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Copyright and patents are very different things. Lumping them under the disingenuous umbrella term "IP" only serves to muddle the waters and create FUD. They ar

Copyright and patents are very different things. Lumping them under the disingenuous umbrella term "IP" only serves to muddle the waters and create FUD. They are not property rights. It's best to criticize each precisely and surgically. Know the terms, know the rules, the exceptions, etc. Know the history, know the original purpose of these laws. That kind of broader knowledge in broader society is what can help. The big corps are interested in having a vague blurry idea around "IP" that just makes you scared and think "wouldn't download a car" and has a chilling effect of thinking that all "that stuff" is electrified and better not touch it, and that it's just natural that there's "intellectual property" and it's just minor details whether it's copyright or patents or trademarks or whatever else. Property rights are ancient. By associating copyright with that, they make it seem that it's also just as fundamental and civilization-grounding as private property, when most of intellectual history had no such concept. Derivative works, tweaking ideas, splicing them in new ways was just normal. A related disingenuous propaganda term is "content consumption", again creating the association between e.g. reading a book or listening to a song on the one hand and eating food, or using up soap or fuel on the other. See also: https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-nonsensical-and-pernicious https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-... https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LT_IPMisnomer-2-1.pdf https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LT... https://conversableeconomist.com/2013/03/29/is-intellectual-property-a-misnomer/ https://conversableeconomist.com/2013/03/29/is-intellectual-... https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

jalapenos 1y ago
What? Copyright and patents are exactly the same thing. Making "you copied me!" actionable at a court of law, by statute, when before that there was no such legal fiction of "intellectual property" or any other exclusive rights to reproduce a thing.
- bavell 1y ago
  You basically replied to GP's eloquent and nuanced post with, "nah bro trust me, purple is actually blue!"
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Congrats on proving your own point
- Borealid 1y ago
  Copyright and patents are absolutely not the same thing at all. A patent makes it illegal to use a particular idea, by any means. It is a limited-time universal monopoly on a set of specific "claims" (the selected applications of the idea). It has nothing to do with whether someone copied you or not. A copyright is a prohibition on someone copying you, with certain exceptions where they are allowed to do so ("fair use" or "fair dealing"). Copyrights also, in the USA, bring certain protections against people attempting to use a work in a way you did not intend even where they are not duplicating it. A trademark is a prohibition on someone causing confusion by copying something you use to identify yourself, or by using/referencing it (without copying) in a context you don't wish. A trade secret is a criminal prohibition on someone intentionally causing another to divulge certain information that you contractually banned them from divulging. A security classification is a ban on certain ideas/information being shared with parties that a government agency did not wish them shared with, or used in certain contexts. This is not a protection available to individuals, only to governments. A license is an intentional weakening of one or more of the above types of protection, potentially with attached civil penalties in the event the bounds of the license are exceeded. It can thus, when accepted, limit behaviour beyond what would normally be allowed by one of the IP types above. All six of these IP types protect against Person B doing something that is in some way related to an activity Person A did earlier, but they are really quite different in what they cover and how. I don't agree at all they're the same thing.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    I think you want them to be meaningfully different, for whatever reason, but at the end of the day, they both come down to "if I did the thing you already did, and that you laid claim to through some form of artificial statutory fabrication of rights, you can sue me". Whether that means me exploiting having heard your song by playing your song myself, or exploiting your invention I examined by building it myself, they both come down to: statutory fabrication of fictitious "you can't do because they did already" rights, that at common law could have (rightly) only been achieved through keeping the thing a secret (e.g. still present to this day in say trading algorithms, and in software through the now ubiquitous SaaS model) and contacts (i.e. NDAs) flowing from that.
- cowboylowrez 1y ago
  "property in general" is essentially a "legal fiction" because there are no natural property rights other than "I successfully guarded my pile of stuff against thieves". heck when you think of a complete body of law for instance, its all "fiction", if I were to use your terminology.

jalapenos 1y ago

What? Copyright and patents are exactly the same thing. Making "you copied me!" actionable at a court of law, by statute, when before that there was no such legal fiction of "intellectual property" or any other exclusive rights to reproduce a thing.

bavell 1y ago
You basically replied to GP's eloquent and nuanced post with, "nah bro trust me, purple is actually blue!"
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Congrats on proving your own point
Borealid 1y ago
Copyright and patents are absolutely not the same thing at all. A patent makes it illegal to use a particular idea, by any means. It is a limited-time universal monopoly on a set of specific "claims" (the selected applications of the idea). It has nothing to do with whether someone copied you or not. A copyright is a prohibition on someone copying you, with certain exceptions where they are allowed to do so ("fair use" or "fair dealing"). Copyrights also, in the USA, bring certain protections against people attempting to use a work in a way you did not intend even where they are not duplicating it. A trademark is a prohibition on someone causing confusion by copying something you use to identify yourself, or by using/referencing it (without copying) in a context you don't wish. A trade secret is a criminal prohibition on someone intentionally causing another to divulge certain information that you contractually banned them from divulging. A security classification is a ban on certain ideas/information being shared with parties that a government agency did not wish them shared with, or used in certain contexts. This is not a protection available to individuals, only to governments. A license is an intentional weakening of one or more of the above types of protection, potentially with attached civil penalties in the event the bounds of the license are exceeded. It can thus, when accepted, limit behaviour beyond what would normally be allowed by one of the IP types above. All six of these IP types protect against Person B doing something that is in some way related to an activity Person A did earlier, but they are really quite different in what they cover and how. I don't agree at all they're the same thing.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  I think you want them to be meaningfully different, for whatever reason, but at the end of the day, they both come down to "if I did the thing you already did, and that you laid claim to through some form of artificial statutory fabrication of rights, you can sue me". Whether that means me exploiting having heard your song by playing your song myself, or exploiting your invention I examined by building it myself, they both come down to: statutory fabrication of fictitious "you can't do because they did already" rights, that at common law could have (rightly) only been achieved through keeping the thing a secret (e.g. still present to this day in say trading algorithms, and in software through the now ubiquitous SaaS model) and contacts (i.e. NDAs) flowing from that.
cowboylowrez 1y ago
"property in general" is essentially a "legal fiction" because there are no natural property rights other than "I successfully guarded my pile of stuff against thieves". heck when you think of a complete body of law for instance, its all "fiction", if I were to use your terminology.