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Economic Gridlock – the Invisible Cost of IP Law
smellsofbikes writes "This week's New Yorker magazine has a financial article, 'The Permission Problem,' discussing the hidden cost of patent, trademark and copyright laws. It's a subject anyone here already knows well, but he brings up two interesting points: 1) He uses the term 'tragedy of the anticommons.' Instead of depletion of a shared resource, this describes under-use of hoarded resources: areas that can't be explored because they're encumbered by patent/copyright issues. As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see. I like the term 'tragedy of the anticommons' because it encapsulates a long-winded explanation into a pithy, memorable phrase that will stick with people unfamiliar with the topic. 2) He also cites a study by Ben Depoorter and Sven Vanneste that discusses why anticommons effects are seen, beyond mere competition. Individual right holders value their contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the project value, so if there are more than three or four right holders, their perceived value can far exceed the total value of the project, making it uneconomical."
I've been anti-copyright for years, testing the water in a large variety of industries to see how getting rid of copyright can actually aid artists. I've now discovered that in every market I've tested, holding on to copyright creates less profit for the artist.
In music, I helped 3 bands (one who is now on an international tour, has had MTV coverage, and sells out a lot of shows) move away from copyright. Tell your fans to bootleg your album, and amazing stuff materializes. It's free promotion, and the tour is where you make your money. Let the fans design their own shirts, and you're getting your own artists for nothing. The plumber makes his money doing repeat work, the musician does the same. The plumber goes to school, and learns new skills all the time; the musician does the same when they compose music.
I moved on to photography and discovered that giving away your photography (say, as free stock imagery) is the best form of marketing your ability as a photographer. I now know at least 3 photographers who openly give their images away online, and have seen their hired work double or even triple. Again, marketing is free if you give it away.
As a writer myself, I repudiate copyright on all I do. I openly ask others to reprint my writings, and even stick their own names on it if they want. Because I write about niche markets, the aid of distribution of my thoughts means more people are attracted to those ideas, which means they'll likely eventually find me. That's a huge benefit for me as I can then sell future newbies to the market on my newsletters, or even hire myself out as a ghost writer or personal writer. My income has surged because I don't copyright my writings, or even ask others to attribute me during the redistribution process.
Copyright doesn't inhibit a market in any way, it inhibits the artist who thinks they can retain creative control and distributive control of prior labor. That's over -- if you didn't charge for the labor, it's now a marketing tool. If you did charge for the labor, you've profited. If you market your abilities correctly, you'll get hired for the work in the future.
I do understand the "need" to patent medicines, but I truly believe even that is useless. Research and development for medicines does not need to be publicly funded or protected by patents. Instead, research can continue the way it always has: fund raisers, private charitable donations, and other ways to get the money needed to develop new medicines. What is the biggest reason medicine costs hundreds of millions to develop? The FDA and other organizations which restrict the market due to government intervention. No different from why copyright is a failure and harms the copyrighter more than it helps them.
YouTube cartoonists will trump Disney eventually. Online music distribution has already destroyed the record stores. Free PDF newsletters, blogs and other web products are killing the newspaper industry and periodical industry. Free product = marketing yourself for being hired to do new work. It's a good thing.
"WKRP in Cincinnati" was a mildly popular TV show in the late 70s/early 80s. It was one of my favorite shows and I waited anxioously for it to be released on DVD. Delays delays delays until finally, last year it was released. Unfortunately it was butchered. You see popular (for its time) music played an integral part of the background of the show and quite often character dialog was over music. Unfortunately, when the time came to release the DVD, music rights could not be secured and they had to re-dub the audio of major major parts of most of the show with different (not the original) actors. If you, like I do, remember the show vividly, these re-dubs jolt the senses and make the DVD basically unwatchable.
TDz.
Let me translate.
People are greedy.
Making a profit is good. Making a fair profit is better.
Of course, this article points out what the problem is without tendering a solution. No, I don't have a solution, either. Is this just human nature?
I recall reading in "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" how an anthropologist was paying a local tribe a bounty for every bone or fragment recovered from a fossil field. He soon discovered that the bounty hunters were smashing the large bones into tiny fragments in order to maximize their profit.
In this case, of course, it's an ill-thought-out bounty - whereas I don't know the answer for the IP question from the article. However, it points out the same conclusion: People will tend to maximize their profit whenever they see a way to do it that doesn't involve extra work on their part.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
How so, I thought it's been blindingly obvious for many years.
Patents, once the means to help an inventor have a little time to make their money back, have become an economic weapon. That was never going to end well.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I've seen a situation where a few major manufacturers dominate a field (which i wont name) but all have cross-licensing agreements with each other.
It'd be like Ford holding patents on wheels, doors and windows but GM holding streering wheels and brakes. Then they agree to cross license all their patent portfolios.
This effectively makes it nearly impossible for a newcomer to break into the field. They don't have the resources to challenge fords "wheels" patent, and all the people who are resourced to have that thrown out - aren't motivated to because they have a licensing agreement.
1. Full disclosure of the intellectual property, including human readable, compilable source code for any algorithms covered by patent, and programs covered by copyright. (Yes, that means source code for Windows.)
2. Declared value for all intellectual property, with taxes levied based on the value. The owner could set the value at zero in order to escape taxation, but that leads to...
3. Competitive bidding, where any person or group can offer an amount higher than the declared value to put the property in the public domain. The owner would have the option of matching the bid (and paying taxes on the new declared value), or accepting the money and releasing the property into the public domain.
To give an example, let's say I write the great American novel. As the creator, I own the rights to it. I declare a value of $0 because I hate paying taxes, and shop around for a publisher.
Unfortunately, no publisher wants to give me my preferred price of $100K. One offers me a $10K advance for exclusive rights, which I ignore. He then bids $5K to put the book into the public domain. I then have a choice of matching that bid (and paying whatever tax rate has been decided), negotiating with that publisher for a higher price, negotiating with another publisher for a higher price, or accepting the 5 grand and releasing the work to the public.
This not only encourages new work and allows derivative work, it also forces intellectual property to be used.
Discussing patents and copyrights can quickly become an exercise in futility when people have an almost religious fervor about their rights. While some would say that copying ideas is natural human behavior, which IP laws artificially restrict to a degree in the name of public good, others would argue that IP is an inherent human right which IP laws simply recognize. These two positions are fundamentally opposed.
But even IP fundamentalist can be convinced that fully exercising one's own rights is not always in one's own best interest. For example, suppose we believed that each of us had the innate right to rule the world and everything in it. That right would work fine if humans could live far enough apart so as never to have any contact with each other. We could live under the illusion of total dominion (at least until we wanted to reproduce). But stubbornly defending that right in practice would be a huge obstacle to forming any kind of functioning society.
Modern IP laws and their vocal proponents have gone a long way toward convincing the public that IP rights are indeed inherent and sacred, not merely privileges granted by lawmakers "for limited times," but a fundamental requirement of civilization. In discussions about limiting copyrights or patent rights, IP fundamentalists invoke images of a backward, anarchic world without modern conveniences, medicines, literature or basic services. It's a false dichotomy, but one that has been painted all too vividly on the public's mind.
I've always found that real-world examples are a good way to point out the flaws in absolutist arguments. The example of the aircraft patent pool illustrates how IP cooperation can be beneficial even when it has to be forced. But there are readers out there who will argue that even that specific example was a bad idea. Some people feel threatened by any notion that something they consider theirs might be taken away from them. They seem to feel that losing everything is at stake whenever they give up anything, and that totalitarianism is always just around the corner. I don't know how to communicate with those people.
IP fragmentation is also a huge problem in biotechnology. Golden Rice is a classic story of the anticommons.
Statesman
share stuff you made all you want. Nobody cares. Its when you share stuff other people worked hard to create, that we have a problem.
Most people see that as blindingly obvious.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Copyrights / patents ... if you cannot turn a profit in 14 years then it's your fault.
The system was not ORIGINALLY intended to provide someone with a lifetime's worth of income. It was to ENCOURAGE development.
I make singleplayer PC games. Can you explain to me how abandoning copyright makes me better off?
Well, obviously they'll be great marketing tools for all those millionaires who want to commission more single-player games.
No, wait, that's wrong. You're in the wrong market! Yeah, that's it. You should be making multiplayer games. You could provide a subscription to a server that hosts the games, and hope that no-one else will reverse engineer your code in ten minutes and then provide a different server more cheaply.
Oh, wait, people already do that sort of thing. I guess you'll just have to ship every game you sell only with a contract that states that the person receiving it won't copy and distribute it further, so that you can afford to sell it at a price many individual customers would be willing to pay and the sum of all the small payments would provide you a worthwhile profit. Yeah, that might work. If only I could think of a name for reserving the right to copy something... Nope, I got nothing, sorry.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
is to require that any patent or copyright holder be actively developing and/or selling related products. In other words, the economy must be able to obtain the "benefits" of the "innovation" in order to justify the government grant of monopoly. Remember that these "rights" are actually privileges granted by the government on behalf of the people for their greater benefit. Limitation or revocation of these privileges is not confiscation and should not be viewed in the same way as a taking of land or other tangible property; it is appropriate in cases in which the public interest is clearly not being served by their continuation.
For copyright, this approach is fairly easy because the work subject to protection already exists; if a work subject to copyright protection has not been newly licensed by or performed for an end user (i.e., not a reseller) in the past 3 years on terms generally available to other end users, that copyright expires. This definition prevents the holder from offering a work for sale at an absurd price, transferring it among subsidiaries, or giving away one copy a year to a "lucky winner" to avoid losing protection. Perpetually out-of-print books, obsolete software, and music owned by defunct record companies would all be freed from copyright protection.
Patents are harder because the patent may exist before commercially viable products do. One possible first-order approximation might be that patents may not be owned by holding companies; only individuals and operating companies may possess them. This requirement would make it difficult for patent trolls to execute their business model. Another strategy might be to require holders to notify the patent office when they first manufacture a product they believe is subject to protection under a specific patent; the patent office could then allow double-blind challenges (to protect trade secrets associated with ongoing R&D) to patents that are not apparently in use and are at least 3 years old. An inspector would then attempt to obtain evidence from the holder that product development is actively occurring; if it is not, the patent is invalidated. There are plenty of pitfalls here; I challenge everyone to try writing a definition that actually solves the problem. The principle is sound, but it's harder than it looks.
Drugs are a special case; much of why the patent system is such a mess is that the same rules are applied to drugs and software, while the economics behind the two fields are so different.
Getting back to making an effort at explaining the parent's (grandparent's?) comments -- without indicating any agreement with the same:
Sure, the GPL depends on copyright... so what? Folks can't make derivative works combining GPLed works with proprietary software (or software under permissive but incompatible licenses, which there are a lot of) -- and such proposed derivative works really are "software not written". (What do I mean by "proprietary" in a proposed world without copyright? Source code is a trade secret, object code is obscured). There've been plenty of fan-based projects trying to resurrect classic games by writing modern engines for them shut down because the original copyright holder -- while not selling the original game -- refuses to allow creation of the involved derivative work... and there are plenty of cases where Free Software avoids implementing functionality which is known to be patented; look at how the development of Tux3 was held up.
The argument that there are works not created due to restrictions via intellectual property laws is quite sound. That said, I tend to give credence to the position that intellectual property protection is necessary for much (not all) commercial development to take place as well... but that level of protection doesn't need to be anything like what it is today. Personally, I'd like to see copyright durations rolled back to their original values, and patents only available in fields where they make sense (not business models, not software)... but the latter seems unlikely, and the former flat-out impossible.
I'd prefer not to stoop to their level, but you don't win against a bully by fighting fair.
On the contrary, usually that is exactly how you beat a bully. Most bullies win precisely because the people they are bullying consider themselves constrained in ways the bullies do not. Release those constraints to put the participants on an equal footing, and most bullies lose very quickly.
This applies almost universally, whether you're talking about the kid who gets beaten up at school because the teachers always tell him not to fight back, or the RIAA cases against song swappers where one side has to pay silly legal fees just to get their day in court while the other side pays no legal fees if it gets settled out of court.
However, you're right that the results of the "loss calculations" for works never produced because of copyright would be just as valid as the RIAA's, which is to say not at all.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Oh, wait, people already do that sort of thing.
Of course they do. Let's look at World of Warcraft. The open source project MaNGOS provides a reasonable facsimile of the WoW backend, and a couple of other open source projects provide decent content for that backend. It's all free, one can easily customize their server to allow players to do all sorts of interesting things that Blizzard's servers won't, and one can fix bugs they come across if they've a mind to. Yet Blizzard continues to maintain a paid monthly user base of 10 million or so.
Why is that? Mostly, it's because Blizzard continues to make a product that's perceived to be better than the alternatives. The MaNGOS servers tend to be sparsely populated, somewhat glitchy, and don't have all the quests and other content implemented correctly, and having that consistency is worth money to a lot of people. I would tend to believe that whether copyright was involved or not, the company would still continue to make money simply by providing the superior product.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Cases in point: they suppressed publication of research about
In the first of these, the FDA was more murderous than the Vietnam War; in the second, they were responsible for more torture than the Spanish Inquisition.
And their only use for altruism is to use it to try to whitewash their lust for power.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Have to laugh because I was just thinking about this stuff this morning.. I've been ripped off a lot. Sometimes I've later met the folks that ripped me off, and when they realize who I am they get kinda quiet. But it's ok, because I'm still vastly more inventive then they are. Ideas are just building blocks, you make one, then you stand on it and make another that goes on top, etc. In that sense, when I get ripped off and somebody takes the idea to market, they just built a platform for me to continue to build on, training customers and creating workflows that I can easily leverage on to the next thing. Sure, that doesn't work that way every time.. but it works often enough. Now, if I wanted to own the planet, it would annoy me. But I don't, and the people that do can't seem to figure out how to do it anyway, so it's all good.
The basic issue in IP discussions always seems to boil down to whether IP rights are granted with society's consent, or are inherent properties of being human.
What bothers me is that we continue to have this debate in the United States, when the U.S. Constitution is crystal clear on the subject. Where we keep getting tripped up is on the "limited times" part - it's ridiculous that it's been construed to mean "a period of time far in excess of the average person's lifetime".
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
As an aside, they are one of only three honest classical-music publishers I know (the other two being Novello and Oxford U Press, both British); all the others make a practice of claiming copyright for music written even before the American revolution.
I think that such fraudulent claim of copyright (as is the usual music-publishing practice) should be punished at least as severely as copyright infringement. Scaled by the number of copies sold. And (under the legal doctrine of assumed competence) counted as wilful infringement, so that the penalty is at least $750/copy. Many of them would have fines measured in the tens or hundreds of millions.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Western society has to make something to be economically solvent. We can't build our economies by making everyone a sodding barista.
If you go for manufacturing, then you create a population of poor people and shatter the illusion of prosperous capitalist society. If you, as most western countries have done, outsource the dirtiest jobs to other countries you can provide the illusion of prosperity for all, you must rely on more high tech industries that tend to require IP, and you kill innovation in the name of having a nice middle class buffer between the billionaires and the sweatshop workers.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...I can't get seasons 1 and 2 of Reboot because the current copyright owners (Universal) are just sitting on it.
i'm no big fan of his work, but he obviously takes his work very seriously, and he has won amount of critical acclaim, so these words from him mean a lot to me (an interview from aintitcool.com from 2004):
so the real perversion here is the guy who discovers something obscure, labors over it to rescue it from decaying media, make it popular again by distributing it in new art, which means more exposure for the original artist, and what thanks does he get for that? HE GETS PUNISHED
that's the state of intellectual property
fuck intellectual property
the entire concept is bankrupt
we need to not just ignore, but we must somehow actively subvert and destroy, to the best we can, the bankrupt, dead concept so called intellectual property
its a dead fucking farce
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you look at the disruptive growth of Linux HPC clusters, you will find that there are no IP agreements. I actually wrote about this: Why Linux On Clusters?. The absence of IP agreements allowed the HPC community to work together and grow faster than anyone imagined. On the famed Beowulf mailing list (started by Don Becker BTW) their is a free exchange of ideas and no one claims ownership of any IP. I call it a "Lawyer Free Zone" similar to what was proposed in Scotland back in the late 90's.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey