Lessig On IP Protection, Conflict 217
cdlu writes "According to NewsForge [part of OSDN, like Slashdot], Stanford University law professor, author, and Creative Commons chairman Lawrence Lessig sharpened the definition of the ongoing legal struggle over intellectual property while talking at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday. According to Lessig: 'Contrary to what many people see as a cultural war between conservative business types and liberal independents, this is not a 'commerce versus anything' conflict. It's about powerful (business) interests and if they can stop new innovators'."
Short term vision, short term interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say 'brain drain'?
The SCO Business Model (Score:0, Insightful)
- If I can make money with Linux ==> Go big, make a "Linux IPO"
- If no one uses my puroducts ==> sue the company with products/services that are the biggest threats to my business
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us have been trying to open people's eyes to that for decades.
China and Brazil have already had their eyes opened on this score. They are both large, resource rich countries.
They might even have an ax or two to grind.
KFG
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Intellectual property is an artificial concept, especially now that digital media allows us to make unlimited copies. A book reader is a physical device that takes time and money to manufacture on a per-unit basis. An e-book is an intangible bundle of electrons that can easily be pulled from Project Gutenberg, if no modern publisher is willing to release books in that format.
Of course, what actually happens is that there's demand for some modern book as eBooks, and if nobody provides it, then some fan will make one, and blam - free copies all over the place, and the publisher gets nothing more than a big headache.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:4, Insightful)
And, strangely enough, China turns out a lot of culture. How many of Holywood's best directors and actors over the past fifteen years have been from China or been influenced by the Chinese? A hell of a lot.
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
Revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean coming up with a different system -- it can be a revolutionary use of the existing system which is what Lessig has done.
In fact, he is even more of a genius for finding creative ways to use existing IP law to meet his ends (of course taking enormous inspiration from Stallman et co. in the software space).
this is a difficult issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it our right to restrict the use of our ideas? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not understand why individuals and companies consider it a right to be able to control the use of their invention or demand extravagant or prohibitive compensation for its use. An idea or work of art, once formulated should be equally available to everyone to build upon. Determining what is or isn't prohibitive is trickier though I think we'd be able to do better than the current broken system.
Digital didn't change anything. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:this is a difficult issue (Score:5, Insightful)
with out this there is no real incentive for most people to do anything much.
Actually, history has shown this to be untrue. There has, historically, been more innovation in countries where the duration of "IP" protection, be it copyright or patent, is less than the average "apprentice to journeyman" cycle. This was the case in Germany and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they both lept ahead of Britain (which had much more stringent IP laws) technologically because of it. Likewise, much of our most innovative music has been given to us by people who didn't give a fuck about whether or not they got paid - they just wanted to make music.
Yes, there are practical issues... But any sane society should already handle taking care of those.
Re:He sometimes doesn't sound so revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
If copyright was instituted correctly and as the founding fathers intended it would encourage a continuous upgrade of ideas from everyone, including the original author. For instance, if a writer of a novel would have to keep on writing in one way or another. When corps cry about the importance of copyright, it's often forgotten that a fiction writer, for example, could just release a new edition of their work that might have a new introduction or new essays about the work or even slight revisions on the story and this would be a BRAND NEW copyright, giving them a new 7 years (or whatever) for the new work. A nonfiction writer could also add evidence or do other rewrites to their work and they would likewise get a BRAND NEW copyright, or a new author could then build on the previous ideas brought forward freely. As you can see, this "classic" copyright encourages continuous work while our version of copyright encourages you to sit back and collect the dough for the rest of your life.
So he's not really anti-copyright or anti-license. He's against using it in a way that goes against what its original intent. So in a you're right.. he's not revolutionary. He wants to go back to the original rules. I for one agree with him.
As Bill G himself put it. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft is just one good idea away from oblivion."
I may not have the quote exactly right, but the idea expressed is correct.
Therefore, to protect one's future, if one is a power player, one must protect innovation from outside the company. Excessive innovation from inside the company is, more often than not, antithetical to profits.
As an example from outside IT, a Trinity factory oval racer who used to practice at my track once told me the story of his first race for the team. He not only won, but he broke the track race record by two seconds.
When he got off the driver's stand, glowing with pride and accomplishment, the team manager stormed up to him and said, "Don't ever let me see you do anything like that again, or your fired. We came here with seconds in hand. You only needed to win by one second, not half a lap. Now every other team knows how fast we are, and they're all going to go home and figure out how to go just as fast before they come out to a major meet again. You just threw away a full season's advantage by showing off. And a full season's sales advantage that goes with it."
There is no advantage to an established company in offering too much "advancment" to the public. Especially if they can get the public to buy chrome as advancment.
Anybody from outside who offers advancement when the public is willing to buy chrome simply needs to be stopped.
A large and powerful corporation, again using Microsoft as the obvious example, by necessity becomes conservative. They have little to gain. They can live off of the the return of their outside investments, effectively, for eternity. They can only lose.
They don't like losing.
If they can create a conservative general atmosphere in society and at law that favors them, well, they don't have to because they can't have any real competition.
Other powerful corporations aren't real competition in innovation because they're all playing by the same rule sheet. Only try to win by one second, so you can sell the other seconds you've already got later, when people get tired of this year's chrome.
KFG
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:3, Insightful)
What part of 'Chinese' don't you understand?
Even if you were to limit it to just the People's Republic of China, then you'd still have to include Hong Kong. (The brits did give it back, after all.) And even then you'd get some saying that Taiwan is technically PRC territory anyway.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I exclude Taiwan and Hong Kong? Hong Kong's had even less "IP" law enforcement than China. Ditto for Taiwan. And Hong Kong's had the benefit of a non-tyrannical government for much of the time and, even now, China's adopting a largely "hands off" policy. That just makes my point stronger, not weaker.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:this is a difficult issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are some parallels: A civilization that grew to prosperity based on free thought, progress, and advancement of knowledge. Conservative elements that grew to dominance and stifled the very free thought that made them great. As for coping with barbarians, perhaps there is a modern parallel for that too, in terrorism.
Re:Is it our right to restrict the use of our idea (Score:3, Insightful)
"I do not understand why individuals and companies consider it a right to be able to control the use of their invention or demand extravagant or prohibitive compensation for its use."
This is the free market economy at work. If I create a work and charge too much for it, it won't sell. If I charge too little, I don't make enough to stay in business.
I ocasionally with a well-respected analyst firm that publishes an annual seven-year forecast report for a particular industry. This report is eight pages, and costs $4,500.00. Yet it is considered by many to be a fair price. I know that many people reading this will simply not comprehend why on earth an eight page report would be sold for $4,500.00, but trust me on this one.
If that analyst firm can write something that people want to buy for $562 per page, then they deserve that money. It is their right and prerogative to charge what the market will bear.
"An idea or work of art, once formulated should be equally available to everyone to build upon."
If tomorrow we enacted a price control law that said that a publisher could not charge more than $X per page, then there's a good chance that the analyst firm would simply no longer publish that particular report. This would be a loss for everybody.
"Determining what is or isn't prohibitive is trickier though I think we'd be able to do better than the current broken system."
I disagree here. The free market works incredibly well in this case. If nobody buys their report this year for $4,500.00, then they'll lower the price next year. And so on. By allowing the analyst firm to charge whatever they like for this forecast report, they are ultimately in control of their business. Putting price controls on copyrighted works is not the answer.
What it really comes down to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't believe me?
I think SCO is a very good example, in many ways.... hell you don't even have to invent or create to anything to make your claim to fame and fortune....
What should be happening is that the term length should be getting shorter and control should be being removed....
How does an inventor or creator get a return?
Far better than they are now!!!
Just because you can invent or create, there is no proof that there is some magical power included or connected to such that says you will know best how to market or distribute it....
If such marketing and distribution is open to all to do, simply paying back to the inventor or creator, some reasonable percentage
Re:Is it our right to restrict the use of our idea (Score:5, Insightful)
But the truth is, most of the good stuff out there was not created by people looking for an incentive - it was created by people who _loved_ doing what they did, and hacked it to their advantage.
All of the world's greatest works, and greatest genuises never worked for money or incentive - that helped, sure, but it was not the goal. The purpose was to innovate for the love of the subject, for the very sake of innovation itself.
Look at Nikolas Tesla, or any of the really great inventors. Or physicsts and mathematicians. Or even musicians. The real good ones do not really care about the money - they do it because they love playing music - its their life, and its in their blood. Sure, a little incentive helps them move on, but with or without it they will do what they do simply because it gives them happiness.
Now, thats whats wrong with today's culture. People are not willing to do anything without compensation. We expect something in return. Look at the trash quality of music today - its only because the morons who are making it are interested only in making money and fame, and not music in itself. Why do so many patents exist? People are not willing to innovate because they love what they do, they are willing to innovate if they can profit and get something in return.
I feel that this is a very bad trend, and a very bad notion. If you notice where true innovation comes from, even today it is only from people who do not care about what they get in return - take Linus Torvalds for example. What he did was simply for the love of what he did best - nothing more.
Unless this attitude changes, and people accept that knowledge belongs to humanity - you may profit from it, but thats not the reason you should be doing it - we are fucked.
*YOU* Can Change the Copyright Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress could repeal the copyright laws tomorrow, if you could get enough votes to do so. That's more of a possibility than you might think, if you consider that more Americans use peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush.
My article suggests a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform, ranging from speaking out [goingware.com] to practicing civil disobedience [goingware.com].
I want every American peer-to-peer network user to read my article by the time of the elections. Presently it gets about 2000 readers a day, but needs to get read about a hundred times more frequently to achieve my goal. If you feel as I do that what I have to say is important, then you can help by linking to my article from your own website, weblog or from message boards.
You'll see from my sig that I've been asking readers to Googlebomb it with the phrase "free music downloads". This has been pretty successful so far, with my article now ranking #3 at Google for that query [google.com]. It's getting about 800 search engine referrals each day for "free music downloads".
My article has a Creative Commons license if you'd like to mirror it.
Principle vs. practice (Score:5, Insightful)
[Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and publicity rights have] always been an artificial concept. That doesn't make it necessarily a bad one.
I agree with the principle behind copyright, that giving an author an economic incentive to create can promote Progress, but I disagree with its implementation in the U.S. Code as of today, such as the effectively perpetual term of monopoly, the breadth of the monopoly on musical works given that there exist a provably finite number of melodies [slashdot.org], and the breadth of the monopoly on derivative works that in the end prevents authors lacking deep pockets for a "fair use" legal defense from creating some satiric works.
I agree with the principle behind patents, that giving an inventor an economic incentive to invent can promote Progress, but I disagree with the poor job that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has done with respect to examining patents for obviousness given prior art.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:4, Insightful)
The good news, Ford made it. The bad news, is it took a huge toll on him before he was able to sell his "horribly unsafe" car (usafe is the reasoning back then to quash his ability to sell cars.)
Already though Taiwan, Hong Kong, Brazil and yes... mainland China are starting to innovate by improving the technologies that they are "illegally" copying. Selling exact copies of a product to pay for the R&D dollars so that they can make their own improved product that they can uniquely call their own, and sell in the US.
What these companies do is extreme, and it's real innovation that's being squashed here - not the inflated innovation done by reverse engineering. Yet legal or not, these other countries will innovate on thier own.
What I'm saying here is ... just like movies the US is defininately way in the lead, but the rest of the world is catching up... slowly. There's no reason to allow large companies to save their short term profits by quashing US innovations forcing the the rest of the world to be catching up faster.
Lwssig's has got it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:3, Insightful)
China
India
Pakistan
Brazil
When these guys get a decent legal system to enforce IP laws, they'll start getting stuff like workplace safety regulations, environmental regulations, etc. Then the megacorps will dump them like so many high-priced American white-collar workers.
Re:Is it our right to restrict the use of our idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Man does not live by gratification alone. If we don't ensure that the innovators, inventors, and creators get some monetary benefit out of the work they create, then they're simply going to wind up spending a lot of their time doing other crap so that they can put food on the table.
That's simply a waste of their talents. I'd rather be encouraging some crap inventors simply so that the truly talented ones could be spending the majority of their time doing what they're best at.
We need to work together (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the general public really believes that money is the sole incentive of technical creativity. I agree money can be a good incentive if you're selling televisions or computers, but the real underlying work that went into the ability to produce these things was done, not for profit, but more because people were compelled by the process of discovery.
The integrated circuit is a good example. Most of the fundamental research that went into the chip came from a lot of painstaking research in solid state physics and was carried out by researchers in university labs making less than they would working for a Fortune 500 OEM.
People really are capable of doing things just for fun, because they're interested in them, or just like knowing how things work.
However, people do need to get paid. But the question here should be, how do we bring people together to create technology? Wouldn't it be great to get all the top cancer researchers together and see if they could make some headway on understanding tumors? But how do we meet their needs, keep them happy, make sure they are adequately compensated, etc.? Though this may be difficult to accomplish under our current economic system, I think you'll agree it's something we need to work towards as it seems to me a much better approach than saying, "we have a pattent system, and if you can find the cure for cancer, you can make a lot of money." This seems so inefficient as comapanies tend to scramble over each other, reinventing the wheel, keeping their research secret and trying to make as much money as they can.
Thoughts?
Re:this is a difficult issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Also true. But from a more technical point of view, a patent/copyright length shorter than the typical "apprentice to journeyman" cycle means that you can use cutting-edge stuff however you want when you're ready to do work on your own. In other words, software patents (heck, most patents these days) should last a decade, MAXIMUM. And six years is more than enough in most fields.
Copyrights are a little trickier, but seven years seems to be reasonable.
Re:As Bill G himself put it. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly.
KFG
Re:Principle vs. practice (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, here's a business model: First, find out what the courts have decided is too short a melody fragment to be copyrightable. This probably isn't quite the same in every jurisdiction, but it's likely under 10 notes. Let this be N. For example, the distinguished first phrase of Happy Birthday is just 5 notes, all the same length, so N is at most 4.
Next, write a little program to generate all the tune fragments from N+1 to, say, 2*N notes. We probably can limit the melody to just an 8-note octave, or maybe make it 12 notes to be on the safe side. OTOH, we might want to include variants of the fragments with various notes of double length, to take into account rhythmic variations.
Apply for copyright on all of these fragments. Whether they all get processed and approved is irrelevant; you'll have applied so you can claim them.
When a new hit song comes out, compare it with your archive of melody fragments. It will match some of them. File suit for copyright infringement.
Profit!
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the author who's screwed having spent a year of his/her life writing a well crafted piece of fiction only to find there are copies available for free over [insert p2p of choice here] without any recognition going to the author for writing the piece in the first place.
Usually, the author has been paid by the publisher, and has probably given up all rights to said publisher. So p2p is more likely the publisher's headache. Most copyright laws are written to protect the publisher. Rather strange, I just finished reading (ok, skimming. This law stuff is hard.) the first copyright law of 1710. It did provide some protection for the author, much to the dismay of the publishers of the time. The part about this law that I really liked was that if there was a complaint about the price, the gov't could set a "fair" price. As I said in another post, If you want copyright protection, you must accept a price set by the "protectors".
Re:Is it our right to restrict the use of our idea (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not advocating traditional price controls, socialism or communism at all. What I'm saying is that you shouldn't allow one company the option to restrict the use of intellectual property by another company. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property and it is only the fact that we didn't have the technology to copy things at will that made the existing systems, which do treat them in the same way, workable for so long.
We need to evolve past this way of thinking, before we REALLY see a mess develop. I'd say we're on the brink of seeing just that as technology continues to accelerate.
Re:this is a difficult issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I see, so there's still a financial incentive for Elvis to produce music? Kind of useless since he's dead, but his stuff won't go PD until 2050 or so.
Re:Is it our right to restrict the use of our idea (Score:3, Insightful)
It almost seems like anti-incentive, to know that I could get sued for reverse engineering an API to implement a program that works with it, or by independently developing software code which happen to be covered by non-specific patents. Having that fear in the back of my mind is frequently enough to quash any self-generated incentive that I would have had in the first place. Without intervention, the other party's crap product wouldn't have been produced, and I would have been free to produce mine without being cowed by vague IP claims.
Re:*YOU* Can Change the Copyright Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
May need to rethink compensation model (Score:3, Insightful)
It always seems that most arguments over IP tends to resolve around the issue of compensation. Yet both sides seem to be missing two fundamental assumptions they are both making in the economics of intellectual work.
I think we all need to challenge both of those axioms. I find myself in a particularly unique position (on /. anyway it seems) of being both mostly conservative with strong belief in the capitalistic society, while also abhoring most IP facades and even the very idea of exclusive artifical ownership of ideas. And I think the apparent conflict between these extremes is actually the result of poorly chosen axioms.
Think about economics outside the IP arena. Compensation is most usually made *prior* to (or in synchronism with) the creation/product. Townsfolk pay farmers for eggs they will receive, not for the past egg-yield of the farmer. Employers pay programmers' salaries for new programs they will write, not their past work. The church commissioned artists for masterpieces they would paint on the ceilings of their cathederals, not for the right to view already prepared graffitti. And even music cartels hire musicians mostly based upon contract for future creations.
So why are we so eager to assume without question that artists and authors are always due compensation on what they have already done, rather than as encouragement for what we want them to do. I'm sure it must have something to do with intrinsic differences in the supply/demand models and the opportunity v. incremental costs between physical and intellectual works. Also the concept of inventory of intellectual "property" seems to make little sense. The "intellectual" industry seems to have the same effect on traditional economic laws, as black holes have on physics. We can't keep using the traditional models to argue the IP world.
Yes, I am aware that I am overgeneralizing and that this argument has some holes; but I do believe there is some insight to be gained in this line of thought, and I'm curious what others may think....by the way, you have my permission to mayke derivative works of this comment by making your own intelligent response to it.
Re:Lessig the Grey vs. Creative Commons (Score:3, Insightful)
And you do know that DJ Danger Mouse pressed 3000 CDs, yes?
From what I understand, 3000 CDs were pressed, and a number of these were sold on Ebay. As long as DJ Danger Mouse did not sell them (he had no arrangement with the Beatles or Jay-Z) he is okay (not making a profit), but the resale of these CDs (in this case, there is no "first sale" ) is not okay. That would be the same as if I took my mp3 copy and created a CD version and sold it -- not okay.
I'm not sure if DJ Dangermouse personally sold any of the CDs, or if the sales were all second party, but IMHO, no money should change hands at any point for these CDs.
Disclaimer: I am using okay/not okay because according to current copyright law (the "real world"), the whole Grey Album project was illegal. Okay / not okay only pertains to my current opinion on how copyright (IMHO) should work, not how it actually works. That's why I support Lessig -- he has thought of things that I'm sure I have never thought of as far as how copyright law should work fairly for all parties.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:1, Insightful)
When you can make an "infinite" number of copies for "free" (or close to it), there is no need to invent property (formalized exclusive possession) to solve a natural conflict. There is no natural conflict; giving copies to everyone makes the pie bigger.
Re:This Lessig guy is smoking something potent (Score:3, Insightful)
"powerful business interests" are not all the same (Score:3, Insightful)
If we all have something in common, I suspect we could identify it as respect for creativity.
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not a new idea either. It happened to Henry Ford back in 1906 when the other established car-makers tried to squash him.
Sorry bud, you'd have done better to cite Diesel instead. The Diesel engine was technically superior to the popular gasoline with spark plug engines, but the man was crushed under the burden of patent suits and died in poverty. The Diesel engine is still superior to gasoline engines, even if it smells bad, and remains in a niche market.
In any case, regardless of what you picked, the Wright Brothers very seriously and emphatically enforced their own patents. The result was that engineers had to work around their patents and ultimately built a better plane than the Wrights had, and built a foundation upon which solid planes were eventually built rather than the canvas pieces of junk the Wright brothers built. And the Wright Brothers sank off into la-la land. They should've spent less time enforcing their patents and more time fighting.
My only point is that there are plenty of examples where people have completely screwed up by enforcing their IP rights . What we need is proof that it's happening here and now, and crushing innovation and generally hurting society.
Not that I disagree with you, mind you, I just think we need more facts and a stronger argument and less historically based rhetoric. :)
Re:A threat to "developed nations" (Score:3, Insightful)
unless people are changing the author's name on the book, the author is getting recognition. It's not money, admittedly. Maybe this same person wrote the best book in the world, but people still overlooked it.
PLease, please, please, Read what some authors really think about this [baen.com].
Yes, Eric Flint seems to agree with you, but he also proves, well, I guess you should all go read it yourself. :)
copyright==gravytrain (Score:2, Insightful)
the straw man in this case is the artist him/herself--if you look back through history, you'll find a large percentage of artists who failed to profit off their ideas, and many who died broke--the people who have made the money are the 'support system' (dealers, brokers, attorneys,estates, etc) and, of course, the family and descendents, many who don't actually give a s#!t about the artwork itself, but the revenue stream that it has created...
the recent contretemps of the Joyce estate prohibiting readings in Ireland is but the latest example--look at any successful artist and you'll see them at the center of a cottage industry, often to the point where the surrounding industry becomes so large that the artist him/herself becomes secondary--think of the RIAA and all of their talk about paying the artist, when all they are really after is preserving their own money flow...
i'm not begrudging anybody a job, but i am taking aim at those people who use other people's creative work from years past as a perpetual annuity--original copyright laws were designed to balance individual creativity and common access, not a gravytrain for family members and lawyers!