Near vacuum is "less harsh" than thin C02? How so? And even though water does exist on the moon, its absence would be a minus, not a plus. The "weather" on the moon may be marginally less objectionable (it depends on your tastes, I suppose) but you're not going to be out in the weather much on either of them. And as for the distance, the real question is the depth of the gravity well, on which standard I'll grant that the moon is somewhat nicer.
Even so, an Earth-crossing asteroid would probably be a better choice, or something in one of the L-points (from which you could use the superhighway for cargo that wasn't marked "Rush").
It still begs the question; like your august predecessors, you're confusing the existence of a definition with a proof of existence. I could say "Blorfs are extant blue dragons that presently live in New Jersey" if I wanted to. But I couldn't use the definition to prove that the set of all Blorfs was non-empty. Likewise God and IP.
You can't patent a number or an idea like "let's go to lunch."
I wouldn't be so sure of this. In fact, given the work of Kurt Gödel, the present stance on software patents, business process patents ("Would you like to supersize that?"), and digital music distribution, trademarking of phrases ("You're fired!"), etc. I would claim that you could hobble together an "IP" claim on both of these that might well stand up in court. At the very least, you could expect a reasonably profitable season of barrity.
But the "property" part of IP involves ownership. You can, therefore, deprive someone of part of the essence of their idea by using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it.
This simply begs the question. You assume that it is a meaningful statement to say that someone "owns" an idea, and then state without proof that "using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it" must "deprive someone of part of the essence of their idea."
From there, it is but a short question begging step to conclude what you've already assumed, that this essence they have been deprived of is the thing that (by assumption) they owned.
We could do the same things with integers if you like:
You are right that you cannot appropriate the "integer" part of the integer property. You can take my integer and do math with it without depriving me of anything.
But the "property" part of IP (Integer Properties) involves ownership. You can, therefore, deprive someone of part of the essence of their integer by using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it.
Or with imagination:
You are right that you cannot appropriate the "imagination" part of the imaginary property. You can take my imaginings and imagine them yourself without depriving me of anything.
But the "property" part of IP (Imaginary Property) involves ownership. You can, therefore, deprive someone of part of the essence of their imagination by using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it.
I'll offer my definition, and then respond to your other points.
I would define "property" to be a social contract for establishing the rights of people to use something that, by its nature, may only be used by a limited number of people or in a limited number of ways at a time. Note that this is not limited to physical objects (e.g. the broadcast spectrum is property under this definition), nor does it assume private ownership (public property is covered). The concept of property does not apply to things that cannot be directly used in any meaningful sense (e.g. the sun) or that may be used by an unlimited number of people simultaneously (e.g. long division), but it does cover the consequences of such things where, and only where the stated conditions apply. For example, the sun light falling on a given piece of land may be considered the "property" of the land owner in that an adjacent landowner might reasonably be considered to be "stealing" it should they build a structure on their land that overshadowed their neighbor; likewise, dividing 643 pounds of rice between 23 people does not make the rice "non-property" just because it involved long division.
The key concept is allocating use of resources that can only be used by a limited number of people at any given time
Note that, under my definition, ideas are clearly not property.
And now, to your points:
"Your definition is not circular; as I noted, you simply moved the requisite specificity from 'property' to 'ownership.'"
Are you unfamiliar with the parts of speech? Property is the object to which ownership applies. Giving specificity to ownership is the same as giving specificity to property.
Grammar has nothing to do with it. "Property" and "Ownership" are both nouns. If you were to define each in terms of the other, it would be circular. Instead, you defined property in terms of ownership, and ownership in terms of control.
Unless you are trying to claim that your definition was circular, I don't see why you are objecting to this.
What do you think control of an object is? It's the right of use of that object. Control of people is another thing -- it's not about controlling people. It's about controlling an object (eg, having the right of use). You choose to deliberately conflate the concepts when there are big differences, so I tried to help you understand the difference. Besides, what do you think physical property rights are, if not controls on the behavior of others?
No, it is you who are conflating things. If you are willing to say that it's about controlling an object than you are doing exactly what you accused me of--assuming that all property must be, by definition, an object. Since you refused to accept that position, you can not now assume it unless you intend to recant.
Further, you have agreed that you have no way of controlling ideas. Therefore, if you claim the right to control the way people use ideas, but admit that you can't control the ideas, you must perforce control the people.
The problem does not arise with physical objects; you can control their use by controlling the objects, not the people who might use them. You can, literally, take your ball and bat and go home. But if you are claiming to own not a specific ball and bat but rather the idea of baseball this will not suffice. The people may well start playing with "bootleg" balls and bats as soon as you leave.
By your own admission, the only way to control people's use of ideas is to control the people.
Are you trying to be daft? I respected your thought process earlier, but you select this quote without understanding, or apparently reading, the sentences that preceded it. I was distilling it for you so that you could understand what I meant by the term control, and how you chose to take it out of context and misinterpret i
Therefore, there is nothing that is intrinsically excepted from being property except for thos things that it is physically impossible to control the use of -- natural laws (gravity, etc). However, it is possible to control references to gravity (theoretically), so, if someone had sufficient force, they could have as their property the term 'gravity' -- but not the natural law itself.
I could not claim them as property since I have no means of controlling who uses them. But if I had the physical force or legal means to prevent anyone from using those terms, then I could claim the terms as property.
Exactly. Your definition isn't about "property" per se, but about the control of others through the use of force.
if you think my definition is circular
Your definition is not circular; as I noted, you simply moved the requisite specificity from "property" to "ownership."
It's not about control, it's about the right of use
Not so fast. You clearly stated that it was about control. As for "the right of use"...
My definition, at its most basic level, is just the right of use.
No, your definition at the most basic level is the "right" to control/prevent use by others. You have made that quite clear, and ought not try to dodge the point here, as it's the cornerstone of your whole argument. If you back away from it, you will be left with nothing since it is only the control of the actions of others that supports your definition of "ownership" on which you base your definition of "property."
Thank you for the cogent reply. I would agree with your analysis, the key point of which is, I maintain, the point that, in addition to undisputed forms of property, the term "property" also includes Anything not conservable, onto which we artificially confer properties of conservation.
If I accept this, I'm entitled to draw a few conclusion from it, specifically:
Since we are arbitrarily and artificially grafting "intellectual property" onto the original notion of property, my point in the head post (that "IP" is not a natural concept) is vindicated.
The GGP post's point that acting as if IP was bound by the conservation laws is incorrect is defanged; if the definition of IP is specifically thing which we have agreed (contrary to the facts) to treat as if it followed conservation laws, it can hardly be considered illogical to make use of the assumption.
The fact that we have decided to treat something as if it had certain properties does not obligate the universe (or even other people who are not party to our agreement) to act as if it has those properties.
While we are free to agree to act as if things have properties that they in fact do not, we would be ill advised to depend in any way on them actually behaving as if they shared our delusion. And, while we may try to temporarily enforce our agreement by various means, we would be wise to expect that our efforts will ultimately fail.
inalienable rights - read that to mean "natural rights,"
Why would I do that? Inalienable has a very definite meaning (something that can not be transfered) and it has nothing to do with the meaning of natural (occurring without the intervention of an outside agency).
Appropriating another's intellectual property without compensation or permission is a "might makes right" argument.
Balderdash. How can you "appropriate" someone else's idea? You would be right to use the term if the process involved going into their head and somehow removing the idea. But what you are talking about here doesn't involve taking anything from anyone, save the ability to control and limit the thoughts of others. If you think a thought that someone else claims as "intellectual property" all you have deprived them of is the ability to dictate the conditions under which you are allowed to think that thought. You have not stopped them from thinking it, you have not affected them in any way.
In such a circumstance, the only element of "might makes right" is their ability to use physical force to stop you from thinking "their" thoughts without permission.
The reason that a term ought not describe everything is simple; a term that describes everything is of very little use in discourse, since we already have words ("anything"/"everything" etc.) that fill that role and the introduction of synonyms that appear to have additional meaning is misleading at best.
The reason a definition should not be circular (which by the way, I'm tempted to claim yours is) is that it is likewise useless. If you can't define a term except by reference to itself (or another term, such as ownership, which is defined in terms of it) then you can't really use it to communicate, only to obfuscate.
The reason I am only tempted to say your definition is circular is that I notice you have simply moved the denotional requirements from the word property to the word ownership. You reject the notion that property be something physical, or at least something that obeys certain conservation laws, and instead claim that it is something that is owned. But you then turn around and imply that things that can be owned are, in effect, things that can be "controlled".
Now, this would follow quite nicely if your property obeyed the conservation laws. But as it does not, I'm left wondering how you intend to control (and thus own) your putative property. How do you control 7, or green, or "Hip hop my heart stop"? I contend that you can't.
Instead, you must attempt to control people which are after all physical objects, to make them only think or say or do what you would permit them to. While this is not quite a circular definition, I find it more than a tad distasteful.
Am I reading your position correctly? Property is anything that can be owned, and things can be owned if (and only if) you can control the use of them, either (in the case of traditional property) by controlling the things or (in the case of intellectual property) by controlling the users?
I would agree that Trademark, Copyright, and Patents started out as a social contract. I can not credit your claim that you support "the best balance for ALL parties concerned" in the context of the rest of your post. I will attempt briefly to explain why.
The original social contract embodied, as all contracts in principal do, a meeting of the minds. There was a clear statement of what was expected of both parties, and a clear understanding of the recourse that both parties had in the event that they found the terms disadvantageous, to wit, non-participation. But unlike a normal contract, one side has decided to systematically (and, in my opinion, unconstitutionally) modify the "agreement" to their advantage.
The obligation for disclosure has been systematically weakened.
The scope of "protection" has been systematically extended.
The "limited" terms have been systematically lengthened.
My option of non-participation has been systematically undermined.
At the same time, an actual rational analysis of the changes that have taken place in the last two hundred years would argue that a society would benefit more from weakened intellectual property laws (since the originals were predicated on the assumption that innovators were rare, and we no find ourselves with more would-be innovators than we know what to do with). Thus we have a "contract" that has been unilaterally modified by one side to the determent of society. Is this really what is "the best balance for ALL parties concerned?"
I am perfectly happy with the idea of Hollywood stopping making movies. I would be content (actually happy) if all the record companies and their "artists" went on strike and refused to produce more "hits." That was, after all, their right under the original deal. But I do not accept their "right" to hobble the computer equipment I require to practice my trade so that they can enforce their newfound "rights" which were never part of the original social contract, nor to pass new laws restricting my constitutional rights, to the same dubious ends.
I wrote the post to which you are responding before reading your further explanation of your position in the sibling thread. I was mistaken in my assumption about where we were disagreeing (but we do still, so far as I can tell, disagree).
Please see my post "Secrecy != Control" on that thread, especially the second point, for my response to your position as articulated here and there.
Nonsense. No one is claiming that hospitals, etc. are natural phenomenon, and if they were I'd call them on that as well.
Skipping your poetic lead up, I disagree in any case with your second point that systems defined by convention have "natural limits." The whole point of arbitrary systems is that they are defined, arbitrarily, to have whatever limits we care to ascribe to them. The very fact that (as you point out) these limits differ from place to place and from time to time is evidence that they are arbitrary, not natural.
Secrecy is one way to maintain control, or ownership -- IP laws are another way to maintain control, or ownership.
This is, of course, untrue. I can keep a secret as ferociously as I like, and it won't do a thing to prevent anyone else who discovers the same thing from using it anyway they see fit.
I might, for example, find an enormous prime number, and decide never to tell anyone about it. And, unbeknownst to me, a hundred other people might know the same prime number, and be doing things I would never approve of with it. You know what? I couldn't do a thing to stop them, because secrecy isn't the same as control.
The problem with applying conservation laws to determine whether something is property is that property, in that argument, is arbitrarily defined as physical property. I believe that many anti-IP people misdefine property, and the basic misunderstanding of terms leads to logical arguments, that while the arguments are fine, the presuppositions are not -- and therefore the argument doesn't work.
Not really true (the right to use a certain portion of the brodcast spectrum at a certain time and place, for example, is not physical property but it is conservered). But that aside I'll accept this as a possibility if you can provide:
An alternative non-circular definition of property, without recourse to an arbitrary lists of what is or isn't property.
An example of something that wouldn't be property under your definition.
It's my contention that the reason most people define property as they do is that there isn't a viable alternative. Any other definition that you might choose is either going to be too broad (so that everything is property, and the term is meaningless), an itemization (land, jewels, trademarks, and patents are property, and nothing else), or circular (property anything things that someone can own).
I believe you are talking at cross purposes with several of the other posters in this thread. Specifically, your assumption that "IP is in no way unnatural" -- in other words, that it is natural and reasonable it treat information as if it were property, with the consequent adoption of production/consumption metaphors, and all the associated control systems, is apparently preventing you from understanding what we are saying.
What you are assuming is simply not true. Note that we aren't talking about what's good or bad, practical or impractical, moral or immoral, but simply about the observable properties of information.
Take, for example, consumption. People who believe in IP perforce adopt the "consumer" model of the market. If information is property, then its market consists of producers and consumers. But no one "consumes" information. If I read a book, or watch a movie, or build a device, I haven't "used up" the information required to do these things. In short, I haven't consumed anything.
Faced with this fact (and note that I am still not talking about right vs. wrong, or practical vs. impractical, or any of that) there are two possible responses. One would be to realize that you are trying to catch moonbeams in a jar, and rethink your position on ideas being property. The other is to try and somehow change the natures of information so that it behaves itself and starts acting like property ought to. You could come up with all sorts of ways to try to make the information go away like things are supposed to when they have been consumed, and spend a great deal of time and money doing so. You would, of course, fail.
The question is, which of these responses is sane, and which is crazy?
--MarkusQ
P.S. My great grandmother used to think that electricity was a fluid, and she would stick rags in empty light sockets to keep it from leaking out and running up her electric bill. And before her, there were people who believed that vision was rays that emanated from the eyes.
Intellectual Property is the antithesis of trade secrets. The whole justification of Intellectual Property is that it will replace the natural* concept of secrets. That's why all system of IP registration include the requirement (or at least originally did) of disclosure; trademarks had to be used in commerce, copyrighted materials had to be published, inventions had to be demonstrated and documented to the extent that they could be duplicated by practitioners skilled in the appropriate arts.
Trade secrets were seen as detrimental to society, and IP was invented to supplant them. Unfortunately, the cure is turning out to be worse than the disease.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for wolves marking territory, that's physical property. And the very fact that wolves do it means that it's natural by any sane definition of natural.
* I say that secrets are natural because we do see example of them in the animal kingdom; animals will go to great lengths to prevent other animals from learning things which might give them a competitive advantage. But they do this precisely because because they instinctively recognize that information is not "property" in any meaningful sense; my having it does not prevent you from having it too, and once you have it there is very little I can do (short of all out combat to the death) to take it back. In short, none of the conservation laws we normally associate with property apply.
It's a trick question. "IPR" isn't natural, it's an invention (and a relatively recent one at that). So asking where its "natural boundaries" are is silly. Where is are the "natural boundaries" of Rap? Or of lavender? Where is the natural boundary between Spanish and Italian?
It's a silly question.
For the vast bulk of history (and for all time before that), there was no such thing as "Intellectual Property." There isn't even any analogy in the animal kingdom (just imagine Monarch butterflies issuing a take down notice to other butterflies that have infringed on their trademark look and feel). The "natural" state is for people to thinks, say, and do whatever they want, and to copy good ideas wherever they see them. That, in a nutshell, is how culture works. But very recently there has arisen the observation that some good ideas are hard to copy unless the inventor is willing to explain the trick to you. And one way to induce them to do so is to ameliorate their fear that by so doing they will create a host of competitors, by promising to prevent other people from using the trick for awhile provided that they share it.
Sounds like a fair deal, but, like many things, a little greed is all it takes to spoil it for everyone.
I can type a lot faster than I can write with a pen.
Why didn't the Prof mandate voice recorders, if that was really the concern?
You completely missed the point. Her objecting isn't to the way the students are trying to transcribe her words, but rather the fact that they're transcribing at all. The are trying to make an external record rather than coming to an internal understanding. There was a great Doonesbury strip about this once; I couldn't find a copy on line, but I found a description:
Or, in your version, the scene from "Real Genius" where the students wind up leaving tape recorders to capture a lecture presented--not by their professor--but by his tape recorder, which is mechanically droning out the material.
Well said (except for the "I'm a Republican" part ).
I suppose I could have said "I'm a Republican who values truth more than victory, despite what you might have been led to believe about my party by the conduct of some of its more prominent members" but that seemed a little long winded. If you mean I ought to be a Democrat, I beg to differ. I may well vote for a Democratic congress critter this year, if it looks like they will take concerted action to hold Bush and company accountable, but I do not in general agree with many platforms of the Democratic party.
The one thing I would disagree with on your post is that calling some criticisms "rational" is stretching the term too much.
Perhaps. Although much of the wildest criticism is still rational on its own terms. The very odd thing is that we are quite willing to believe all sorts of things about the leaders of foreign countries, and even about the leaders of our country in the distant past (typically, the cut off is "before I was born"), but have this huge blind spot when it comes to present day leaders of our own country. No one would have believed that Kennedy was high most the time, or that Nixon was using the executive branch as a political tool, etc. when it was actually happening but now it is ho-hum history. No one in the general public would have thought that we would plan to stage/permit an attack by Cuba to start a war, or test biological/chemical weapons on our own people (as an aside--why is that any worse than testing them on foreigners?), or give blankets infused with smallpox to refugees in order to kill them off, at the time we were doing it but now that it's all over no one bats an eye.
So before you start calling some of the criticism irrational, you ought to ask yourself: is it really irrational, or is it just uncomfortable for me to admit there might be something to it?
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
I for one, dislike them both (see here and here for just a few recent posts predating this thread, to substantiate my claim...google should turn up more, back to the Clinton years, when Marc Rich and the Gubernatorial pardons of attractive women roused my ire). But whenever you attempt to level a rational criticism of a politician you discover that you will be instantly labeled a partisan, and the substance of your point dismissed.
Which leads me to a conclusion: attacks on politicians are frequently non-partisan (especially during primaries, when the parties eat their own to impress the masses) but defenses of them are almost always partisan. This includes the sort of "why don't you criticize this guy instead" defense going on here. It's my firm belief that reasonable people of both parties (for what it's worth, I happen to be a Republican) are appalled at the sort of shenanigans that get pulled by the leaders of both parties, but that the highly partisan yahoos always jump to the defense when their side's in power.
What Bush is doing is wrong, and frankly he should be in jail. The fact that Clinton may well deserve the next cell over is not an excuse, it's an example of how bad the problem realy is.
Yeah, we're losing all our civil liberties but some guy is still free to openly criticize the government without fear of the FBI showing up on his doorstep.
Your line of reasoning rang a bell. Where did I hear it before? Oh yeah, I remember:
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
-- Pastor Martin Niemöller
You are confusing "going away" with "gone"; just because at sunset there is still more than enough light to read by, you can not conclude that daylight is not going away, and should not draw comfort from the fact that it isn't as dark as it is somewhere else on the planet.
Looks like a diverting way to spend an evening. My question though: I've heard some talk of there being a MMRT/LA* version and I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to opt out?
I presume you modded my post "flamebait" because you support one or the other major party and yet couldn't think of a cogent way to justify the disparity between their words and their actions. While I appreciate your dilemma (I can't justify it either) you might consider that the problem is with the parties and the people who support them, not with people who point out their hypocrisy.
In other words, in this case I'll take your "flamebait" mod to mean "Insightful but emotionally uncomfortable for me." If I'm mistaken, and you can offer a cogent defense of either party in the contexts mentioned, I'd be glad to hear it.
And let's face it, the people who were upset about Clinton getting it on wtih the intern wouldn't be voting democrat anyway.
I've never understood this logic. Which party is it that's against sexual discrimination in the work place? Who is it that objects to workplace flirtation between managers and subordinates on the grounds that the disparity in power between them might create a "hostile work environment"? And come on, an intern and the leader of the free world (at least back then)--if that isn't a disparity in power I don't know what is.
Meanwhile, the party of fiscal responsibility and small government is building a police state on credit.
Nanotechnology is any technology which exploits phenomena and structures that can only occur at the nanometer scale, which is the scale of several atoms and small molecules.
Hmm. First off, the article you site is not consistent on this point, or with regards to the facts. It further states:
The term "nanotechnology" was defined by Tokyo Science University professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper (N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'Nano-Technology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974.) as follows: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule." In the 1980s the basic idea of this definition was explored in much more depth by Dr. Eric Drexler, who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and the books Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, (ISBN 0-471-57518-6), and so the term acquired its current sense.
What is interesting here is that:
The person credited with coining the term was using the narrow, useful definition instead of the overly vague (to the point where it's useless) definition that you cite.
It blames Drexler for the dilution, which is absurd. Anyone who's ever heard him speak could tell you his stand on the issue, and he is not in favor of the loose useage.
The "current sense" referred to in the Wikipedia article may be current among hucksters and buzzword bingo players, but I have yet to meet anyone who seriously thinks about such things who doesn't distinguish between 1) chemistry, 2) eutactic nanotechnology, and 3) fine-scale materials engineering, all of which are covered under the umbrella you use.
This appears to be a case (after reading the Talk page for the article) where Wikipedia is caught in the middle of a debate between two or more camps that want to own a word--one group would like it as narrow as possible, so that they can use it to refer to a specific set of goals--none of which they have accomplished, and the other wants it broad so they can use it to garner funding for what they are doing now.
I'd have to say I'd side with the former, but it would be silly to claim that there wasn't a debate about the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Bombs and guns may break my bones, but pictures will never hurt me physically.
You've obviously never seen tubgirl either.
--MarkusQ
Near vacuum is "less harsh" than thin C02? How so? And even though water does exist on the moon, its absence would be a minus, not a plus. The "weather" on the moon may be marginally less objectionable (it depends on your tastes, I suppose) but you're not going to be out in the weather much on either of them. And as for the distance, the real question is the depth of the gravity well, on which standard I'll grant that the moon is somewhat nicer.
Even so, an Earth-crossing asteroid would probably be a better choice, or something in one of the L-points (from which you could use the superhighway for cargo that wasn't marked "Rush").
-- MarkusQ
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
I have no idea how, but someone hacked your message.
Which is a shame, because I rather liked it.
Heck, I still like it, so, to whoever hacked it, thanks!
-- MarkusQ
A few objections:
I wouldn't be so sure of this. In fact, given the work of Kurt Gödel, the present stance on software patents, business process patents ("Would you like to supersize that?"), and digital music distribution, trademarking of phrases ("You're fired!"), etc. I would claim that you could hobble together an "IP" claim on both of these that might well stand up in court. At the very least, you could expect a reasonably profitable season of barrity.
-- MarkusQ
But the "property" part of IP involves ownership. You can, therefore, deprive someone of part of the essence of their idea by using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it.
This simply begs the question. You assume that it is a meaningful statement to say that someone "owns" an idea, and then state without proof that "using it in a way not consistent with their ownership of it" must "deprive someone of part of the essence of their idea."
From there, it is but a short question begging step to conclude what you've already assumed, that this essence they have been deprived of is the thing that (by assumption) they owned.
We could do the same things with integers if you like:
Or with imagination:
I trust you see why I am not convinced by this.
--MarkusQ
I'll offer my definition, and then respond to your other points.
And now, to your points:
Are you unfamiliar with the parts of speech? Property is the object to which ownership applies. Giving specificity to ownership is the same as giving specificity to property.
Grammar has nothing to do with it. "Property" and "Ownership" are both nouns. If you were to define each in terms of the other, it would be circular. Instead, you defined property in terms of ownership, and ownership in terms of control.
Unless you are trying to claim that your definition was circular, I don't see why you are objecting to this.
No, it is you who are conflating things. If you are willing to say that it's about controlling an object than you are doing exactly what you accused me of--assuming that all property must be, by definition, an object. Since you refused to accept that position, you can not now assume it unless you intend to recant.
Further, you have agreed that you have no way of controlling ideas. Therefore, if you claim the right to control the way people use ideas, but admit that you can't control the ideas, you must perforce control the people.
The problem does not arise with physical objects; you can control their use by controlling the objects, not the people who might use them. You can, literally, take your ball and bat and go home. But if you are claiming to own not a specific ball and bat but rather the idea of baseball this will not suffice. The people may well start playing with "bootleg" balls and bats as soon as you leave.
By your own admission, the only way to control people's use of ideas is to control the people.
Just a few clarifications:
I could not claim them as property since I have no means of controlling who uses them. But if I had the physical force or legal means to prevent anyone from using those terms, then I could claim the terms as property.
Exactly. Your definition isn't about "property" per se, but about the control of others through the use of force.
Your definition is not circular; as I noted, you simply moved the requisite specificity from "property" to "ownership."
Not so fast. You clearly stated that it was about control. As for "the right of use"...
No, your definition at the most basic level is the "right" to control/prevent use by others. You have made that quite clear, and ought not try to dodge the point here, as it's the cornerstone of your whole argument. If you back away from it, you will be left with nothing since it is only the control of the actions of others that supports your definition of "ownership" on which you base your definition of "property."
-- MarkusQ
Thank you for the cogent reply. I would agree with your analysis, the key point of which is, I maintain, the point that, in addition to undisputed forms of property, the term "property" also includes Anything not conservable, onto which we artificially confer properties of conservation.
If I accept this, I'm entitled to draw a few conclusion from it, specifically:
--MarkusQ
inalienable rights - read that to mean "natural rights,"
Why would I do that? Inalienable has a very definite meaning (something that can not be transfered) and it has nothing to do with the meaning of natural (occurring without the intervention of an outside agency).
Appropriating another's intellectual property without compensation or permission is a "might makes right" argument.
Balderdash. How can you "appropriate" someone else's idea? You would be right to use the term if the process involved going into their head and somehow removing the idea. But what you are talking about here doesn't involve taking anything from anyone, save the ability to control and limit the thoughts of others. If you think a thought that someone else claims as "intellectual property" all you have deprived them of is the ability to dictate the conditions under which you are allowed to think that thought. You have not stopped them from thinking it, you have not affected them in any way.
In such a circumstance, the only element of "might makes right" is their ability to use physical force to stop you from thinking "their" thoughts without permission.
--MarkusQ
The reason that a term ought not describe everything is simple; a term that describes everything is of very little use in discourse, since we already have words ("anything"/"everything" etc.) that fill that role and the introduction of synonyms that appear to have additional meaning is misleading at best.
The reason a definition should not be circular (which by the way, I'm tempted to claim yours is) is that it is likewise useless. If you can't define a term except by reference to itself (or another term, such as ownership, which is defined in terms of it) then you can't really use it to communicate, only to obfuscate.
The reason I am only tempted to say your definition is circular is that I notice you have simply moved the denotional requirements from the word property to the word ownership. You reject the notion that property be something physical, or at least something that obeys certain conservation laws, and instead claim that it is something that is owned. But you then turn around and imply that things that can be owned are, in effect, things that can be "controlled".
Now, this would follow quite nicely if your property obeyed the conservation laws. But as it does not, I'm left wondering how you intend to control (and thus own) your putative property. How do you control 7, or green, or "Hip hop my heart stop"? I contend that you can't.
Instead, you must attempt to control people which are after all physical objects, to make them only think or say or do what you would permit them to. While this is not quite a circular definition, I find it more than a tad distasteful.
Am I reading your position correctly? Property is anything that can be owned, and things can be owned if (and only if) you can control the use of them, either (in the case of traditional property) by controlling the things or (in the case of intellectual property) by controlling the users?
--MarkusQ
I would agree that Trademark, Copyright, and Patents started out as a social contract. I can not credit your claim that you support "the best balance for ALL parties concerned" in the context of the rest of your post. I will attempt briefly to explain why.
The original social contract embodied, as all contracts in principal do, a meeting of the minds. There was a clear statement of what was expected of both parties, and a clear understanding of the recourse that both parties had in the event that they found the terms disadvantageous, to wit, non-participation. But unlike a normal contract, one side has decided to systematically (and, in my opinion, unconstitutionally) modify the "agreement" to their advantage.
At the same time, an actual rational analysis of the changes that have taken place in the last two hundred years would argue that a society would benefit more from weakened intellectual property laws (since the originals were predicated on the assumption that innovators were rare, and we no find ourselves with more would-be innovators than we know what to do with). Thus we have a "contract" that has been unilaterally modified by one side to the determent of society. Is this really what is "the best balance for ALL parties concerned?"
I am perfectly happy with the idea of Hollywood stopping making movies. I would be content (actually happy) if all the record companies and their "artists" went on strike and refused to produce more "hits." That was, after all, their right under the original deal. But I do not accept their "right" to hobble the computer equipment I require to practice my trade so that they can enforce their newfound "rights" which were never part of the original social contract, nor to pass new laws restricting my constitutional rights, to the same dubious ends.
--MarkusQ
I wrote the post to which you are responding before reading your further explanation of your position in the sibling thread. I was mistaken in my assumption about where we were disagreeing (but we do still, so far as I can tell, disagree).
Please see my post "Secrecy != Control" on that thread, especially the second point, for my response to your position as articulated here and there.
-- MarkusQ
Nonsense. No one is claiming that hospitals, etc. are natural phenomenon, and if they were I'd call them on that as well.
Skipping your poetic lead up, I disagree in any case with your second point that systems defined by convention have "natural limits." The whole point of arbitrary systems is that they are defined, arbitrarily, to have whatever limits we care to ascribe to them. The very fact that (as you point out) these limits differ from place to place and from time to time is evidence that they are arbitrary, not natural.
--MarkusQ
Secrecy is one way to maintain control, or ownership -- IP laws are another way to maintain control, or ownership.
This is, of course, untrue. I can keep a secret as ferociously as I like, and it won't do a thing to prevent anyone else who discovers the same thing from using it anyway they see fit.
I might, for example, find an enormous prime number, and decide never to tell anyone about it. And, unbeknownst to me, a hundred other people might know the same prime number, and be doing things I would never approve of with it. You know what? I couldn't do a thing to stop them, because secrecy isn't the same as control.
The problem with applying conservation laws to determine whether something is property is that property, in that argument, is arbitrarily defined as physical property. I believe that many anti-IP people misdefine property, and the basic misunderstanding of terms leads to logical arguments, that while the arguments are fine, the presuppositions are not -- and therefore the argument doesn't work.
Not really true (the right to use a certain portion of the brodcast spectrum at a certain time and place, for example, is not physical property but it is conservered). But that aside I'll accept this as a possibility if you can provide:
It's my contention that the reason most people define property as they do is that there isn't a viable alternative. Any other definition that you might choose is either going to be too broad (so that everything is property, and the term is meaningless), an itemization (land, jewels, trademarks, and patents are property, and nothing else), or circular (property anything things that someone can own).
--MarkusQ
IP is in no way unnnatural
I believe you are talking at cross purposes with several of the other posters in this thread. Specifically, your assumption that "IP is in no way unnatural" -- in other words, that it is natural and reasonable it treat information as if it were property, with the consequent adoption of production/consumption metaphors, and all the associated control systems, is apparently preventing you from understanding what we are saying.
What you are assuming is simply not true. Note that we aren't talking about what's good or bad, practical or impractical, moral or immoral, but simply about the observable properties of information.
Take, for example, consumption. People who believe in IP perforce adopt the "consumer" model of the market. If information is property, then its market consists of producers and consumers. But no one "consumes" information. If I read a book, or watch a movie, or build a device, I haven't "used up" the information required to do these things. In short, I haven't consumed anything.
Faced with this fact (and note that I am still not talking about right vs. wrong, or practical vs. impractical, or any of that) there are two possible responses. One would be to realize that you are trying to catch moonbeams in a jar, and rethink your position on ideas being property. The other is to try and somehow change the natures of information so that it behaves itself and starts acting like property ought to. You could come up with all sorts of ways to try to make the information go away like things are supposed to when they have been consumed, and spend a great deal of time and money doing so. You would, of course, fail.
The question is, which of these responses is sane, and which is crazy?
--MarkusQ
P.S. My great grandmother used to think that electricity was a fluid, and she would stick rags in empty light sockets to keep it from leaking out and running up her electric bill. And before her, there were people who believed that vision was rays that emanated from the eyes.
They were wrong.
Intellectual Property is the antithesis of trade secrets. The whole justification of Intellectual Property is that it will replace the natural* concept of secrets. That's why all system of IP registration include the requirement (or at least originally did) of disclosure; trademarks had to be used in commerce, copyrighted materials had to be published, inventions had to be demonstrated and documented to the extent that they could be duplicated by practitioners skilled in the appropriate arts.
Trade secrets were seen as detrimental to society, and IP was invented to supplant them. Unfortunately, the cure is turning out to be worse than the disease.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for wolves marking territory, that's physical property. And the very fact that wolves do it means that it's natural by any sane definition of natural.
* I say that secrets are natural because we do see example of them in the animal kingdom; animals will go to great lengths to prevent other animals from learning things which might give them a competitive advantage. But they do this precisely because because they instinctively recognize that information is not "property" in any meaningful sense; my having it does not prevent you from having it too, and once you have it there is very little I can do (short of all out combat to the death) to take it back. In short, none of the conservation laws we normally associate with property apply.
It's a trick question. "IPR" isn't natural, it's an invention (and a relatively recent one at that). So asking where its "natural boundaries" are is silly. Where is are the "natural boundaries" of Rap? Or of lavender? Where is the natural boundary between Spanish and Italian?
It's a silly question.
For the vast bulk of history (and for all time before that), there was no such thing as "Intellectual Property." There isn't even any analogy in the animal kingdom (just imagine Monarch butterflies issuing a take down notice to other butterflies that have infringed on their trademark look and feel). The "natural" state is for people to thinks, say, and do whatever they want, and to copy good ideas wherever they see them. That, in a nutshell, is how culture works. But very recently there has arisen the observation that some good ideas are hard to copy unless the inventor is willing to explain the trick to you. And one way to induce them to do so is to ameliorate their fear that by so doing they will create a host of competitors, by promising to prevent other people from using the trick for awhile provided that they share it.
Sounds like a fair deal, but, like many things, a little greed is all it takes to spoil it for everyone.
-- MarkusQ
I can type a lot faster than I can write with a pen.
Why didn't the Prof mandate voice recorders, if that was really the concern?
You completely missed the point. Her objecting isn't to the way the students are trying to transcribe her words, but rather the fact that they're transcribing at all. The are trying to make an external record rather than coming to an internal understanding. There was a great Doonesbury strip about this once; I couldn't find a copy on line, but I found a description:Or, in your version, the scene from "Real Genius" where the students wind up leaving tape recorders to capture a lecture presented--not by their professor--but by his tape recorder, which is mechanically droning out the material.
-- MarkusQ
Well said (except for the "I'm a Republican" part ).
I suppose I could have said "I'm a Republican who values truth more than victory, despite what you might have been led to believe about my party by the conduct of some of its more prominent members" but that seemed a little long winded. If you mean I ought to be a Democrat, I beg to differ. I may well vote for a Democratic congress critter this year, if it looks like they will take concerted action to hold Bush and company accountable, but I do not in general agree with many platforms of the Democratic party.
The one thing I would disagree with on your post is that calling some criticisms "rational" is stretching the term too much.
Perhaps. Although much of the wildest criticism is still rational on its own terms. The very odd thing is that we are quite willing to believe all sorts of things about the leaders of foreign countries, and even about the leaders of our country in the distant past (typically, the cut off is "before I was born"), but have this huge blind spot when it comes to present day leaders of our own country. No one would have believed that Kennedy was high most the time, or that Nixon was using the executive branch as a political tool, etc. when it was actually happening but now it is ho-hum history. No one in the general public would have thought that we would plan to stage/permit an attack by Cuba to start a war, or test biological/chemical weapons on our own people (as an aside--why is that any worse than testing them on foreigners?), or give blankets infused with smallpox to refugees in order to kill them off, at the time we were doing it but now that it's all over no one bats an eye.
So before you start calling some of the criticism irrational, you ought to ask yourself: is it really irrational, or is it just uncomfortable for me to admit there might be something to it?
--MarkusQ
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
I for one, dislike them both (see here and here for just a few recent posts predating this thread, to substantiate my claim...google should turn up more, back to the Clinton years, when Marc Rich and the Gubernatorial pardons of attractive women roused my ire). But whenever you attempt to level a rational criticism of a politician you discover that you will be instantly labeled a partisan, and the substance of your point dismissed.
Which leads me to a conclusion: attacks on politicians are frequently non-partisan (especially during primaries, when the parties eat their own to impress the masses) but defenses of them are almost always partisan. This includes the sort of "why don't you criticize this guy instead" defense going on here. It's my firm belief that reasonable people of both parties (for what it's worth, I happen to be a Republican) are appalled at the sort of shenanigans that get pulled by the leaders of both parties, but that the highly partisan yahoos always jump to the defense when their side's in power.
What Bush is doing is wrong, and frankly he should be in jail. The fact that Clinton may well deserve the next cell over is not an excuse, it's an example of how bad the problem realy is.
--MarkusQ
Yeah, we're losing all our civil liberties but some guy is still free to openly criticize the government without fear of the FBI showing up on his doorstep.
Your line of reasoning rang a bell. Where did I hear it before? Oh yeah, I remember:
You are confusing "going away" with "gone"; just because at sunset there is still more than enough light to read by, you can not conclude that daylight is not going away, and should not draw comfort from the fact that it isn't as dark as it is somewhere else on the planet.--MarkusQ
Looks like a diverting way to spend an evening. My question though: I've heard some talk of there being a MMRT/LA* version and I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to opt out?
--MarkusQ
* Massively Multi -Player Real Time / Live Action
I presume you modded my post "flamebait" because you support one or the other major party and yet couldn't think of a cogent way to justify the disparity between their words and their actions. While I appreciate your dilemma (I can't justify it either) you might consider that the problem is with the parties and the people who support them, not with people who point out their hypocrisy.
In other words, in this case I'll take your "flamebait" mod to mean "Insightful but emotionally uncomfortable for me." If I'm mistaken, and you can offer a cogent defense of either party in the contexts mentioned, I'd be glad to hear it.
--MarkusQ
And let's face it, the people who were upset about Clinton getting it on wtih the intern wouldn't be voting democrat anyway.
I've never understood this logic. Which party is it that's against sexual discrimination in the work place? Who is it that objects to workplace flirtation between managers and subordinates on the grounds that the disparity in power between them might create a "hostile work environment"? And come on, an intern and the leader of the free world (at least back then)--if that isn't a disparity in power I don't know what is.
Meanwhile, the party of fiscal responsibility and small government is building a police state on credit.
Go figure.
--MarkusQ
Nanotechnology is any technology which exploits phenomena and structures that can only occur at the nanometer scale, which is the scale of several atoms and small molecules.
Hmm. First off, the article you site is not consistent on this point, or with regards to the facts. It further states:
What is interesting here is that:
This appears to be a case (after reading the Talk page for the article) where Wikipedia is caught in the middle of a debate between two or more camps that want to own a word--one group would like it as narrow as possible, so that they can use it to refer to a specific set of goals--none of which they have accomplished, and the other wants it broad so they can use it to garner funding for what they are doing now.
I'd have to say I'd side with the former, but it would be silly to claim that there wasn't a debate about the issue.
--MarkusQ