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The thing that always worries me when I see software people talking about songs not being property is then what does that make software? I see the act of creat

by nirvana 15y ago

The thing that always worries me when I see software people talking about songs not being property is then what does that make software? I see the act of creating software and creating a song or a movie as being very analogous. It takes a lot of work on the front end to create the master copy, but then that master copy can be digitally reproduced at no marginal cost. Movies and songs grew up in an old style situation where distributors and producers put up the money and in exchange for the risk take a lot of the back end. Software came later, and so we have, for instance, the open source movement. There's not a lot of open source movies. If we don't respect songs as property, but we do think of our own software creations as property, is that not hypocrisy? I can hate the RIAA and MPAA and all their evil actions, and still think of these products as property... many movies cost a hundred million dollars to make. I think it might be more productive to point out that the RIAA and MPAA are doing bad things... than to try and throw out the idea that easily reproducible goods can be property.

jonny_eh 15y ago
That sounds like a straw man. Who is advocating for getting rid of copyright on music AND software? And just because it costs money to make certain properties, like the smells coming from a restaurant, should we make laws that twist common sense and decency to protect profits derived from these properties?
- jamroom 15y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying get rid of copyright, but there certainly are a number of people who believe music should be available in digital form, for free (i.e. since I cannot but it without DRM than I am justified getting it from a torrent, etc.). Whether that is right or not, it certainly seems to be part of our current online culture. Copyright law should already protect "copies" of these things, and really has no regard to profit (how you profit from your copyright is up to you).
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I don't think anyone is saying get rid of copyright Sorry, but many people are. Personally, I'd like to at least try it too.
- pgisoverrated 15y ago
  I am adocating for getting rid of copyroght on music AND software. That's because I am intellectually consistent... which was the original point. pg's intellectual inconsistency gives him power in the world of hucksters and thieves, but no one who takes these issues seriously simulataneously takes his self-serving screeds seriously.
  - joshAg 15y ago
    what about copyright on ebooks? how would that work since a book can be published in both a digital and a physical format?
raganwald 15y ago
If we don't respect songs as property, but we do think of our own software creations as property, is that not hypocrisy? Who said that software is property? Not me. http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-th...
pedalpete 15y ago
You make a valid point, but the value in software is most often personalized to the user. Music and movies don't have that same limitation. If the movie were a 'choose your own adventure', and the user had to use a specific platform, then the software is no longer a smell that anybody can smell, it is a specific targeted smell. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately as I'm working with a generic product which is freely available in mass, how do you charge for that? By making it more valuable to the user at the time of use is the best that I've come up with so far.
thasmin 15y ago
There are a bunch of minor differences between software and music that make software more viable as a business when using the same definition of property. Software companies often sell services that are wholly based on software, but it's the service that has value. Customized software such as an internal accounting system is worth more to the purchaser and often not worth anything to the world at large. It's also easier to use the old definition of property to sell because it's easier to prevent unauthorized users from using software.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
See the major difference there is that engineers have recognized this and built a moat around their inventions. You don't just provide some bytes that run on someone's computer, you provide a service that can't be duplicated. Now ask yourself why it is that engineers adjusted but media has not. What are their motivations?
- reinhardt 15y ago
  Maybe because only engineers have the luxury of providing a service that can't be duplicated? I have trouble imagining viable SaaS equivalents for media. What would a, say, Books-as-a-Service look like?
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    You can get 1 free Kindle download a month with Amazon prime. However, I think Porn is leading the way on that one. There are plenty of sites that give you access to a growing collection of stories for a monthly price, and one that allows free access to it's collection but charges for a better search and bookmarking system. Which I guess boils down to either the patronage system, where you can sponsors people to write (ex: epic poetry) or the organizational system where you can distribute free content and then give kickback to the most popular authors like many blogging systems do. PS: Batoto.com is an odd mix as it returns money to people who translate works but not the original authors. Sort of like a pirates auction house. The advantage for users being a nice interface and rapid updates.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Except now the patronage system can be easily distributed instead of relying on rich people. I doubt it'll ever fund an "Avatar", but 2.9 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adv...
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    I'm being very radical here, but the thought of the only books being published being by people who actually want to be read rather than waant to be rich is not a problem for me. For craftsmen whose primary goal isn't to communicate or entertain, I'd suggest patrons. I'd certainly sponsor about 1/50 of a writer spread across a curated pool. I'd probably sponsor about 1/200 of a curator. They wouldn't have to even send me the books, I'd just buy them from the printer with the best quality to cost ratio.
smilliken 15y ago
It's worth pointing out that a significant part of the software industry has adapted to providing services instead of licences to their software. The argument isn't as much about what's morally right, but what's economically practical. It's really hard to control the flow of information, including music and software.
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  Exactly, we have evolved and adapted to the internet. Which is exactly what we're asking the entertainment industry to do. It would only be an hypocrisy if hackers were trying to push laws to protect software from being pirated. But you don't, quite the opposite actually, I'd guess most of us would rather see less IP enforcement, than otherwise. Personally, I'd invite you to share my creation as much as you can, please do so.
  - saraid216 15y ago
    Not hackers; their musical counterparts wouldn't be the RIAA and such, but rather the people noodling on music in the spare time for the fun of it. Look to large corporations: Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, &c using patents offensively and defensively, instead.
- mc32 15y ago
  What would an analogous solution form Music look like? Labels which only offer their music (song catalogs) as a service, thus requiring a listener to subscribe to their service (and multiple services if one enjoyed music from artists belonging to different labels)? Maybe someone could offer a platform for musicians to undercut (cut-out) the label middle-person. One would still likely see multiple direct to consumer music platforms --many requiring some kind of subscription service? There could be a free service which would be subsidized or supported via advertising. The solutions above could all be undermined by people recording the music and saving them locally. One can't easily "save" Google services locally and get the same benefit out of them. I mean, one could make a good effort, but the result would require much effort that is beyond the tolerance of most people, I think.
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
Observe the current state (near-non-existence) of the compiler market. This is not a bad thing: gcc is not the best compiler that humanity could produce, but we wouldn't want to trade it for a really expensive but marginally better one. Similarly, games are pirated a lot; but is a world with lots of free-to-play games really worse than a world in which the games are (as now) largely too expensive (per hour) for the target audience? There will always be money to be made in writing custom in-house software, but lots of software is becoming cheaper/free. This is mostly a good thing.
- tonyedgecombe 15y ago
  The compiler market is interesting, when I look back thirty years to when I started programming there were dozens of small companies providing various languages and tools. There are a few now but not on the same scale. This probably is a good thing, it is possible to get started now with no expenditure beyond the hardware whereas when I started I was limited by what I could afford.
  - pjscott 15y ago
    This is also handy for hardware companies. It seems like almost every embedded processor comes standard with a GCC-based toolchain, so they're forced to compete on things more interesting than having good compiler support.
- elemeno 15y ago
  I don't know that that's a great analogy - there is a compiler market but it's not necessarily one that people notice. Microsoft sells it's compilers in the form of Visual Studio. Intel sells a variety of C++ and Fortran compilers. There's GCC, there's LLVM/Clang. They all compete against each other in a variety of ways, thus there is a market, albeit one in which the currency is to extents eyeballs as opposed to money. (in the sense that if you're in an area where a for-money compiler is required, the cost of it is likely not an issue - so it comes down to which compiler do your devs want to be using) In my opinion, a world with lots of free games is worse than a world with a few expensive games. I see at being almost analogous to mass-production vs artisan craftsmanship. I'd rather enjoy the fruit of a craftsman's labour than I would gorge myself on the cheap, cheerful and unpolished wares of the assembly line.
deleted 15y ago
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InclinedPlane 15y ago
The nature of property is defined by the extent and limitations of rights. But the shape of those boundaries, and the things that are allowed to be property, changes depending on society, culture, and technology. Can you own a single word, for example (like, say, sklartch)? Not as a trademark but actually owning the word, owning the right to let people use it, copy it, etc. Of course you can't, because copying a word is trivial. You cannot stop someone from memorizing and writing out a short series of letters, either with a keyboard or with a pen and paper. It is not within anyone's power to restrict or control the writing of the word "sklartch". And, of course, we accept intuitively that you can't own a word, or a smell, because we have already internalized that it is impossible and thus ridiculous to do so. We are in the midst of a technological revolution that is rapidly making it ridiculous to attempt to control the copying of digital goods. It is no more possible to control the copying of a movie, song, or book than it is to control the copying of the word sklartch. Does that mean that such things can no longer be property? Perhaps. It can be disconcerting to traverse the boundary where something goes from being property to not, because of course we have come to believe that obtaining something that is defined as property without paying for it is stealing. But if you were to write the word sklartch on a piece of paper would you feel like a thief? Would you feel like a thief if you intentionally passed by a nearby restaurant because it smells good? Would you feel like a thief if you read a book in a library? Would you feel like a thief if you listened to a song on the radio and turned the radio off as a commercial came on? Obviously there is additional complexity involved, but this is still a very important part of the discussion about the future of art and its relationship to law and technology. Edit: how do you make money out of something that can't be property? Well, I put a lot of effort into inventing the word "sklartch" how do I make money off of that? To some degree, this changes what people do and what people make. You don't see people making careers out of inventing new words (except Dr. Seuss). But there are often other business models that still work. Radio/used book stores/libraries haven't destroyed art yet, perhaps file sharing won't either. One strong possibility, that is already a reality for some, is that makers acquire a reputation via their early works and then use a platform like kickstarter to earn money preemptively on their next work. In combination with "pay what you want" models, I think it might be workable. Also, keep in mind that we are currently entirely blind to all of the activities that would benefit society greatly (including creation of art) but which are very uncommon because it's not possible to make a living from them.
Natsu 15y ago
> The thing that always worries me when I see software people talking about songs not being property is then what does that make software? They're exactly the same. There's a reason the industry is moving towards SaaS and building businesses atop FOSS, rather than trying to build a better dongle.
baddox 15y ago
> I see the act of creating software and creating a song or a movie as being very analogous. Of course they're analogous. I think pg is fine with disposing of the traditional model of "selling software." As he pointed out in his recent Pycon keynote, Amazon AWS is a spectacular example of profitable commercial software, but it doesn't follow that model of "selling software."
run4yourlives 15y ago
Sorry, I don't see where PG said that songs weren't property at all. He's saying the definition of that particular property is changing, but that doesn't mean it is non-existent. With software, music, movies and books, what's changing is the notion that the copying of a piece of work is the creation of new property, hence deserving of the unit cost of all the work that went into the creation of the original material. It's not that a new song belongs to everyone by default, it's that the math is skewed. Software developers have figured this out already - which is why you can buy an app for $.99 instantly. The producers of other material haven't adjusted. Although unlike pg I don't think it has anything to do with bonuses, and everything to do with the fact that the entire production-enabling industry has become obsolete; especially for music, but soon enough for movies as well and books as well. The content producer doesn't need a gatekeeper to help create physical copies his book or song, then distribute these to selected merchants around the world. He needs an editor and a marketing firm to get the word out, and that's it.
adharmad 15y ago
To generalize what you are saying, society will always consider those things as "property" that add value. Songs, movies, software all add value (for some definition of value) to their users. If, hypothetically, all software is open source, but differs in its data input, then the data will be considered "property". It is already happening with social networking sites, wherein there is reluctance to share in an open way user data, comments, photos, "likes" etc. That being said, I think content, being a product of human creativity and imagination, will always have some value in the "property" sense.
mmaunder 15y ago
Exactly. I wrote this as a top level post and then read your post, so decided to post it as a reply here instead: Imagine your server based app suddenly become instantly copyable and deployable by anyone visiting your site, at no charge to them or you. You launch your latest startup and within 6 hours there are thousands of clones around the world competing with you. This new reality applies to any new web or mobile app you build. That would terrify me. I agree the method of enforcement and level of influence the industry has on our legislative process is extremely problematic. I don't agree that how industry execs are compensated is relevant. Intellectual property like the movie Avatar cost money to make and have real value. As consumers we are prepared to exchange money for that value, money which is worth less to us than the value we extract from the product. It's just that the laws of physics have changed and it's no longer possible to exchange one unit of Avatar for X dollars because once the first customer consumes it, it is free for everyone else, in a perfectly efficient piracy market. I want to live in a world where people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on making movies like Avatar. So rather than telling the industry to just "get with the program, your goods are free like smells now", I'd like to see our community come up with a solution to this very very hard problem. Any takers?
- abstractbill 15y ago
  Imagine your server based app suddenly become instantly copyable and deployable by anyone visiting your site, at no charge to them or you. You launch your latest startup and within 6 hours there are thousands of clones around the world competing with you. This new reality applies to any new web or mobile app you build. That would terrify me. A technology that could instantly clone any software service would have to be magical enough that I think its benefits would outweigh the drawback of killing a business model.
  - loumf 15y ago
    Unless the result was no more software services.
    - wdewind 15y ago
davidw 15y ago
You could always give performances and charge for those! Oh, wait... Joking aside, I think that IP is and should remain a messy compromise. There are no easy answers. Were it to cease to exist completely, it would reduce the incentives for producers, and thus consumers would be worse off too because they would have less software, books, movies and music to enjoy. I don't have all the answers in terms of details, but copyright terms right now are too long. Patents should vary by sector, taking into account the real world. Biotech patents applied to medicines are useful because those medicines are easy to copy, more often than not, but take years of research to come up with. Software patents just seem like bunk to me. Other things are probably in the middle somewhere. And all of this should be reviewed every 10 years or so to see how the facts on the ground are changing. As for enforcement... that's tricky. With no enforcement at all, it's sort of silly to even pretend that producers have any rights. Too draconian is obviously bad as well. Anyone have any thoughts on the details, wherein lies the devil? Also, speaking of smells and property, Googling for "perfume intellectual property" turns up some interesting stuff, like this: http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2010/01/19/smelly-rights-copyright-in-perfume/ http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2010/01/19/smelly-rig...
- lukifer 15y ago
  I agree with IP being a messy and (currently) necessary compromise. The problem is that it requires retro-fitting an economic incentive structure based on scarce and defensible atoms to a good that is none of those. It's like asking what kinds of rail-roads we should build for our cars to drive on. Sure, we can continue to limp forward with the mess we have now, paying the huge legal overhead, as well as the opportunity cost of the economic activity which is hindered by this environment (patent trolls, remix culture, etc). But I don't think we should be content with that. I'd much rather we explore new incentive systems which are oriented specifically toward knowledge work. We already do this in the form of new business models: commoditizing your components, freemium, gift economies, etc. But there is still a lot of unexplored space in creating new ways to profit from the creation of data, either by creating new business models, or drafting new social conventions (government-backed or otherwise).
  - 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
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crusso 15y ago
I've always worried about the same thing. In a world where software and easy-to-copy "bits" can not be owned, would a viable business model be to hack into Facebook, steal the code and the user database then set up my own social networking site using their IP? I mean, if they can't own bits then I haven't really stolen anything by hacking into their system. Maybe I'd need to pay them back for the cost of the download? Just wondering.
jes5199 15y ago
Software, like music, is a performance art. People will always pay for you to make something new. If I solve a problem you have, you will be willing to pay me for the benefit of having it fixed, even if it soon solves the same problem for other people, too. If every single piece of software ever written was open-sourced, there would still be more software that needed to be written.

by nirvana 15y ago

jonny_eh 15y ago

That sounds like a straw man. Who is advocating for getting rid of copyright on music AND software? And just because it costs money to make certain properties, like the smells coming from a restaurant, should we make laws that twist common sense and decency to protect profits derived from these properties?

jamroom 15y ago
I don't think anyone is saying get rid of copyright, but there certainly are a number of people who believe music should be available in digital form, for free (i.e. since I cannot but it without DRM than I am justified getting it from a torrent, etc.). Whether that is right or not, it certainly seems to be part of our current online culture. Copyright law should already protect "copies" of these things, and really has no regard to profit (how you profit from your copyright is up to you).
- icebraining 15y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying get rid of copyright Sorry, but many people are. Personally, I'd like to at least try it too.
pgisoverrated 15y ago
I am adocating for getting rid of copyroght on music AND software. That's because I am intellectually consistent... which was the original point. pg's intellectual inconsistency gives him power in the world of hucksters and thieves, but no one who takes these issues seriously simulataneously takes his self-serving screeds seriously.
- joshAg 15y ago
  what about copyright on ebooks? how would that work since a book can be published in both a digital and a physical format?

raganwald 15y ago

If we don't respect songs as property, but we do think of our own software creations as property, is that not hypocrisy? Who said that software is property? Not me. http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-th...

pedalpete 15y ago

You make a valid point, but the value in software is most often personalized to the user. Music and movies don't have that same limitation. If the movie were a 'choose your own adventure', and the user had to use a specific platform, then the software is no longer a smell that anybody can smell, it is a specific targeted smell. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately as I'm working with a generic product which is freely available in mass, how do you charge for that? By making it more valuable to the user at the time of use is the best that I've come up with so far.

thasmin 15y ago

There are a bunch of minor differences between software and music that make software more viable as a business when using the same definition of property. Software companies often sell services that are wholly based on software, but it's the service that has value. Customized software such as an internal accounting system is worth more to the purchaser and often not worth anything to the world at large. It's also easier to use the old definition of property to sell because it's easier to prevent unauthorized users from using software.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

See the major difference there is that engineers have recognized this and built a moat around their inventions. You don't just provide some bytes that run on someone's computer, you provide a service that can't be duplicated. Now ask yourself why it is that engineers adjusted but media has not. What are their motivations?

reinhardt 15y ago
Maybe because only engineers have the luxury of providing a service that can't be duplicated? I have trouble imagining viable SaaS equivalents for media. What would a, say, Books-as-a-Service look like?
- onemoreact 15y ago
  You can get 1 free Kindle download a month with Amazon prime. However, I think Porn is leading the way on that one. There are plenty of sites that give you access to a growing collection of stories for a monthly price, and one that allows free access to it's collection but charges for a better search and bookmarking system. Which I guess boils down to either the patronage system, where you can sponsors people to write (ex: epic poetry) or the organizational system where you can distribute free content and then give kickback to the most popular authors like many blogging systems do. PS: Batoto.com is an odd mix as it returns money to people who translate works but not the original authors. Sort of like a pirates auction house. The advantage for users being a nice interface and rapid updates.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Except now the patronage system can be easily distributed instead of relying on rich people. I doubt it'll ever fund an "Avatar", but 2.9 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adv...
- pessimizer 15y ago
  I'm being very radical here, but the thought of the only books being published being by people who actually want to be read rather than waant to be rich is not a problem for me. For craftsmen whose primary goal isn't to communicate or entertain, I'd suggest patrons. I'd certainly sponsor about 1/50 of a writer spread across a curated pool. I'd probably sponsor about 1/200 of a curator. They wouldn't have to even send me the books, I'd just buy them from the printer with the best quality to cost ratio.

smilliken 15y ago

It's worth pointing out that a significant part of the software industry has adapted to providing services instead of licences to their software. The argument isn't as much about what's morally right, but what's economically practical. It's really hard to control the flow of information, including music and software.

vibrunazo 15y ago
Exactly, we have evolved and adapted to the internet. Which is exactly what we're asking the entertainment industry to do. It would only be an hypocrisy if hackers were trying to push laws to protect software from being pirated. But you don't, quite the opposite actually, I'd guess most of us would rather see less IP enforcement, than otherwise. Personally, I'd invite you to share my creation as much as you can, please do so.
- saraid216 15y ago
  Not hackers; their musical counterparts wouldn't be the RIAA and such, but rather the people noodling on music in the spare time for the fun of it. Look to large corporations: Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, &c using patents offensively and defensively, instead.
mc32 15y ago
What would an analogous solution form Music look like? Labels which only offer their music (song catalogs) as a service, thus requiring a listener to subscribe to their service (and multiple services if one enjoyed music from artists belonging to different labels)? Maybe someone could offer a platform for musicians to undercut (cut-out) the label middle-person. One would still likely see multiple direct to consumer music platforms --many requiring some kind of subscription service? There could be a free service which would be subsidized or supported via advertising. The solutions above could all be undermined by people recording the music and saving them locally. One can't easily "save" Google services locally and get the same benefit out of them. I mean, one could make a good effort, but the result would require much effort that is beyond the tolerance of most people, I think.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

Observe the current state (near-non-existence) of the compiler market. This is not a bad thing: gcc is not the best compiler that humanity could produce, but we wouldn't want to trade it for a really expensive but marginally better one. Similarly, games are pirated a lot; but is a world with lots of free-to-play games really worse than a world in which the games are (as now) largely too expensive (per hour) for the target audience? There will always be money to be made in writing custom in-house software, but lots of software is becoming cheaper/free. This is mostly a good thing.

tonyedgecombe 15y ago
The compiler market is interesting, when I look back thirty years to when I started programming there were dozens of small companies providing various languages and tools. There are a few now but not on the same scale. This probably is a good thing, it is possible to get started now with no expenditure beyond the hardware whereas when I started I was limited by what I could afford.
- pjscott 15y ago
  This is also handy for hardware companies. It seems like almost every embedded processor comes standard with a GCC-based toolchain, so they're forced to compete on things more interesting than having good compiler support.
elemeno 15y ago
I don't know that that's a great analogy - there is a compiler market but it's not necessarily one that people notice. Microsoft sells it's compilers in the form of Visual Studio. Intel sells a variety of C++ and Fortran compilers. There's GCC, there's LLVM/Clang. They all compete against each other in a variety of ways, thus there is a market, albeit one in which the currency is to extents eyeballs as opposed to money. (in the sense that if you're in an area where a for-money compiler is required, the cost of it is likely not an issue - so it comes down to which compiler do your devs want to be using) In my opinion, a world with lots of free games is worse than a world with a few expensive games. I see at being almost analogous to mass-production vs artisan craftsmanship. I'd rather enjoy the fruit of a craftsman's labour than I would gorge myself on the cheap, cheerful and unpolished wares of the assembly line.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

InclinedPlane 15y ago

The nature of property is defined by the extent and limitations of rights. But the shape of those boundaries, and the things that are allowed to be property, changes depending on society, culture, and technology. Can you own a single word, for example (like, say, sklartch)? Not as a trademark but actually owning the word, owning the right to let people use it, copy it, etc. Of course you can't, because copying a word is trivial. You cannot stop someone from memorizing and writing out a short series of letters, either with a keyboard or with a pen and paper. It is not within anyone's power to restrict or control the writing of the word "sklartch". And, of course, we accept intuitively that you can't own a word, or a smell, because we have already internalized that it is impossible and thus ridiculous to do so. We are in the midst of a technological revolution that is rapidly making it ridiculous to attempt to control the copying of digital goods. It is no more possible to control the copying of a movie, song, or book than it is to control the copying of the word sklartch. Does that mean that such things can no longer be property? Perhaps. It can be disconcerting to traverse the boundary where something goes from being property to not, because of course we have come to believe that obtaining something that is defined as property without paying for it is stealing. But if you were to write the word sklartch on a piece of paper would you feel like a thief? Would you feel like a thief if you intentionally passed by a nearby restaurant because it smells good? Would you feel like a thief if you read a book in a library? Would you feel like a thief if you listened to a song on the radio and turned the radio off as a commercial came on? Obviously there is additional complexity involved, but this is still a very important part of the discussion about the future of art and its relationship to law and technology. Edit: how do you make money out of something that can't be property? Well, I put a lot of effort into inventing the word "sklartch" how do I make money off of that? To some degree, this changes what people do and what people make. You don't see people making careers out of inventing new words (except Dr. Seuss). But there are often other business models that still work. Radio/used book stores/libraries haven't destroyed art yet, perhaps file sharing won't either. One strong possibility, that is already a reality for some, is that makers acquire a reputation via their early works and then use a platform like kickstarter to earn money preemptively on their next work. In combination with "pay what you want" models, I think it might be workable. Also, keep in mind that we are currently entirely blind to all of the activities that would benefit society greatly (including creation of art) but which are very uncommon because it's not possible to make a living from them.

Natsu 15y ago

> The thing that always worries me when I see software people talking about songs not being property is then what does that make software? They're exactly the same. There's a reason the industry is moving towards SaaS and building businesses atop FOSS, rather than trying to build a better dongle.

baddox 15y ago

> I see the act of creating software and creating a song or a movie as being very analogous. Of course they're analogous. I think pg is fine with disposing of the traditional model of "selling software." As he pointed out in his recent Pycon keynote, Amazon AWS is a spectacular example of profitable commercial software, but it doesn't follow that model of "selling software."

run4yourlives 15y ago

Sorry, I don't see where PG said that songs weren't property at all. He's saying the definition of that particular property is changing, but that doesn't mean it is non-existent. With software, music, movies and books, what's changing is the notion that the copying of a piece of work is the creation of new property, hence deserving of the unit cost of all the work that went into the creation of the original material. It's not that a new song belongs to everyone by default, it's that the math is skewed. Software developers have figured this out already - which is why you can buy an app for $.99 instantly. The producers of other material haven't adjusted. Although unlike pg I don't think it has anything to do with bonuses, and everything to do with the fact that the entire production-enabling industry has become obsolete; especially for music, but soon enough for movies as well and books as well. The content producer doesn't need a gatekeeper to help create physical copies his book or song, then distribute these to selected merchants around the world. He needs an editor and a marketing firm to get the word out, and that's it.

adharmad 15y ago

To generalize what you are saying, society will always consider those things as "property" that add value. Songs, movies, software all add value (for some definition of value) to their users. If, hypothetically, all software is open source, but differs in its data input, then the data will be considered "property". It is already happening with social networking sites, wherein there is reluctance to share in an open way user data, comments, photos, "likes" etc. That being said, I think content, being a product of human creativity and imagination, will always have some value in the "property" sense.

mmaunder 15y ago

Exactly. I wrote this as a top level post and then read your post, so decided to post it as a reply here instead: Imagine your server based app suddenly become instantly copyable and deployable by anyone visiting your site, at no charge to them or you. You launch your latest startup and within 6 hours there are thousands of clones around the world competing with you. This new reality applies to any new web or mobile app you build. That would terrify me. I agree the method of enforcement and level of influence the industry has on our legislative process is extremely problematic. I don't agree that how industry execs are compensated is relevant. Intellectual property like the movie Avatar cost money to make and have real value. As consumers we are prepared to exchange money for that value, money which is worth less to us than the value we extract from the product. It's just that the laws of physics have changed and it's no longer possible to exchange one unit of Avatar for X dollars because once the first customer consumes it, it is free for everyone else, in a perfectly efficient piracy market. I want to live in a world where people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on making movies like Avatar. So rather than telling the industry to just "get with the program, your goods are free like smells now", I'd like to see our community come up with a solution to this very very hard problem. Any takers?

abstractbill 15y ago
Imagine your server based app suddenly become instantly copyable and deployable by anyone visiting your site, at no charge to them or you. You launch your latest startup and within 6 hours there are thousands of clones around the world competing with you. This new reality applies to any new web or mobile app you build. That would terrify me. A technology that could instantly clone any software service would have to be magical enough that I think its benefits would outweigh the drawback of killing a business model.
- loumf 15y ago
  Unless the result was no more software services.
  - wdewind 15y ago

davidw 15y ago

You could always give performances and charge for those! Oh, wait... Joking aside, I think that IP is and should remain a messy compromise. There are no easy answers. Were it to cease to exist completely, it would reduce the incentives for producers, and thus consumers would be worse off too because they would have less software, books, movies and music to enjoy. I don't have all the answers in terms of details, but copyright terms right now are too long. Patents should vary by sector, taking into account the real world. Biotech patents applied to medicines are useful because those medicines are easy to copy, more often than not, but take years of research to come up with. Software patents just seem like bunk to me. Other things are probably in the middle somewhere. And all of this should be reviewed every 10 years or so to see how the facts on the ground are changing. As for enforcement... that's tricky. With no enforcement at all, it's sort of silly to even pretend that producers have any rights. Too draconian is obviously bad as well. Anyone have any thoughts on the details, wherein lies the devil? Also, speaking of smells and property, Googling for "perfume intellectual property" turns up some interesting stuff, like this: http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2010/01/19/smelly-rights-copyright-in-perfume/ http://www.patentbaristas.com/archives/2010/01/19/smelly-rig...

lukifer 15y ago
I agree with IP being a messy and (currently) necessary compromise. The problem is that it requires retro-fitting an economic incentive structure based on scarce and defensible atoms to a good that is none of those. It's like asking what kinds of rail-roads we should build for our cars to drive on. Sure, we can continue to limp forward with the mess we have now, paying the huge legal overhead, as well as the opportunity cost of the economic activity which is hindered by this environment (patent trolls, remix culture, etc). But I don't think we should be content with that. I'd much rather we explore new incentive systems which are oriented specifically toward knowledge work. We already do this in the form of new business models: commoditizing your components, freemium, gift economies, etc. But there is still a lot of unexplored space in creating new ways to profit from the creation of data, either by creating new business models, or drafting new social conventions (government-backed or otherwise).
- 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

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crusso 15y ago

I've always worried about the same thing. In a world where software and easy-to-copy "bits" can not be owned, would a viable business model be to hack into Facebook, steal the code and the user database then set up my own social networking site using their IP? I mean, if they can't own bits then I haven't really stolen anything by hacking into their system. Maybe I'd need to pay them back for the cost of the download? Just wondering.

jes5199 15y ago

Software, like music, is a performance art. People will always pay for you to make something new. If I solve a problem you have, you will be willing to pay me for the benefit of having it fixed, even if it soon solves the same problem for other people, too. If every single piece of software ever written was open-sourced, there would still be more software that needed to be written.