5 ms·

How is intellectual property a public good issue? It's easy to, for example, sell a book to a single person, with a contract written to protect the author (from

by curi 19y ago

How is intellectual property a public good issue? It's easy to, for example, sell a book to a single person, with a contract written to protect the author (from distribution of copies, or whatever). A public good issue is, say, when you build a dam that helps an entire flood valley, and people living there can get the benefit of your work without paying you, by refusing to agree to any contract with you. I don't see that an author faces that kind of issue. Enforcing a contract is another matter, and has become very hard for some types of intellectual property, but that is different than a public good problem, in which no one is breaking the law.

davidw 19y ago
Books aren't the "problem": digital content is. Digital content is certainly non-rivalrous - if I download a copy of a movie, it's not affecting anyone else's ability to use their own copy. The tricker one is excludability. It's sort of possible with digital goods, but it doesn't work very well, and it appears to be working less well the more people get access to fast connections and lose their qualms about copying things. It's a tough problem. People like Stallman would like to have the government step in and take charge (if I've understood his position correctly), but I think that's a terrible solution. You could just leave things to "Coasian solutions", which is what a lot of open source software seems to be (the Apache web server, for instance), but you would probably never get stuff like the things Apple produces in that case. Custom software, governed by contracts between two parties, probably wouldn't suffer as much.
- curi 19y ago
  OK, I just don't think that the difficulty of enforcing certain legal contracts, should be conflated with a public good problem. It's fundamentally a different kind of issue. Music downloaders are not free riders. They've broken the law (at least the uploader has clearly broken his contract with the artist not to do this). In a classic public good case, like the flood valley and dam, the difficulty is that people who own property in the valley, and break no laws by continuing to farm there, benefit from the flood control that the dam owner can't prevent from affecting their property. Which is only a problem because it gives them an incentive to get their neighbors to pay for the dam, while not doing so themselves.
  - davidw 19y ago
    Sure, good point, but consider that the IP laws that exist in the first place are an attempt to make property out of something where 'property' doesn't really exist in the physical sense. In the case of a book or a song in the era of records, it was a pretty good solution, as enforceable property rights were a pretty good way of encouraging people to produce material that even then could be copied without too much trouble. These days though, that compromise seems to be creaking under the strain of new technology, and is due for a revision. I'm not sure what the answers are, but I still like the idea of looking at it as a compromise between producers and consumers that should give something to each one. Giving nothing to the producers will discourage production of those kinds of goods. Give too much power to the producers in an age where copying is so easy means using fairly heavy-handed and invasive government power to enforce their rights.
    - gnaritas 19y ago
      As the music industry is now learning... music is a service, not a product. Its short run as a product (records, tapes, CDs) was an artificial creation that still made some sense when bound to physical media (a product). No one really has a good solution yet, but it seems that information really doesn't like being a product.
      - rms 19y ago
        One of these days, information is going to be free, I promise you.
        bayareaguy 19y ago
        If I ever get a pet, I'm going to name it 'information' just so you can keep your promise.
        rms 19y ago
        Well, for metaphor's sake, I hope Information can fend for himself in the wild.

by curi 19y ago

davidw 19y ago

Books aren't the "problem": digital content is. Digital content is certainly non-rivalrous - if I download a copy of a movie, it's not affecting anyone else's ability to use their own copy. The tricker one is excludability. It's sort of possible with digital goods, but it doesn't work very well, and it appears to be working less well the more people get access to fast connections and lose their qualms about copying things. It's a tough problem. People like Stallman would like to have the government step in and take charge (if I've understood his position correctly), but I think that's a terrible solution. You could just leave things to "Coasian solutions", which is what a lot of open source software seems to be (the Apache web server, for instance), but you would probably never get stuff like the things Apple produces in that case. Custom software, governed by contracts between two parties, probably wouldn't suffer as much.

curi 19y ago
OK, I just don't think that the difficulty of enforcing certain legal contracts, should be conflated with a public good problem. It's fundamentally a different kind of issue. Music downloaders are not free riders. They've broken the law (at least the uploader has clearly broken his contract with the artist not to do this). In a classic public good case, like the flood valley and dam, the difficulty is that people who own property in the valley, and break no laws by continuing to farm there, benefit from the flood control that the dam owner can't prevent from affecting their property. Which is only a problem because it gives them an incentive to get their neighbors to pay for the dam, while not doing so themselves.
- davidw 19y ago
  Sure, good point, but consider that the IP laws that exist in the first place are an attempt to make property out of something where 'property' doesn't really exist in the physical sense. In the case of a book or a song in the era of records, it was a pretty good solution, as enforceable property rights were a pretty good way of encouraging people to produce material that even then could be copied without too much trouble. These days though, that compromise seems to be creaking under the strain of new technology, and is due for a revision. I'm not sure what the answers are, but I still like the idea of looking at it as a compromise between producers and consumers that should give something to each one. Giving nothing to the producers will discourage production of those kinds of goods. Give too much power to the producers in an age where copying is so easy means using fairly heavy-handed and invasive government power to enforce their rights.
  - gnaritas 19y ago
    As the music industry is now learning... music is a service, not a product. Its short run as a product (records, tapes, CDs) was an artificial creation that still made some sense when bound to physical media (a product). No one really has a good solution yet, but it seems that information really doesn't like being a product.
    - rms 19y ago
      One of these days, information is going to be free, I promise you.
      - bayareaguy 19y ago
        If I ever get a pet, I'm going to name it 'information' just so you can keep your promise.
        rms 19y ago
        Well, for metaphor's sake, I hope Information can fend for himself in the wild.