulting property rights should still be taxed at the higher rate or put in the public domain. Think of it as a public private partnership.
I wouldn't mind if authors, artists and musicians could be eligible for a bit of an R&D stipend here and there, but the most pressing need for this reform is in the pharmaceutical industry. A system that holds lives for ransom based on pharmaceutical patents seriously flawed if not criminal.
If you don't want someone to use your photographs, you shouldn't give them your photographs... You don't need copyright laws to achieve that effect.
You've said it yourself. A "work for hire" style of agreement works just fine. Someone wants a photograph, he pays you to make it. No copyrights needed at all. You can even make a contract over how they are allowed to use said photographs, so you can use ordinary contract law to protect your photos in those few cases.
Plants do not reproduce in the manner you think.
*sighs* The fact that some plants reproduce asexually as well as sexually reinforces, rather than contradicts my point. Life attempts where possible to produce copies of itself.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I'm not very good at explaining things. However, this is a much deeper question than initially hinted at. In today's world isn't not solely about IP, but about general economics. In the end, economics says the product will reach its replication and distribution costs. For digital medium, once it's created, it's $0. It's a whole economics between scarce and non-scarce goods. But, like I said before, I'm very bad at explaining these things. Check out TechDirt (www.techdirt.com) and Mike Masnick's posts. He's covered this in great depth (and even offers personal one to one discussion on the topic) far better than I ever could.
There is no solution. Intellectual Property is a fantasy. Here's a great example: giving a speech. We call it "giving" a speech, because after you've said it, it's not yours anymore. The same is true for a performance - we "give" those too. You can't give a speech and then take it back, nor can you publish a book while keeping it to yourself.
If you want to control your "intellectual property", you have to keep it to yourself.
Do people now feel OBLIGATED to send money to the heirs of the Shakespeare estate every time they quote the Bard? Do you send money to the heirs of Volta every time you use a battery? No? If you don't then you are a sanctimonious hypocrite.
I've had this discussion many times in academic circles. The discussions are typically rational with well-founded arguments. Then I talk to business people and lawyers. They don't see their actions as hypocritical because their actions are legal. As difficult as it may be to understand, there are people who are only guided by what the law allows (or doesn't), and not by intellectual honesty or fairness.
They believe that it's not hypocritical to require their posterity be paid by those who use their IP, while they don't pay Volta's family for the battery because there is no law requiring them to pay.
It's the most frustrating thing to talk with people about the way it could/should be (and was) only to have them re-explain the way things are.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
If you're an anarcho-capitalist you DO NOT believe in Government. Therefore you believe the market provides solutions to intellectual property and physical property.
You can not design a system that works better than anarchy.
If you believe in anarcho-capitalism you do not believe in inherent rights, but rights that make economic sense. In most cases intellectual property does not make economic sense (total surplus is always less under any monopoly).
You don't really sound like an anarcho-capitalist... I should know, since I am one.
Also, if you want to ask this sort of question then there is a whole fucking forum devoted to it with really smart, responsive and helpful people here...
http://austrianforum.com/
Being an anarcho-capitalist... YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
as in, lacking a government. as in, look what you get in the real world
i appreciate your sarcasm, but then, not talking to you but talking in general, if the fruits of anarchy are so obvious, why do so many people think describing themselves as anarchists or "anarcho-blahblah" is supposed to make them look anything but utterly foolish or ignorant or stupid. or, more accurately, suburban middle class wannabes without a clue
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a caveat, I'm drawing this from a USAdian background as the USA is where I'm from and seems to be the world's IP big dog, loose cannon, whatever.
What's under discussion here should not be called intellectual property. That's a name thought up by someone who held a bunch of copyrights and wanted to hold them forever. It's not property, it's a copyright or a patent or a trademark. It is not owned: It is held.
But the dream of corrupting the debate by introducing a biased term has come true, and even so-called anarcho-capitalists are now calling copyrighted material "intellectual property." Entertainment lawyers FTW.
The very first step in drawing back the madness, the very first one, is in a courtroom: The moment some suehappy company's lawyer says "intellectual property" in front of a judge, the defendant must object that the term has no real meaning and must be suppressed and never used in any court anywhere ever again and its use in the presence of a jury is grounds for a mistrial.
And if that doesn't work, hooray, because if it's intellectual property, then it's property, and property can be taxed.
So long as a company (or person) insists it "owns" an intellectual property, its value shall be assessed shall be taxed annually at a rate of one dollar plus a percentage of gross receipts the highest-grossing of the last five years. Make a billion dollars on it, be taxed on a billion-dollar estate. Tired of paying money on a billion-dollar estate? Place it in the public domain and it is now part of the creative commons. Forget to pay money on it? Public domain. It's been ninety years since it was published? Public domain -- and ninety years is simply insane. It should be fifty, or life plus twenty, max.
Copyrights and patents expire for a reason: By protecting materials for a period of time, the Constitution creates temporary monopolies as economic stimulus for creative efforts. By having copyrights and patents expire, The Constitution provides economic stimulus to the nation as a whole: copyrighted and patented materials become part of the pool from which new ideas and inventions can be derived.
This is not my sandwich.
I absolutely deny the validity and existence of "intellectual property". It is a metaphor stretched beyond breaking point to reach a bunch of invalid conclusions. The "intellectual property" metaphor falls apart because, as others have pointed out, it is the physical nature and consequences of same - uniqueness, scarcity, nonduplicability - that provide the underpinning to any meaningful notion of ownership rights over same that we call "property rights". If I steal your physical property, I deprive you of the use of it. If I "steal" your "intellectual property", you still have it. The information regarded as "intellectual property" can be replicated, perfectly, (and at essentially zero cost); because there is no limit on supply, there is no basis for an economics of supply and demand, and hence no grounds to support a system of proscriptive rights over it.
If physical property was like that, would we feel the need for physical property rights? Most likely not, or they'd be something entirely different from what we currently thnk of as property rights. If I could walk up to your parked car in the street, press a button, and drive away in an exact duplicate, and you still had your car right there, would you feel robbed? I don't see how you could claim to have lost anything. You couldn't even claim that the value of your car had diminished in some intangible sense owing to the increased supply that existed because of my copying - remember, to truly compare physical property to "intellectual property", we have to imagine we're living in a Star Trek-like future world with matter replicators and an unending abundance of all material goods; nothing would be scarce and scarcity would add value to nothing.
The current "intellectual property rights" movement is more like an act of enclosure of the commons by a gang of rent-seeking feudal lords. Information is not like objects that can be owned as property, because you can't hold an intangible. "Posession is nine-tenths of the law": your rights of physical property ownership depend on and arise from your ability to physically control the object in question, to keep it in your posession and deny access to others by force if necessary. You simply cannot do that with an intangible. The intangible realm of information is "Terra nullius", a new and unclaimed land, and it is meaningless nonsense to say you can pace out boundaries and stake a claim to an area of it; your fences are non-physical, your barriers to entry do not exist, and you cannot keep people out, as a simple matter of fact; you are unable.
Rather than attempt to overturn and deny this reality in pursuit of an illusory comparison with physical property, the law should accept this difference as being definitive of the fact that intellectual property cannot be owned.
"for no reason whatsoever"
Control over finite resources == survival in hard times, for example both sides of this (remarkably civil) thread are willing to kill to defend their 'rights'. What they really mean by rights is access to basic needs like food, water, shelter, sewerage, electricity,...,playstation,...,where does 'basic needs' stop? Who dies if there is not enough water for everyone? - How much is 'enough'?
Nature rewards survival, the two opposing forces of competion and co-operation explain much of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is an immense topic, so I'll focus on a few things which I've mentioned before.
1. "Real" Property encompasses those things which are truly economically scarce. By that I mean "things that can only be used simultaneously by a small finite number of people." For instance: a piece of land, a particular tool, a book (the physical object), etc. Real Property rights make sense, because it is possible to enforce by virtue of the location of the object. Note that a consumer/user of physical property has some typical social grants also: right of first sale, the concept that if you 'buy' the object, you can use is until it breaks with no additional compensation to the manufacturer than original (you don't pay annual license fees on a hammer for instance). (Note: Things like leases are different, because in those the 'customer' pays less than the "ownership" amount for a temporary use of the item. Observe: you can both buy and rent tools from stores like Home Depot - a large "consumer" construction supply store for those not familiar with it - you buy a tool it's yours, you rent it you have to return it later, but renting is far less expensive for a few days than buying a tool.)
2. "Intellectual" Property has some problems that current legal and social constructs do not address. The first is that currently the system tries to protect the work as the economically scarce item - the copy of the music, book, software, etc. Those things are not economically scarce though, because there is no loss of use to any number of individuals which may be utilizing an idea. Until the rules protect what is actually scarce - the people coming up with and implementing the ideas - then the system will be broken. Rather than strange licensing rules and copyrights and such, I would rather see forced "attribution rights" (for lack of a better term). That said, the only thing that really troubles me about "intellectual property" is the ability of people to continue to extract economic wealth from others for work that was done in the past without adding new value - things like forced annual licenses for software when a version that's three years old is fine for a particular need, or making tons of money off a song that was written thirty years ago. I don't have problems with artists making money off new performances (performances are a scarce economic good, so those fall under the "old" paradigms). This is why, of all the current forms of intellectual property, I think Trademark is the most sound as it is simply what I meant by attribution "rights" - it ensures the consumer that a particular product was created/developed by a particular entity and establishes brand image and gives real value to both the consumer and manufacturer/creator. It also allows for vast competition in a field - I can by a brand X widget or a brand Y widget depending on my tastes.
So what's the solution? I admit that I am not entirely sure, because there are problems with the current implementations of both real and "intellectual" property rights. What is really needed is a thoughtful consideration of the social goals of the concepts, and how to ensure that people remain free to think and tinker and make a living off (which is a distinct difference in my mind from "profit from") their works. Having any entity, even a government, tell you that you cannot implement an idea because someone else implemented it is a not-so-subtle form of slavery.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Suppose instead of killing you, ShieldW0lf would wait after you naturally died, and only then take over your former (now unowned) property. Absolutely no crimes, no violence.
Would you then agree that he has a right to do that? On which base would you either allow or deny it?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
This doesn't mean that there are no copyrights or patents. What this means is that the material covered by these are not "property". The property, the copyright or patent, is the temporary monopoly over the distribution of that material, created to provide an incentive for the production of that material. The strength and duration of that monopoly should be based on the resources needed to profit from the production, distribution, and sale of that material.
What is happening is that these costs have been massively reduced, particularly for music.
The capital costs of music production have been cut by the development of good inexpensive digital mixers and sequencers like Garage Band... something that has been going on since the '70s, really, and which really started to take off as early as the late '80s. You still need a studio, and people with the skills to use these tools well, but you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to create studio quality masters.
Distribution costs have gone down almost to zero.
And sales costs have been reduced, since you don't need to maintain any inventory.
So the costs and risks involved in producing music for mass distribution have gone through the floor, and the industry that has evolved to manage the former high risk is going through a massive shrinkage... and trying to use the copyright laws created in the earlier period of high costs of production to fight one of the side effects of these changes.
But this has nothing to do with "intellectual property".
the solution to "intellectual property" is to recognize that it's a metaphor, and concentrate on the goals of the copyright system rather than treating it as something that's inherently important.
Ah, yes. Increasing overall wealth by sharing. A simple concept, really: a rising tide lifts all boats.
The point of "IP" law isn't to increase overall wealth. It's to increase individual, personal wealth. Those who support IP support the effective exploitation of shared and common heritage for their own gain.
The point of capitalism isn't to share, or to create the most overall wealth. It's to create the most personal wealth.
Sweden sounds like a good place.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
1 - Do you acknowledge the legitimacy of intellectual property to begin with?
No. As a rabid libertarian, I used to, before RMS's arguments convinced me - although if he had not, I suspect the RIAA, MPAA, and Disney would have anyway.
The fact is simple: you cannot, and should not, lay claim to own something in someone else's mind. It's as simple as that. Intellectual "property" is nothing of the sort. The moment you introduce the idea that an idea itself can be "property" you automatically bring to bear the social mechanisms of enforcement of something already in the mind of another person. In other and simpler words: Thought Police. That is no definition of "liberty" that makes sense to me.
The idea of "property" was invented as a means to control access to and use of scarce resources. Intellect, despite the example of politicians all over the world, is simply not scarce.
Reasonable people can talk about the problem of compensating creators of new intellectual "property" - but only after they have rid themselves of the destructive meme of forcing it into the real estate mold.
It is not a natural right - it was dreamed up by the guys who wrote your constitution. To be 'natural' you'd have to be born with it and even in the US I don't see babies being born with guns in their hands.
I do not need a king to enforce my property rights. I have a gun to enforce my property rights
Right - so if say a foreign government invades to steal your land you and your gun will happily be able to see them off without any government help? No I didn't think so. You do need a government to enforce your property rights otherwise another government will come and take them away.
Thus, because I have a gun, I own my land, and the King (aka gov't), has no rights of its own at all.
The rights of your government come from exactly the same basis as all of your rights. They are written down in the law of the land. The same laws that give you a right to bear arms give the government the right to pass laws over you. To say that your government has no rights is to say that you have no rights.
The answer is simple. We use property taxes to ensure that land is kept productive in the USA, otherwise, the property is confiscated by the state and auctioned off to someone who will enforce that claim. Or, the owner may transfer the land to the public domain - usually the county or state. For example, Annenberg donated a large part of New Jersey's natural woodlands for this reason and now they exist for the public benefit.
The same should be done with intellectual property. If someone files a copyright or a patent, have them pay taxes on it, annually. If they can't pay the taxes, they are not entitled to the claim, and they can either have the IP confiscated by the state for auction, transfer ownership to a charitable organization, sell it, or give it to the people in the form of public domain.
That lets people get stinking rich off of new ideas, which encourages innovation, but also discourages rent seeking, which promotes stagnation.
I'm surprised that liberals have not thought of this already. Of all great ironies, here it is the conservative Republican reminding you liberals of actually why property taxes were invented, and you invented them. They solved the problem before, and can solve it again.
This is my sig.
I had to look up what the heck anarcho-capitalism is ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-Capitalism
"It advocates the elimination of the state, the provision of law enforcement, courts, national defense, and all other security services by voluntarily-funded competitors in a free market rather than through compulsory taxation."
Does this mean if I need a cop I have to rent one? what if I am poor I guess I am SOL... or does it mean that the rich own the cops and you have to do what they say? - same goes for the army. Only one rich fuck would come up with such screwed up piece of garbage - equal rights? only what you can pay for... the good news everything is tax free, but your "government" is owned by the local robber baron or monopolist or militia - actually it does sound familiar... I am sorry but anyone who advocated "anarcho-capitalism" is a billionaire or an idiot
The current mess we have with patents and copyrights and associated litigation
is by far the best argument against treating "ideas" as "property". They are
ethereal, have no intrinsic value and are rarely something that you could claim
"clear title" to anyways. This "clear title" issue is the real problem. It is
nearly impossible for any creative work to be entirely the "property" of the
creator. Inevitably to create anything you will need to "steal" quite a bit of
other people's work. This undermines the notion of exclusive ownership of the
"original" owner and interferes with the creation of new works.
This is the core of the "patent" problem. Trivial derivative works (Tivo)
suddenly become issues of massive legal liability.
Creative works are not property, they're capital.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The purpose of property rights in modern society is, at heart, to make sure that someone is not deprived of the fruits of his labor. If I take care of a farmhouse, if I work the land and make it productive, it is only just that I be allowed to keep the house and the lion's share of the food I produce; anyone can see the injustice if someone came along and took over my house and stole all the food I grew, because for all my work I am now homeless and starving.
It is fundamental to the nature of property that someone can be deprived of it, and that is the reason we have laws to protect it. It's not about money, it's about natural rights. However, natural rights for ideas go in the opposite direction. If I hear an idea, it is my natural right to think about it and try to apply it to my life in some way. The saying "Information wants to be free" is true insofar as there is no real impediment to an idea propagating itself indefinitely, and that once known it is not easily forgotten. Thus, information is actually the opposite of property.
Nevertheless, in order to make it economically feasible for people to come up with new ideas (books, music, inventions), the government allows an un-natural right to monopoly that is limited in duration so that the writer and the inventor can enjoy the fruits of their productive labor like the farmer does.
Really, it ought to be called 'intellectual un-propery', because that describes precisely what it is.
I do believe that authors and inventors should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors for a limited time, in order to encourage them to be authors and inventors.
I do believe that traditional United States copyright law is fine, except that
(a) the amendments to the term of copyright are unconstitutional, because they exceed the authority conferred by the Constitution,
(b) "fair use" needs to be more clearly defined and expanded to provide some kind of safe harbor to creative people, and
(c) the statutory damages sections need to be amended to reflect modern technology which permits mass reproduction of inexpensive files and micropayments in such areas as peer to peer file sharing.
And by 'traditional United States copyright law' I would include the traditional customs and practices of copyright lawyers, who traditionally would seek to avoid, rather than precipitate, unnecessary litigation, by the use of cease and desist agreements.
The bizarre litigation campaign of the RIAA and MPAA and their European alter egos bears no resemblance to traditional United States copyright law.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
*Bang!* /me kills tjstork. /me moves into tjstork's house.
"What, you wanna start bringing up the PAST? Don't be silly. This house is mine NOW."