Well, then maybe it should be protected by access control, eh?
"I don't care how easy it was to get -- they still had to manipulate the system to access the data."
No they didnt. They had to enter an URL, nothing more, nothing less.
"Or are you saying that if a computer has a public web server, then anything you can gain from the computer is fair game, including by running root kits?"
Anything available to you without bypassing security measures is fair game.
"What is astounding to me is that people seem to think that how easy it was to break the security is relevent to anything. "
If there is no security you cannot be expected to assume there should have been security. There was nothing to break, there was no security.
"They showed they lack good judgment and a sense of ethics."
Um, no, they showed curiosity and a certain resourcefulness in finding data. Traits I can certainly appreciate in colleagues.
Now, HBS and Stanford on the other hand showed a lack of good judgement and a sense of ethics. Their only concern appears to be to save face because they invested in a crap product that apparently doesnt even have proper access control. To blame some applicants to cover up their own incompetence is pretty low.
"they'd email the Dean of Admissions and ask"
Where do I send my mail asking if it is ok to access www.harvard.edu? Some guy said you could access their webpage if you typed that into your web browser, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to?
If you can access it you can assume you're allowed to access it. It is not customary to be required to ask permission for looking at things in plain view.
What, they should be accepted into Comp Sci because they can type in an URL?
I know Comp Sci isnt as popular as it used to be, but isnt that setting the standards a bit low...?
If you are not denied access when you're trying to access data then you can reasonably assume you're allowed to access that data. It's not like they were presented with a big 'permission denied' or 'access strictly prohibited' which they then tried to crack.
It's also a perfect example of the damage that the intellectual monopoly exceptions cause to the free market.
Here we have people getting paid for spending time with making a product less useful, directly damaging a small part of the total wealth of society, in the attempt to keep prices up. Market vandalism.
That could not happen in a competetive free market without monopoly protections.
"Can you tell me one logical reason why anyone might think that people with stiff, cold fingers would not make more typing errors than people with normal fingers?"
What if the research had shown the opposite result? People might get more careful when they feel their capacity is diminished, for example.
"You don't need a study to find out that shooting yourself in the head will hurt you."
Except, you'd be proven wrong. Done with appropriate care it will instantly kill you, in which case it will not hurt very much.
You mean, most applications are built as replacements for applications, which are built as replacements for uncomputerized processes.
This is the fundamental nature of most software, if not innovation and knowledge as such. Inspiration and incremental improvements.
It has nothing to do with wether it's opensource or commercial software, both are often replacements trying to look somewhat like the original; opensource just realizes this and capitalizes on it by enabling cooperative sharing and resource pooling, thus minimizing overhead in time and resources for the fundamental interchange of ideas that drive development.
Oh, and if you ever try to be particularly innovtive for the end users GUI's, you're going to get so much grief... looking pretty much like what people are used to is a survival trait.
Excuse me, but I think you've forgotten one very important post:
39 % - marketing
Now it adds up to even more. However, if we dock the.01% the artist gets until it's paid for the losses that should do the trick, provided they move several infinities of units. Hmm... better run that one by the math consultants again.
The whole thing would be funny except that's pretty much how it works today...
Frankly, I'd rather pay an extra tv-tax to have tv produced than watch advertizing.
Marketing is an unproductive parasite on the economy, where consumers get to pay extra for the privilidge of supporting the production of something they'd have to be forced to watch, resulting in nothing but damage to the free market.
"If content on par with premium cable were to go online in any significant way"
Content better than premium cable already is online in a significant way. The current failure of content providers to change their business model to fit doesnt change that.
There will be no real test. If it does well piracy will be blamed for it not doing even better. If it tanks, p2p again.
They will totally disregard the fact that the last few installments have sucked so bad that a lot of ex-fans wouldn't watch it if they got paid for it, nevermind wasting time downloading or going to the cinema.
Personally I'll watch it when it comes with a time back guarantee if I dont like it.
Funnily enough, if you look at the statistics, the highest correlation factor with numbers of patents granted per country is actually divorce rate (according to stats found at www.nationmaster.com).
One can wonder about cause and effect for that one for a while...
Many correlations for patent grant rate are similar; the effects of a dense legal code.
High correlations with technical achievement or innovative competetiveness tend to be communications infrastructure and education level.
"As an IP professional, I hereby certify that Slashdot is a more reputable forum for prenatal medicine than the US patent system."
Truly. Looking at Slashdot to read reputable articles about patent law is like looking at the USPTO's patents for new ideas.
"there is such a cataclysmic misunderstanding of US patent statutes and case law around Slashdot that I really wish they'd quit carrying the stories"
Indeed. Of course, there's also such a cataclysmic misunderstanding about inventions and obviousness around the USPTO and the US court system that many slashdotters wish they'd stop issuing patents.
In other words, the very idea that the existence of Lotus possibly not being a valid reason to kick the patent out is a valid reason to kick the entire patent system out because it's 'obviously' defective.
Well, personally I'm basing my judgement on having seen the previous recent installments in the saga which left me with feelings most reminiscient of a Futurama quote - "You watched it. You can't unwatch it."
Based on that, I'm not going to go see it at a cinema. Maybe I'll catch it on video or TV, but if I'm going to see it at all it will be someplace where I can easily at least go do something more interesting it if I find I'd be more entertained washing dishes or hanging laundry.
In essence, you've come up with a similar way forward as I have. Keep the IP close to the developer, and stop the spreading of the bad economic effects of exclusivity and control, and the benefits would be closer to the theoretical purpose of IP.
And, yes, it is far reaching, but eventually we're going to have to decide on wether we want a free market or not.
"I don't care about copyright, that's more of an entertainment thing (frivolous) and I don't think revising it would be of any benefit to society in general."
It depends on which angle you're attacking the problem from. Personally, I'm coming from the angle of freeing up resources tied up in doing undesired work created by market distortions. If you look at it from a larger economic scale, such work is a net drain on the wealth of society, whereever it happens. In public sectors undesired work can at least be subject to political control, but in private sectors protected from competition the waste can accumulate unchecked. For example, money spent on paying for the marketing of Brittney Spears is money not spent on other artists, a new pot, investing in a few stocks, etc. While Brittney might even be a desireable good for some, creating some odd form of 'wealth', the excessive amount of marketing is an artefact of monopoly distortion, draining resources from society as a whole.
"Besides, that kind of revolution is about to happen in the music industry already."
Eventually, yes, unless the big labels manage to lock up the sales channels and keep artists from selling direct to consumers.
Indeed, but the current system isnt particularly useful in sifting the worthwhile from the junk. It fails with objectively quantifiable products like computer software, and it's atrocious with subjective material like books and music.
"Second of all, even if the company owned no IP, and did no R&D, it would still incur these costs at a similar rate."
Yes, one would think so, but that's just what the monopoly nature of IP has screwed up. As the monopoly takes away market pressure the pricing will constantly grow to what the market can bear, not fall to cheapest most efficient production. Further, the exclusivity distorts the economic playingfield, shifting value from product quality and low cost to maximizing the value of marketing. No matter how much is spent on marketing, you cant be undercut by competition if you have a monopoly.
"The extra money the can earn due to their IP is used to offset the costs of the R&D. Without that, they would not have the extra revenue to finance their R&D."
Again, that's the theory, but it's turned out different in practice. Compare generics to brand names. It's not the R&D that's eating the difference. Most of the extra revenue is diverted into other areas. Compare in the music industry. It's not the artists that get the money, it's diverted to other areas.
The IP industries are rapidly approaching the efficiency levels of Soviet bed factories in bringing the product to the consumer.
It's not necessarily their fault, it's that you cant give companies a little bit of monopoly anymore than you can get a little bit pregnant. The economics of the situation get distorted, and you diverge from the rules of a free market to the rules of a monopoly market.
"This effect is also noticeable with brand name items."
Indeed, but with brand names it is at least forgivable, as they're not guaranteed protection from substitute products, keeping their markup and inefficiency somewhat in check. (Altho we could discuss the merits of that system too...)
"Well that's just silly. I've never seen a good way to quantify "innovation rate" but I do know that any country with good education and telecom also usually has a dense legal system, so it's not reasonable to try to separate the two."
Of course it's difficult to quantify innovation rates and capacity. The stats I've been looking at are from www.nationmaster.com, which collects stats from all over (if you want the correlations I think you'll have to fork over $10 to them tho). The one's I've been looking at for this are Economy: Patents granted, source WIPO IP Statistics, Economy: Innovation, source The Global Competitiveness Report 2001-2002 and Economy: Technological achievement, source UNDP Human Development Report.
You're right that the various factors are interlocked, and the correlations show that. My argument is based on the fact that patents granted correlates highly (40-65% correlation) with all sorts of things one expects in a civilized society just like you say, making it difficult to argue that more patents lead to more innovation while at the same time not making an equally good case that the patents are causing the divorces. At the same time, technological achivement and innovative competetiveness correlate more highly (range 70-85%) with infrastructure and education factors than they do with the civilized society factors.
This leads me to suggest that patents are an effect of the legal system and innovation levels, not a driving factor for innovation.
"It is not reasonable to expect companies or wealthy investors to invest money into new ideas without being able to make back their money"
I agree to some extent, and I'm not really suggesting scrapping IP completely. My first suggestion (and perhaps only step) would be to restore the functionality to what your idea about IP is. It should be used to funnel investment into R&D. As I said, I believe it's currently mostly used as a monopo
"Well, the reality of intellectual property is that if you spend $2.0 billion developing a new technology"
If you throw $2.0 billion into the sea for a bucket of water and someone else comes along and takes his own bucket, is that an argument that you should own the seawater? If you build a supply chain and auditing system around fetching that bucket of water, making it actually cost you $2 billion to obtain it, should you own the seawater?
It's not development costs that drive IP, it's IP that drives development costs. The derived monopoly of copyrights and patents are what create huge inefficient organizations. R&D is a miniscule amount of the monopolies financed by the IP money.
You might have a point if IP was actually tied to R&D costs, but as it is constructed today it isnt. And many indicators suggest the vast oversupply of intellectual material, from the existence of free software to the refusal rate of artists and writers, to the vast divergence between medicine costs from generics and patented drugs (and do note, those cost differences are not even close to explained by R&D costs. Take a look at a pharmcorp financials and ask yourself why 'sales and administration' costs twice what 'R&D' costs, and why patent money is paying for that.).
If you still doubt that argumentation, take a look at statistics related to patents and technical development. The patent rate in countries correlates heavily with the density of the legal system (judges per capita, divorce rate, etc), while the innovation rate correlates far more with education and telecom.
The reality is that the rationale you mention sounds good, but frankly we've been had. It sounds good but it just isnt quite the way things work. R&D isnt that expensive, IP isnt a good way to finance the actual costs that exist as it drives those costs up by taking away competetive pressure and the monopoly costs from the IP industries are starting to severely damage the free market.
"What is it, intrinsically, that makes something physical yours?"
The reality that if someone else takes it I no longer have the use of it.
"How can some claim to have dominion over a pice of land?"
Land is, indeed, a grey area. Culturally I think you'll find land property rights appear as land attains scarcity in particular cultures.
"It's easy to see that any property (including "physical" property) exists only because of the common agreement amongst individuals that it does."
No. Property is one method of mediating access to limited resources. If the resources are more or less unlimited you'll rarely find them subject to property claims. With the notable exception of intellectual 'property', which should be more aptly called 'intellectual monopoly'. Which of course has its roots in political powergames rather than any actual notion of property.
"because they could no longer WILLINGLY SELL their rights to corporations."
"Sell or you dont eat". Doesnt sound that willing to me. Kinda puts you at a disadvantage, considering the obscenely massive supply surplus of people with creative talent as compared to the demand.
Dont kid yourself, copyright law aint meant to make the authors rich, or it'd contain exploitation protection. It's meant to make those who control the mass duplication equipment and distribution channels rich. Now, as it was back when the kings gave monopolies to the owners of the printing presses in exchange for censorship control and monetary support.
It wasnt the authors who lobbied for copyright, it was the publishers. The 'poor authors' were just a good excuse at a time when people were fairly pissed off at monopoly abuses.
"If you were a succesful coder, wouldn't you really NEVER EVER regret having lost the possibility of selling your code to some corporation for an obscenely fat paycheck?"
Try working in a burger joint and spending your paycheck on the lottery. You'd have a better chance then.
Dont forget that it's _your_ money that goes into the 'lottery', and for every IP-encumberance-taxed product you pay extra for, far more goes into the 'bookies' pocket than goes to the 'winner'.
Still, if you felt were a lucky gambler, wouldnt you really regret having lost the possibiliy of cashing in the big win...
Personally I'm too pissed off at paying for the bookies to live it up, when I could have both lower taxes and lower prices for many things if I didnt have to pay for that game anymore.
As the only conceivable reason to find copyright acceptable at all is as an economic incentive for creativity, the only sane way to decide would be on a statistical basis. At what amount of economic incentive is the maximum level of creative production achieved?
Any more or any less and it only makes society as a whole poorer.
"Copyright was meant to reward the author for contributing something worthwhile to society, by allowing them to reap the profits from the work for a limited period."
I used to believe that. Then I read up on the history and found out that that belief is just the spin on the idea that the publishers used back 300 years ago when their crown monopolies names were dirt and they needed a less politically sensitive way of retaining their power. Solution; say it's really the 'authors rights', but leave the rights entirely without any protection and rely on their far more powerful economical position to force the authors to sell cheap.
Monopoly power was what the crown used to buy them then, monopoly power is what it uses now. The problem hasnt arisen, the problem was the basic idea from the beginning.
Eminent domain for patents is pointless tho, as they arent property but rather limited temporary monopoly rights.
Like with all monopolies costs will rise to what the market can bear, and so it's not really useful to blame the pharmaceuticals; they're operating within the economic logic of the current patent legislation.
From a free market point of view, the problem with all current intellectual monopoly legislation is that the monopoly power is extended throughout an entire enterprise. With such legislation, R&D, which is what should be financed by patents, becomes not an end to itself, but a means through which the rest of the organisation can avoid competition. R&D becomes just a small subservient part to the needs of the massive cost behemoth of a corporation without outside market pressure.
For intellectual monopoly grants to be useful they have to be limited to finance R&D, and R&D _only_.
That's your CEO's problem, as he'll be the one attesting to the reliability of the company finances when any sysadmin can modify data without being accountable. He's the one who'll be facing jail time when the books get cooked.
"Along with the plastic came a license to watch the movie, which you can transfer if you sell the plastic."
Be careful with calling it a license, as it's actually ownership of that particular copy of the movie, which entails all property rights not explicitly taken away from you and given to the copyright holder. Once the copyright expires, those rights are given back to you and you own every aspect of that piece of property. It's a subtle, but in my opinion, important distinction to make.
"This new law seems to now allow limited modification in certain circumstances, but still not (of course) copying."
Sort of. I'd say it's more along the line of allowing bypassing of the DMCA's anti-circumvention measures for some purposes, but I havent looked at it close enough.
Legally I think you'd have been allowed to skip parts that you wished either way, but the technical means to do that may have been illegal, and in some way the timings may have been considered to be derivative works which would make them illegal to distribute without permission.
"I like the fact that this promotes the idea that people can have control over the content that they pay to license."
You mean, you like the idea that that people can have control over the property they own. Yes, once upon a time that used to be a hallmark of capitalism.
Despite what some industries may wish to claim, the first sale doctrine still stands and when you buy a work you actually own that copy of it, you dont license it.
Slashdot Mirror
"The information was not intended to be public."
Well, then maybe it should be protected by access control, eh?
"I don't care how easy it was to get -- they still had to manipulate the system to access the data."
No they didnt. They had to enter an URL, nothing more, nothing less.
"Or are you saying that if a computer has a public web server, then anything you can gain from the computer is fair game, including by running root kits?"
Anything available to you without bypassing security measures is fair game.
"What is astounding to me is that people seem to think that how easy it was to break the security is relevent to anything. "
If there is no security you cannot be expected to assume there should have been security. There was nothing to break, there was no security.
"They showed they lack good judgment and a sense of ethics."
Um, no, they showed curiosity and a certain resourcefulness in finding data. Traits I can certainly appreciate in colleagues.
Now, HBS and Stanford on the other hand showed a lack of good judgement and a sense of ethics. Their only concern appears to be to save face because they invested in a crap product that apparently doesnt even have proper access control. To blame some applicants to cover up their own incompetence is pretty low.
"they'd email the Dean of Admissions and ask"
Where do I send my mail asking if it is ok to access www.harvard.edu? Some guy said you could access their webpage if you typed that into your web browser, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to?
If you can access it you can assume you're allowed to access it. It is not customary to be required to ask permission for looking at things in plain view.
What, they should be accepted into Comp Sci because they can type in an URL?
I know Comp Sci isnt as popular as it used to be, but isnt that setting the standards a bit low...?
If you are not denied access when you're trying to access data then you can reasonably assume you're allowed to access that data. It's not like they were presented with a big 'permission denied' or 'access strictly prohibited' which they then tried to crack.
It's also a perfect example of the damage that the intellectual monopoly exceptions cause to the free market.
Here we have people getting paid for spending time with making a product less useful, directly damaging a small part of the total wealth of society, in the attempt to keep prices up. Market vandalism.
That could not happen in a competetive free market without monopoly protections.
"Can you tell me one logical reason why anyone might think that people with stiff, cold fingers would not make more typing errors than people with normal fingers?"
What if the research had shown the opposite result? People might get more careful when they feel their capacity is diminished, for example.
"You don't need a study to find out that shooting yourself in the head will hurt you."
Except, you'd be proven wrong. Done with appropriate care it will instantly kill you, in which case it will not hurt very much.
Definitely a good idea if you're the least paranoid. RFID tagged ID cards would be an assassins wetdream.
Gives a whole new meaning to 'This bomb's got your name on it.'.
You mean, most applications are built as replacements for applications, which are built as replacements for uncomputerized processes.
This is the fundamental nature of most software, if not innovation and knowledge as such. Inspiration and incremental improvements.
It has nothing to do with wether it's opensource or commercial software, both are often replacements trying to look somewhat like the original; opensource just realizes this and capitalizes on it by enabling cooperative sharing and resource pooling, thus minimizing overhead in time and resources for the fundamental interchange of ideas that drive development.
Oh, and if you ever try to be particularly innovtive for the end users GUI's, you're going to get so much grief... looking pretty much like what people are used to is a survival trait.
Excuse me, but I think you've forgotten one very important post:
.01% the artist gets until it's paid for the losses that should do the trick, provided they move several infinities of units. Hmm... better run that one by the math consultants again.
39 % - marketing
Now it adds up to even more. However, if we dock the
The whole thing would be funny except that's pretty much how it works today...
Frankly, I'd rather pay an extra tv-tax to have tv produced than watch advertizing.
Marketing is an unproductive parasite on the economy, where consumers get to pay extra for the privilidge of supporting the production of something they'd have to be forced to watch, resulting in nothing but damage to the free market.
"just to afford the hosting."
P2P efficiency disproves that theory.
"If content on par with premium cable were to go online in any significant way"
Content better than premium cable already is online in a significant way. The current failure of content providers to change their business model to fit doesnt change that.
"The real test"
There will be no real test. If it does well piracy will be blamed for it not doing even better. If it tanks, p2p again.
They will totally disregard the fact that the last few installments have sucked so bad that a lot of ex-fans wouldn't watch it if they got paid for it, nevermind wasting time downloading or going to the cinema.
Personally I'll watch it when it comes with a time back guarantee if I dont like it.
Funnily enough, if you look at the statistics, the highest correlation factor with numbers of patents granted per country is actually divorce rate (according to stats found at www.nationmaster.com).
One can wonder about cause and effect for that one for a while...
Many correlations for patent grant rate are similar; the effects of a dense legal code.
High correlations with technical achievement or innovative competetiveness tend to be communications infrastructure and education level.
"As an IP professional, I hereby certify that Slashdot is a more reputable forum for prenatal medicine than the US patent system."
Truly. Looking at Slashdot to read reputable articles about patent law is like looking at the USPTO's patents for new ideas.
"there is such a cataclysmic misunderstanding of US patent statutes and case law around Slashdot that I really wish they'd quit carrying the stories"
Indeed. Of course, there's also such a cataclysmic misunderstanding about inventions and obviousness around the USPTO and the US court system that many slashdotters wish they'd stop issuing patents.
In other words, the very idea that the existence of Lotus possibly not being a valid reason to kick the patent out is a valid reason to kick the entire patent system out because it's 'obviously' defective.
Well, personally I'm basing my judgement on having seen the previous recent installments in the saga which left me with feelings most reminiscient of a Futurama quote - "You watched it. You can't unwatch it."
Based on that, I'm not going to go see it at a cinema. Maybe I'll catch it on video or TV, but if I'm going to see it at all it will be someplace where I can easily at least go do something more interesting it if I find I'd be more entertained washing dishes or hanging laundry.
In essence, you've come up with a similar way forward as I have. Keep the IP close to the developer, and stop the spreading of the bad economic effects of exclusivity and control, and the benefits would be closer to the theoretical purpose of IP.
And, yes, it is far reaching, but eventually we're going to have to decide on wether we want a free market or not.
"I don't care about copyright, that's more of an entertainment thing (frivolous) and I don't think revising it would be of any benefit to society in general."
It depends on which angle you're attacking the problem from. Personally, I'm coming from the angle of freeing up resources tied up in doing undesired work created by market distortions. If you look at it from a larger economic scale, such work is a net drain on the wealth of society, whereever it happens. In public sectors undesired work can at least be subject to political control, but in private sectors protected from competition the waste can accumulate unchecked. For example, money spent on paying for the marketing of Brittney Spears is money not spent on other artists, a new pot, investing in a few stocks, etc. While Brittney might even be a desireable good for some, creating some odd form of 'wealth', the excessive amount of marketing is an artefact of monopoly distortion, draining resources from society as a whole.
"Besides, that kind of revolution is about to happen in the music industry already."
Eventually, yes, unless the big labels manage to lock up the sales channels and keep artists from selling direct to consumers.
"There is a difference."
Indeed, but the current system isnt particularly useful in sifting the worthwhile from the junk. It fails with objectively quantifiable products like computer software, and it's atrocious with subjective material like books and music.
"Second of all, even if the company owned no IP, and did no R&D, it would still incur these costs at a similar rate."
Yes, one would think so, but that's just what the monopoly nature of IP has screwed up. As the monopoly takes away market pressure the pricing will constantly grow to what the market can bear, not fall to cheapest most efficient production. Further, the exclusivity distorts the economic playingfield, shifting value from product quality and low cost to maximizing the value of marketing. No matter how much is spent on marketing, you cant be undercut by competition if you have a monopoly.
"The extra money the can earn due to their IP is used to offset the costs of the R&D. Without that, they would not have the extra revenue to finance their R&D."
Again, that's the theory, but it's turned out different in practice. Compare generics to brand names. It's not the R&D that's eating the difference. Most of the extra revenue is diverted into other areas. Compare in the music industry. It's not the artists that get the money, it's diverted to other areas.
The IP industries are rapidly approaching the efficiency levels of Soviet bed factories in bringing the product to the consumer.
It's not necessarily their fault, it's that you cant give companies a little bit of monopoly anymore than you can get a little bit pregnant. The economics of the situation get distorted, and you diverge from the rules of a free market to the rules of a monopoly market.
"This effect is also noticeable with brand name items."
Indeed, but with brand names it is at least forgivable, as they're not guaranteed protection from substitute products, keeping their markup and inefficiency somewhat in check. (Altho we could discuss the merits of that system too...)
"Well that's just silly. I've never seen a good way to quantify "innovation rate" but I do know that any country with good education and telecom also usually has a dense legal system, so it's not reasonable to try to separate the two."
Of course it's difficult to quantify innovation rates and capacity. The stats I've been looking at are from www.nationmaster.com, which collects stats from all over (if you want the correlations I think you'll have to fork over $10 to them tho). The one's I've been looking at for this are Economy: Patents granted, source WIPO IP Statistics, Economy: Innovation, source The Global Competitiveness Report 2001-2002 and Economy: Technological achievement, source UNDP Human Development Report.
You're right that the various factors are interlocked, and the correlations show that. My argument is based on the fact that patents granted correlates highly (40-65% correlation) with all sorts of things one expects in a civilized society just like you say, making it difficult to argue that more patents lead to more innovation while at the same time not making an equally good case that the patents are causing the divorces. At the same time, technological achivement and innovative competetiveness correlate more highly (range 70-85%) with infrastructure and education factors than they do with the civilized society factors.
This leads me to suggest that patents are an effect of the legal system and innovation levels, not a driving factor for innovation.
"It is not reasonable to expect companies or wealthy investors to invest money into new ideas without being able to make back their money"
I agree to some extent, and I'm not really suggesting scrapping IP completely. My first suggestion (and perhaps only step) would be to restore the functionality to what your idea about IP is. It should be used to funnel investment into R&D. As I said, I believe it's currently mostly used as a monopo
"Well, the reality of intellectual property is that if you spend $2.0 billion developing a new technology"
If you throw $2.0 billion into the sea for a bucket of water and someone else comes along and takes his own bucket, is that an argument that you should own the seawater? If you build a supply chain and auditing system around fetching that bucket of water, making it actually cost you $2 billion to obtain it, should you own the seawater?
It's not development costs that drive IP, it's IP that drives development costs. The derived monopoly of copyrights and patents are what create huge inefficient organizations. R&D is a miniscule amount of the monopolies financed by the IP money.
You might have a point if IP was actually tied to R&D costs, but as it is constructed today it isnt. And many indicators suggest the vast oversupply of intellectual material, from the existence of free software to the refusal rate of artists and writers, to the vast divergence between medicine costs from generics and patented drugs (and do note, those cost differences are not even close to explained by R&D costs. Take a look at a pharmcorp financials and ask yourself why 'sales and administration' costs twice what 'R&D' costs, and why patent money is paying for that.).
If you still doubt that argumentation, take a look at statistics related to patents and technical development. The patent rate in countries correlates heavily with the density of the legal system (judges per capita, divorce rate, etc), while the innovation rate correlates far more with education and telecom.
The reality is that the rationale you mention sounds good, but frankly we've been had. It sounds good but it just isnt quite the way things work. R&D isnt that expensive, IP isnt a good way to finance the actual costs that exist as it drives those costs up by taking away competetive pressure and the monopoly costs from the IP industries are starting to severely damage the free market.
"What is it, intrinsically, that makes something physical yours?"
The reality that if someone else takes it I no longer have the use of it.
"How can some claim to have dominion over a pice of land?"
Land is, indeed, a grey area. Culturally I think you'll find land property rights appear as land attains scarcity in particular cultures.
"It's easy to see that any property (including "physical" property) exists only because of the common agreement amongst individuals that it does."
No. Property is one method of mediating access to limited resources. If the resources are more or less unlimited you'll rarely find them subject to property claims. With the notable exception of intellectual 'property', which should be more aptly called 'intellectual monopoly'. Which of course has its roots in political powergames rather than any actual notion of property.
"because they could no longer WILLINGLY SELL their rights to corporations."
"Sell or you dont eat". Doesnt sound that willing to me. Kinda puts you at a disadvantage, considering the obscenely massive supply surplus of people with creative talent as compared to the demand.
Dont kid yourself, copyright law aint meant to make the authors rich, or it'd contain exploitation protection. It's meant to make those who control the mass duplication equipment and distribution channels rich. Now, as it was back when the kings gave monopolies to the owners of the printing presses in exchange for censorship control and monetary support.
It wasnt the authors who lobbied for copyright, it was the publishers. The 'poor authors' were just a good excuse at a time when people were fairly pissed off at monopoly abuses.
"If you were a succesful coder, wouldn't you really NEVER EVER regret having lost the possibility of selling your code to some corporation for an obscenely fat paycheck?"
Try working in a burger joint and spending your paycheck on the lottery. You'd have a better chance then.
Dont forget that it's _your_ money that goes into the 'lottery', and for every IP-encumberance-taxed product you pay extra for, far more goes into the 'bookies' pocket than goes to the 'winner'.
Still, if you felt were a lucky gambler, wouldnt you really regret having lost the possibiliy of cashing in the big win...
Personally I'm too pissed off at paying for the bookies to live it up, when I could have both lower taxes and lower prices for many things if I didnt have to pay for that game anymore.
"Who decides this?"
As the only conceivable reason to find copyright acceptable at all is as an economic incentive for creativity, the only sane way to decide would be on a statistical basis. At what amount of economic incentive is the maximum level of creative production achieved?
Any more or any less and it only makes society as a whole poorer.
"Copyright was meant to reward the author for contributing something worthwhile to society, by allowing them to reap the profits from the work for a limited period."
I used to believe that. Then I read up on the history and found out that that belief is just the spin on the idea that the publishers used back 300 years ago when their crown monopolies names were dirt and they needed a less politically sensitive way of retaining their power. Solution; say it's really the 'authors rights', but leave the rights entirely without any protection and rely on their far more powerful economical position to force the authors to sell cheap.
Monopoly power was what the crown used to buy them then, monopoly power is what it uses now. The problem hasnt arisen, the problem was the basic idea from the beginning.
Eminent domain for patents is pointless tho, as they arent property but rather limited temporary monopoly rights.
Like with all monopolies costs will rise to what the market can bear, and so it's not really useful to blame the pharmaceuticals; they're operating within the economic logic of the current patent legislation.
From a free market point of view, the problem with all current intellectual monopoly legislation is that the monopoly power is extended throughout an entire enterprise. With such legislation, R&D, which is what should be financed by patents, becomes not an end to itself, but a means through which the rest of the organisation can avoid competition. R&D becomes just a small subservient part to the needs of the massive cost behemoth of a corporation without outside market pressure.
For intellectual monopoly grants to be useful they have to be limited to finance R&D, and R&D _only_.
That's your CEO's problem, as he'll be the one attesting to the reliability of the company finances when any sysadmin can modify data without being accountable. He's the one who'll be facing jail time when the books get cooked.
"Along with the plastic came a license to watch the movie, which you can transfer if you sell the plastic."
Be careful with calling it a license, as it's actually ownership of that particular copy of the movie, which entails all property rights not explicitly taken away from you and given to the copyright holder. Once the copyright expires, those rights are given back to you and you own every aspect of that piece of property. It's a subtle, but in my opinion, important distinction to make.
"This new law seems to now allow limited modification in certain circumstances, but still not (of course) copying."
Sort of. I'd say it's more along the line of allowing bypassing of the DMCA's anti-circumvention measures for some purposes, but I havent looked at it close enough.
Legally I think you'd have been allowed to skip parts that you wished either way, but the technical means to do that may have been illegal, and in some way the timings may have been considered to be derivative works which would make them illegal to distribute without permission.
"I like the fact that this promotes the idea that people can have control over the content that they pay to license."
You mean, you like the idea that that people can have control over the property they own. Yes, once upon a time that used to be a hallmark of capitalism.
Despite what some industries may wish to claim, the first sale doctrine still stands and when you buy a work you actually own that copy of it, you dont license it.