What's the Solution To Intellectual Property? 979
StealthyRoid writes "I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and a huge supporter of property rights, both physical and intellectual. At the same time, I find the current trend of increasing penalties for minor violations, criminalizing civil IP matters, anti-consumer technologies like DRM, and abuse of the legal system by the *AA's of the world really disturbing. You'd think that by now, there'd be a reasonable solution to the problem of protecting intellectual property while at the same time maintaining the rights of consumers and protecting individuals from absurd litigation, but I have yet to find one. So, I pose these questions to the Slashdot community: 1 — Do you acknowledge the legitimacy of intellectual property to begin with? That is, do you believe that intellectual property is a valid construct equivalent to physical property, or do you think it's illusory? If not, why? 2 — If so, how would you go about protecting the rights of intellectual property holders in a way that doesn't require unfair usage limitations or resort to predatory abuse of the tort system?"
Time Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have Ayn Rand on your bookshelf? (Score:1, Insightful)
no more artificial scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
Standard answer (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO (Score:1, Insightful)
IP = Information (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to control intellectual property, you need to be able to control the information exchanged between people. That is a very difficult thing to do, and may give you a totalitarian society as a side effect.
no scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
property rights are important b/c of the problem of scarcity; if there were enough of everything, there wouldn't be fights over who owns what.
with intellectual property, there is no scarcity of the idea or musical recording or what not; it's free (or close to it) to copy.
IP (or some of it) can be arguably justified on purely utilitarian grounds to incentivize creativity, and certain rights are granted that are similar to property rights, hence the use of the word property, but the analogy is taken too far when people think of IP as actual "property"
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Ben Franklin gave his inventions to the world, why can we not do the same? All IP is based on MINE MINE MINE and preventing people from building on your work as long as possible, under the self-interested characterization of other people as THIEVES until proven otherwise. All IP is based on rationalizations of this very selfish behavior.
We've had enough of compromise, all that has given us is unending nibbled-to-death-by-ducks as the lawyers extend and extend and extend the reach of copyright and IP and patents. Soon your great-great-grandchildren will be living off your IP which was never the intent. It always starts as "reasonable" laws passed to encourage innovation and then pass things into public domain as soon as possible.
Do people now feel OBLIGATED to send money to the heirs of the Shakespeare estate every time they quote the Bard? Do you send money to the heirs of Volta every time you use a battery? No? If you don't then you are a sanctimonious hypocrite.
We HAD a solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Our system worked FINE. The Internet actually brought no new cards to the table except speed. I could go on about that one for a long time, and bring up copy protection in the context of player pianos (which court cases also involved patentability of "software"). But that would take up a lot of time and space.
In a nutshell: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It wasn't broke. But they did it anyway, since the mid-90s, all in the name of corporate protectionism and profit. And in the process, they broke it pretty badly.
The solution is simple: put the laws back the way they were, when they actually WORKED and we had, arguably, the best-working set of "IP" laws in the world.
Re:Time Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
Idea: Exemption from IP for innovators. (Score:3, Insightful)
Although it would probably be difficult to implement in such a way that the spirit would not be overcome by the letter of the law, I would like to see exemptions to all existing IP laws that apply to those who take copyrighted or patented ideas and produce something original and of merit. If some patent-troll firm amassed a bunch of software patents without producing viable products, real software companies producing actual software could use this exemption and use those ideas without paying ransom or getting sued.
Of course, it might be better to just prune away.
Re:Time Limits (Score:2, Insightful)
Also to the submitter:
You shall not find many here who look at intellectual property as real property. This is simply because its simply ideas. The idea that a idea can be treated like real property is absurd. It would mean you shoot people for listening to you because they 'stole' your ideas and your just trying to defend them. It would basically lead to the idea that thought itself must be regulated, as that is the only way to control ideas, which is all intellectual property is.
Re:Time Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to point out to anyone, that this is not a US-only problem, it's a problem for the entire developed world (and affects the rest).
If a new system is to be functional, it has to do two things.
1. Ensure that the creator is compensated for his time, and the uncertainty inherent to creating a new products and works of art.
2. Ensure that the public gets to enjoy this product once the creator has been compensated.
Intellectual property is a concept aimed at balancing the need to boost creativity to the benefit of the public.
Both patronage and intellectual property ensures 1. But intellectual property is starting to fail at 2 in more than one way.
The amount of "compensation" for the creative work, is in many industries currently pushed way beyond reasonable and DRM is an attempt to ensure that 2 will never take place.
One of the interesting aspects, is that most of the music we see today, is still a combination of patronage and intellectual property.
The recording & distribution companies, pay the artist to create works, but now patronage means that the artist loses his or hers rights to the music. I don't think this was the idea envisioned in Intellectual Property.
so what's better?
How on earth would i know, I haven't studied it intensively, and neither has most!
Re:Time Limits (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, although no doubt we could come to an agreement in terms now, in fact we do not believe that this design will be useful to any other manufacturer, since it complements our patents specifically. Therefore, we prefer to wait a year and get your design for free. However, thank you for your visit. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Some ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
2) As many people have said (and I am sure will continue to say), time-limits need to be shortened. Simple enough to make that statement without a discrete number of years, I know, but I don't have one as yet.
Usage rights need to be effectively unlimited - i.e. treat the purchaser of a "licence" to access/use intellectual property the same as a sole purchaser of tangible property. I can copy, backup, sell, modify, install on multiple machines, change hardware, do whatever I like. If the copyright holder grants/sells to me a right to use that intellectual property, he forfeits all other "rights" with respect to me.
This is talking primarily in the personal/domestic setting. I realise that in the commercial world, licences which are limited (both in duration and use) are commonplace and useful. These generally, however, arise from *signed* contracts. Don't try and BS us with this click-through, shrink wrap EULA business.
Outlaw any technology which impinges on a purchaser's right to access his purchase. DRM, TPM, etc, throw it out the window.
Establish *reasonable* penalties for infringement. Million dollar file for downloading a movie from Channel BT? Disproportionate penalties tend to encourage flouting of the law, IMO. If I were slugged $100 for a movie I downloaded illegitimately, I would probably say "fair cop". Set up an IP tribunal to stop the combative litigation style of the MAFIAA.
In the same vein, do not allow IP holders to act as police (a la DMCA takedown notices). Do not tolerate any conflicts of interest by letting ISPs and content producers to get into bed together. Ban any so-called "TOS" which permit your ISP to boot you off your service if they think you are serving copyrighted material. Provide safe-harbour protection to ISPs so they can ignore threats from IP holders. Packet filtering/inspection is and should be treated as a gross invasion of privacy.
This is just a start. I'm sure there are a good deal of other great ideas.
Abolish copyright, limit patent, trademark okay (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing as "intellectual property" (Score:3, Insightful)
But corporate interests have been hard at work. Many creative artists no longer own what they produce; the new improved laws reduce their products to nothing more than "work for hire" for their corporate masters. The creators don't reap the profit of their labors anymore. And there's also been changes in the laws that extend the protections for these creators long, long beyond what was a fair exchange between the creator's interests and the public interest.
It's not enough that the whole "protect creators, protect the public interest" system has been perverted in the name of corporate profit. To further enrich themselves, they hired marketing and public relations experts. The false concept of "intellectual property" was created and used to justify even more perversions of our legal system. You can only infringe a copyright - but if you can call it property then you can say that someone is stealing your property. Bring on the draconian criminal penalties and secure the corporate interests from having to compete in the modern net-connected world.
Using music as an example: Record companies and their trade associations file lawsuits against their customers by the thousands to protect their copyrights. Those people didn't write or perform any music; where did they get their copyrights from? They say they're doing this to protect the artists - but those artists aren't getting much (if any) of the profits from their creative works. The real creators don't even own what they create; the copyrights were "stolen" by the record companies and the new improved laws mean they won't have to release the music into the public domain for a very, very long time (if ever).
The motion picture studios have been watching and they're starting to play the same games.
Note well: none of this is to protect the artists. It's to protect corporate profits, pure and simple. As long as they can get away with using "intellectual property" to get lawmakers to further protect their profit margins they will. But at the end of the day it's still nothing more than a phrase that means less than nothing. Ideas are not property; never have been, never will.
Re:Not much of anarcho in your capitalsm, is there (Score:5, Insightful)
An anarcho-capitalist who believes in IP is like a libertarian who advocates for a monarchy.
Intellectual Property. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Standard answer (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you, but the problem is that it appears impossible to persuade governments to legislate to provide copyright and patent laws that are anything like what would be optimal for society as a whole.
False dichotomy! (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, by its very nature it would have to not be equivalent. For example, if I infringe your intellectual property, I haven't deprived you of the use of it, as would be the case if I stole your physical property. Since the natural consequences of infringement are different, it follows that the rights should not be completely equivalent. However, that's not at all the same as saying that there shouldn't be any intellectual property rights.
artificial scarcity and capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
so why then do we have IP at all? because capitalism can only deal with scarcity: you can not sell sand in the desert. this shows a principal problem with capitalism. and if you look a bit closer then you see that this does not only happen with intellectual goods but with almost everything that capitalism deals with: it introduces artificial scarcity:
the capitalist system is fundamentally broken. every year 10 million people are starving even though there would be enough food to feed them all... capitalism just does not cater to those with no money...
our so called "democracy" is becomming more of a farce every day: voters being manipulated by $$$-media... those with enough corporations behind them have more money for their election campaign... this all leeds to the fact that you can only rule if you represent the profit-interests of the big corporations...
greetings mond.
Legal hang-ups (Score:5, Insightful)
Many Slashdotters are adamant in their assertion that intellectual property is not a valid right or concept. They often cite legal history, and technicly they are correct. However, it seems they are doing this more for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to actually caring about how the law is constructed. The argument usually goes something like, "IP theft isn't stealing, it's copyright infringement". I always like to counter this with something like, "would you rather I steal $50,000 from you or embezzle it?". It is readily apparent that the effect is the same.
Therefore, I personally DO recognize IP as a valid concept and right. If I'm the first cave-man to discover fire after rubbing sticks together for months, and you light your fire from mine without rewarding me, you do indeed take something from me. The fire-maker deservers to be fed from the next kill, lest the wheel-maker observes that the fire-maker starved, and decides to give up on his endeavor.
OTOH, when the fire-maker stomps out fires and demands a portion of the meat in perpetuity, he shouldn't be surprised when he gets clubbed on the head.
In other words--common sense.
Therefore, software patents -- get rid of 'em. They dont't incentivise. They just make software developers worry. Everybody knows it.
*AA enforcement? None on low-quality encodings that get radio airplay. Why? because you can already time-shift broadcast radio. Pulling it off digitally is really just the same thing, format-shifted. Same deal for music vids, which you could have legitimately recorded off MTV 25 years ago with your VHS (in fact, WB and some other studios are putting up their own YouTube channels with classic MTV vids, perhaps they finally are realizing it's actually good for their PR and not taking away from new sales). High-quality encodings and/or lossless recording should be more restricted. The penalty should be ordinary restitution: steal 100 CDs worth of music, pay 200 CD equivalent penalty. None of this $30,000 business for downloading one song.
IP in the music/vid business can be a *good* thing. Bits don't go to landfill. Availability of high-quality recordings in a manner that ensures payment will help that.
Abandoned works should lapse into the public domain, but registration shouldn't be required for copyright on each work. I could go on and on...
The short answer though, is common sense. Isn't it always? Unfortunately, it always seems to be in short supply. The laws are written by lawyers who are paid by businesses. Hence, all the legal hang-ups.
Yes But No (Score:2, Insightful)
I beleive in the concept of intellectual property from an idea in order to ensure the original creator gets suitably reimbursed for their work. However, When intellectual property was first introduced the period was only 15 years (or close), since then it's been raised a raised untill we have this situation, of whoever patents an idea first keeps it for eternity (not quite, but the rate of IP being extended is actually faster than the time is running out, so with the trends of today, eternity) Of course that trend is completely the reverse of the intention of IP, because as the economy has grown, more money can be made in a shorter time, so surely the IP laws should shorten the time IP is protected?
As for outrageous settlements for the RIAA, I have easily enough songs to bankrupt me several times over, so why on earth would I stop taking the songs now? The difference would be between a fine of $1 000 000 and $1 050 000, either way, I simply don't have that money- if I can't afford to buy the music in the first place, why on earth would they presume I can afford a fine like that. Plus the out of court setttlements aren't proportional to the songs sold.
With modern pop music, no serious critic would claim that more than 5% of it's value remains after 5 years, by then all there is is small royalties for the odd CD bought, and most of the money has been made, that's when the IP runs out. This is just a side effect of teh type of music created now, and of course could be reveiwed if some music that aged better was produced.
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
Now at the same time, Monsanto does not get to fly those seeds over random farms and drop them and then sue those farmers, thats bad business, so don't think I love this company, but dammit you fools, don't think some scientist in a lab didn't work their ass off to create this amazing thing. And dammit, they better make some money, otherwise all that scientist can do for a living is steal shit from you...course you live in a world in which there is no scarcity, so no one would ever steal from you.
As a writer I say, no need for IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Ideas are not equivalent to property (Score:5, Insightful)
1) There is no natural scarcity of ideas. Taking a thing deprives the person it is taken from of its use. If two people share an idea, both have it and neither the less. The two outcomes are diametrically opposed, ideas are the opposite of property. They are not subject to property. Dissemination of ideas increases the sum of knowledge, whether for profit or not. The purpose of patent and copyright law is to maximize the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
2) To pretend that an idea can be owned as property suggests that one owns and has the right to exercise control over another's thoughts. This is absurd and unmanageable.
3) If an idea is property, there is no basis to suggest that ownership of an idea shouldn't be permanent and heritable as other property is. This would be an economic and social disaster.
etc.
The constitution provides a simple justification for granting a monopoly to an inventor on the use of their idea: "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." This is a noble goal, one I think generally embraced be even the opponents of the current copyright regime. This suggests a simple and obvious test for laws meant to regulate the temporary monopolies: if a given law can be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, we are fairly subject to the limitations thereof so long as we (We) agree with the goal of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. If a law regulating the free use and exchange of ideas cannot be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts it is wrong and unconstitutional.
That was sorta what I was wondering (Score:5, Insightful)
In the west we already had a concept of, basically: you bought _a_ book, you didn't buy the rights to the novel. You bought _a_ record, you didn't buy the rights to that band's album. You bought _a_ (copy of the) newspaper, you didn't buy _the_ newspaper. Etc. It worked. Most people could already wrap their mind around that.
We had a first sale doctrine that worked perfectly well with that too. Yes, you didn't buy the rights to the novel, for example, but you bought a book and you can do almost whatever you want with it. Resell it, lend it to your friend, read it to your kid at bedtime, etc.
Then came for example software and tried to handwave in the fallacy that they need completely other constructs, for something that was already solved for everything else. See, you need to _license_ software, because, OMG, otherwise you'd think you bought the rights to that program as a whole! WTH? We already had the distinction between buying a book, and buying the ownership of a novel itself. You didn't need to "license" a book, or a vinyl record, or a newspaper.
Even after the loophole of, basically, "yeah, but you need to copy the program to memory, which is making a copy, and you need a license to make copies" was closed, we got stuck with the same stupidity as a before. Nah, see, it's _licensed_, not sold, 'cause if we sold it you might think you bought the rights to Vista as a whole!
Exactly wth is the fundamental difference between buying a copy of, say, Vista, and buying a copy of Huckleberry Finn? I'll go on a limb and say that people would have had no trouble using the pre-existing concept for software too.
And then based on the license stupidity, we had increasingly stupid stuff snuck in as licensing terms, that no consumer rights law would have allowed otherwise. E.g., you can't resell it. (See the recent AutoCAD lawsuit, but also all the software where you have to use up a serial number to use it, etc.) You can resell your old book, your old vinyl records, even your old copy of The New York times if you find someone interested in that particular issue, but you can't resell your old copy of AutoCAD. 'Cause it's licensed not sold. Some presume to unilaterally decide what else you can run on that computer. (E.g., it's quite common for game copy-protections to just quit or do this and that to you, if they think you have a CD emulator running on that computer.) Or what they can do to your computer. Or what you can use it for. Etc. Everything that consumer protection laws gave you for books, records, etc, the license took away for software.
And now unsurprisingly we see the guys from the other media, essentially go, "wait, wait, you mean we wouldn't have had to give customers all those rights, if we called it a license too? Damn, we want some of that too!" All the aberrations and stupidities built on that fallacy for software, we're now seeing trickling back to, say, movies and music. They too want a DRM scheme to prevent you from reselling it. They too want to unilaterally require your DVD player to phone home and spy on you, 'cause, hey, if software can do that, they want it too. They too want a say in what you can use the DVD for, and in which devices. (See copy protected CDs which actually play a reduced bit rate MP3 instead of the uncompressed music, if you play them on a computer.) Etc.
Heck, even Sony's infamous copy protection rootkit was, essentially, just trying to get the same control over that music as they have over software. In a misguided and flawed way, to be sure, but they didn't do anything much more underhanded than their copy protection already does for games.
And methinks it's about high time to say a collective, "WTF?" Or rather, a, "No, you don't. You software guys learn to live with what already worked for everything else, instead of everyone else copying your invented loopholes. Yes, you sold a copy, not the rights to the program. We know that. That already applied to everyone who bought a copy o
Re:Intellectual property compromises physical (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, you can purchase a hard disk with the bits set randomly, but once you re-arrange the magnetic charges in a specific fashion, you are infringing upon someone else's rights. This goes to show that intellectual property is indeed an illusion. Shouldn't you be able to do what ever you'd like with that chunk of metal in your room?
These sorts of hyper-reductionist arguments are stupid. At the end of the day a human is just a bunch of atoms. Shouldn't I be able to disrupt those atoms the same way I can disrupt the atoms in my own house if I want? And before you start on who "owns" atoms, "ownership" is just an arrangement of neuronal connections in people heads. ENOUGH!
If we accept that we're talking about things at a human level, not at an absurd reductionist level, then both ownership and copyright are meaningful terms about which we are able to have a discussion, and neither is an "illusion" as you state.
Rich.
Capitalism: The real WTF: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
The keyword is 'exclusive', meaning only 1 person can use it at a time. If I use a car to drive from A to B, you cannot use it at the same time to drive from C to D. All physical property works that way, somehow.
Now for IP, many people think it's the patented/copyright work that is the 'property' in IP. It isn't - you can copy things anyway, so they're not really scarce. It is the right to determine who is allowed to make copies and when, that is regarded as 'property'. And this is exclusive. Only 1 person or organisation can hold the copyright on a work at any given time. This right is the (artificially) scarce item that is used/inherited/sold and so on. Once you understand this, IP makes perfect sense from a conceptual point of view. I don't like this concept, but it's perfectly in line with how people deal with physical property.
Where IP doesn't make sense, is from a practical point of view. Copyright may have served a purpose 1 or 2 hundred years ago, but times have changed. I have yet to see a convincing proof that the world as a whole has benefited from past IP laws. That technological/cultural progress would have been slower without it. In todays fast-moving society, it serves even less purpose. Countless patents fall in the 'obvious' or 'bound to happen sooner or later' category. Without IP laws, these things would have been thrown onto the world for everyone to use for free. Nor are there any objective standards used to determine IP protections. Protection periods aren't calculated or estimated for optimal effect, but lobbied by greedy corporations for maximum profit. As a result, society as a whole loses.
And then there's implementation. Take for example DRM: you hand a million customers identical 'black boxes' with identical locks, with identical content inside, then you give those customers identical keys, and you tell them: "now go open your box, but don't share what you find inside". Aliens would laugh at how silly this is. Or a company invests millions into development of a new drug, then brings it to the market, but not everyone profits because the poorest can't afford the high price. All the hard work has been done, the company wouldn't profit less if there where a group of 'freeriders' who can afford production costs but not market price, but still: millions are suffering because corporate greed is deemed more important than curing sick people.
If it where up to me, IP laws would be scrapped from the books, so that companies can have succes by innovating faster or smarter than the competition, as opposed to having a bigger pack of lawyers. In the mean while, I just try to ignore IP law as much as I can get away with (like so many people, whether they admit it or not).
Re:The goal should be innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Do we actually need to encourage these? Do we need to create laws that give inventors a way to profit from their inventions more than others?
I've been mostly staying away from the debate, because there are too many things in there that I have no idea about. But the two things that I do know are that (1) a lot of people who participate in the debate don't know all these things, either, and (2) I resent patents for denying people who invent something that happens to have been patented from using their invention.
That's my 2 cents.
Since you asked.. my $0.02 worth (Score:3, Insightful)
There shouldn't have to be complicated laws concerning IP, it should be very simple:
* If you profit from it, you have to pay the price; if you don't profit from it, you shouldn't have to pay extra.
* You can copy it, but only for your own private use; if you give it to someone else, you're risking having to pay a price.
* If you're attracting attention to yourself (i.e. you're being excessive) then you get in trouble.
Things like P2P could be construed as "being excessive" in my book. If you're giving away music to people on the other side of the planet that you haven't met and never will meet (and who you can't even communicate with because you speak a different language even), then that might be considered excessive. If you're copying a CD for your 5 best friends then that's not anywhere near as excessive. If you're making mix CDs and selling them then you're an idiot who's being excessive and you'll get what you deserve. If you're digitally recording a TV show and burning it to DVD so your freinds who don't get that channel can watch it, that's OK. If you're compiling a whole season of a show and selling DVDs of it on the internet, then you're going to find yourself in trouble with the law. If you burn a copy of a game for a friend who can't afford it because he's a student and is scratching to get by, then what's the big deal? If you're a warez dude and you're cracking that game and letting thousands of complete strangers download it to show how cool you are, then you're a moron and you get what you deserve when they break your door down. I could go on and on but I think I make myself clear?
Re:Time Limits (Score:4, Insightful)
More people need to be aware that treating ideas as subject to absolute or near absolute property rights is implicitly totalitarian. The concept of intellectual property has lost its moorings as a means to promoting the public good by rewarding creators and has become the excuse for ever more authoritarian lawmaking.
I'm hoping that people who understand this will then realize that what is true of intellectual property is true of all other forms for much the same reason. Absolutist conceptions of property lead to hierarchy and authoritarianism. Anarcho-capitalism has this contradiction at its centre.
Here's to the submitter becoming a regular old anarchist. I've always liked them.
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:3, Insightful)
How, exactly, is all IP like genetic modification? If I write a piece of software, every single bit is my own creation (as opposed to your Monsanto example). So how is all IP like your Monsanto example?
I think the GP has the answer in the title of their original post: "artifical scarcity".
Like Monsanto's propietary genomes, your proprietary software is also artificially scarce. This is how they alike - their scarcity is not an essential aspect of their nature, but something which your business model ("IP") imposes on them artificially. Actually, your software could be replicated for free, i.e. at zero cost (or near as dammit). Your "IP" business model, for all its benefit to you, nevertheless requires that you mutilate the social utility of your product.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Capitalism: The real WTF: (Score:3, Insightful)
How the f**k did this comment get modded 'Insightful' ?
When a single corporation controls every product and service, there is no longer any incentive to develop new products and better services. Why do you think antitrust laws were enacted in the first place ? C'mon, we've been complaining for ages about how Microsoft sucked at innovation once they had eaten up 90% of the software market....
A corporation is supposed to make *profit*. If it can get away by just making obscene profits and bringing very little added value to its consumers, it will.
On the other hand, *some* corporations and some other kinds of organizations (non-profits, NGOs) may be ruled by a board that decides that a big part of the profits should be reinvested into R&D. It mainly depends on the people on the board. As long as profit sharks don't get the majority of the votes, there is still some hope that, even without any competition, innovation will be a priority. Otherwise, forget about it: short term profits are the rule, damn the consequences of giving the shaft to developers.
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
A farmer in a community can't do without paying Monsanto royalty fees a few years after another farmer in that community decides he wants to use them.
That system is inherently flawed because the protected property will spread all on it's own regardless of the wishes of the original user or any new involuntary users.
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
Monsanto invested a lot of time and money making their seeds. They did.
You know what? For millenia, men have spent their entire lives breeding stock or hybriding plants in order to get what they wanted. Did they own the rights to every offspring? No. They got to sell that animal or plant once. They could keep the genetic line in their possession and only sell meat or flour or whatever, but once that thing was out in the world, it was everyone's.
Tell me one good reason why GE is different.
Your are just totally wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
You do not have a right to what you did not create. If you want something, you should make it yourself. It's my land, my idea, my property, and you can go find your own. Your laziness and lack of creativity does not give you a right to steal.
Oh please don't go bleat on about having the right to food, housing or medical. Those things are important, yes, but, if they are so important than shouldn't you be willing to work for them?
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
That explanation is good enough for Monsanto, it should be good enough for you.
Re:Time Limits (Score:2, Insightful)
The more complex the social relationships are and the more people are participating in them, the less predictable are the needs and potential of an individual. Almost all goods are scarce: there is not enough of them for everyone to feel they have enough. The system of property rights promotes making responsible decisions with regards to what you want and encourages peaceful methods for obtaining it.
You can't have everything you want. Sometimes, this means making tough decisions. That it's tough does not mean it's unfair.
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
And if the gp wants some land to work on, he/she can work on my land, which is mine because somebody stuck a flag in it 200 years ago.
I'm a capitalist, but the gp has a point.
You could say wealth & resources are available to anyone who works hard enough. But the amount of wealth available to someone who works hard in the Congo is quite different from the wealth available to someone who works hard in the UK.
If you're willing to accept the benefits bestowed on you by your forefathers, perhaps you should be willing to accept responsibility for previous generations' injustices.
Adelle.
Re:artificial scarcity and capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
It's easy enough to point out failings of democracy and capitalism. The hard bit is to suggest something that will work better. And, I mean really work better, even when people try to game the system.
Capitalism has proven to be an impressively successful way to organize people to do things collectively. It needs a certain amount of political control and limitation to avoid the worst side-effects, but what's the alternative?
The essence of capitalism, after all, is that you can get someone to work for you by giving them money. It's a kind of persuasion that nicely fills the gap between saying "please" and threatening violence.
Re:Ideas are not equivalent to property (Score:3, Insightful)
And the consideration of something being 'unconstitutional' or not is immaterial. Intellectual Property works on a global basis (what with the interweb and all), ideas don't respect borders, and there's no constitution for the planet.
Re:no more artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahahahaha *excuse me*.
You forgot to mention that you should, by all means, avoid having any plants on your field being pollinated with pollen from Monsantos plants, because if this happens, one or two of the following might happen: 1) you get slapped with a lawsuit from Monsanto for infringing on their patented stuff, 2) your seeds (yes, in some parts of the world part of the harvest is still used as seeds for the next year) will fail to germinate, forcing you to buy your seeds from somewhere else.
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know about birthright, but who created your land? or your computer? or your shoes? Obviously you have no right to anything under your rules.
Who created the words you use to speak?
Believing in IP is equivalent to believing that the state and/or corporations should be able decide what you are allowed to *think*.
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
>It's my land,
How did you make the land?
Andrew
i'm not trying to be cruel or to troll (Score:5, Insightful)
i agree with you about ip, i hate it. i think ip law should be utterly destroyed. however, i object to your "i'm an anarcho-capitalist...". its your opening remark. and making it whiffs of desperation to be or feel different. i agree with your thinking, but the way you present yourself to the world is odious
your ideological self-description should be "normal". your radical agenda should be called "common sense". the point is, you are trying to appeal to other people, not distance yourself from them, and that's what you do, consciously, or subconsciously, you create a wedge, when you begin a sentence with this "i'm an anarcho-capitalist..." oh really? in other words, you're an average middle class suburban kid
do you want to destroy ip? or do you just want to tweak your ego? if you want ip destroyed, your job one is to make yourself appealing to the average joe. not drive a wedge against them. your ideology stands zero chance of succeeding in this world when you try to distance yourself from people rather than make yourself part of them. real politics trumps college aged identity politics
secondly, "anarcho-capitalism" is basically, somalia. sound superior? i thought not. so stop embracing ideology which appeal to college age kids with far too many textbooks and far too little real life experience. it is possible to destroy ip without becoming somalia. really. so lose the college age naivete
much like the college age girl who describes herself as a polyamorous bisexual and then becomes a suburban housewife with 2.3 kids and a dog in 10 years, you will be a cube dweller in 5 years if you continue calling yourself a bullshit label of "anarcho-capitalist". its not a real or valid ideology. its intellectual ephemera, fetishistic esoteric ideology, art house insularism. "anarcho-capitalism" is not a real, working valuable set of ideas. really. lose the bullshit label
i know you are going to be hostile to my words. i apologize if i sound too rough. i'm actually trying to be helpful and i don't know a softer way to say it. i think you will appreciate what i am saying one day
Re:Time Limits (Score:4, Insightful)
For most creators, IP has always failed at 1. The myth of the starving artist is not really a myth, but reality. The economics of IP has always benefited the already known or wealthy. The Internet, digitization and filesharing doesn't change the fact that it's very difficult to make money on creating imaginary goods. What it does, is lower the barrier-to-entry and create a slew of new business models based on offering the service of supplying the goods as opposed to selling rights to use the goods themselves. These business models are much more robust in light of new distribution models, and can in fact be seen as thriving from them whereas the old models wither and die.
The philosophical/social side of the equation looks like this: Intellectual Property = information.
Thus, if you want to control intellectual property, you need to be able to control the information exchanged between people. That is a very difficult thing to do, and will most likely give you a totalitarian society as a side effect.
A common spiritual understanding is needed (Score:1, Insightful)
Ok... IÂll bite.
"I don't acknowledge property rights. Why? Because property rights boil down to "I was here first, I stuck a flag in it, it is mine","
So you wonÂt mind if I take your apartment, your car, your TV, your first newborn? Maybe you donÂt have that, but anything you have, I can just take?
Excuse moi, but property is a concept as old as civilization. When youÂre dealing with 5-20 people in a scarce environment, sharing is needed and effective, but our spiritual evolvement today is far beneath for what is needed for sharing in a huge, abundant society. If you want to complain, complain about lack of spiritual education. By spiritual, meaning anything that makes diverse people uniting in harmony, is spiritual.
"and everything had a flag stuck in it before I was born, and I refuse to acknowledge a system that considers all of this to be someone elses property."
Contrary to your belief, _someone_ was here before you. The world does not revolve about you. Get over it.
"It is my birthright, to share with others of my generation. If you claim I do not have a right to my birthright, I consider that justification to kill you and take it by force."
So, by lack of actual reasoning, power and conviction, you will compensate by using or threatening to use force, exactly what is the difference by this methodology and every other on the block (used in USA, USSR, China, terrorists, etc?) You yourself argues against force below. Is it just because "they" are stronger than you? Is harmful force against someone somehow acceptable because you are weaker?
"As far as intellectual property and creative works are concerned, there are two ways to measure the value of those."
No, there is only one, beside from the bullshit ones. What other people are willing to give for it. ItÂs called market price. If you charge too much, it wonÂt sell. Too little, and you increase volume sales. Etc.
Say I have a Coke. I wonÂt sell it to you. ItÂs my choice. You canÂt force me to sell it for even 1 billion dollars.
Say I am willing to sell you a Coke for 1 million, but another is selling Coke for 10 pops. You obviously choose the cheapest one. You see how the responsibility of the deal is split between the two parties evenly?
ItÂs called market price. Look it up. ThereÂs written volumes of books on economics by smarter people than us combined, and they knew all the different philosophies and concepts much better too.
Nobody is arguing wether we need intellectual property in todayÂs society. But in what form is what is interesting, because we constantly need to shape our society to where we want to go. There is no doubt copyright shouldnÂt extend idefinately, and patents shouldnÂt cover algorithms etc.
I gather you watch movies now and then for example. Would you rather like to watch YouTube flicks (which is royalty free), or some bigger blockbuster movies? You have the royalty-free option now. With technological advancements, we have more options than ever, but still we need commercial enterprise in most parts of our lives.
What you are arguing about is a completely different society. This leads to frustration, because youÂre not dealing with the society weÂve got. YouÂre not helping at all, until you accept what youÂve got and be grateful for it. There will always be changes. If you work with them, you become more powerful.
Oh, you want a violent "revolution"? I tell you, this idea is sooo old. See how far they got with that in ALL the countries, leading ignorant people into newfangled ideas about how to distribute wealth "evenly". ItÂs fools gold, and violence give more problems.
Re:Time Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
Say you kill a landowner for his land. Now the land is yours. The next generation has no land. Who do you think they will want to kill?
Sorry, I do not want a war every generation because people feel it's their birthright to have land. It is not. Study, work, make money, buy it. I did, why can't you? If you try to take something that is rightfully mine because you are too lazy to work for it, then I reserve the right to kill you.
That is the evil of Communism, when you think everything belongs to everyone, individuals have nothing and the government owns everything. Anarchic Communism is even worse, because everyone thinks they have the right to everything, and without any government to keep the order, we'd be in a constant state of war.
Agree and disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
IF other countries haven't had that sort of chain of events take place, then, they aren't going to have that. In Kenya, for example, all of the good land is locked up by giant estates that are descendants of their colonial forbears. This arrangement was set up by the imperial powers to create products for export back to the mother country and on the cheap. So, in Kenya, you have thousands of acres of the very best farmland growing coffee for export to the West, all owned by a handful of people, while the vast majority of the country starves. The problem in these countries, is that, what happens is that a marxist revolution takes place, and the "people" wind up owning the land, but in practice the people are just another small gang of thugs and for the average guy, the situation hasn't changed at all, except what little he did have was lost in the revolution designed to liberate him.
Quite honestly, in those countries, what is needed is a redistribution of land into private ownership. You can't have an equitable system of property rights without everyone being able to own some sort of property!
Meritocracy (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the essence of the disposition of a man's estate after his death is to ask, what's best for the people. I do not see property rights as an excuse to create a nobility, but I do think it is right to want to give your children -something- extra. So, could a man that builds a small company be able to pass that to his kids? Yes. But, should the likes of a Bill Gates be able to enshrine his or her children? ER, no.
Property is a muddy concept at least, and one-liner generalizations like "You do not have a right to what you did not create" (or "Your are just totally wrong") don't describe it with justice nor can't be used as moral guidelines, at danger of making a radical out of you.
Nothing is ever absolute, but when confronted with a radical threatening to hang people, then you need to be able to make polarizing statements back.
Re:Meritocracy (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he has a valid point in noticing how "classic" property is not that different to intellectual property, as the moral principles stated to defend both are exactly the same; and if one can be contested, so can the other. In special one characteristic of property, that to be respected forever.
Also, as others have pointed out, your statements that property are related to "what you create" are totally misplaced, since many forms of property don't follow that form.
Re:In America we don't need kings for that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
It's my air, you can't breath it unless you pay me rent. See how silly this kind of thinking is? The only reason people get away with land monopoly is because it's easy to enforce, try enforcing a breathable air monopoly. It's very difficult and you'd be right to kill the person that attempted to do so.
This idea that property is a natural right is a farce, can someone own the sun or instance? You didn't create the sun, nor the earth, nor even yourself. Do I have a right to own people because I worked and invested money and all the resources in them? By your logic slavery should be perfectly legal, and you can own people and can be treat them as objects.
The truth is property rights are inconsistent across the board, people are made of the land, and when you create another human being you're investing resources and you're labor, yet we no longer allow the ownership of people, yet all they are is re-organized land.
Property Rights are just our backwards rationalization trying to solve complex problems and jusfify ou dominance over others in a world of scarcity, prejudice and mutual distrust and stupidity. Property is a form of tyranny when in the hands if idiots no matter which way you slice it, individual property rights ultimately has to compete with the rights of others and the common good. Any property someone owns they did not create, they merely re-organized what already existed.
IP is for socialists (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm puzzled why an anarcho-capitalist is so quick to embrace monopolies handed out by the government to private entities, which is what IP is. Myself, I'm more supportive of free markets where anyone can compete.
I thick government-granted monopolies is something a Guild Socialist [wikipedia.org] should support. Or maybe a Mussolini Fascist.
Re:Economies of scale. (Score:3, Insightful)
Monsanto creates higher yield per acre by making the plant immune to the total herbicide they manufacture, which allows for tons and tons of the stuff being dumped into the environment.
Here, fixed that for you.
Equivalent? Fax me that piano... (Score:2, Insightful)
The main problem I see with IP rights is that the products are all, without exception, built on the combined achievements of the human race over many thousands of years. In the case of biological patents they are also based on the achievements of natural selection. No one individual or company or group of individuals owns these achievements.
No book, song, program, drug, seed, invention or production concept is possible without the information, knowledge, education, systems and resources that preceded it.
The combination of all human intellectual capital in the public domain is the birthright of the entire human race, collectively and individually.
Therefore, profits from products created using our collective intellectual property and based on the artificial scarcity engendered by IP laws should be taxed at a much higher rate, say 60 to 70 percent. This public income stream should be earmarked to fund public support for R&D. This won't, and shouldn't, eliminate private R&D. Private corporations should be eligible for R&D funding, but resulting property rights should still be taxed at the higher rate or put in the public domain. Think of it as a public private partnership.
I wouldn't mind if authors, artists and musicians could be eligible for a bit of an R&D stipend here and there, but the most pressing need for this reform is in the pharmaceutical industry. A system that holds lives for ransom based on pharmaceutical patents seriously flawed if not criminal.
Re:Time Limits (Score:4, Insightful)
The most obvious problem with your comparison is that the rulers you cite took something away from other people and kept it for themselves and their cronies. The OP wants to liberate it for everyone's use.
Thus your next swing at the strawman fails as well:
The US Declaration of Independence declares rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Rights are tricky to define, but I think one facet of them is that they apply to everyone equally. When all the property is already sewn up before you appear on this earth, the right to pursue happiness is foreclosed. And please don't bother arguing that anyone can "pursue" happiness -- the phrase obviously means "effectively pursue," otherwise it would mean nothing.
All of that said, history shows us that "killing and taking" is a generally poor strategy for social progress. I prefer an immediate end to intellectual property -- Free Software shows us that it's not necessary for innovation -- and a very steep estate tax.
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how far back you follow the chain, nobody did. It was simply there. At some point somebody stuck a flag in it and said "This is mine, for no reason whatsoever other than that I'll kick your butt if you try taking it", and made that stick.
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say that, but you'd be wrong.
But the amount of wealth available to someone who works hard in the Congo is quite different from the wealth available to someone who works hard in the UK.
In the UK, as in most countries, the amount of wealth a person has is generally inversely proportional to how hard they've worked for it. The richest people are mostly the ones who inherited it and didn't work for it at all.
Intellectual "property" is rapidly reaching the same state. Consider the notorious copyright on the century-old "Happy Birthday" song. It is currently owned by Warner Chappell, and you'd be hard pressed to show that the officers of that corporation have ever done anything that qualifies as "work" to realize the several million dollars in royalties that it brings them each year. OTOH, the Hill sisters that wrote the song never received any income from it at all, but as elementary-school teachers, they worked rather hard their whole lives (and produced the song as part of their job).
This is typical of how Intellectual Property actually works. The actual creators rarely realize any significant income from their creators; the income generally goes to the owners of corporations that control the mass-production and distribution channels. This control generally comes not from any sort of hard work, but rather from financial and political power that makes it possible for them to exclude competition.
Re:In America we don't need kings for that (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest I'm not certain there's a difference. No matter where you are in the world you're on land which was once someone else's, and they were murdered or enslaved to get them off it. In the US that's more recently true than it is in Europe, but it's also true in Europe.
If you believe in property rights, now is the time to give the whole of the territorial United States back to the First Nations, because, with the exception of a very few small enclaves, they were there first and they didn't give it up voluntarily (and before you think I'm getting at Americans, the same is true virtually everywhere else on Earth, too).
If what you're saying is 'I believe in property rights, but only those rights which were established after my ancestors killed your ancestors', then I don' think you've got a very solid foundation for your rights.
This whole issue gets very complicated. Look at Israel/Palestine. The Israelis claim it's theirs, because their (cultural) ancestors were there first, even though they were driven out. The Palestinian Arabs claim it's theirs, because they've always lived there. Who's right? It turns out that the Palestinian Arabs are genetically closer to the ancient Jews than most modern Israelis are. So what counts, your genetic heredity, your cultural heritage, or your actual possession of the land? And if it's actual possession, when's the date from which we say property rights apply? Is it before 1948 or after?
I'm not picking on the Israelis particularly here, either. It's just that they are currently in the process which mostly finished in Britain by the eighteenth century and in the United States in the nineteenth, of driving indigenous people off their land by force. We've all done it. Everywhere in the world it's been done. No-one's innocent. But before you start talking about property rights, when's the date the rights start from?
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have the answer either. But I find it amazingly arrogant to think that ones wealth is entirely due to oneself. That's nonsense. Most of my wealth is because I'm lucky enough to be born at the richest of all times (until now) in one of the richest countries on earth, with two well-educated parents, and am surrounded by a population that in general is well-educated.
None of this, or at best a miniscule fraction of this, is due to me. Had I been born to a single, uneducated teenage mother in Ghana, my life would've been very -VERY- different.
Yes, your own hard work makes a difference. But it's not by far the only thing that makes a difference. Infact even with the least possible own work, I'd have ended up better-off than 95% of the people in Ghana.
Re:Time Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual property cannot be applied to plan (Score:3, Insightful)
*sighs* The fact that some plants reproduce asexually as well as sexually reinforces, rather than contradicts my point. Life attempts where possible to produce copies of itself.
Re:Time Limits (Score:3, Insightful)
it is competition for available resources, and the desire to control those resources, that leads to war, and in fact most forms of aggression (see behavioral ecology).
there are no inherent evils to communism, only to its implementation. nevertheless it is inherently flawed; it does not scale, and it rules out compensation for incentive (see heavens on earth: utopian societies in america for examples of successful egalitarian societies).
as for capitalism, its current implementation is inherently flawed as well. willful violation of laws regarding pollution, for example, are engendered by the fact that corporate officers are legally bound to create maximal returns for shareholders.
what is wrong with the UN is what is wrong with humanity (see above).
yes, an anarchy (Score:3, Insightful)
i appreciate your sarcasm, but then, not talking to you but talking in general, if the fruits of anarchy are so obvious, why do so many people think describing themselves as anarchists or "anarcho-blahblah" is supposed to make them look anything but utterly foolish or ignorant or stupid. or, more accurately, suburban middle class wannabes without a clue
Is it property? Then tax it. (Score:3, Insightful)
As a caveat, I'm drawing this from a USAdian background as the USA is where I'm from and seems to be the world's IP big dog, loose cannon, whatever.
What's under discussion here should not be called intellectual property. That's a name thought up by someone who held a bunch of copyrights and wanted to hold them forever. It's not property, it's a copyright or a patent or a trademark. It is not owned: It is held.
But the dream of corrupting the debate by introducing a biased term has come true, and even so-called anarcho-capitalists are now calling copyrighted material "intellectual property." Entertainment lawyers FTW.
The very first step in drawing back the madness, the very first one, is in a courtroom: The moment some suehappy company's lawyer says "intellectual property" in front of a judge, the defendant must object that the term has no real meaning and must be suppressed and never used in any court anywhere ever again and its use in the presence of a jury is grounds for a mistrial.
And if that doesn't work, hooray, because if it's intellectual property, then it's property, and property can be taxed.
So long as a company (or person) insists it "owns" an intellectual property, its value shall be assessed shall be taxed annually at a rate of one dollar plus a percentage of gross receipts the highest-grossing of the last five years. Make a billion dollars on it, be taxed on a billion-dollar estate. Tired of paying money on a billion-dollar estate? Place it in the public domain and it is now part of the creative commons. Forget to pay money on it? Public domain. It's been ninety years since it was published? Public domain -- and ninety years is simply insane. It should be fifty, or life plus twenty, max.
Copyrights and patents expire for a reason: By protecting materials for a period of time, the Constitution creates temporary monopolies as economic stimulus for creative efforts. By having copyrights and patents expire, The Constitution provides economic stimulus to the nation as a whole: copyrighted and patented materials become part of the pool from which new ideas and inventions can be derived.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your are just totally wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now, I'm just leaving Uni. I have very little money, no land, no property.
What I'd like is a croft (I live in Scotland). I'd be willing to build my own home, raise crops, sell "niche" stuff (candles, jewellery etc. )to turn a coin to buy the stuff I can't grow etc.
Only problem is "landowners". For some reason, because his great-great-great grandaddy helped the english king, there are whole islands "owned" by some rich english bastard (not saying that as a slur, I've met him, he is a total tool) who thinks they're "quaint", visits them once every decade, and has a lawyer who vigourously defends them from anyone who tries to actually use the land.
Think they generate a little income from some local farmers that lease the right to put sheep on them in summer; not something that need stop if someone occupied one of the many old crofts, like me, but sadly they don't think like that. They think about "holiday homes" and "timeshares".
It annoys the hell out of me. I could take that land, use it in an environmentally friendly way, growing subsistence crops, using ecofriendly power and waste management, making small products for the community, and in general making a positive addition to the local area.
But no, rich english landowner doesn't like that. So no go.
Saying that, there is an "eco-commune", a planned settlement, on Erraid, one of the Western Isles here in Scotland. Was thinking about joining them; they've pretty much done what I'd like to and gotten some landowner to donate their land.
Kinda like to do it myself though, so if you have land, and it's suitably arable, I'll take you up on that!
Re:Why dwell on the past? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Meritocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
A trust-fund baby will spend more unearned wealth during their lifetime than a welfare mother could ever dream of.
It's All About Scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an immense topic, so I'll focus on a few things which I've mentioned before.
1. "Real" Property encompasses those things which are truly economically scarce. By that I mean "things that can only be used simultaneously by a small finite number of people." For instance: a piece of land, a particular tool, a book (the physical object), etc. Real Property rights make sense, because it is possible to enforce by virtue of the location of the object. Note that a consumer/user of physical property has some typical social grants also: right of first sale, the concept that if you 'buy' the object, you can use is until it breaks with no additional compensation to the manufacturer than original (you don't pay annual license fees on a hammer for instance). (Note: Things like leases are different, because in those the 'customer' pays less than the "ownership" amount for a temporary use of the item. Observe: you can both buy and rent tools from stores like Home Depot - a large "consumer" construction supply store for those not familiar with it - you buy a tool it's yours, you rent it you have to return it later, but renting is far less expensive for a few days than buying a tool.)
2. "Intellectual" Property has some problems that current legal and social constructs do not address. The first is that currently the system tries to protect the work as the economically scarce item - the copy of the music, book, software, etc. Those things are not economically scarce though, because there is no loss of use to any number of individuals which may be utilizing an idea. Until the rules protect what is actually scarce - the people coming up with and implementing the ideas - then the system will be broken. Rather than strange licensing rules and copyrights and such, I would rather see forced "attribution rights" (for lack of a better term). That said, the only thing that really troubles me about "intellectual property" is the ability of people to continue to extract economic wealth from others for work that was done in the past without adding new value - things like forced annual licenses for software when a version that's three years old is fine for a particular need, or making tons of money off a song that was written thirty years ago. I don't have problems with artists making money off new performances (performances are a scarce economic good, so those fall under the "old" paradigms). This is why, of all the current forms of intellectual property, I think Trademark is the most sound as it is simply what I meant by attribution "rights" - it ensures the consumer that a particular product was created/developed by a particular entity and establishes brand image and gives real value to both the consumer and manufacturer/creator. It also allows for vast competition in a field - I can by a brand X widget or a brand Y widget depending on my tastes.
So what's the solution? I admit that I am not entirely sure, because there are problems with the current implementations of both real and "intellectual" property rights. What is really needed is a thoughtful consideration of the social goals of the concepts, and how to ensure that people remain free to think and tinker and make a living off (which is a distinct difference in my mind from "profit from") their works. Having any entity, even a government, tell you that you cannot implement an idea because someone else implemented it is a not-so-subtle form of slavery.
Re:Intellectual Property. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideas should never be treated as physical property. Only the physical constructs emerging from those ideas are actual property. Bring an idea to a working prototype, then get your patent. If you can do that, then you're a player in the game. If you can do that, then you get your construction, and not some mythical, not possible for twenty years construction, protected for a period of time. That's how the system should work. Then, and only then, does everyone benefit.
Consider this as a concrete example: If I steal an iPod, I should expect to be treated as a criminal. If I buy an iPod and rebuild it into a prototype of something newer and better, i.e. not just repainting it or giving it more storage capacity, I should be treated as an innovator, not a criminal. But, should I do that, I should be prepared for someone else to do the same to me.
*Does not apply to those who are have no intention of actually doing good with their patents.
Re:That was sorta what I was wondering (Score:3, Insightful)
All copying whatsoever is by definition spreading knowledge, spreading education, promoting the advancement of the useful arts and sciences.
Re:In America we don't need kings for that (Score:5, Insightful)
The type of people who have the sense of entitlement to the property of others, usually aren't that productive or cooperative, otherwise they would have property for themselves. At least in North America, where the majority of the working class are middle-class.
Property is an intellectual tool, that allows the property owners to become more powerful than non-property owners, and one that promotes long-term activity in the population (savings, investment, etc.). Property wins the social-evolution test as a stable and effective social system.
Social systems where anyone is allowed to take anything they want from someone else, pretty much only exists in a handful of pre-industrial societies, or in places where society gets messed up (i.e. immediately post-Katrina New Orleans)
Re:Time Limits (Score:1, Insightful)
I believe that intellectual property exists, but it's more like food than land. One person grows wheat, and that person deserves to be compensated for doing so. Then the next person takes the wheat and makes bread, then the next makes a sandwich, etc. Ideas grow off of each other. You have the right to benefit from your idea, but others have the right to build on it. This is why patents are public records available to everyone.
The point of defining intellectual property is, believe it or not, to encourage its development. Some things are created for the sheer joy of creating them. This is the best kind of creativity, but it does little to meet the immediate needs of society.
My favorite example of intellectual rights is the secretary who invented white-out. Naturally this was in the days before word processors. She went home one night and in sheer frustration designed a liquid paper to make her life easier. She probably would have shared it with all of her friends. But because she could patent and market it, people all of the world can still correct their typing quickly and neatly.
It's almost impossible to find actual white-out anymore, because people took the idea and found ways to make it better and less expensively. The inventor got her due, and now anyone can benefit from her idea. The current intellectual rights system helps to assure that inventors gain enough from spreading their ideas to make bringing them to the world worthwhile.
The great problem with intellectual property is it's not always easily reproduced. A textbook, for example, cannot be simply reverse-engineered. Likewise medications are very expensive to create, but are needed as soon as they are available. Neither of these options fit into the standard time-limit well. I don't believe that any system will ever meet the needs of all, which is why, unfortunately, we need humans to implement the systems. Asimov's robots were the perfect balance, but they haven't been invented and copied yet.
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Re:Why dwell on the past? (Score:3, Insightful)
Suppose instead of killing you, ShieldW0lf would wait after you naturally died, and only then take over your former (now unowned) property. Absolutely no crimes, no violence.
Would you then agree that he has a right to do that? On which base would you either allow or deny it?
There is no "intellectual property". (Score:3, Insightful)
What is happening is that these costs have been massively reduced, particularly for music.
The capital costs of music production have been cut by the development of good inexpensive digital mixers and sequencers like Garage Band... something that has been going on since the '70s, really, and which really started to take off as early as the late '80s. You still need a studio, and people with the skills to use these tools well, but you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to create studio quality masters.
Distribution costs have gone down almost to zero.
And sales costs have been reduced, since you don't need to maintain any inventory.
So the costs and risks involved in producing music for mass distribution have gone through the floor, and the industry that has evolved to manage the former high risk is going through a massive shrinkage... and trying to use the copyright laws created in the earlier period of high costs of production to fight one of the side effects of these changes.
But this has nothing to do with "intellectual property".
the solution to "intellectual property" is to recognize that it's a metaphor, and concentrate on the goals of the copyright system rather than treating it as something that's inherently important.
Shared wealth (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of "IP" law isn't to increase overall wealth. It's to increase individual, personal wealth. Those who support IP support the effective exploitation of shared and common heritage for their own gain.
The point of capitalism isn't to share, or to create the most overall wealth. It's to create the most personal wealth.
Sweden sounds like a good place.
Wrong paradigm... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. As a rabid libertarian, I used to, before RMS's arguments convinced me - although if he had not, I suspect the RIAA, MPAA, and Disney would have anyway.
The fact is simple: you cannot, and should not, lay claim to own something in someone else's mind. It's as simple as that. Intellectual "property" is nothing of the sort. The moment you introduce the idea that an idea itself can be "property" you automatically bring to bear the social mechanisms of enforcement of something already in the mind of another person. In other and simpler words: Thought Police. That is no definition of "liberty" that makes sense to me.
The idea of "property" was invented as a means to control access to and use of scarce resources. Intellect, despite the example of politicians all over the world, is simply not scarce.
Reasonable people can talk about the problem of compensating creators of new intellectual "property" - but only after they have rid themselves of the destructive meme of forcing it into the real estate mold.
anarcho-capitalism? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not? Just look a the current mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
is by far the best argument against treating "ideas" as "property". They are
ethereal, have no intrinsic value and are rarely something that you could claim
"clear title" to anyways. This "clear title" issue is the real problem. It is
nearly impossible for any creative work to be entirely the "property" of the
creator. Inevitably to create anything you will need to "steal" quite a bit of
other people's work. This undermines the notion of exclusive ownership of the
"original" owner and interferes with the creation of new works.
This is the core of the "patent" problem. Trivial derivative works (Tivo)
suddenly become issues of massive legal liability.
Creative works are not property, they're capital.
Follow the law, for starters (Score:3, Insightful)
I do believe that traditional United States copyright law is fine, except that
(a) the amendments to the term of copyright are unconstitutional, because they exceed the authority conferred by the Constitution,
(b) "fair use" needs to be more clearly defined and expanded to provide some kind of safe harbor to creative people, and
(c) the statutory damages sections need to be amended to reflect modern technology which permits mass reproduction of inexpensive files and micropayments in such areas as peer to peer file sharing.
And by 'traditional United States copyright law' I would include the traditional customs and practices of copyright lawyers, who traditionally would seek to avoid, rather than precipitate, unnecessary litigation, by the use of cease and desist agreements.
The bizarre litigation campaign of the RIAA and MPAA and their European alter egos bears no resemblance to traditional United States copyright law.
Re:The goal should be innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is that ideas ARE NOT PROPERTY.
The real problem is that people assume that practices that are good to encourage efficient use of scarce resources will apply to non-rivalrous goods.