Neither Intellectual Nor Property 280
Techdirt's Mike Masnick is writing a series of short articles on topics around intellectual property. His latest focuses on the term itself, exploring the nomenclature people have proposed to describe matter that is neither intellectual nor property. The whole series (starting here) is well worth a read.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
For heaven's sake... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand why this is so difficult for you idiots to comprehend. The "property" around that MP3 you're warezing isn't the file itself; it's the *copyright*, which can not be duplicated and which is scarce. Now, you may not think such a thing *should* exist in order to be property and Richard Stallman may have told you that it's thoughtcrime to think such a thing, but the fact is that in our legal system it *is* property. All this sophistry about scarcity is completely missing the point.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Deja Vu (Score:3, Insightful)
That said,Sounds nice, but I don't think it holds merit at all. The very purpose of property and property rights is self-interest and the philosophical right to pursue self-interest. It has nothing to do with managing allocation of resources. It's human nature to declare ownership (ever been around a two-year-old?) because ownership of things translates to better survival and reporductive rates.
At any rate, I'm sure I'm gonna get modded into oblivion here, since my post runs counter to the opinions of some of the more rabid libertarian/anarchist moderators. I'm not going to get into some of the other things in his blog specifically in relation to IP... since rebuttal of same is apparent in the comments to so many articles have come before.
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why that is so difficult for you idiots to comprehend.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
That's (one reason) why people get so upset over IP law - there's nothing stopping them copying ideas EXCEPT the law (it's so rare that something is produced by one person that it may as well be discounted), and there's no harm done by copying IP (RIAA/MPAA might argue that, but you could just as easily argue that their business system is based solely on the law, which means that it would be different/redundant without that law).
That's as succinctly as I could manage to summarise the article, and none of it seemed like intellectual wankery - this argument has serious ramifications IRL, and looking at the fundamentals of it seems as good a place to start as any. So, what you generate with your brain IS your property, but just like your money, it's completely useless if you don't SPEND it.
Intellectual property (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tax Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
And about as practical.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought he was saying that he owes the estate of Aristotle for his use of that idea, and he owes some money to various Germanic tribes for their contributions to the English language. I'd imagine that is keyboard is illegal, as it didn't include any payment to the estate of Christopher Sholes, inventor of the QWERTY keyboard layout. Does his power company pay rights to Tesla's decedents for their use of alternating current to power that computer? Is there anything that we as humans can make or do that doesn't utilize the ideas of other people?
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing scarce about music these days is the talent.
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:5, Insightful)
The scarcity's in the time and talent of the artist. Rick Astley put time and effort into his songs, and he's considerably more talented than most singers. If he wrote the music and lyrics, then that's even more time that was put into the song. It's not property in the tangible sense.
Also, our law recognizes this, because you're not charged with felony theft when you download a shitload of music/movies off the internet, so try again.
Re:When I say "make some", you say "noise" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, copyright, trademarks and the host of related items aren't property. They are a limited monopoly issued by the government for whatever reasons to their holder.
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Deja Vu (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's theft. I merely believe that it results in sub-optimal results for the community as a whole. I don't really want to put effort into supporting something that's specifically designed to be contrary to my interests and to make it illegal for me to make it work in a manner that isn't.
It isn't theft.
And downloading a movie isn't theft either.
It's arguably doing damage to the community for the movie to not be freely available. The cost of the movie is likely too high for many people who might otherwise enjoy it. So the community as a whole is hurt by the value these people are not deriving from the movie because the monopoly right granted on its distribution makes the cost too high.
The idea is to trade off the damage to the community as a whole as opposed to the good for the community as a whole to grant a temporary monopoly right in an attempt to encourage the production of the movie. Treating copyright as a property right is to totally short-circuit this attempt at balance.
The existence of electronic distribution means this balance needs to be re-thought. The tradeoff is different. The ability to make a copy so cheaply means that the amount of damage to society being done by the granted monopoly right is correspondingly greater. Even more people than previously might be able to enjoy the movie if only the monopoly right didn't exist.
There is no analogue in the world of physical property. Sure someone who doesn't have a pound of sugar might be able to derive a lot of value from having that pound. But in order for them to have it, it has to be taken from someone else who is also deriving value from having it.
Calling copyright 'intellectual property' totally casts the debate in terms that lead people to make poor decisions.
The idea of capitalism is to derive the overall greatest value to society as a whole from the distribution of various resources. It turns out that to do that it is best to let each individual actor assign their own values to various resources and each bargain with the others to gain the things they most value. This has various interesting problems in practice, but that's the basic idea.
Casting copyright and patents as 'property' totally skews how people think of them and prevents this calculation from being done appropriately.
Re:Term of Art (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the difference between the two in the physical world, rather than the abstraction of the physical world which is the law.
Intellectual property - exclusion can only occur with the aid of 3rd parties (i.e. law enforcement).
Intellectual property - Once conveyed, you still have it.
Intellectual property - Subdivision is infinite, you can give away pieces of arbitrary size to as many people as want them.
Intellectual property - control requires 3rd parties (i.e. law enforcement)
Intellectual Property (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
No man is an island.
The ideas etc that you generate with your brain are not emanating only from you but are generated by your experiences; your education, the society in which you grew up, your life experience.
They do not arise out of some kind of vacuum, unless you really *are* empty-headed.
Hence, if there really is *property* here it must be said to be the property of all of society; you *didn't* come up with it *all* by yourself. Never. Ever.
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:0, Insightful)
People fail to compare apples to apples, for the reasons you've given. While *information* can be reproduced ad infinitum, the right that people are asserting cannot. Only one person can have *exclusive* rights to form any given pattern. It's a very valid point to argue that no one should have such a right (like you say), but the property claimed is, undeniably, scarce.
I am quite frankly sick of all the misconceptions and crappy arguments thrown around about IP. I really should step up my efforts to stamp them out. I'll list a few of them here:
-"intellectual property is a deceptive term/ blurs distinctions between copyright and trademark, etc" --> Um, yeah, because it's a superset term that people find useful in many contexts. For example, "signficant other" can be said to "blur" the difference between a wife and a girlfriend, but if superset terms really confuse you, you were confused to begin with.
-"It's not property" --> See the zillion analogues that people automatically notice when they're intelligent and honest.
-"IP has no legal meaning" --> but it does in common parlance.
-"It's possible to produce intellectual works for profit without asserting IP rights" --> and you can use those methods even while IP exists; we would, however, lose all those that require IP in order for anyone to bother producing them.
Anyone else want to try their hand?
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree inasmuch as commercially, mass produced music is concerned, but there is *plenty* of good, free (as in beer and liberty) music out there. You just gotta know where to look. Of course my tastes are rather diverse, so YMMV, etc.
If it were up to me, only the original composer(s) could hold a copyright on a piece of music which would expire (and default to public domain) upon their death. No corps or estates allowed.
Re:Intellectual property (Score:2, Insightful)
That's an interesting point, but really it's just splitting hairs. A patent is really just some ink on a page that represent a less vague idea on how to implement something. Music is just air pressure differences that hit the eardrums in a certain order. Bits on a hard drive (or in memory) are just an arrangement of electrons that represent some idea that can entertain or provide a tool to get work done. Ultimately everything is just a sequence of something, and that's now what's really important - it's what the sequence represents. When it comes down to it, it seems to *me* that all tools are really just an extension of the mind, which is why the whole debate over "Imaginary/Intellectual" Property comes off as convoluted and absurd.
...Then again, I'm still a naive idealist, although somehow rather cynical. Ahh, fuck it...
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:2, Insightful)
I download a song that I will never buy anyway, they've lost nothing by that download, unlike someone stealing a car, or a dvd off the shelf, or any of the other ridiculous bullshit analogies that they use.
I submit to you, sir, that "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" is equally bullshit.
If you couldn't get it for free, would you still listen to music? I'm guessing you would, but maybe you'd have to compensate the artist instead. Although I'd like to see a lot of them starving, I wouldn't want to see every artist a starving artist.
If their work isn't worth paying for, don't buy it. Don't finger-quote-bunny "steal" it. If a tune isn't worth $.99 to you, it's obviously not worth listening to. So why are you torrenting it, and then being self-righteous about your laziness?
The scarcity's in the time and talent of the artist. Rick Astley put time and effort into his songs, and he's considerably more talented than most singers. If he wrote the music and lyrics, then that's even more time that was put into the song. It's not property in the tangible sense.
...which the artist doesn't get paid for. Because what that time and talent produces is not tangible. But, that intangible good is more value than the tangible one - yet you don't feel he and others have a right to get paid for their work?
Re:When I say "make some", you say "noise" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Term of Art (Score:3, Insightful)
A copyright, for example, is not the same thing as the creative work to which the copyright pertains, nor is either of those the same as a copy in which the creative work might be fixed. A copy is certainly property. A copyright is arguably property. A creative work is certainly not property.
Ultimately, property is that which is capable of being used and enjoyed by the owner, lent to others and recoverable, and which the owner can dispose of (either by selling, or by destroying). While a creative work meets the first requirement, it cannot meet the other two (outside of extreme and unrealistic situations), largely because it's nonrivalrous. A copyright, at least, can.
However, there are non-rivalrous goods out there in which we attach property rights.
Offhand, I can't think of any. Your easement example doesn't work. The easement is very large, but it is finite. If the entire population of the world was playing golf that day, and everyone hit their ball onto that lot, you'd have a hell of a time if they all decided to retrieve it simultaneously. If the easement were truly non-rivalrous, it would be no problem at all.
IP resembles real or personal property a lot more than it resembles anything else.
Again, it depends on what 'IP' means. As a lawyer who practices in copyright and trademark, I assure you, the term is so vague, so meaningless, so deliberately confusing, that I have no idea of what people mean when they say it. I don't even use the term at all myself, save to point out why it shouldn't be used.
If you want to talk about copyright, say so. Ditto, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, publicity rights, etc. They're all different, they're all unrelated, and they're not going to be less so just because of a made-up umbrella term.
Re:Term of Art (Score:5, Insightful)
With physical property I (or me and both my friends) can (attempt to) physically secure property from you and your roving band of 6^2^2 friends. Regardless of whether or not I'm successful, only one of us ends up with it. Either I'm successful in defending it, or you manage to take it from me. This idea led mankind to villages and countries: To defend my property from the invaders.
Contrast this with an idea: Once I publish my idea (or even tell one person) it is impossible for me to ever be sure that no one else uses my idea. I suppose I could kill the first person I told, but this is an unusually harsh 'defence' for 'property' and still doesn't guarantee that either they already told someone else, or (as often happens) someone else had the same idea as me.
The reality is that physical property can be protected, but ideas can not.
The 'net is a perfect example of this: the more some organization tries to stifle the dissemination of something (perhaps internal e-mails) the more it gets copied throughout the net until it becomes literally impossible for anyone (including the government) to halt this spread.
That we may or may not make use of the government to help protect our physical property isn't really important. What is important is that physical property can be protected, while ideas can not. And this is true due to the rivalrous nature of property, and the non-rivalrous nature of ideas. This "problem" has been exacerbated by the internet, which is of course a giant idea copying machine: your idea goes in once, but comes out everywhere...
Re:valuable intellectual property (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, to me
Re:For heaven's sake... (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling us "idiots" was your first mistake.
Your second is jumping into a philosophical debate with something that doesn't make much sense -- the whole point of calling it "intellectual property" is so that there can be a concept of theft, right?
Well, I didn't steal the copyright, and can't.
I disagree with Stallman about many things. He did point out that Intellectual Property isn't a completely sound term, as it covers two or three completely separate branches of law.
But he didn't have a problem with the concept of copyright itself, which makes you an idiot for bringing him up in the first place. The GPL works through copyright. It could not work without copyright.
It ever occur to you that our legal system might be wrong? And that this might be the whole point of these discussions?
All this "sophistry" is very relevant to the point, which is this:
You can post as many Slashdot comments as you want. You can let the RIAA and the MPAA sue as many people as it can. You can pass as much legislation as you want.
But all of that is pissing in the wind. Piracy is a fact. It is real, it is happening, and it is not going away.
So, the question of whether or not to legitimize something that a large portion of the population is already doing anyway is a good one. Think Prohibition.
And think very carefully about how you'd like copyrights, trademarks, and patents to work.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
In the past the artist had a patron: The church. The state. The merchant prince. The patron's one rule is that the art he commissions remains unique. You do not embarrass Nero by building a knock-off of his golden house.
You should ask yourself why you want to be paid forever for something you do once.
Because it is something no one else has ever done - perhaps no one else could ever do. Harper Lee has written one novel. But that novel is To Kill A Mockingbird.
The real money is in the litigation (Score:3, Insightful)
Half the reason patent lawyers have no interest in filing quality patents is because that would cut down on patent litigation.
Re:So like Military Intelligence? (Score:2, Insightful)