5 ms·

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 cost

by 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".
  - msandford 11y ago
    > it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work I don't see how protecting the publishers so they can profit from the work is any different than encouraging things to be made in the first place. In a world with no big companies publishing and no copyright, the introduction of copyright allows authors to restrict copying and thus to get paid for their work. The introduction of publishers doesn't change this dynamic. It moves writing from something that's done either altruistically or through patronage into the realm of something you can do as a business. The people doing the printing get paid either way since they're charging you per page or per copy or whatever. They actually don't really care what the content is, how it's protected, etc. Their business model is predicated on real tangible things, namely paper and ink. Writing isn't predicated on the restriction of real tangible things so much as intangible ones; a book is much, much more about the information it contains than the actual paper or bits that make it up. Which is why copyright is considered intellectual property, not real property.

by tfgg 11y ago

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".
- msandford 11y ago
  > it was to protect publishers so they could profit from the work I don't see how protecting the publishers so they can profit from the work is any different than encouraging things to be made in the first place. In a world with no big companies publishing and no copyright, the introduction of copyright allows authors to restrict copying and thus to get paid for their work. The introduction of publishers doesn't change this dynamic. It moves writing from something that's done either altruistically or through patronage into the realm of something you can do as a business. The people doing the printing get paid either way since they're charging you per page or per copy or whatever. They actually don't really care what the content is, how it's protected, etc. Their business model is predicated on real tangible things, namely paper and ink. Writing isn't predicated on the restriction of real tangible things so much as intangible ones; a book is much, much more about the information it contains than the actual paper or bits that make it up. Which is why copyright is considered intellectual property, not real property.