Economic Gridlock – the Invisible Cost of IP Law

smellsofbikes writes "This week's New Yorker magazine has a financial article, 'The Permission Problem,' discussing the hidden cost of patent, trademark and copyright laws. It's a subject anyone here already knows well, but he brings up two interesting points: 1) He uses the term 'tragedy of the anticommons.' Instead of depletion of a shared resource, this describes under-use of hoarded resources: areas that can't be explored because they're encumbered by patent/copyright issues. As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see. I like the term 'tragedy of the anticommons' because it encapsulates a long-winded explanation into a pithy, memorable phrase that will stick with people unfamiliar with the topic. 2) He also cites a study by Ben Depoorter and Sven Vanneste that discusses why anticommons effects are seen, beyond mere competition. Individual right holders value their contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the project value, so if there are more than three or four right holders, their perceived value can far exceed the total value of the project, making it uneconomical."

Re:Another form of gridlock

[russotto]

What if the newcomer develops a new method of transportation? Hovercraft, jetpack, skycar, Segway?

Then he's sued out of business because chances are, his novel method of transportation infringes on at least one of the big boys' patents. Sure, his propulsion method is new... but what about that suspension? OK, he's got a new suspension... but the fuel delivery system is covered. Or the windscreen.

Move it back to 14 years.

[khasim]

Copyrights / patents ... if you cannot turn a profit in 14 years then it's your fault.

The system was not ORIGINALLY intended to provide someone with a lifetime's worth of income. It was to ENCOURAGE development.

Re:Another form of gridlock

[localman]

Your take is absolutely correct. A place I worked got a letter from NCR once we got big enough. It basically said: "You are in the computer industry, therefore you are almost surely violating some of our patents. Either cough up x% of your revenue, or we'll go to court and find out which patents you're violating."

Re:What nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

That was quite the condescending and worthless analysis that totally misses great swaths of the societal costs of IP law.

vincent gallo said ti best

[circletimessquare]

i'm no big fan of his work, but he obviously takes his work very seriously, and he has won amount of critical acclaim, so these words from him mean a lot to me (an interview from aintitcool.com from 2004 [aintitcool.com]):

Capone: The songs selections here are inspired at times. I really liked the Gordon Lightfoot song "Beautiful."

V.G.: Thank you. The amount of time I spent choosing the music of the film would be unbelievable to you. The funny thing is, when it's not right, you spend all your time playing songs for people saying, "What do you think of this one? How about this one? How about this one?" You're dying, when you're on that level. When you hit it, it's so obvious and you immediately get a desperate feeling that says, "How am I going to get the rights? Are they going to fuck me on the rights to this song?" And guess who are the worst people in the movie business. The licensing people. They are most miserable, mean, selfish, insensitive, regressive, unproductive on the planet earth. You don't know what it's like to feel so strong about something and not have a budget to make that go away. It's not like I was looking to get some Paul McCartney song for my movie; I'm talking about esoteric music. Some of the music in the film didn't even exist, I had to rebuild the original master tapes that had decomposed. I had to re-bake the tape stock, the emulsion on the tape had peeling off. I'm the only person in the world who would salvage this particular recording because I had an original three-track machine and I knew how to bake that type of Ampex tape. The tape would have disappeared in two more years, and it's highly spliced. Then to be ballbusted for a year and a half on the licensing on that music. We talk about how long it took for me to get the film out after Cannes was because the film wasn't ready due to negative problems. I wanted to use this technique to blow up the negative in a new way. That's why I waited so long to finish the film. But it turns out that I would have had to wait seven, eight months anyway was the releases for the music. If you were dealing with the musician directly, you wouldn't have these problems. It's the people representing these artists that kill the process. I realize if you want to use the Beatles song "Revolution" to sell eyeglasses, I understand the exploitation of that. I understand that I'm using culturally significant relics to manipulate people into attaching those to my product. But if I'm using a rare piece of music by and unknown artist, not to brag, but the people whose music I use in my films sell way more records than they were selling before they were in my film. Proof of it is, the Italian artist who did this one jazz piece in my movie had sold 600 copies worldwide before my movie. Before my film was released just on the announcement that they were included people tracked down the music, and they sold something like 6,000 more copies. Why you're treated like you're exploiting this music makes no sense. If they're going to make a tough deal for you, just be up front about it. But this sort of, "We don't have time for you. What do you want?" stringing along is nonsense. And I'm the producer on THE BROWN BUNNY. I didn't have a music supervisor. I did the licensing for BUFFALO 66 and THE BROWN BUNNY. And of all my memories of making the film, that's my most painful memories.

so the real perversion here is the guy who discovers something obscure, labors over it to rescue it from decaying media, make it popular again by distributing it in new art, which means more exposure for the original artist, and what thanks does he get for that? HE GETS PUNISHED

that's the state of intellectual property

fuck intellectual property

the entire concept is bankrupt

we need to not just ignore, but we must somehow actively subvert and destroy, to the best we can, the bankrupt, dead concept so called intellectual property

its a dead fucking farce