5 ms·

Governments should not own copyrights. A copyright is the ownership to a published work. However, taxpayers paid for the creation of the work, so they are the

Governments should not own copyrights. A copyright is the ownership to a published work. However, taxpayers paid for the creation of the work, so they are the actual owners. Since everyone owns the work, there is no enforceable right.

danharaj 11y ago
Tax money is not taxpayer money. As soon as one pays their taxes, it is no longer their money. If taxpayers want tax money used in a certain way, they should convince voters to tell the government to use it in that way. That's how taxes work. Talking about 'taxpayer money' is language trying to establish an entitlement to tax money that tax payers do not have. It is anti-democratic language because in trying to establish such a spurious entitlement, it throws the power of the electorate to dictate government under the bus. I'm curious where all the assertions in your argument came from, because they do not come from law, and they do not come from classical Liberalism which is the foundation of western democracies. I've only ever seen it trotted out in an attempt to establish a relation of accountability between governments and property owners instead of the foundational relation of accountability between governments and voters. Doesn't sound so nice, really.
tfgg 11y ago
While I agree with the conclusion that mapping data should be free, since it's useful infrastructure and will probably help the entire economy more than it costs to make it free, I don't see how your argument necessarily follows. Governments can own things in a way that doesn't mean that everyone has property rights over it -- just a democratic right to influence how it is used. The government owns the pavement, that doesn't mean I can dig it up and take it away (copyright is different from this, but just to illustrate "government propety" != "everyone's property") In the case of mapping data, a government can choose the invest money in a product, which it then sells to a subset of the population. Charging means that taxpayers pay less. It also means there are direct customers that can drive the development of the product along the economically highest impact lines.
- msandford 11y ago
  You have to have some context in order for the argument against government owning copyrights to make sense. 1. Copyright was created in order to encourage the creation of things that might not otherwise be created were copyright not to exist; books, magazines, etc that without copyright nobody would have incentive to produce as anyone could just COPY it without investing the time to create it first 2. Copyright is thus a legal construct for ensuring that the people who did some creative or laborious act had SOME way of getting paid, namely rationing it economically 3. The government has already paid for the work to be done through taxes and this power is basically absolute; if you disagree try and not pay taxes and see how long you stay out of prison 4. Charging people for things the government does may or may not be more economically efficient, it really depends on the cost associated with the infrastructure to accept payments and ration out the goods versus the cost of simply publishing for free, in recent times it's gotten cheaper to publish and cheaper to accept money 5. The idea that the government has any right to ration information as opposed to physical goods is a tough sell because once the information is created and the marginal cost of replicating it is zero or very close to, what is the charging mechanism for? I totally get why it might be better to ration roads or schools or whatever; they're tangible things and there's not an infinite amount of them. But everyone in the US can have a copy of the map for effectively free once it's been created so there's not a lot of good argument (at least in my opinion) why it shouldn't be free.
  - tfgg 11y ago
    I understand the history of copyright, but in general I don't understand why copyright can't be an incentive for governments to create and maintain information products such as maps, just as much as it is for companies/individuals. Without copyright and the ability to charge for use, the government might not want to spend the larger amount of money to create or maintain the dataset.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    >Copyright was created in order to encourage the creation of things that might not otherwise be created were copyright not to exist; // I'm really not so sure about this: initially, like in the Statute of Anne it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work. This has a side-effect of encouraging creation in that content creators know they have the chance to make money rather than just having their work duplicated freely. But in current renditions of copyright law the public domain is (or was) an important element - works that would otherwise have been held privately can be duplicated when the work is older, enriching the public domain just as patents enrich[ed] the public domain with information about inventions. I think your assertion goes a step too far. WRT the US Constitution'd "copyright" clause [which I'm imagining you had in mind] isn't a million miles away but "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" could as easily be about making knowledge public as it is about rewarding authors of "Writings".
notahacker 11y ago
As a taxpayer, I'd much rather the government made a profit from its commercially-motivated research or IP ventures rather than simply spending its tax revenues underwriting the profits of third parties that copy its work.

danharaj 11y ago

Tax money is not taxpayer money. As soon as one pays their taxes, it is no longer their money. If taxpayers want tax money used in a certain way, they should convince voters to tell the government to use it in that way. That's how taxes work. Talking about 'taxpayer money' is language trying to establish an entitlement to tax money that tax payers do not have. It is anti-democratic language because in trying to establish such a spurious entitlement, it throws the power of the electorate to dictate government under the bus. I'm curious where all the assertions in your argument came from, because they do not come from law, and they do not come from classical Liberalism which is the foundation of western democracies. I've only ever seen it trotted out in an attempt to establish a relation of accountability between governments and property owners instead of the foundational relation of accountability between governments and voters. Doesn't sound so nice, really.

tfgg 11y ago

While I agree with the conclusion that mapping data should be free, since it's useful infrastructure and will probably help the entire economy more than it costs to make it free, I don't see how your argument necessarily follows. Governments can own things in a way that doesn't mean that everyone has property rights over it -- just a democratic right to influence how it is used. The government owns the pavement, that doesn't mean I can dig it up and take it away (copyright is different from this, but just to illustrate "government propety" != "everyone's property") In the case of mapping data, a government can choose the invest money in a product, which it then sells to a subset of the population. Charging means that taxpayers pay less. It also means there are direct customers that can drive the development of the product along the economically highest impact lines.

msandford 11y ago
You have to have some context in order for the argument against government owning copyrights to make sense. 1. Copyright was created in order to encourage the creation of things that might not otherwise be created were copyright not to exist; books, magazines, etc that without copyright nobody would have incentive to produce as anyone could just COPY it without investing the time to create it first 2. Copyright is thus a legal construct for ensuring that the people who did some creative or laborious act had SOME way of getting paid, namely rationing it economically 3. The government has already paid for the work to be done through taxes and this power is basically absolute; if you disagree try and not pay taxes and see how long you stay out of prison 4. Charging people for things the government does may or may not be more economically efficient, it really depends on the cost associated with the infrastructure to accept payments and ration out the goods versus the cost of simply publishing for free, in recent times it's gotten cheaper to publish and cheaper to accept money 5. The idea that the government has any right to ration information as opposed to physical goods is a tough sell because once the information is created and the marginal cost of replicating it is zero or very close to, what is the charging mechanism for? I totally get why it might be better to ration roads or schools or whatever; they're tangible things and there's not an infinite amount of them. But everyone in the US can have a copy of the map for effectively free once it's been created so there's not a lot of good argument (at least in my opinion) why it shouldn't be free.
- tfgg 11y ago
  I understand the history of copyright, but in general I don't understand why copyright can't be an incentive for governments to create and maintain information products such as maps, just as much as it is for companies/individuals. Without copyright and the ability to charge for use, the government might not want to spend the larger amount of money to create or maintain the dataset.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  >Copyright was created in order to encourage the creation of things that might not otherwise be created were copyright not to exist; // I'm really not so sure about this: initially, like in the Statute of Anne it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work. This has a side-effect of encouraging creation in that content creators know they have the chance to make money rather than just having their work duplicated freely. But in current renditions of copyright law the public domain is (or was) an important element - works that would otherwise have been held privately can be duplicated when the work is older, enriching the public domain just as patents enrich[ed] the public domain with information about inventions. I think your assertion goes a step too far. WRT the US Constitution'd "copyright" clause [which I'm imagining you had in mind] isn't a million miles away but "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" could as easily be about making knowledge public as it is about rewarding authors of "Writings".

notahacker 11y ago

As a taxpayer, I'd much rather the government made a profit from its commercially-motivated research or IP ventures rather than simply spending its tax revenues underwriting the profits of third parties that copy its work.