6 ms·

digital property should not work under exclusive principles (unlike physical property which has to). to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property mea

digital property should not work under exclusive principles (unlike physical property which has to). to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property means we choose to abandon one of the key advantages of digital information. it means we favor owning things over being free.

hopefulengineer 8y ago
why would any company invest in R&D if it could just be immediately taken for free?
- kingraoul3 8y ago
  Because their competitors are doing so, and would be able to outcompete them at the point of sale based on price.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Something something open source
- rudolph9 8y ago
  The idea is stealing is not a black and white concept. Stealing something digital generally has very different effects than stealing something physical. For example, if someone the software I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I loose out on revenue I would have otherwise received from them. If someone uses the car I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I am out thousands of dollars, I have no means to get to work, and no means of purchasing groceries. Stealing is not black and white and rules and regulations should reflect that.
  - mLuby 8y ago
    What?! Stealing is a super simple concept: what the owner will not give, the thief takes anyway. You could try to argue theft in contexts where the owner's willingness to give is ambiguous is not clear-cut (eg taking one piece of candy from the jar is fine but taking all the candy is theft), but that's ambiguity in communication and cultural convention, not in the concept of theft itself.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      Really it isn't stealing in intellectual content period - it is infringement. There are many groups conflating the two but they have very distinct meanings. In order for something to be stolen it must be taken away. If you make an award winning painting and hang it on your mantleplace and I paint a perfect copy of it that doesn't mean that it is suddently missing from your house. I may have devalued it and I certainly would have infringed but not stolen anything. Even ownership has such radically different meanings between the two they probably shouldn't have the same word. There is a vast space of things that nobody owns called the public domain. Saying you can't own a chair would be a bizarre invasion of rights. It doesn't matter how long chairs have been around - the fact it existed in the wood age doesn't mean you can no longer own one. Saying that you own the concept of all chairs and all must pay tribute is a downright bizarre megalomania. They have existed from the wood age and long before any current civilizations were even alive - to claim exclusive ownership of something so universal and ancient is absurd. Intellectual property isn't a natural right by any means - it is a pragmatic policy granted by governments meant to serve a purpose. It operates based upon treaties in the first place. A hypothetical newly discovered underwater civilization copying from our airwaves would not be cause for military intervention. The same underwater civilization robbing freighters for cargo would be cause for intervention.
      - readbeard 8y ago
        You’re right—the use of the term “intellectual property” has muddled public discourse on this important issue. Society as a whole benefits from a robust system of copyright, trademarks and patents to incentivize art and innovation. But just as too weak a system will slow innovation by making it less financially viable, too strong a system will slow innovation by making it harder and more expensive to build new things out of old ones. We need to strike a balance, but the popular notion that ideas and expressions are strongly analogous to real property will likely lead to policies that are, on balance, harmful.  That IP law in the U.S. was conceived of as an economic incentive issue—and not an ethical one—is strongly suggested in the “copyright clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” [0] Thomas Jefferson elaborated on his own views on IP in a letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813 [1]: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.” To reiterate a bit of what you said, if “intellectual property” is not property at all, it cannot be stolen—only infringed upon. And the difference is important because whereas theft is a violation of natural law, infringement is a violation of the rules of a specific society. China is a different society and it has different rules. If we want to make respecting our country’s copyrights, trademarks and patents a precondition of trade, that seems like a good idea—but we should just say that. The drama of calling it “theft” is unnecessary and wrong. By the way, I recently read and recommend “Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction” [2] by Siva Vaidhyanathan for an all-around introduction to intellectual property. [0] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/ [1] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-property-a-very-short-introduction-9780195372779?cc=us&lang=en& https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-propert...
rayiner 8y ago
Why not? There is more merit to exclusive ownership of digital property than physical property. My entitlement to my yard is pretty comical—that land was there a billion years before I was born and will be there a billion years after I’m dead. But Captain Marvel? That’s a thing that only exists in the universe due to the labor of certain humans. Why shouldn’t they own it?
- naringas 8y ago
  because it's a slippery slope that seems to constantly slide away from liberty and towards property for most of civilization's history. there's gotta be some equilibrium, which is precisely why copyright was originally intended to be a temporary thing.
  - cestith 8y ago
    Temporary, yes, and it should also have certain exceptions. Exceptions should include things like reverse engineering for making compatible accessories or compatible competitive products. They should include fair use for critique and criticism. They should include the right to resell your property and to repair or customize your own copy of a property. There are probably valid and important exceptions I'm not listing. During that limited term and subject to those exceptions though copyright should be solidly enforced. Otherwise the people creating things will just be ripped off wholesale by people who do nothing but rip them off and relabel things. Now, I think the copyright term is far too long. It is especially too long for abandoned works. I'd like to see something akin to trademark rules applied to copyright, in which if you're not offering a work or a work directly derived from it for X years the term ends early. The maximum term should be a bit shorter than it is for the specific work, too, but I think suing people for copying or modifying something you are no longer willing to sell them is asinine.
- harryh 8y ago
  A person can enforce ownership of their physical property by themselves. Intellectual property enforcement requires the massive power of the state. One might argue that we should prefer a world in which that sort of massive power is used sparingly.
amelius 8y ago
> to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property means we choose to abandon one of the key advantages of digital information You forget that another key advantage of digital information is that we can have a digital economy.
- naringas 8y ago
  I am more interested in being free than having an economy. then again, I speak as a human being, not as a profit motivated institution.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    These arguments are pretty weak and end up doing more harm than saying nothing. There are strong arguments in favor of limiting copyright as it was originally intended (in the US constitution at least). Where the limited time monopoly exists to incentivize people to create, but where the goal is to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the public benefit. Long term ownership and control can stifle science and art with owners shutting down tenuously connected derivative work.
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    I need to ask you an honest question: have you every run your own business ? If not, you should try it, it's a really eye-opening experience that will give you really valuable insight into the world that we live in. The one thing that you will learn is that we are all creatures of the environment we operate in, and very few of us actually have economic/political power that extends very far, so one should always be very careful about ascribing ulterior motives to other people. Most of the time, people just want to make a decent amount of money so that they can have a nice life with their families.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  I'm skeptical of the idea that this is an advantage.
kodablah 8y ago
> it means we favor owning things over being free. That statement lacks a lot of nuance and presents it as a binary, mutually exclusive choice. Absolutist stances like this don't help the situation which is rife with many use cases that are and aren't valid. You can have this as a general principle you prefer, but it cannot work as an hard-fast rule for all digital properties.
- naringas 8y ago
  I agree... I really advocate for an equilibrium between property and liberty. But throurough my short life on earth I've perceived a stronger pull towards property which (again, seeking equlibrium) makes me use a more extreme language in support of the other viewpoint... counterbalance.
  - news_to_me 8y ago
    I hope you find, as you get older, that it's better to strongly advocate a balanced and considered message, rather than a simple but extreme one. Extreme positions may be more emotionally satisfying, but they bring a host of long-term disadvantages. An easy example of this is the current division in US politics due to extreme positioning.
    - OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
      hah don't have too strong an opinion
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      On the other hand, plenty of well educated people seem to grow up and reach the opposite conclusion - that the only solution to some endemic problems, which keep occurring despite changes in leadership, is a radical one. Simplicity sometimes is the best solution.
    - naringas 8y ago
      I suppose the tricky thing about advocating a balanced message in this specific topic is that nobody really knows what a good working equilibrium should be regarding these issues. I mean, it's a contentious issue for China and the USA... My view on the matter is that us (as global humans in a global civilization) have yet to figure out how to strike a balance in this world with an Internet.
wpietri 8y ago
It's an interesting principle, but if you want people to adopt it, I think you have to show how the benefits are greater than the costs. America's first copyright law goes back to 1790, or about 200 years before most people owned computers. It was adopted because people saw benefit in rewarding the people who created books and maps. We've extended IP protection over the years for reasons bad and good. If you want to get rid of that, you need to explain how we'll get the same or better benefits with your approach. Because from my perspective supporting the current system means means I favor writers and musicians and researchers and artists getting paid for the good things they create over abstract principles.
- waddlesworth 8y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with the parent, but the current system supports publishers, journals and rights-holders far more than it does artists and researchers. Until we have a popular means of paying artists directly, or self-publishing, this will continue to be the case.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Sure. Some of that's illegitimate, but some of it definitely isn't. Publishers do valuable things too. For example, writer John Scalzi here answers the question of why he doesn't self-publish: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/05/25/about-that-deal/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/05/25/about-that-deal/ (See under "Why are you sticking with traditional publishing!") And I'll note that in addition to the obvious functions of editing, marketing, talent development, and vendor management, they also provide capital. One could say correctly that it's perfectly possible for software to all be sold by single individuals. But most software is produced by companies, quite a lot of whom take up-front investment.
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    We do have ways of self-publishing or paying creators directly: the internet. Anyone can pop up a web site and start selling their wares with minimal fuss. It costs a couple of thousand bucks to set up an internet-based company in the US, with the majority of the money going to incorporation. Payment processing services, payroll services, tax/accounting services, hosting services, etc. are all super-cheap and don't require a lot of work. Sometimes I have to stop myself from constantly grumbling "kids these days...", but wow, I'm seeing a lot of young people erecting mental barriers to acting on their dreams and aspirations. It's never been easier to make money in this country, but you have to a) put in the hours, b) stop giving away your stuff for free, and c) manage your expectations - nobody is saying that you're going to win the lottery by becoming the next Google or FB.
TimJYoung 8y ago
Which is fine, but don't be surprised if the majority of the people choose to do other things and not produce the very thing that you want produced. Jaron Lanier talks about this a lot in his books and speaking engagements, and I would highly recommend his books for a better perspective.

hopefulengineer 8y ago

why would any company invest in R&D if it could just be immediately taken for free?

kingraoul3 8y ago
Because their competitors are doing so, and would be able to outcompete them at the point of sale based on price.
wetpaws 8y ago
Something something open source
rudolph9 8y ago
The idea is stealing is not a black and white concept. Stealing something digital generally has very different effects than stealing something physical. For example, if someone the software I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I loose out on revenue I would have otherwise received from them. If someone uses the car I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I am out thousands of dollars, I have no means to get to work, and no means of purchasing groceries. Stealing is not black and white and rules and regulations should reflect that.
- mLuby 8y ago
  What?! Stealing is a super simple concept: what the owner will not give, the thief takes anyway. You could try to argue theft in contexts where the owner's willingness to give is ambiguous is not clear-cut (eg taking one piece of candy from the jar is fine but taking all the candy is theft), but that's ambiguity in communication and cultural convention, not in the concept of theft itself.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Really it isn't stealing in intellectual content period - it is infringement. There are many groups conflating the two but they have very distinct meanings. In order for something to be stolen it must be taken away. If you make an award winning painting and hang it on your mantleplace and I paint a perfect copy of it that doesn't mean that it is suddently missing from your house. I may have devalued it and I certainly would have infringed but not stolen anything. Even ownership has such radically different meanings between the two they probably shouldn't have the same word. There is a vast space of things that nobody owns called the public domain. Saying you can't own a chair would be a bizarre invasion of rights. It doesn't matter how long chairs have been around - the fact it existed in the wood age doesn't mean you can no longer own one. Saying that you own the concept of all chairs and all must pay tribute is a downright bizarre megalomania. They have existed from the wood age and long before any current civilizations were even alive - to claim exclusive ownership of something so universal and ancient is absurd. Intellectual property isn't a natural right by any means - it is a pragmatic policy granted by governments meant to serve a purpose. It operates based upon treaties in the first place. A hypothetical newly discovered underwater civilization copying from our airwaves would not be cause for military intervention. The same underwater civilization robbing freighters for cargo would be cause for intervention.
    - readbeard 8y ago
      You’re right—the use of the term “intellectual property” has muddled public discourse on this important issue. Society as a whole benefits from a robust system of copyright, trademarks and patents to incentivize art and innovation. But just as too weak a system will slow innovation by making it less financially viable, too strong a system will slow innovation by making it harder and more expensive to build new things out of old ones. We need to strike a balance, but the popular notion that ideas and expressions are strongly analogous to real property will likely lead to policies that are, on balance, harmful.  That IP law in the U.S. was conceived of as an economic incentive issue—and not an ethical one—is strongly suggested in the “copyright clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” [0] Thomas Jefferson elaborated on his own views on IP in a letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813 [1]: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.” To reiterate a bit of what you said, if “intellectual property” is not property at all, it cannot be stolen—only infringed upon. And the difference is important because whereas theft is a violation of natural law, infringement is a violation of the rules of a specific society. China is a different society and it has different rules. If we want to make respecting our country’s copyrights, trademarks and patents a precondition of trade, that seems like a good idea—but we should just say that. The drama of calling it “theft” is unnecessary and wrong. By the way, I recently read and recommend “Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction” [2] by Siva Vaidhyanathan for an all-around introduction to intellectual property. [0] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/ [1] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-property-a-very-short-introduction-9780195372779?cc=us&lang=en& https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-propert...

rayiner 8y ago

Why not? There is more merit to exclusive ownership of digital property than physical property. My entitlement to my yard is pretty comical—that land was there a billion years before I was born and will be there a billion years after I’m dead. But Captain Marvel? That’s a thing that only exists in the universe due to the labor of certain humans. Why shouldn’t they own it?

naringas 8y ago
because it's a slippery slope that seems to constantly slide away from liberty and towards property for most of civilization's history. there's gotta be some equilibrium, which is precisely why copyright was originally intended to be a temporary thing.
- cestith 8y ago
  Temporary, yes, and it should also have certain exceptions. Exceptions should include things like reverse engineering for making compatible accessories or compatible competitive products. They should include fair use for critique and criticism. They should include the right to resell your property and to repair or customize your own copy of a property. There are probably valid and important exceptions I'm not listing. During that limited term and subject to those exceptions though copyright should be solidly enforced. Otherwise the people creating things will just be ripped off wholesale by people who do nothing but rip them off and relabel things. Now, I think the copyright term is far too long. It is especially too long for abandoned works. I'd like to see something akin to trademark rules applied to copyright, in which if you're not offering a work or a work directly derived from it for X years the term ends early. The maximum term should be a bit shorter than it is for the specific work, too, but I think suing people for copying or modifying something you are no longer willing to sell them is asinine.
harryh 8y ago
A person can enforce ownership of their physical property by themselves. Intellectual property enforcement requires the massive power of the state. One might argue that we should prefer a world in which that sort of massive power is used sparingly.

amelius 8y ago

> to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property means we choose to abandon one of the key advantages of digital information You forget that another key advantage of digital information is that we can have a digital economy.

naringas 8y ago
I am more interested in being free than having an economy. then again, I speak as a human being, not as a profit motivated institution.
- fossuser 8y ago
  These arguments are pretty weak and end up doing more harm than saying nothing. There are strong arguments in favor of limiting copyright as it was originally intended (in the US constitution at least). Where the limited time monopoly exists to incentivize people to create, but where the goal is to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the public benefit. Long term ownership and control can stifle science and art with owners shutting down tenuously connected derivative work.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  I need to ask you an honest question: have you every run your own business ? If not, you should try it, it's a really eye-opening experience that will give you really valuable insight into the world that we live in. The one thing that you will learn is that we are all creatures of the environment we operate in, and very few of us actually have economic/political power that extends very far, so one should always be very careful about ascribing ulterior motives to other people. Most of the time, people just want to make a decent amount of money so that they can have a nice life with their families.
claudiawerner 8y ago
I'm skeptical of the idea that this is an advantage.

kodablah 8y ago

> it means we favor owning things over being free. That statement lacks a lot of nuance and presents it as a binary, mutually exclusive choice. Absolutist stances like this don't help the situation which is rife with many use cases that are and aren't valid. You can have this as a general principle you prefer, but it cannot work as an hard-fast rule for all digital properties.

naringas 8y ago
I agree... I really advocate for an equilibrium between property and liberty. But throurough my short life on earth I've perceived a stronger pull towards property which (again, seeking equlibrium) makes me use a more extreme language in support of the other viewpoint... counterbalance.
- news_to_me 8y ago
  I hope you find, as you get older, that it's better to strongly advocate a balanced and considered message, rather than a simple but extreme one. Extreme positions may be more emotionally satisfying, but they bring a host of long-term disadvantages. An easy example of this is the current division in US politics due to extreme positioning.
  - OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
    hah don't have too strong an opinion
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    On the other hand, plenty of well educated people seem to grow up and reach the opposite conclusion - that the only solution to some endemic problems, which keep occurring despite changes in leadership, is a radical one. Simplicity sometimes is the best solution.
  - naringas 8y ago
    I suppose the tricky thing about advocating a balanced message in this specific topic is that nobody really knows what a good working equilibrium should be regarding these issues. I mean, it's a contentious issue for China and the USA... My view on the matter is that us (as global humans in a global civilization) have yet to figure out how to strike a balance in this world with an Internet.

wpietri 8y ago

It's an interesting principle, but if you want people to adopt it, I think you have to show how the benefits are greater than the costs. America's first copyright law goes back to 1790, or about 200 years before most people owned computers. It was adopted because people saw benefit in rewarding the people who created books and maps. We've extended IP protection over the years for reasons bad and good. If you want to get rid of that, you need to explain how we'll get the same or better benefits with your approach. Because from my perspective supporting the current system means means I favor writers and musicians and researchers and artists getting paid for the good things they create over abstract principles.

waddlesworth 8y ago
I don't necessarily agree with the parent, but the current system supports publishers, journals and rights-holders far more than it does artists and researchers. Until we have a popular means of paying artists directly, or self-publishing, this will continue to be the case.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Sure. Some of that's illegitimate, but some of it definitely isn't. Publishers do valuable things too. For example, writer John Scalzi here answers the question of why he doesn't self-publish: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/05/25/about-that-deal/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/05/25/about-that-deal/ (See under "Why are you sticking with traditional publishing!") And I'll note that in addition to the obvious functions of editing, marketing, talent development, and vendor management, they also provide capital. One could say correctly that it's perfectly possible for software to all be sold by single individuals. But most software is produced by companies, quite a lot of whom take up-front investment.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  We do have ways of self-publishing or paying creators directly: the internet. Anyone can pop up a web site and start selling their wares with minimal fuss. It costs a couple of thousand bucks to set up an internet-based company in the US, with the majority of the money going to incorporation. Payment processing services, payroll services, tax/accounting services, hosting services, etc. are all super-cheap and don't require a lot of work. Sometimes I have to stop myself from constantly grumbling "kids these days...", but wow, I'm seeing a lot of young people erecting mental barriers to acting on their dreams and aspirations. It's never been easier to make money in this country, but you have to a) put in the hours, b) stop giving away your stuff for free, and c) manage your expectations - nobody is saying that you're going to win the lottery by becoming the next Google or FB.

TimJYoung 8y ago

Which is fine, but don't be surprised if the majority of the people choose to do other things and not produce the very thing that you want produced. Jaron Lanier talks about this a lot in his books and speaking engagements, and I would highly recommend his books for a better perspective.