8 ms·

The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

115 points by yannis 15y ago

vog 15y ago
That reminds me on Stallman's very interesting article about the (mis-)use of the term "intellectual property": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  That's a much less incendiary piece than what I'm used to seeing from Stallman, thanks for posting.
Symmetry 15y ago
A "right to sue" could be considered property if you squinted hard enough, but of course when people talk about intellectual property they're talking about "UNIX" or Windows or the Mac OS look and feel, not the legal mechanisms themselves.
- Sharlin 15y ago
  Yes, juridically, the word "property" in "intellectual property" actually does refer to the rights, not to the immaterial entities governed by those rights. "Intellectual property rights" is just tautological.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    Thank you, it always seemed to me that it would make sense if it was supposed to be that way, but I didn't realize that that was the actual law.
gvb 15y ago
What I consider to be intellectual property is between my ears - it is my intellect and my property. I have an arrangement with my employer to rent my intellect for nominally 8 hours per day. What that arrangement produces are artifacts (ink on paper, magnetic domains on disk drives, charge on floating gates) of my intellect. My employer owns those artifacts, but not the intellect that created them. Companies can talk all they want about their "intellectual property", but their property is artifacts, and artifacts are not intelligent. Artifacts cannot generate new, novel, artifacts. When a company uses the term "intellectual property," that is offensive to me because the company is denigrating my intellect by equating it to inanimate artifacts. The uncomfortable truth (for companies) that they have forgotten or chosen to ignore is that the intelligence part of their company is not their property. The intelligence walks out the door every evening.
- adimitrov 15y ago
  That's a very interesting, and strong way to view it — however, I feel like this is still not going to solve the main issue: Yes, my intellect is my property, and it's going to stay that way. But my intellect needs to feed on — artifacts. If I see something I find interesting, I want to see how it's done. Not for the purpose of copying it, and appropriating it, but for the purpose of learning from it; feeding my intellect is the way I can keep it alive. I cannot generate new, novel artifacts, without old ones to feed my curiosity, and my ability. Here's the thing: the companies want to own those artifacts, and I want to freely peruse them. It would be one thing to just be able to rent them from companies, but in the case of closed source, that is not possible. Intellectual artifacts become inaccessible.
- T_S_ 15y ago
  IP is a catch-all term for a variety of legal situations (patents, copyright, trade secrets, even non-compete). Your comment is a very nice legal theory, but I don't know if the courts decide things this way in every case.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  I think you're being overly picky about wording. Intellect creates intellectual artifacts, just as a mason puts down masonry. If such an intellectual artifact happens to be property then it is intellectual property.
sp332 15y ago
Here's the rest of that letter from Thomas Jefferson. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... It's interesting to realize that even such a fierce supporter of personal rights in our country didn't recognize ideas as something that should be "protected" like personal property.
- m__ 15y ago
  Actually, "protecting" ideas as if they were property is in direct opposition to personal rights, so this should be expected. It's weird how "intellectual property" somehow got associated with personal liberty, the free market etc., when in fact it totally goes against those ideas.
  - uriel 15y ago
    Yes, intellectual property is completely contrary to free markets and personal liberty, in its essence is a system of government-granted and government-enforced monopolies, and how anyone can think that is compatible with liberty economic or personal boggles the mind.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Well, I've heard that in Britain, IP is considered an inherent right just like personal property. If I own the result of my own physical labor, why wouldn't I own the result of intellectual labor as well?
    - Sharlin 15y ago
      You do. No-one can take it away from you, except by destroying all copies and mindwiping you. Owning something doesn't mean you get to control copies of that something.
    - Vivtek 15y ago
      Because if you physically make something and it's taken from you, you no longer have it. Information can't be taken from you - granted, a medium on which it's stored could be, but again, that would be a physical, not an intellectual loss. You can't be deprived of the knowledge that allowed you to create the item in the first place. Unless, of course, somebody else is granted the intellectual property rights to it.
hxa7241 15y ago
A basic roundup of ethical problems for IP: * Conflict with fundamental personal liberty: Mill's idea that we have unrestricted liberty except to the extent that it injures someone else, is fairly standard. But IP conflicts with that, yet IP is not fundamental, not grounded in physical fact. (See Koepsell: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip_koepsell_2009.html http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip...) * Cannot be justified on the basis of harm: One could justify rights by showing that lack of them causes harm to those denied. But IP represents no physical relation where any harm could be rendered. (See Wilson: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~rehbjgs/docs/could-there-be-a-right.pdf http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~rehbjgs/docs/could-there-be-a-right.pd...) * Does not make complete sense as a generalised rule: The idea that a moral rule is generalisable, as a critical feature, is also standard (probably more so). But if everyone owned IP equally much there is no advantage, and everyone would be better off freely sharing copies. (And indeed, what do we seem to see amongst similarly large corporations? They buy big patent portfolios and agree, or tacitly accept, truces between them.)
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  None of these are ethical problems if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work, and can contract (exclusively, for a period of time) with a publisher for the distribution of said work. Put another way: you may (or may not) be old enough to remember when an American paperback company, Ace books, produced and sold paperback copies of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" without paying Tolkien for the rights (and in direct competition with Houghton Mifflin, to whom Tolkien had contracted). Are you prepared to argue that Ace did Tolkien no harm?
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work Then please elaborate why we should accept said premise. You just state it like it's an universal law of the universe. It isn't. No artisan (or actually, no one at all) is entitled to a successful business modell. And by the way, the "problem" aren't the people who are unwilling to pay for anything (which I am sure you or someone else will cite sooner or later). It's the people expecting to make money with art. It's cool if you can. If you can't, then you're not entitled to laws or monopolies that protect your failed business modell. >Are you prepared to argue that Ace did Tolkien no harm? Why should it have? More people were able to read his beautiful works. Are you prepared to argue how that constitutes as harm in the first place?
nextparadigms 15y ago
I've seen many people say that if RIAA and MPAA keep trying to introduce new censorship laws like that, eventually the "camel's back will break", and people will demand a total overhaul of the copyright system, or perhaps completely eliminate it. I tend to agree. The more they will push this, the more people will rise up and speak against it, and many people will start questioning if copyright should even exist in the first place. Through their aggressiveness on this issue, they will put the spotlight on it, and I don't think it will end up being in their favor. I believe the people will eventually win this one, even if in the mean time they manage to introduce one or two more Internet censorship laws. I like this TED video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs
- bch 15y ago
  See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 "Lessons from Fashions Free Culture."
jvandonsel 15y ago
The quote by John Perry Barlow: "Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales." leaves a lot to be desired. OK, so how do writers make their living? By giving live readings? I think not.
- seabee 15y ago
  > OK, so how do writers make their living? The glib answer is "most don't", and indeed you will find a lot of writers who have other jobs. Journalists are writers, and the relationship there is fairly clear. PR and marketing materials need writing too. In short, you make your living by a company renting or commissioning your talents. Musicians had only one other option before recorded music - performing - and even then that wasn't always feasible. Think of classical music and its performance demands. You joke about live readings, but the ancient poets did just that. They also complained of poverty. People really do suffer for their art.
  - adsr 15y ago
    It's a basic right, if you spend a year writing a book, you are the one who have the rights to sell it and thus make money from your work. Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
    - gnaritas 15y ago
      You assume it to be, but that's the point of this discussion, it isn't or shouldn't be. If you spend a year doing something no one wants to pay for, you don't have a right to force them to.
      - adsr 15y ago
        Of course, but if no one wants to buy it no one is forced to either.
jarrett 15y ago
While I agree that our current intellectual property system is doing a great deal of harm (particularly due to it being slanted in favor of monied interests), there is a protect-the-little-guy rationale for some form of copyright. Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. This novel is great; it has the capacity to become the #1 bestseller, provided the right marketing is there. I go to my publisher and enter into a contract saying that I'll let them read my manuscript in exchange for them promising not to publish or sell it until we've worked out a deal. So far so good. Contracts keep me protected in the world without copyright. I give them the manuscript, they love it, and they publish it. All is well until a huge publishing company notices my book and starts printing and marketing it, without paying me or my publisher a dime. They manage to sell 100 times as many copies as my publisher, because mine is a small, independent operation, and the big company has a sophisticated and well-funded marketing machine. This is one area where intellectual property laws, if properly designed, would protect smaller entities against larger ones. And that's where I think the real value of (hypothetical) intellectual property laws lies.
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  Or nobody sells your book at all. You give it away for free on the Internet, and you make money off speaking appearances.
  - benologist 15y ago
    It's very easy to say someone else should work for nothing and do additional work to earn money. Do you have a free-job that consumes most of your time, and a paid-job you fit in around it?
    - lukeschlather 15y ago
      It's sort of difficult to say whether I have a free-job or a paid-job. I certainly do a lot of volunteering.
  - eropple 15y ago
    Because that's very realistic (Cory Doctorow aside, and he's a special case). It's foolish besides--speaking engagements, etc. take away time from actually producing creative works. It's the sort of miss-the-point silliness often espoused by the anti-IP sorts: "spend an incredible amount of time doing X to maybe, if you're lucky, sell a marginal number of Y, where Y is totally unrelated to X." It's silly and a misallocation of a wtiter's resources to take away from actually writing to hit the speaking circuit.
naughtysriram 15y ago
easiest way for a government to bag some money is to liberalize to the private by means of copyrights. but what it does it slowly slaving it self to the private. one fine day the private will own the public completely and even copyright the constitution. so no other country can have its right to have rights.. pathetic system.
olavk 15y ago
Intellectual property at least makes a certain sense, since it is something you create yourself out of thin air, and therefore can decide to make available to others under certain conditions if both parties agree. If you don't make it available, nobody suffers, and if you do, you have created value without depriving others, so it is only fair to receive compensation. Owning land, on the other hand is clearly immoral. You didn't create the land, so how could you own it? Oh, you bought it from someone else. Well they didn't own it either. Someone stole it from the community a long time ago. Owning land is theft exactly because it is a limited resource.
- grandpa 15y ago
  > Owning land is theft exactly because it is a limited resource. Would you say the same is true of gold?
- FrojoS 15y ago
  you have created value without depriving others, so it is only fair to receive compensation. How is this fair to everyone else who had the same idea but wasn't as fast or greedy?
  - olavk 15y ago
    Good point - that is why I don't support IP rights for ideas so simple that other people would come up with them independently. This includes many software patents. I do believe in IP rights for creations above a certain level of complexity. For example, no two people would come op with the same novel or symphony independently.
    - FrojoS 15y ago
      I do believe in IP rights for creations above a certain level of complexity. For example, no two people would come op with the same novel or symphony independently. Interesting thought. Though, where do you draw the line? I don't want to oversimplify things. But a lack of IP obviously didn't demotivate Mr. Beethoven from writing lots of symphonies.
- 15y ago
tzs 15y ago
There's an economic justification for the current type of IP law in societies that philosophically believe that the free market should be used whenever possible to determine the allocation of resources. It goes like this: ------ It can be shown by the mathematical economics folks that the free market leads to economically optimum results if and only if the goods in the market have certain attributes. If goods do not have those attributes, the free market does not work with those goods in the sense that it does not lead to a good allocation of resources. Intellectual goods do not have those attributes. Therefore the free market does not work for intellectual goods. If we want to have optimal allocation of resources to the production of intellectual goods, we either need some mechanism other than the free market (e.g., patronage, probably by the government) or we need to pretend that intellectual goods DO have the necessary attributes. Our current IP law takes the later approach. ------ Nearly every anti-current-IP-system opinion I've read (including the submitted article and most of the comments here so far) fails to propose how to achieve reasonable allocation of resources using some system other than the current system (except for RMS...he's one of the few who gets it--see below). At best we usually get suggestions that creators of intellectual goods will find something else to do. For instance, musicians will give concerts, writers will make their living doing contract articles, programmers will provide customization or support, and so on. Those suggestions are missing the point. When a great novelist is spending time writing articles, he's not writing his next great novel. When a great programmer is handling tech support, he's not writing great programs. Those resources are not being optimally allocated. RMS has suggested that there be a tax on internet connectivity, with the money going to fund creators of intellectual goods, with distribution of the money based on the cube root of popularity.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  People are engaging in activity Y. Activity Y is not profitable. How can we control the internet to make Activity Y profitable? Suggesting folks engaged in Activity Y figure it out is not an acceptable response. I can't help but feel this is a false dilemma. What about Activity A B and C that aren't profitable? Shouldn't we care about the proliferation and development of all these activities? Furthermore, maybe folks engaging in Activity Y should just evolve and adopt to the modern climate of the digital age. See GNU/Linux.
FrojoS 15y ago
In my mind kickstarter.com is the solution to the intelectual property problem. How can, knowledge workers, for instance musicians, earn money in the 21. century? Simple, charge upfront before publishing. Imagine a popular band like U2 would ask for the money, they expect from their next album, upfront. I think, their fans, including me, would do what ever it takes to raise that money together. Et voila, you can still become rich as musician without mega concerts or a police state. I've been talking about this solution with my friends for years. We never made it happen. Now kickstarter.com is here. But I'm still waiting for a large adaptation in industries like music or software and video games. Is it just a question of time and promotion or am I'm overlooking something important? PS: I posted this a few seconds ago at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723374 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723374 but then realized it would fit better here.
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  That does sound like an interesting model. Producers would, I suppose, initially have to establish their reputations by releasing things for free. The dynamics of choosing prices would be completely different, more like selling equity. One thing that would worry me: a lot of people would have to be involved in getting a piece to a point where it could be sold. How would it be protected while all these people are looking at it and working on it? Also, if you work out one of these deals with a publisher, and transmit it over the Internet, are you legally protected against people stealing it en route?
  - FrojoS 15y ago
    That does sound like an interesting model. Producers would, I suppose, initially have to establish their reputations by releasing things for free. Yes. One thing that would worry me: a lot of people would have to be involved in getting a piece to a point where it could be sold. How would it be protected while all these people are looking at it and working on it? Based on trust, just like today. How is this different from how music, books, games etc. are produced now? Also, if you work out one of these deals with a publisher, and transmit it over the Internet, are you legally protected against people stealing it en route? Not sure if you got me. No publisher required. Its direct b2c. Just like kickstarter.com works today. I'm only missing the "big fish". And no one could "steal" it. Once its published its published. Free like any information thats published into our world today. A free license like BSD would be appropriate.
kanzure 15y ago
What if patents granted tax benefits instead of granting a monopoly? Would this work?
aaavw 15y ago
Given that (1) most people are or are becoming "authors" now that the tools to create and distribute have become much more distributed then ever before; that (2) the way copyright works at the moment is to reward only popularity, not original creativity; that (3) for any author obscurity is a much larger problem then infringement ever could be; that (4) creativity may not need encouragement as becomes obvious seeing how much is intentionally produced to be widely distributed for free (open source, creative commons, youtube, etc)?; that (5) only a very tiny percentage of authors will ever get "rich" of their work. So perhaps we need to look at another solution? An unconditional basic income for all would support authors/artists/anyone exactly at the moment they need it to do their work. It will not make anyone rich, but it will enable works that can't be created at the moment (because the artist needs to do other work instead). When an author does become populair they will not have been forced into an unfavorable contract with a publisher when they where broke, working poor. An unconditional basic income would enable people to be creative, it would pay just enough so that money isn't an issue anymore. This would be more effective way to promote the arts and sciences then copyright in its current form.
- uriel 15y ago
  Your idea sounds a bit like Milton Friedman's negative income tax.
Tycho 15y ago
Property underpins our ability to survive. All wealth is ultimately a product of the mind (whether it's writing a novel, or finding some oil and knowing how to use it), so as a general rule if a man cannot control the produce of his mind, he can't expect to survive. I see intellectual property as pretty fundamental to any society that respects individual rights.

115 points by yannis 15y ago

vog 15y ago

That reminds me on Stallman's very interesting article about the (mis-)use of the term "intellectual property": http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
That's a much less incendiary piece than what I'm used to seeing from Stallman, thanks for posting.

Symmetry 15y ago

A "right to sue" could be considered property if you squinted hard enough, but of course when people talk about intellectual property they're talking about "UNIX" or Windows or the Mac OS look and feel, not the legal mechanisms themselves.

Sharlin 15y ago
Yes, juridically, the word "property" in "intellectual property" actually does refer to the rights, not to the immaterial entities governed by those rights. "Intellectual property rights" is just tautological.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  Thank you, it always seemed to me that it would make sense if it was supposed to be that way, but I didn't realize that that was the actual law.

gvb 15y ago

What I consider to be intellectual property is between my ears - it is my intellect and my property. I have an arrangement with my employer to rent my intellect for nominally 8 hours per day. What that arrangement produces are artifacts (ink on paper, magnetic domains on disk drives, charge on floating gates) of my intellect. My employer owns those artifacts, but not the intellect that created them. Companies can talk all they want about their "intellectual property", but their property is artifacts, and artifacts are not intelligent. Artifacts cannot generate new, novel, artifacts. When a company uses the term "intellectual property," that is offensive to me because the company is denigrating my intellect by equating it to inanimate artifacts. The uncomfortable truth (for companies) that they have forgotten or chosen to ignore is that the intelligence part of their company is not their property. The intelligence walks out the door every evening.

adimitrov 15y ago
That's a very interesting, and strong way to view it — however, I feel like this is still not going to solve the main issue: Yes, my intellect is my property, and it's going to stay that way. But my intellect needs to feed on — artifacts. If I see something I find interesting, I want to see how it's done. Not for the purpose of copying it, and appropriating it, but for the purpose of learning from it; feeding my intellect is the way I can keep it alive. I cannot generate new, novel artifacts, without old ones to feed my curiosity, and my ability. Here's the thing: the companies want to own those artifacts, and I want to freely peruse them. It would be one thing to just be able to rent them from companies, but in the case of closed source, that is not possible. Intellectual artifacts become inaccessible.
T_S_ 15y ago
IP is a catch-all term for a variety of legal situations (patents, copyright, trade secrets, even non-compete). Your comment is a very nice legal theory, but I don't know if the courts decide things this way in every case.
Dylan16807 15y ago
I think you're being overly picky about wording. Intellect creates intellectual artifacts, just as a mason puts down masonry. If such an intellectual artifact happens to be property then it is intellectual property.

sp332 15y ago

Here's the rest of that letter from Thomas Jefferson. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... It's interesting to realize that even such a fierce supporter of personal rights in our country didn't recognize ideas as something that should be "protected" like personal property.

m__ 15y ago
Actually, "protecting" ideas as if they were property is in direct opposition to personal rights, so this should be expected. It's weird how "intellectual property" somehow got associated with personal liberty, the free market etc., when in fact it totally goes against those ideas.
- uriel 15y ago
  Yes, intellectual property is completely contrary to free markets and personal liberty, in its essence is a system of government-granted and government-enforced monopolies, and how anyone can think that is compatible with liberty economic or personal boggles the mind.
- sp332 15y ago
  Well, I've heard that in Britain, IP is considered an inherent right just like personal property. If I own the result of my own physical labor, why wouldn't I own the result of intellectual labor as well?
  - Sharlin 15y ago
    You do. No-one can take it away from you, except by destroying all copies and mindwiping you. Owning something doesn't mean you get to control copies of that something.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    Because if you physically make something and it's taken from you, you no longer have it. Information can't be taken from you - granted, a medium on which it's stored could be, but again, that would be a physical, not an intellectual loss. You can't be deprived of the knowledge that allowed you to create the item in the first place. Unless, of course, somebody else is granted the intellectual property rights to it.

hxa7241 15y ago

A basic roundup of ethical problems for IP: * Conflict with fundamental personal liberty: Mill's idea that we have unrestricted liberty except to the extent that it injures someone else, is fairly standard. But IP conflicts with that, yet IP is not fundamental, not grounded in physical fact. (See Koepsell: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip_koepsell_2009.html http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip...) * Cannot be justified on the basis of harm: One could justify rights by showing that lack of them causes harm to those denied. But IP represents no physical relation where any harm could be rendered. (See Wilson: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~rehbjgs/docs/could-there-be-a-right.pdf http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~rehbjgs/docs/could-there-be-a-right.pd...) * Does not make complete sense as a generalised rule: The idea that a moral rule is generalisable, as a critical feature, is also standard (probably more so). But if everyone owned IP equally much there is no advantage, and everyone would be better off freely sharing copies. (And indeed, what do we seem to see amongst similarly large corporations? They buy big patent portfolios and agree, or tacitly accept, truces between them.)

michael_dorfman 15y ago
None of these are ethical problems if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work, and can contract (exclusively, for a period of time) with a publisher for the distribution of said work. Put another way: you may (or may not) be old enough to remember when an American paperback company, Ace books, produced and sold paperback copies of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" without paying Tolkien for the rights (and in direct competition with Houghton Mifflin, to whom Tolkien had contracted). Are you prepared to argue that Ace did Tolkien no harm?
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work Then please elaborate why we should accept said premise. You just state it like it's an universal law of the universe. It isn't. No artisan (or actually, no one at all) is entitled to a successful business modell. And by the way, the "problem" aren't the people who are unwilling to pay for anything (which I am sure you or someone else will cite sooner or later). It's the people expecting to make money with art. It's cool if you can. If you can't, then you're not entitled to laws or monopolies that protect your failed business modell. >Are you prepared to argue that Ace did Tolkien no harm? Why should it have? More people were able to read his beautiful works. Are you prepared to argue how that constitutes as harm in the first place?

nextparadigms 15y ago

I've seen many people say that if RIAA and MPAA keep trying to introduce new censorship laws like that, eventually the "camel's back will break", and people will demand a total overhaul of the copyright system, or perhaps completely eliminate it. I tend to agree. The more they will push this, the more people will rise up and speak against it, and many people will start questioning if copyright should even exist in the first place. Through their aggressiveness on this issue, they will put the spotlight on it, and I don't think it will end up being in their favor. I believe the people will eventually win this one, even if in the mean time they manage to introduce one or two more Internet censorship laws. I like this TED video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs

bch 15y ago
See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 "Lessons from Fashions Free Culture."

jvandonsel 15y ago

The quote by John Perry Barlow: "Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales." leaves a lot to be desired. OK, so how do writers make their living? By giving live readings? I think not.

seabee 15y ago
> OK, so how do writers make their living? The glib answer is "most don't", and indeed you will find a lot of writers who have other jobs. Journalists are writers, and the relationship there is fairly clear. PR and marketing materials need writing too. In short, you make your living by a company renting or commissioning your talents. Musicians had only one other option before recorded music - performing - and even then that wasn't always feasible. Think of classical music and its performance demands. You joke about live readings, but the ancient poets did just that. They also complained of poverty. People really do suffer for their art.
- adsr 15y ago
  It's a basic right, if you spend a year writing a book, you are the one who have the rights to sell it and thus make money from your work. Same with software, a GPL license would be worthless without copyright.
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    You assume it to be, but that's the point of this discussion, it isn't or shouldn't be. If you spend a year doing something no one wants to pay for, you don't have a right to force them to.
    - adsr 15y ago
      Of course, but if no one wants to buy it no one is forced to either.

jarrett 15y ago

While I agree that our current intellectual property system is doing a great deal of harm (particularly due to it being slanted in favor of monied interests), there is a protect-the-little-guy rationale for some form of copyright. Let's imagine a world without copyright. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel. This novel is great; it has the capacity to become the #1 bestseller, provided the right marketing is there. I go to my publisher and enter into a contract saying that I'll let them read my manuscript in exchange for them promising not to publish or sell it until we've worked out a deal. So far so good. Contracts keep me protected in the world without copyright. I give them the manuscript, they love it, and they publish it. All is well until a huge publishing company notices my book and starts printing and marketing it, without paying me or my publisher a dime. They manage to sell 100 times as many copies as my publisher, because mine is a small, independent operation, and the big company has a sophisticated and well-funded marketing machine. This is one area where intellectual property laws, if properly designed, would protect smaller entities against larger ones. And that's where I think the real value of (hypothetical) intellectual property laws lies.

lukeschlather 15y ago
Or nobody sells your book at all. You give it away for free on the Internet, and you make money off speaking appearances.
- benologist 15y ago
  It's very easy to say someone else should work for nothing and do additional work to earn money. Do you have a free-job that consumes most of your time, and a paid-job you fit in around it?
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    It's sort of difficult to say whether I have a free-job or a paid-job. I certainly do a lot of volunteering.
- eropple 15y ago
  Because that's very realistic (Cory Doctorow aside, and he's a special case). It's foolish besides--speaking engagements, etc. take away time from actually producing creative works. It's the sort of miss-the-point silliness often espoused by the anti-IP sorts: "spend an incredible amount of time doing X to maybe, if you're lucky, sell a marginal number of Y, where Y is totally unrelated to X." It's silly and a misallocation of a wtiter's resources to take away from actually writing to hit the speaking circuit.

naughtysriram 15y ago

easiest way for a government to bag some money is to liberalize to the private by means of copyrights. but what it does it slowly slaving it self to the private. one fine day the private will own the public completely and even copyright the constitution. so no other country can have its right to have rights.. pathetic system.

olavk 15y ago

Intellectual property at least makes a certain sense, since it is something you create yourself out of thin air, and therefore can decide to make available to others under certain conditions if both parties agree. If you don't make it available, nobody suffers, and if you do, you have created value without depriving others, so it is only fair to receive compensation. Owning land, on the other hand is clearly immoral. You didn't create the land, so how could you own it? Oh, you bought it from someone else. Well they didn't own it either. Someone stole it from the community a long time ago. Owning land is theft exactly because it is a limited resource.

grandpa 15y ago
> Owning land is theft exactly because it is a limited resource. Would you say the same is true of gold?
FrojoS 15y ago
you have created value without depriving others, so it is only fair to receive compensation. How is this fair to everyone else who had the same idea but wasn't as fast or greedy?
- olavk 15y ago
  Good point - that is why I don't support IP rights for ideas so simple that other people would come up with them independently. This includes many software patents. I do believe in IP rights for creations above a certain level of complexity. For example, no two people would come op with the same novel or symphony independently.
  - FrojoS 15y ago
    I do believe in IP rights for creations above a certain level of complexity. For example, no two people would come op with the same novel or symphony independently. Interesting thought. Though, where do you draw the line? I don't want to oversimplify things. But a lack of IP obviously didn't demotivate Mr. Beethoven from writing lots of symphonies.
15y ago

tzs 15y ago

There's an economic justification for the current type of IP law in societies that philosophically believe that the free market should be used whenever possible to determine the allocation of resources. It goes like this: ------ It can be shown by the mathematical economics folks that the free market leads to economically optimum results if and only if the goods in the market have certain attributes. If goods do not have those attributes, the free market does not work with those goods in the sense that it does not lead to a good allocation of resources. Intellectual goods do not have those attributes. Therefore the free market does not work for intellectual goods. If we want to have optimal allocation of resources to the production of intellectual goods, we either need some mechanism other than the free market (e.g., patronage, probably by the government) or we need to pretend that intellectual goods DO have the necessary attributes. Our current IP law takes the later approach. ------ Nearly every anti-current-IP-system opinion I've read (including the submitted article and most of the comments here so far) fails to propose how to achieve reasonable allocation of resources using some system other than the current system (except for RMS...he's one of the few who gets it--see below). At best we usually get suggestions that creators of intellectual goods will find something else to do. For instance, musicians will give concerts, writers will make their living doing contract articles, programmers will provide customization or support, and so on. Those suggestions are missing the point. When a great novelist is spending time writing articles, he's not writing his next great novel. When a great programmer is handling tech support, he's not writing great programs. Those resources are not being optimally allocated. RMS has suggested that there be a tax on internet connectivity, with the money going to fund creators of intellectual goods, with distribution of the money based on the cube root of popularity.

smokeyj 15y ago
People are engaging in activity Y. Activity Y is not profitable. How can we control the internet to make Activity Y profitable? Suggesting folks engaged in Activity Y figure it out is not an acceptable response. I can't help but feel this is a false dilemma. What about Activity A B and C that aren't profitable? Shouldn't we care about the proliferation and development of all these activities? Furthermore, maybe folks engaging in Activity Y should just evolve and adopt to the modern climate of the digital age. See GNU/Linux.

FrojoS 15y ago

In my mind kickstarter.com is the solution to the intelectual property problem. How can, knowledge workers, for instance musicians, earn money in the 21. century? Simple, charge upfront before publishing. Imagine a popular band like U2 would ask for the money, they expect from their next album, upfront. I think, their fans, including me, would do what ever it takes to raise that money together. Et voila, you can still become rich as musician without mega concerts or a police state. I've been talking about this solution with my friends for years. We never made it happen. Now kickstarter.com is here. But I'm still waiting for a large adaptation in industries like music or software and video games. Is it just a question of time and promotion or am I'm overlooking something important? PS: I posted this a few seconds ago at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723374 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723374 but then realized it would fit better here.

andrewflnr 15y ago
That does sound like an interesting model. Producers would, I suppose, initially have to establish their reputations by releasing things for free. The dynamics of choosing prices would be completely different, more like selling equity. One thing that would worry me: a lot of people would have to be involved in getting a piece to a point where it could be sold. How would it be protected while all these people are looking at it and working on it? Also, if you work out one of these deals with a publisher, and transmit it over the Internet, are you legally protected against people stealing it en route?
- FrojoS 15y ago
  That does sound like an interesting model. Producers would, I suppose, initially have to establish their reputations by releasing things for free. Yes. One thing that would worry me: a lot of people would have to be involved in getting a piece to a point where it could be sold. How would it be protected while all these people are looking at it and working on it? Based on trust, just like today. How is this different from how music, books, games etc. are produced now? Also, if you work out one of these deals with a publisher, and transmit it over the Internet, are you legally protected against people stealing it en route? Not sure if you got me. No publisher required. Its direct b2c. Just like kickstarter.com works today. I'm only missing the "big fish". And no one could "steal" it. Once its published its published. Free like any information thats published into our world today. A free license like BSD would be appropriate.

kanzure 15y ago

What if patents granted tax benefits instead of granting a monopoly? Would this work?

aaavw 15y ago

Given that (1) most people are or are becoming "authors" now that the tools to create and distribute have become much more distributed then ever before; that (2) the way copyright works at the moment is to reward only popularity, not original creativity; that (3) for any author obscurity is a much larger problem then infringement ever could be; that (4) creativity may not need encouragement as becomes obvious seeing how much is intentionally produced to be widely distributed for free (open source, creative commons, youtube, etc)?; that (5) only a very tiny percentage of authors will ever get "rich" of their work. So perhaps we need to look at another solution? An unconditional basic income for all would support authors/artists/anyone exactly at the moment they need it to do their work. It will not make anyone rich, but it will enable works that can't be created at the moment (because the artist needs to do other work instead). When an author does become populair they will not have been forced into an unfavorable contract with a publisher when they where broke, working poor. An unconditional basic income would enable people to be creative, it would pay just enough so that money isn't an issue anymore. This would be more effective way to promote the arts and sciences then copyright in its current form.

uriel 15y ago
Your idea sounds a bit like Milton Friedman's negative income tax.

Tycho 15y ago

Property underpins our ability to survive. All wealth is ultimately a product of the mind (whether it's writing a novel, or finding some oil and knowing how to use it), so as a general rule if a man cannot control the produce of his mind, he can't expect to survive. I see intellectual property as pretty fundamental to any society that respects individual rights.