4 ms·

It's an unavoidable side-effect of having easy and cheap duplication ... I've been trying to accumulate a list of practices or behaviors where there has never

It's an unavoidable side-effect of having easy and cheap duplication ... I've been trying to accumulate a list of practices or behaviors where there has never been any (or much) barrier to copying, and where for someone to complain would sound a little bizarre. For example, hair styles. If you dream up a wicked hair style and go out in public, anyone who sees you can likely copy it for themselves. Same with how you dress yourself. (See also http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401) Can anyone suggest others?

aero142 15y ago
Facts. Mathematics. Jokes.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nextparadigms 15y ago
Fashion has a pretty long history of not having or disregarding intellectual property, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0
davidw 15y ago
Next, can anyone correlate those with the investment of time required to produce them? Copying a joke is one thing, copying the entire Harry Potter series is another.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  What loss exactly does that copy cause? My guess is that people who like movies so much as to go through the trouble of copying them also goes a lot to movie theatres.
  - davidw 15y ago
    In a copyright free world, movie theaters would of course be free to copy the movies too. Benefits would accrue to landowners, basically, rather than producers of movies.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      In the end, this would change how movies are funded.
      - davidw 15y ago
        Change it how? All I ever hear are handwavy proposals about "other ways" of doing things. How could you get a significant return on an investment in producing a film? Even non-flashy films cost a lot of money to make. Or would films become the exclusive province of wealthy sponsors with money to squander?
CamperBob 15y ago
I've been trying to accumulate a list of practices or behaviors where there has never been any (or much) barrier to copying, and where for someone to complain would sound a little bizarre. Never mind hair styles and couture.... your question carries weight beyond that, I think. Here's my suggested answer: Philosophers and theologians have debated for thousands of years about whether life has meaning and purpose. Arguably, modern genetics and evolutionary biology have given us a definitive answer to that question: if life can be said to have any purpose at all, that purpose is making copies. Making copies on behalf of our genome is what we're here for. This is one of the few statements you can make about all forms of life, from viruses to blue whales. So when someone introduces an artificial means of making information uncopyable, they're going up against the oldest, strongest instinct that any creature possesses: the instinct that tells us to back up our information by spreading it far and wide. And yes, that includes other peoples' information, considering how much of our genome has been cribbed from other species. It's an imperfect argument and probably a bit too abstract for Congressmen to either grasp or successfully shoot down, but I like it.
haroldp 15y ago
Fashion and recipes, http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...
tlb 15y ago
Hollywood invests as much as $100M in a single movie, probably no hair style has involved such effort. Perhaps if someone did invest $100M developing one hairstyle, they would try hard to protect it.
- davidw 15y ago
  Voting down this point of view is pretty sad. While the content guys have certainly behaved badly, and sure don't seem to be creative in searching for solutions, you can't deny that there is a huge problem for them if we went to the other extreme of having everything free everywhere for everyone. Huge investments in films like that would completely cease to exist. No amount of hand waving will paper over that fact, and he's just stating it, not advocating SOPA or anything like that.
  - jamesbritt 15y ago
    *...if we went to the other extreme of having everything free everywhere for everyone." My interest in this is wondering about areas where people innovate but rarely expect any sort of copy protection. Few people are going to invest the budget of a Hollywood movie into a hair style. Is this because they know there is no practical way to stop people from copying hair styles? Suppose the was never any way to copy protect [films|recordings|whatever]. How would this change things? Is (or was) the difficulty of copying things an aberration, a quirk of a relatively brief period of technology? Should we tell the MPAA and RIAA, hey, you guys just happen to have lucked out for a few decades? If someone invested several million dollars in a hair style, and then tried to get laws to prevent people from copying it because copying breaks their business model they'd be mocked for basing a business model on an untenable condition. At what point do we do the same for people creating digital goods?
    - davidw 15y ago
      You write "you guys" as if the public has not benefited from the music and film industries over the years.
derleth 15y ago
Business plans. Imagine if Ray Kroc had been able to force a rent out of everyone who wanted to copy the 'fast food business' idea he came up with.
modeless 15y ago
Fashion in general. There's little IP protection beyond trademarks (hence why popular brands use their trademarks in their designs, e.g. Louis Vuitton) and everyone shamelessly copies everyone else. It's a fascinating case study: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/11/8283.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/11/8283.ars

aero142 15y ago

Facts. Mathematics. Jokes.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nextparadigms 15y ago

Fashion has a pretty long history of not having or disregarding intellectual property, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0

davidw 15y ago

Next, can anyone correlate those with the investment of time required to produce them? Copying a joke is one thing, copying the entire Harry Potter series is another.

rbanffy 15y ago
What loss exactly does that copy cause? My guess is that people who like movies so much as to go through the trouble of copying them also goes a lot to movie theatres.
- davidw 15y ago
  In a copyright free world, movie theaters would of course be free to copy the movies too. Benefits would accrue to landowners, basically, rather than producers of movies.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    In the end, this would change how movies are funded.
    - davidw 15y ago
      Change it how? All I ever hear are handwavy proposals about "other ways" of doing things. How could you get a significant return on an investment in producing a film? Even non-flashy films cost a lot of money to make. Or would films become the exclusive province of wealthy sponsors with money to squander?

CamperBob 15y ago

I've been trying to accumulate a list of practices or behaviors where there has never been any (or much) barrier to copying, and where for someone to complain would sound a little bizarre. Never mind hair styles and couture.... your question carries weight beyond that, I think. Here's my suggested answer: Philosophers and theologians have debated for thousands of years about whether life has meaning and purpose. Arguably, modern genetics and evolutionary biology have given us a definitive answer to that question: if life can be said to have any purpose at all, that purpose is making copies. Making copies on behalf of our genome is what we're here for. This is one of the few statements you can make about all forms of life, from viruses to blue whales. So when someone introduces an artificial means of making information uncopyable, they're going up against the oldest, strongest instinct that any creature possesses: the instinct that tells us to back up our information by spreading it far and wide. And yes, that includes other peoples' information, considering how much of our genome has been cribbed from other species. It's an imperfect argument and probably a bit too abstract for Congressmen to either grasp or successfully shoot down, but I like it.

haroldp 15y ago

Fashion and recipes, http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...

tlb 15y ago

Hollywood invests as much as $100M in a single movie, probably no hair style has involved such effort. Perhaps if someone did invest $100M developing one hairstyle, they would try hard to protect it.

davidw 15y ago
Voting down this point of view is pretty sad. While the content guys have certainly behaved badly, and sure don't seem to be creative in searching for solutions, you can't deny that there is a huge problem for them if we went to the other extreme of having everything free everywhere for everyone. Huge investments in films like that would completely cease to exist. No amount of hand waving will paper over that fact, and he's just stating it, not advocating SOPA or anything like that.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  *...if we went to the other extreme of having everything free everywhere for everyone." My interest in this is wondering about areas where people innovate but rarely expect any sort of copy protection. Few people are going to invest the budget of a Hollywood movie into a hair style. Is this because they know there is no practical way to stop people from copying hair styles? Suppose the was never any way to copy protect [films|recordings|whatever]. How would this change things? Is (or was) the difficulty of copying things an aberration, a quirk of a relatively brief period of technology? Should we tell the MPAA and RIAA, hey, you guys just happen to have lucked out for a few decades? If someone invested several million dollars in a hair style, and then tried to get laws to prevent people from copying it because copying breaks their business model they'd be mocked for basing a business model on an untenable condition. At what point do we do the same for people creating digital goods?
  - davidw 15y ago
    You write "you guys" as if the public has not benefited from the music and film industries over the years.

derleth 15y ago

Business plans. Imagine if Ray Kroc had been able to force a rent out of everyone who wanted to copy the 'fast food business' idea he came up with.

modeless 15y ago

Fashion in general. There's little IP protection beyond trademarks (hence why popular brands use their trademarks in their designs, e.g. Louis Vuitton) and everyone shamelessly copies everyone else. It's a fascinating case study: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/11/8283.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/11/8283.ars