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> IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. You are right that IP law is fundamentally about time. A more nuan

> IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. You are right that IP law is fundamentally about time. A more nuanced way to think about it is that IP law provides a reliable framework to amortize the cost of information creation. Intellectual property is an unusual kind of good in that it: 1. Has extremely high fixed cost. 2. Has near-zero marginal cost. 3. Once the fixed cost is paid, anyone could become a seller for zero fixed cost and near-zero marginal cost. For example, I've spent the past six years of my life writing a book. That's a pretty high fixed cost. Once I've finished polishing it off, it costs me virtually the same to sell 1,000,000 eBook copies as it does for me to sell one. But, also, it would also cost you nearly nothing to take a copy of that eBook, start selling it, and keep all of the profit. You could even undercut me since you didn't pay the fixed cost anyway so have no expenses to recoup. Copyright law gives me a window of time where I can use the low marginal cost and protection from #3 to recoup the time investment I made in #1. Without that protection, the day my eBook goes on sale, someone can buy a copy and immediately start reselling their own copies of it as some dirt cheap price. In a world where that happens all the time, many people would be simply unwilling or unable to invest that high fixed cost and those goods wouldn't exist at all. There are interesting arguments to be had over how long/large this window of protection and exclusivity should be. But I think no window at all would be disastrous. > An effective monopoly over customers should be won through superior products in the marketplace That presumes a world where the marketplace has no influence over which products exist at all. Sure a marketplace that sells my book for $20 and $1 gives customers the choice and they can take the $1. That's clearly superior: same great book, much lower price. But a marketplace where I spend years writing only to have someone else profit from my book is a marketplace where the book doesn't exist as a product at all because I wouldn't write it. (You might argue that people should be creating information products out of the goodness of their hearts and not for financial gain. That's a nice sentiment, but the consequence of it is that it means that only the rich participate in creative culture since only they have the luxury to create in their free time.)

kristopolous 5y ago
The much more common reality is the publisher doesn't release the rights back to the author when it goes out of print or after liquidations, mergers, and acquisitions the current owner of a work is often confusing, especially if they were auctioned in blocks say during a chapter 7 bankruptcy of a publisher. Many media conglomerates had short-lived book publishing arms 50 years ago. The current owners of the successor companies may not even be aware they have those rights in any meaningful sense. These subsequent transfers don't get registered. So the paper trail is hard. Additionally researchers are hampered when trying to track down old newspapers or out of print material. For instance, many daily newspapers shuttered their doors in the past 30 years. Currently you mostly have to go to the Library of Congress, find a local library or historical society with archival microfilm, drive over there and then scrub through the rolls on an analog machine like it's the 1970s. Murky copyright prevents these defunct publications from being digitized. I really wish the existence of Mickey Mouse wasn't the reason I have to wait until COVID is over because the archives room is closed at a specific library I'd like to go to and they don't have the rights to digitize what they have on file. I'd gladly pay for it but nobody knows who to pay. I've tried tracking down the current right holders and the only person I heard back from claims (I believe incorrectly) they do not have those rights. I'm guessing the lawyers saw the long chain of transfers I documented and were just trying to play it safe. So here I am. Splendid. I'm pretty sure in your example there's many other laws that protect you from that kind of brazen theft
- munificent 5y ago
  > I'm pretty sure in your example there's many other laws that protect you from that kind of brazen theft No, it is literally only copyright law. If it wasn't for the ambient threat of copyright litigation that I could bring to anyone else who attempted to sell my book, the day I put it on Amazon, someone else would take it, put their own copy up, and undercut the price. People like to complain loudly about IP law, and I agree there are definitely problems. But I think we massively take for granted all of the many cases where it does work well.
  - kristopolous 5y ago
    Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. If IP disappeared tomorrow, I'd bet quite a bit of money that some skilled lawyers would quickly find a way to get the kind of protection you speak of to exist under other laws. I'd go so much as to say that if something can't be argued under existing laws of things like damage, theft, impersonation, forgery, abuse and fraud, then it probably would be the kind of rights exercise that I'd consider objectionable.
    - notJim 5y ago
      > Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. It doesn't not require fraud or forgery to sell someone else's book. You don't claim to be the author, you claim to be a publisher. Publishers always publish authors' work, that is literally the business of a publisher. You are also not forging anything, unless you are claiming that your version of the book is a specific edition of the printed work. If you sold an author's work and claimed that you have a contract with that author, so that they receive a share of the proceeds, and if that claim was untrue, then that would be fraud. But you could simply not make that claim. > It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. The title represents the property right. If you didn't have the right to exclusive ownership of cars, then the title would be irrelevant, because you could just obtain the keys to the car and sell them to someone. Property rights are the reason this is illegal, not title fraud.
breck 5y ago
> For example, I've spent the past six years of my life writing a book...In a world where that happens all the time, many people would be simply unwilling or unable to invest that high fixed cost and those goods wouldn't exist at all. Honestly the world would be better off. If anyone wants to go off on their own for six years and etch out their own symphony—that's great! All the freedom to them. But that's not something we should subsidize as society by restricting everyone else's intellectual freedoms. Most books are 10x - 100x too long and are mostly a regurgitation of existing ideas. We need more people collaborating on items like Wikipedias and RISC-Vs and Linux Kernels and fewer people trying to generate some new "novel" thing which they have a monopoly over. We shouldn't ever disbar someone from creating whatever they want, but we need to stop pretending like these things are worth a fortune. They're not. The big winners are only making a fortune because of these monopoly laws, not because they are orders of magnitude better than the alternatives. > those goods wouldn't exist at all. The data is overwhelming that the critical, most important goods get created just fine without copyright and patent protection. TCP/IP, WWW, Wikipedia, the majority of all essential medicines, critical NIH databases, et cetera. The goods we get from copyrights and patents are the junk like Oxycontin, Microsoft Windows (how much have we paid for in security lapses), CNN and NYTimes and FoxNews.
- beckman466 5y ago
  > Most books are 10x - 100x too long and are mostly a regurgitation of existing ideas. This. Have you seen someone else elaborate on this more? I see it too and want more sources.

kristopolous 5y ago

The much more common reality is the publisher doesn't release the rights back to the author when it goes out of print or after liquidations, mergers, and acquisitions the current owner of a work is often confusing, especially if they were auctioned in blocks say during a chapter 7 bankruptcy of a publisher. Many media conglomerates had short-lived book publishing arms 50 years ago. The current owners of the successor companies may not even be aware they have those rights in any meaningful sense. These subsequent transfers don't get registered. So the paper trail is hard. Additionally researchers are hampered when trying to track down old newspapers or out of print material. For instance, many daily newspapers shuttered their doors in the past 30 years. Currently you mostly have to go to the Library of Congress, find a local library or historical society with archival microfilm, drive over there and then scrub through the rolls on an analog machine like it's the 1970s. Murky copyright prevents these defunct publications from being digitized. I really wish the existence of Mickey Mouse wasn't the reason I have to wait until COVID is over because the archives room is closed at a specific library I'd like to go to and they don't have the rights to digitize what they have on file. I'd gladly pay for it but nobody knows who to pay. I've tried tracking down the current right holders and the only person I heard back from claims (I believe incorrectly) they do not have those rights. I'm guessing the lawyers saw the long chain of transfers I documented and were just trying to play it safe. So here I am. Splendid. I'm pretty sure in your example there's many other laws that protect you from that kind of brazen theft

munificent 5y ago
> I'm pretty sure in your example there's many other laws that protect you from that kind of brazen theft No, it is literally only copyright law. If it wasn't for the ambient threat of copyright litigation that I could bring to anyone else who attempted to sell my book, the day I put it on Amazon, someone else would take it, put their own copy up, and undercut the price. People like to complain loudly about IP law, and I agree there are definitely problems. But I think we massively take for granted all of the many cases where it does work well.
- kristopolous 5y ago
  Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. If IP disappeared tomorrow, I'd bet quite a bit of money that some skilled lawyers would quickly find a way to get the kind of protection you speak of to exist under other laws. I'd go so much as to say that if something can't be argued under existing laws of things like damage, theft, impersonation, forgery, abuse and fraud, then it probably would be the kind of rights exercise that I'd consider objectionable.
  - notJim 5y ago
    > Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. It doesn't not require fraud or forgery to sell someone else's book. You don't claim to be the author, you claim to be a publisher. Publishers always publish authors' work, that is literally the business of a publisher. You are also not forging anything, unless you are claiming that your version of the book is a specific edition of the printed work. If you sold an author's work and claimed that you have a contract with that author, so that they receive a share of the proceeds, and if that claim was untrue, then that would be fraud. But you could simply not make that claim. > It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud. The title represents the property right. If you didn't have the right to exclusive ownership of cars, then the title would be irrelevant, because you could just obtain the keys to the car and sell them to someone. Property rights are the reason this is illegal, not title fraud.

breck 5y ago

> For example, I've spent the past six years of my life writing a book...In a world where that happens all the time, many people would be simply unwilling or unable to invest that high fixed cost and those goods wouldn't exist at all. Honestly the world would be better off. If anyone wants to go off on their own for six years and etch out their own symphony—that's great! All the freedom to them. But that's not something we should subsidize as society by restricting everyone else's intellectual freedoms. Most books are 10x - 100x too long and are mostly a regurgitation of existing ideas. We need more people collaborating on items like Wikipedias and RISC-Vs and Linux Kernels and fewer people trying to generate some new "novel" thing which they have a monopoly over. We shouldn't ever disbar someone from creating whatever they want, but we need to stop pretending like these things are worth a fortune. They're not. The big winners are only making a fortune because of these monopoly laws, not because they are orders of magnitude better than the alternatives. > those goods wouldn't exist at all. The data is overwhelming that the critical, most important goods get created just fine without copyright and patent protection. TCP/IP, WWW, Wikipedia, the majority of all essential medicines, critical NIH databases, et cetera. The goods we get from copyrights and patents are the junk like Oxycontin, Microsoft Windows (how much have we paid for in security lapses), CNN and NYTimes and FoxNews.

beckman466 5y ago
> Most books are 10x - 100x too long and are mostly a regurgitation of existing ideas. This. Have you seen someone else elaborate on this more? I see it too and want more sources.