Is IP Property? 744
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent article, Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley argues that intellectual property is not 'property' in the traditional sense. According to Lemley, while 'free riding' off of someone else's land or other physical property rights is always undesirable, freely benefitting from someone else's intellectual property rights is often the best way to form a free and creative society. Lemley's distinction also points to the unusual fact that in IP, traditional liberals are often calling for less and less government, while conservatives demand regulation in order to protect their exclusive right to use their intellectual creations."
I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Lemley's distinction also points to the unusual fact that in IP, traditional liberals are often calling for less and less government, while conservatives demand regulation in order to protect their exclusive right to use their intellectual creations.
I don't think this is all that suprising. Conservatives believe what's good for the corporations is good for everyone. Liberals believe that what is good for the people is good for everyone. Strong IP laws favour the big companies - weak IP laws favour the little guy more.
IP isn't property. It never has and never will be. For example, A granted patent isn't valid if there's prior art. How could you apply that principle to say the ownership of a car? I don't think you can. I can smash, steal, set fire to or urinate on a car - I can't do any of these things with a patent! When patent infringement occurs it isn't even stealing in the traditional sense. When someone steal something wealth is transfered atomically. When infringement occurs wealth can be diverted (and that's a dodgy word) away from the patent holder but it's never a transfer from the patent holder directly to the infringer. It's just not correct to call IP property in the traditional sense of the word.
Simon.
Re:I think no (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, those liberals, they never support strict IP laws.
I hate it when broad brush generalities are used like this. It always seems like the distinction is being made to justify that the person making the statement belongs to the "correct" party. In the case of IP laws if you really want to show you want fewer of them your voter registration should be Libertarian....
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
-Jesse
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think no (Score:4, Interesting)
"statist" is one of the more abused words [wordiq.com] used to describe political ideologies, and some more verbage is necessary to separate the libertarian from the socialist, two very different beasts. Chomsky's anarchistic socialism doesn't lead to freedom, at least in terms of property (which the libertarian would argue is absolutely necessary to freedom of the individual).
Back on topic... in the "natural world", things (whether it is a stick or a cave) are owned by force of might and social interaction, essentially systems which enforce ownership of some physical thing. An idea cannot be shared in the "natural world" without that idea becoming free. However, the use of an idea can be controlled by the same systems as physical property. For example, the Chief's Spear could be made by Random Caveman, giving him the same weaponry as the Chief. Chief can control this by taking away, killing, or putting social pressures onto Random Caveman. The idea is no longer free, but subject to force of might and social pressure. Fast forward to today, and we have the same thing except suits are involved. Can an idea be owned? Absolutely.
The question before us is whether or not it is right or wrong to allow anyone to enforce ownership. This is not a cut and dried issue, certainly not in the same way that physics is. Any answer to the question which fails to recognize that we are presented with a moral and philosophical issue can be safely ignored.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
> killing, or putting social pressures onto
> Random Caveman. The idea is no longer free,
> but subject to force of might and social
> pressure...
I like this description. I was about to try to write something as to why IP is not property in the line of: "a dog can recognize property, and would react to someone trying to take his bone away. The same wiuld happen with a baby if you take a toy away. But both would not recognize their IP being taken away fr
Re:I think no (Score:3)
But then, you are obviously a lefty troll trying to slander the "real" real libertarians, who do believe in the freedom of people to do what they want, including owning and utilizing capital.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Interesting)
This little mental exercise aside, I firmly believe in
Re:I think no (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.geocities.com/t35t0r [geocities.com]
Re:I think no (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out the 8 worst internet laws [aclu.org]. Of the 93 worst offenders, only 18 were democrats. Only 2 were in the top 25.
If you really want to show that you want fewer of them, go vote Libertarian (assuming that you support all forms of deregulation among businesses and want to work for the "eventual repeal of all taxes" (if I'm remembering the official party platform plank's wording properly) as well). If you want to show that you want fewer of them and don't support that other stuff, vote Green.
However, if you want to *make* there be fewer of them, go vote Democrat. Me? I'm a pragmatist. You're free to be idealists if you so choose.
Correction: (Score:5, Informative)
those statistics don't tell everything (Score:4, Informative)
As a pragmatist, this makes me wary of electing Democratic candidates until I see evidence that they plan to stand up for my civil liberties.
Oddly enough, the only person I've seen stringently taking a stand for online civil liberties is that old conservative Republican with whom I disagree on just about all other issues, Jesse Helms.
Re:those statistics don't tell everything (Score:3, Insightful)
I won't disagree with you that Clinton really disappoints when it came to his inability to see those laws for what they were and block them. I don't know if there would have been any point to vetoing these bills however, when they mostly passed uncontested at the time. The real problem was that nobody seemed to stop and think twice about what the legislat
Re:those statistics don't tell everything (Score:3, Informative)
Naturally, with big corporations paying most congressional lobbies, his efforts are generally ignored by the main legislation.
Re:those statistics don't tell everything (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. He had no ability to stop it. The Sonny Bono Act garnered more than 66% Congressional approval, enough to override any veto.
All Clinton could've done is delay things a few weeks, which would've been nothing more than a high-profile message. And while I'd have preferred if he took an anti-copyright stance on principle, his powers amounted to no more than the free speech belonging to each citizen (multip
Sonny Bono got no roll-call approval (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, it doesn't excuse Clinton signing it into law. He should at least have put up a fight. Except that he actually supported the law, which is the problem.
The Libertarians are just as bad (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, they were into the whole "IP is property" scam since day one (go read Atlas Shrugged for an early example). It used to figure more prominantly in their platform than it does at present, but it was one of the main reasons for my disenchantment with them (toning it down is good, repudiating it would be better).
The path they seem to be following (slowly) is the realization that "IP" is actually a government created monopoly, which they would on priciple oppose, rather
Re:I think no (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally wrong.
As someone else has pointed out, Green & Libertarian are as irrelevant to the IP question as Democrat & Republican. Greens are pro open source, seemingly because they believe it to be anti-corporation. Aside from that, no help.
A few prominent Libertarians are anti intellectual property because they realize that it is created by government intervention. This is not the position of the Libertarian Party, nor of the Cato Institute, so I don't think there have ever been any Libertarian candidates that are anti-IP. They're all too in love with the idea of property. GW's Ownership Society [google.com] lip service probably gave them all a woody.
And I dispute that Democrats are significantly less pro-IP, your little statistic notwithstanding. I'm a Democrat from California, but I have to admit that Feinstein & Clinton did not represent my interests on these issues. Honestly, I feel like Feinstein is representing my interests about 5% of the time.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Informative)
There wasn't an income tax for more than 100 years, and the government survived. I think the call for smaller government and no taxes speaks to income tax almost exclusively. Perhaps some of the sin taxes as well. But import/export duties, user fees, and other things could sustain a sufficiently small government.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
That's worked real well for israel hasn't it?
Re:I think no (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite to the contrary, rates of international terrorism have *skyrocketted*. The Bush administration first tried to cover this up, and then admitted that they "made mistakes" with their report. However, their revised report (which shows much higher rates of terrorism) still omits everything that happens in Iraq (for example, the blowing up of UN buildings, etc). In short, terrorism rates are through the roof.
> I don't believe they will continue indefinitely
As long as asymmetrical warfare is present, it will, sadly. People who feel powerless strike back in the only way they feel they can - often brutally. The more asymmetrical warfare becomes and the more nations are occupied by foreign (or oppressive local) troops, the more terrorism will occur.
> After all, Germany and Japan didn't exactly give up right away, either.
They bloody well did. There were a couple dozen Japanese people who never got the orders and stayed in the jungles trying to fight, but that's about it. There wasn't even remotely anything like the 10s of thousands of people seen in the streets of Najaf brandishing arms in support of al-Sadr, or no-go zones like Fallujah, Samarra, Kufa, and increasingly Sadr City.
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the article writeup is probably a little more correct is amongst the constituencies of these supposed representatives - most of the liberal people I've met both in the real world and online have been passionately against IP laws in their current form, even the musicians and the game developers. I can't say the same thing for many of my conservative friends - with some notable exceptions.
The point is - it may be true that there is something resembling a liberal/conservative divide on IP laws amongst the general populace (there are quite a few exceptions, as with everything - I'm a pro-gun liberal, a friend of mine is an anti-IP conservative) but that this stance has yet to be really reflected by either party's legislative representatives, both of which are having their pockets lined by the corporations. There's no profit for the representatives in actually, *gasp*, representing their constituency (you have to really screw up badly in order to get voted out), and so they don't.
--Ryv
Re:I think no (Score:5, Informative)
Now the Sonny Bono copyright extension act didn't pass unanimously, and was obviously more controversial. However, it still passed by well over a 2/3rds margin and thus was probably unvetoable.
Also remember the power of the veto was never meant to be overused. Clinton picked and chose his veto battles carefully. And he learned his lesson with vetoes too, as I remember, several times he vetoed bills only to have slightly different legislation passed repeatedly until he signed it (I don't know if he ever actually had a veto overturned). So blaming Clinton for the DMCA and Sonny Bono? I won't say he did enough to prevent them, but I also don't think it's fair to point the finger first, second or even third at him.
The only reason Bush hasn't passed more of these sorts of bills is because the Republicans already pushed most of them through during Clinton's second term when they had the House and the Senate more cleanly under their control, if I remember correctly. Bush has however presided over some real civil liberties gems, like the PATRIOT Act.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Informative)
Because he was pointing out that it wasn't Bush who signed the Sonny Bono act and the DMCA into law, it was Clinton.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
A real conservative under your definition would be, I think, a libertarian.
Max
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly true. The most fiscally responsible budgets we've had recently came about due to gridlock between Clinton and the Republican Congress. A Kerry administration would most likely be better for the budget; not that Kerry wouldn't *want* to spend billions more, but Congress wouldn't go along with it. Still there's no way I can vote for him give
Re:I think no (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately the actual Libertarian Party is run by complete nutjobs, leaving us small-l libertarians/classical liberals/South Park Republicans with no home.
Then fix it, if you agree with the basic platforms, but think some of the wack-jobs are too powerful, get involved and help negate the wack-jobbery - I have found in less than a year of being involved with libertarians, that it is fairly easy to have an impact on this group of individuals that are for the most part willing to listen to all involved parties - unlike the major parties where unless you are ponying up millions in donations, your opinion means nothing.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, up until recently, meant that the Libertarian Party could only be dominated by wack-jobs. Only wack-jobs would conveniently forget about libertarian principles in order to build a political party with the intent of competing with the two major parties. Building a party that strong and that powerful is *anti-libertarian* and would, like all political
Re:I think no (Score:3, Interesting)
A conservative interpretation of the constitution would limit jurisdiction of the federal government to those areas explicitly outlined and leave the rest to the states. How many so-called conservatives are coming out against proposals at the federal level to regulate same-sex marriages, something that is clearly the purview of the states?
I think th
Re: Congress and recognizing marriages (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Are they going to declare that there's no way to "prove" a marriage in which the state makes publicly available its records - or that they can only "prove" some of the records (despite both same sex marriages and opposite sex marriage data being publicized in the same manner)? That would be a hard sell, especially given equal protection.
2) The effect thereof. Again, quite a hard sell under equal
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, the current "Conservative" movement in America represents a cultural movement rather than a coherent political ideology, in other words, Intellectual Conservatism is dead. Liberals however, have recast themselves as Progressives to avoid association with the self-marginalizing far-left. The far-left is about as unintellectual as the far-right these days, both seem to be driven by moral worldviews than valid political ideology. The moderates on the Conservative side, those that still retain an actual political ideology, have been marginalized by culturally motivated groups like the Christian Coalition. The moderates on the Liberal side, after watching the far-left self-marginalize, now dominate the Left and only have to worry about the far-left getting too much voice while they fight off the far-right. Meanwhile, the moderate right is sitting on it's ass, still in complete denial that it has been marginalized by loonies.
I'm sure someone will consider this flaimbait or nonsense, but it's a hell of a lot more accurate than the parent.
Re:I think no (Score:4, Insightful)
There may be a lot of things I'm willing to die for, but the list is shorter when I ask what things I'm willing to kill another human for. In other words, I don't give a damn what you're willing to die for, but I'm sure as hell willing to kill you to protect my rights.
The law cannot dictate your moral behavior solely without violating your rights. Faith based Federal programs are a horribly bad idea because there is no way to determine that services are provided without duress, thus inviting the abuse of equality under the law. That said, if you try to impose your moral view on someone else, you're violating their rights. That's why there will be gay marriage in this country without a Consitutional Amendment. There is no legitamite interest of government in discriminating against gays over a secular contract of marriage, only one of cultural morality, which is not valid in a political structure that has no provision for a dominant culture or religion.
Politics isn't centrally about compromise, that's just part of the mechanics. Politics is ultimately about distilling rights so as to create justice, I'm not sure how you managed to get compromise out of my posts. It's probably best that you don't participate in politics, as your moral blinders probably make it impossible for you to formulate valid political ideas. After all, your morals are yours, not some absolute. You have no more authority to pursue youre moral worldview politically than anyone else. This means that, ultimately, you cannot impose your view without violating the principle of equality under the law. Unless you can decrease the arbitrariness of life for all cultures and religions equally, your law is unjust and counter to 1500 years of Western progression.
Re:I think no (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I think no (Score:4, Informative)
The real problem is that because the word "property" is in "IP", people tend to flasely analogize that the attributes of IP are like the attributes of our prototype of property, "personal property", when they're hardly similar at all. For example, did you know that a published song is subject to compulsory license? The U.S. copyright law (as described in this PDF [copyright.gov]) allows anyone to record an already-recorded song and sell copies, so long as they do some paperwork and pay the songwriter a small per-copy royalty, the so-called "mechanical" fee, currently the greater of 8 1/2 cents total 1.65 cents per minute [copyright.gov], per copy sold.
If we're analogizing copyright with cars, this would mean that anyone could fill out some paperwork, borrow your car, and pay you a small per-mile fee.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Interesting)
Strange as it seems, the creators of music and softwre are also people. Please explain how weak IP laws that allow the corportions to take control of what the little guy creates helps the little guy. If anything the little guy needs STR
Re:I think no (Score:3, Interesting)
The music that gets pirated widely is generally that published by major record labels; the artists often get 15 cents on the dollar. Many bands get their money from tours instead. A band of 5, to make just 50,000$ each per year from music sales, needs to sell 1.6 million dollars worth of music; meanwhile, the record company gets 11 million dollars. That's why the money often comes from tours and live performances.
Software? The situation is even worse. The people who make the software
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
the artists often get 15 cents on the dollar.
Not true.
Although artists' contracts usually state royalty rates of between 15% and 18%, few artists working with big labels get anywhere near that much. The labels employ all sorts of tricks to keep the actual royalty rate down. Little things like arbitrarily reducing the sales figures by 10% before beginning to calculate royalties. How do they justify that? Well, back before the advent of vinyl records, music was distributed on records made of fragile shellac, many of which broke en-route to the stores. Since it was too much trouble to work out exactly how many broke, they arbitrarily called it 10%. In 2004, CDs are subject to the same "breakage" reduction. How many do you think actually break?
And that's just the beginning. The labels generally recoup nearly all of the advertising and marketing expenses from the band's royalties, as well as any and all advances, recording expenses, legal fees, and anything else they can think of. Some of that is reasonable, much is not.
My favorite trick though is the simplest one: Often, after the labels take out every penny they can justify, they look at the total royalties due the band and only pay part of it. The rest? "Settle on audit" is the operative phrase. The only way the band will see that money is if they hire an auditor firm to analyze the figures and formally dispute the royalty payments. Labels sometimes even intentionally make the auditors' jobs hard by providing all of the reports on paper, not electronically, out of order, and mixed in with other stuff. This way the auditors' fees discourage bands from auditing the records. Tens of thousands of auditor fee dollars later, the auditors will have compiled their version of what the band should have been paid. The label will then negotiate a settlement. At the end of it all, the band will get most of the royalties they're due -- after breakage, recoupment, etc., of course.
Most bands that put out a CD never see one thin dime in royalties. Most successful bands net 10% or even less.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly, without copyright, if you write and record a song, Warner Brothers can take your song and sell it and not give you a dime.Without copyright, you don't even have the leverage to sign
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
With copyright, Warner Brothers sells CDs at monopoly pricing of $17.99 each, and the artists still make no significant money from recordings. They only make money off of live performances.
Net effect: a large transfer of money from the public at large into Warner Brother's bank account.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think no (Score:4, Insightful)
No- weak IP laws favor the consumer more. With absolutely no IP laws, it would be nearly impossible for any "little guy" to profit off of any innovation, because a big company would just rip you off and sell what you're selling at a lower price.
And what stifles innovation isn't good for the consumer in the long haul, so it's not even really good for the consumer.
So I would agree that IP is not the same as conventional property, specifically in the sense that, in the digital age, the IP is often media independant, and taking an extra copy doesn't *directly* cost the IP holder any money. I agree that IP laws need to be reformulated in order to protect innovation rather than large companies with obsolete business models. However, I would not be in favor of destroying the concept of IP.
Re:I think no (Score:3, Insightful)
Art like movies that requires some amount of cash to do would still be made as much of the budget is for overpaid actors (rates will fall if noone can or wants to pay them that much).
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
"Most humans refuse to believe that there might be more approaches to solving a problem than the one they happen to favor, or that solving a particular problem simply isn't possible in the manner they wish to pursue. Or, at times, that their "solution" may do more harm than good."
Re:I think no (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm
With software, if I want a paycheck, I have to agree that all rights to everything I write belong to my employer. When the job is done (Is it ever done?
With music, if I want my work to be heard through any of the traditional distribution media, I must sign an "industry standard" contract that gives all rights to my music to the company that handles the recording and distribution. They claim to pay a royalty, but they deduct all their costs from this, so in fact I can't make any money at all unless I'm one of the top 3 or 4 sellers in the Market. If I don't like this, I don't have to sign, but then nobody will ever hear me.
In both cases, the Internet is the core of a pending big shakeup. With software and music, I can put it online, and then people can use it. I don't make much money this way, but at least someone will see/hear my stuff. And people do tend to want things like hard copy, new features, support, live bands, etc., and if I've made a name for myself, I can charge for these things without sharing the money with a corporation.
We really haven't figured out a good way to reward inventors and innovators. We have figured out a way to allow corporations to claim everything produced by the actual creators. Those corporations understand that it's in their interest to have a few showcase examples of people who "made it big", so they pick a handful of creators to publicly reward. This system fails badly for the overwhelming majority of the creators.
The best solution so far seems to be in the sciences, where we have a tradition that knowledge must be published openly for everyone to use. This doesn't itself give income; it gives reputation. But there is no "Intellectual Property", and the scientific community has developed ways to translate reputation into grants and salaries for most of the people involved. Few people strike it rich, but a lot of people make a good life for themselves and their family.
Music hasn't been able to do this. Software has succeeded to some extent, but there's no job security, most of us work anonymously, and the future doesn't look any better right now.
It's possible that the Internet can materially change this, by making the scientists' approach work for others (such as programmers and musicians). It's also possible that the IP fight will fail, and we'll all have to pull our own music and software off the Net because it's all covered by patents owned by corporations. Or Bill Gates will succeed in owning the Internet, and everything we put there will become his property (as happens now if msn.com is your ISP).
Stick around and watch
Conservatives? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conservatives? (Score:2)
Let's look at the drug war in which the conventional liberal position is that the government needs to back off.
It's not as though liberals are inherently Stallinists obsessed with controlling everyone with a huge government bureaucracy. That sort of assumption which he seems to imply is a great disservice to liberals.
Liberals are all for individual rights, you know like as in the word "liberty." It's surprising how difficult this very simple and obvious connection i
Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:2, Insightful)
What a lot of people who take this kind of position often don't realize is the fact that treating IP as property, and protecting peoples' rights to those properties, is what provides the motivation for many of people to be so creative and to pour themselves into their work.
I realize this may not be the case with a lot of open source developers and project members, but in the case of corporate America and entrepreneurs, the financial benefits derived from the protection of IP is a huge motivating factor to
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that eternal copyright protection is sure motivating Elvis to write and sing more songs!
P2P Killed Elvis [slashdot.org]!!!!
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:4, Insightful)
Being "creative" is often an exercise in synthesizing many concepts that other people have "created". How many acts of creation have been compromised or even prevented because so-called "intellectual property" laws have prevented the free expression of ideas? Why should I bother working on a product I have a great idea for if I feel like I'd be crushed by some company with a huge patent portfolio?
I strongly disagree (also IMHO). There will always be idea-creation. People will want to express themselves. Entrepreneurs will want to have competitive advantages. "Intellectual property" is only good for giving arbitrary people the power to stop other people from generating ideas.
That's just because you and your "heartless capitalistic cohorts" are greedy, and want the government to enforce some laws that allow you & them to force people to pay you money for a "good" which they would otherwise not think it was worth to pay you.
In a sensible market system, people should have to pay only for concrete goods or services rendered. Anything else is socialism.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:3, Insightful)
On the more abstract level the ability to learn from each other and to transmit information from one person to next is what separates us from the animals. We should oppose any system that restricts information flow between humans and generations.
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the decendents of Og, inventor of the wheel, should receive royalties from everyone who rides, drives, pushes, or pulls devices with "circular freely rotating attachments designed to facilitate movement"? In perpetuity?
Somehow, that strikes me as absurd.
Yes, developing ideas takes effort, and that effort is more likely to be expended if the ideas can be leveraged to produce income, and correspondingly, the source of that income stream protected. Thus, the notion of ideas as property, with the notion of owners, is born.
But, how does one protect one's property? Did Og kill others who also made wheels? Or, did he just smash their "copies"? Perhaps he traded some fur skins, or free wheels he made to bigger, meaner cave-persons to do that for him. In any case, protecting property takes effort and has a cost associated with it.
The trouble with existing laws that provide for the protection of property is the cost of enforcement is borne by all members of society via the taxes they pay and is not directly related to the value of the property so protected. Yes, income taxes are progressive, and physical property taxes are proportional to the value of the physical property, but how does one (a) value ideas, and (b) account for the ease with which they can be used by others (and conversely, the difficult to prevent such use)?
One can keep an idea secret. Perhaps the idea behind the physical manifestation of its application is not obvious (i.e. "my" wheels have roller-bearings between the bodyu and axle that you can't see). But, increasingly, ideas have the greatest value when they can be applied far and wide, to the benefit of the most people, and, in retrospect, are either "obvious", or easily reapplied (software is a perfect example of the latter, being in between an algorithm and an execution thereof). Keeping them secret reduces their potential value.
In a free world, ideas would be secret unless licensed, subject to agreed-upon terms (including, obviously keeping the secret) at a cost that, amount other things, pays for enforcement of the contract, if necessary. This, however, does not scale well. Furthermore, the damage that can be done by one individual breaking the secret can far exceed whatever one could recover from them. While the notion of ideas subject to conditions regarding their use is not a problem, morally enforcing those conditions against those who have not agreed to them is. We need a notion that is so widely accepted, that there is no question that enforcement can be morally applied. "Property" is one such notion. We respect the property of others even though we may not have contracted explicitly to do so. We do this either because we think it is right, or because enough others do that they fund the enforcement of the notion. While a contractarian may have a problem with this "implied agreement", it is easy to show that acceptance can be tied to permission granted to use non-private shared resources: i.e. if you steal, you can't move around in the places you don't own (public roads), and because you broke that deal (having previously used the road to come and rob someone), we'll lock you up. Not only is that effective, someone in jail can't continue their theft spree. (Of course, incarceration carries it's own costs).
So, the notion if "intellectual property" is an easy one to grasp and accept -- no widespread riots opposing it (though, the widespread use of P2P techniques to share copyright music is an interesting form of civil disobedience). We can pay the state to enforce copyrights, patents, and trademarks, at least as far as criminal infringement goes.
The problem however, is, again, that the cost of this enforcement, is not borne in proprotion to the in
Re:Removing motivation to create innovative IP (Score:3, Interesting)
A Conservative is a Liberal who got 0wned (Score:4, Interesting)
The two sides often disagree on what constitutes a "right," and this seems in line with usual liberal/conservative divisions.
Re:A Conservative is a Liberal who got 0wned (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowadays, the only people for less government are the Libertarians.
Not buying it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not buying it. (Score:3, Informative)
His administration didn't propose the bill, Clinton just signed it. Congresspersons wrote it, the Senate and the House both passed it unanimously (unanimous consent in the Senate, voice vote in the House). Clinton does not bear all the reponsibility for the DMCA becoming law.
Yes, it came into law during Clinton's administration, but that is emphatically NOT the same thing as "Clinton's administration [was] responsible for bringing
Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Use any definitions you like, but the distinction between Left and Right is moot for IP.
WTF?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's get this correct: True Liberals and true conservitives, both, want less regulation - or alt least, reasonable balances between the public-domain and free enterprise.
It's the self-serving politicians that want more regulation - regardless of their labels.
Remember: it took both a Republican house/senate and a Democrat president to pass DMCA and idea-monopoly extensions (read copyright extensions)
Remember: it was Democrat politicians that were pushing for the v-chip and music labels.
Remember: it was Republican politicians that were being bought by Disney.
Both parties suck.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to self-aggrandize... (Score:3, Insightful)
Being a republic or not has absolutely zero influence as to how democratic processes work. In fact, the phrase "republic style of government" is an oxymoron. The only reason Australia isn't a republic is that their nominal head-of-state is a (foreign) Queen.
China is a republic, and they're still stuck in a one-party system... I seem to rem
the whole IP issue is invalid (Score:4, Insightful)
The claim is mostly inaccurate because it presupposes that the copying individual would otherwise have bought a copy from the publisher. That is occasionally true, but more often false; and when it is false, the claimed loss does not occur.
The claim is partly misleading because the word "loss" suggests events of a very different nature--events in which something they have is taken away from them. For example, if the bookstore's stock of books were burned, or if the money in the register got torn up, that would really be a "loss." We generally agree it is wrong to do these things to other people. But when your friend avoids the need to buy a copy of a book, the bookstore and the publisher do not lose anything they had. A more fitting description would be that the bookstore and publisher get less income than they might have got. The same consequence can result if your friend decides to play bridge instead of reading a book. In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
The claim is begging the question because the idea of "loss" is based on the assumption that the publisher "should have" got paid. That is based on the assumption that copyright exists and prohibits individual copying. But that is just the issue at hand: what should copyright cover? If the public decides it can share copies, then the publisher is not entitled to expect to be paid for each copy, and so cannot claim there is a "loss" when it is not. In other words, the "loss" comes from the copyright system; it is not an inherent part of copying. Copying in itself hurts no one.
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid (Score:3, Insightful)
This contains the critical point that has made the scientific community so successful. In scientific circles, the rules traditionally have been: 1) Nobody owns an idea, and you can use others' ideas freely for any purpose; but 2) You must give credit for ideas that you use.
Now, granted, point 2 isn't always followed. But if you want to continue as a working scientist, your violations should
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid (Score:3)
Incorrect. In fact, your entire argument is specious because of this assumption. Copyright is not a "right" in the traditional sense; it is a limitation of the rights of the rest of us, designed to encourage "science and the useful arts" by granting creators a limited monopoly on something that would, in nature, by free, as in beer. There is no n
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct, to a point. The basic "natural" rights are the rights to life, liberty, and property. The exercise of natural rights do not infringe upon the rights of others. These are also all things that can be reasonably protected by force of arms of the rights holder. Free speech is an extension of the right to "liberty". Copyright is not a natural right, as it requires the infringe
Party shift? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why I think the line between conservatives and liberals is becoming obscured. It used to be relatively simple: less government versus more government. Now, with intellectual property and the conservatives looming over the bill of rights in the name of fighting terrorism, I think the parties are primed for a switch. (And don't call me a lib, I'm a small govt. conservative deeply concerned with our rights).
having it both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
if IP were 'real' property it should be subject to value-based tariff when it enters the country. this might keep things like drug research, materials research, heck, analysing radiograms in the US instead of being exported as labor and imported as... thin air.
I'd be much more agreeable to strict IP laws if my 'real' job were treated with the same 'IP is real property' menality.
Philosophical v. practical origins of IP law (Score:5, Informative)
The Natural Rights Perspective. This section quotes John Locke's Two Treatises on Government, in which he writes:
For this "labour" being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what this is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
The Personhood Perspective. This section quotes Markaret Jane Radin's Stanford Law Review Article entitled "Property and Personhood." (34 Stan. L. Rev. 957 (1982):
One may guage the strenght or significance of someone's relationship with an object by the kind of pain that would be occasioned by its loss. On this view, an object is closely related to one's personhood if its loss causes pain that cannot be relieved by the object's replacement. ... If a wedding ring is stolen from a jeweler, insurance proceeds can reimburse the jeweler, but if a wedding ring is stolen from a loving wearer, the price of replacement will not restore the status quo.
This section also quotes Hagel:
The person has for its substantive end the right of placing its will in any and every thing, which thing is thereby mine; [and] because that thing has no such end in itself, its destiny and soul take on my will. [This consitutes] mankind's absolute right of appropriation over all things.
The Utilitarian/Economic Incentive Perspective.This book covers a few articles/comments here, and gives this summation:
Thus the economic justification for intellectual property [in the US] lies not in rewarding creators for their labor, but in assuring that they (and their creators) have appropriate incentives in creative activities.
Not wanting to re-read the entire book, I remember the following. The origins of all IP dates back to ol' England, when the King granted rights to produce something exclusively (and pay the King money). This became patent law. Trademarks arose in a similar style, the exclusive right to mark a product's source (in exchange for paying money to the King). Trademarks became a lot more important during the industrial revolution. Until then, people would buy generic products from their local market/seller. As goods were transported distances, they needed some sort of identification so that people could recognize them. I forget where copyright comes from (I'm a trademark and patent guy). Basically, the origins of IP law were a method for the King to tax producers, who then could make exclusive money on their goods/products.
Re:Philosophical v. practical origins of IP law (Score:3, Informative)
The Statute of Anne, 1710 (IIRC).
Standing on the shoulders of giants (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people have half formed ideas anyway. They usually need to be finished by someone else. IP slows this process down, and in turn slows down progress.
society vs individuals (Score:4, Interesting)
And therein lies the problem in his argument, I didn't even have to RTFA. He uses the word 'society'.
Of course free IP is better for society. That's why science tends to grow exponentially. (historically, at least -- lately even science seems to be greedy) Mandel didn't horde his findings and keep them to himself -- and now the whole world teaches his experiments in high school classrooms as the foundation for further work -- if his experiments were a tightly kept secret, they wouldn't have become the foundation for anything.
But people -- as individuals, not as a society -- are more interested in personal gain. They want to hold on to their IP for whatever perceived advantage they think it gives them, however brief or delusional. I doubt you'll be able to convince them otherwise. When it comes to ownership, even of ideas, people tend to resort to the five-year-old "MINE! MINE! MINE!" thinking.
What is property? (Score:3, Interesting)
Property is anything in which you have "property rights". Property rights are a bundle of rights, different for different types of property, that give you some level of legal control over the object of those rights.
Probably most of the property in our society is not actually in physical objects. Consider money. Consider easements, equitable servitudes, usufructs, licenses, etc...
To say that intellectual property is not property is actually blatantly false when you understand what property actually is. To say that inventions shouldn't be the object of property rights, well, now you're at least being honest. (Although, I agree with the previous poster about creative incentives)...
I think he's right (Score:2)
Wasn't It originally protection? (Score:4, Interesting)
I concede that the recent flurry of corporate activity concerning IP has turned it into almost a corporate owned environment because they finally realized they could pay people to sit around and think up ideas for the company, thus pre-emptively getting rights to the IP instead of that employee getting the full rights...
Plus there is the fact that now individuals are running into stonewalls trying to create their own products (whether or not you make a dime, it is still a product) based on technology that is considered to be someone's IP.
I grant that IP is a terrible title for patents, copyrights, et al, and the corporations are running amuck with the current laws, but I fail to see how abolishing the laws that protect an individuals invention from corporate theft is really good for that individual. Yes it leads to a more open society in that there is no protection for inventions, etc, but at the same time it also means that inventors have less (read: no) incentive to continue inventing products, or if they do invent them there is no incentive to release them. At least now they are released (under protection for a time, then for all) fairly quickly. With nothing to look forward to but Big-O'l-company taking the idea and turning it into their next product line, why would individuals bother releasing it to the world at all? And if there is no incentive to the individual to create new ideas, how is society freer?
And also realize that doing away with IP rights (such as patents) does not necessarally affect the big corporations heavily in terms of patents. In fact, I think very little would change for corporations because they can always fall back on trade secrets while still screwing the little guy that invented something in his garage and has no such protections.
Saying that getting rid of IP would suddenly make a freer society is short-sighted. The commentary that various political parties weigh in stronger on one side of the argument then the other is less than meaningless without knowing exactly how the question was asked and who was asked. It boils down to opinion and FUD, ie "Democrats want a freer society and care about you and me, Republicans want a closed society and don't give a damn about you unles you own a corporation"...without getting to deep into politics, I think the recent antics by politicians on both sides of that fence tend to show they both care most about who is putting money in their pockets...
Not buying it (Score:5, Insightful)
"...in IP, traditional liberals are often calling for less and less government, while conservatives demand regulation in order to protect their exclusive right to use their intellectual creations."
Hollywood must be quite the bastion of conservatism, they way the MPAA is fighting for stronger IP laws. And it is also interesting to hear that the Right has strong conservatives like Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) and Bill Clinton (signer of DMCA and Copyright Extention Act) on their side.
Interesting theory, but no. On this issue, there are good guys and bad guys on both side of the aisle, and which position they take has more to do with who they represent and where they get their funding than how conservative or liberal they are.
Injecting a little perspective here. (Score:3, Insightful)
IP laws exist so that researchers and developers of new things can do their researching and developing with a reasonable expectation of being reimbursed for their time and efforts. Sure, the system gets abused, but that's more due to the overly-legalistic culture of the U.S. and the woefully-outdated patent system in this country, not because IP laws are a faulty concept.
Let us assume I am a multinational drug company researching a cure for cancer. I employ hundreds of researchers and doctors along with their thousands of assistants, accountants, network administrators, and janitors needed to support them. This headcount is not free; these people expect to be paid, and pay them I must if I want them to work on the cancer cure.
Now let us assume I (being the head of the company) spent $20 billion over five years researching this cancer cure and finally succeeded. I'm now $20 billion in the hole and have to find a way to recoup my costs. Society now has two options:
1. I can use IP law to protect my research and my creation, selling the cure and recouping my investment with the profits. Or...
2. With no IP laws, a competing firm can immediately copy my cure and, having not spent a dime on R&D, can vastly undercut my price and prevent me from ever making back my $20 billion investment.
In scenario 1, the world gets a cancer cure, I make back my investment and modest profict, and my company goes on to develop the Next Big Thing.
In scenario 2, the world would never get a cancer cure. Why? Because no company is going to spend $20 billion developing anything if it can't be assured of making that money back!. Any research project or invention requiring any significant amount of investment in order to bring to fruition simply won't be done. Why should it? After all, you do all the hard work, someone else makes all the money, you get nothing. I'm sure the socialists, communists, and anarchist who make up a significant fraction of
Now, I'll be the first one to admit that IP laws have been taken to unhealthy extremes. Instead of being used to protect companies that take risks on long-term research projects, it's being used to lock-up potential avenues of research and squelch competition. What's needed here is tort reform, not a dissolution of IP laws.
A few centuries ago, around 1791 to be exact, France tried a little plan of abolishing patent laws. All the "people" thought it was such a great idea. After all, all these nasty, evil, wicked companies were just making beaucoup bucks off the backs of the noble, kind, honorable, downtrodden working classes. "Why work to feed a bunch of fatcats?" they thought. So, out went the laws, and in came Utopia.
Only it didn't work. Companies ceased to innovate in France. Instead, they left France and went elsewhere. Unemployment skyrocketed, invention stagnated. The poor got poorer than ever. The middle class evaporated. The upper class pulled up stakes and went elsewhere. After a bit of this, the laws were changed back to something more intelligent, and things recovered, but for a while the "workers" got a real taste of what they'd wrought, and it wasn't pretty.
The moral of the story here is IP laws are necessary, and anyone claiming otherwise is living in a fool's fantasy. You can despise the company you work for, you can despise other companies because of their patents and ridiculously-complex and overreaching copyright statues, but
If I Make It, I Own It (Score:4, Insightful)
Invariably, someone asserts that IP is equivalent to "ideas" and that it is wrong/unethical/immoral to claim ownership of ideas.
I assert that entire line of argument is pointless. By its nature, an idea cannot be owned. An idea exists only as a thought confined to someone's brain.
However, works of intellect are not ideas. They are physical entities that use symbols to express and convey the information, the story, that the work's creator is trying to convey to others. Yes, those symbols express an author's ideas, but they are not ideas. The ideas remain in the mind of the author and, perhaps, in the minds of his audience.
So, therefore, if I write a book, the file or manuscript that is the single existing copy of that book belongs to me. Society may or may not benefit from exposure to that book, but society has no rights of access to it unless I, as its owner, transfer those rights.
The same applies, of course, to any such work -- music, sculpture, painting, etc. At some point, each work exists as some sort of a single physical entity that is owned, exclusively, by the person who made it. All rights to that object are vested in that person. No one else can legitimately access that work unless its owner transfers the necessary rights to them.
None of this has anything to do with ideas or access to ideas. To cite an extreme hypothetical example, if I conjure a formula for immortality and write it down on a piece of paper, I can do whatever I wish with that piece of paper. I can make millions of copies and drop them for airplanes, post it to Slashdot, or burn it and never tell anyone.
The counter to this argument requires explaining how rights to an object can move from that object's creator to someone else without that creator's sanction. (Such rights cannot move to "society", which is only a useful linguistic construct. They must move to one or more specific individuals.)
death of IP is the death of investment in IP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure given the billions of dollars required to develop prescription drugs, and the relative ease required to copy these drugs to produce generic equivalents, in a world without IP, there will certainly be a huge influx of money to develop prescription drug ideas that will immediately be stolen. Hell, regulating prescription drug prices in Canada and Europe has alone caused a lot of investmnet in prescription drug development.
If you didn't notice I was being sarcastic.
intellectual property is artificial (Score:5, Insightful)
Intellectual property is artificial. It doesn't exist in the real world. It exists only because we allow it to exist, and (currently, at least) grant it the status of absolute property, supposedly for a certain limited period of time. Under the Constitution, the ONLY reason for the existence of artificial property is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention that copyright is to be used as an absolute guarrantee of profit, nor does it say anywhere that anyone has a right to profit. Profit doesn't enter the equation, except indirectly, by allowing an inventor or creator time to ATTEMPT to make a profit, if he or she so desires.
All arguments concerning copyright and the 'right' to profit are pure bullshit. The Constitution never mentions a right to profit, or the right to make a profit from copyrighted materials. That right doesn't exist. Many people here and elsewhere seem to (deliberately) be confusing copyright with a right to profit that does not, and never has, existed. That includes profit which is dressed up in the doublespeak known as 'lost sales'.
The sole purpose of copyright is to spur development by allowing an inventor or creator a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME to get the jump on potential competitors. Current copyright laws, while they may fulfill the technical definition of 'limited', are ridiculously long. The copyright has been extended several times to keep works of art which belong to certain powerful corporations out of the public domain, and for no other reason. This directly contradicts the purpose of copyright as defined by the Constitution, even if it doesn't violate the letter of the law. But it seems that the purpose of a law means little these days, and it's only the actual wording that counts in court.
It's rather clear that extending copyright to an absurd extreme does nothing whatsoever for the public welfare, and is designed solely to protect the profits of a few vested interests with the ability to buy Congressmen through bribes (colloquially known as 'campaign contributions' or 'a weekend in Tahiti with a teenage hooker'). But it's gone even farther than this, in that copyright laws are being used to prop up outdated business models in the face of advancing technology, an attempt to put a halt to that technology altogether. Copyright laws are being used as a weapon AGAINST innovation in a vicious, winner-take-all fashion. If the RIAA, MPAA, Disney et. al. have their way a number of new technologies would be banned from the United States altogether.
That's what the most serious issue is. It isn't about a 'right' to profit, which doesn't exist, and it isn't about the 'rights' of authors or musicians or movie makers, who only have the rights we feel like granting them when it comes to artificial property (re the Constitution). The biggest issue is that current vested interests are using whatever weapons they have at their disposal (or 'encouraging' Congress to create new ones) to slow down or put a complete halt to a variety of new technologies. They are, in fact, doing their very best to cripple innovation and impose a form of stasis over the entire American economy (with the help of a whole lot of other businesses who are doing the same thing by abusing the patent system) so that they'll remain at the top of heap, forever, secure that the government will destroy their competition for them.
Whether or not you happen to agree with free market principles (I'm a libertarian, so you can guess my take on this whole sorry business), the only logical outcome of this tangled mess is that America will no longer be a leader in technologica
who owns IP (Score:3, Insightful)
So when the creator/inventor dies , his works and IP should go into the public library, except if his will describes otherwise.
If the corporation created the IP by themselves, the corporation owns the IP and is valid as long as the corporation lives. If the corporation is taken over, a special ruling board should decide if the merger of take-over does not mean IP is being destroyed , intentionally or unintentionally.
Bottom line for me : IP should never be allowed to die or get jailed into someone's office drawer.
Robert
Lemley's Retarded Reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)
In a market econonomy, we care only that producers make enough return to cover their costs, including a reasonable profit . . . . so long as the price stays above marginal cost producers will still make the good."
This is true for a mature product. But we're talking about invention, which implies innovation, which implies risk.
Lemley uses the example of a copy of "Hamlet". If the actual production cost of the book is $5.00, how much should a producer be allowed to make? What is a fair profit? 20%?
Now, say that the product isn't a book. Let's say it's a pill for cancer patients. The pill costs $0.30 to produce (that is the "marginal cost"). Still think 20% is okay?
Lemley would ignore the fact that this company spent billions of dollars on the research that led to the cure, in addition to billions of dolloars on ongoing research that never leads to a cure. How do they afford this? They have shareholders who are willing to take a risk: let's spend billions of dollars, and maybe we can get a return on our investment. Lemley says that "rent ['unfair' profit] seeking behavior" is "socially wasteful." Nothing could be further from the truth. Rent-seeking behaviour is the essence of entrepreneurship, and it is the very behavior we should encourage.
The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward that is required to make entrepreneurs take that risk. Any academic who uses the rhetoric of "covering costs, plus a fair profit" should be summarily ignored. Entrepreneurs do not take giant risks and invest in the creation of world-changing technology for "a fair profit."
The stuff you create, whether physical or intellectual, should be yours, and you should be able to do what you want with it, at least for some period of time. If it is in your interest to release your property under the GPL (as it most certainly is for some companies and their software assets), you should be able to do it. If you want to be the Grinch and stuff it under your mattress, you should be able to do that, too. For the good of the world and everyone in it, entrepreneurs should be allowed and encouraged to seek profit. And "zero-sum", "profit is wasteful", "you-should-only-have-'fair'-profit" academics like Lemley should be dismissed.
Not to Mention ... (Score:4, Informative)
Professor Mark Lemley argues that intellectual property is not 'property' in the traditional sense
Not to mention the fact that, as Larry Lessig points out in his most recent book, the "property" is the copyright or patent, not the protected work itself. Funny how "IP" attorneys so frequently pretend the distinction doesn't exist.
Thomas Jefferson's opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breath, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Makes sense to me!
"unusual fact" (Score:3, Interesting)
Until the owners of the businesses that sold said already-shelled eggs noticed. They, in turn, called up their (republican) congressmen, and screamed that they were losing profit. So, under the guise of "protecting the public's health" [despite the fact that NOT ONE SINGLE CASE of disease/sickness was reported], a law was passed outlawing the nifty egg cracker.
Needless to say, there are zillions of parallels to this lesson in IP-land, deCSS-land, etc. Sadly, it's not just the republicans who stand behind larger gov't to protect interests: the dems are just as bad with the DMCA as the republicans. Just one of the reasons I'm an independent.
Well... (Score:3, Funny)
PCB#@
Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
A: No.
That's the short answer. The long answer is that while many people would like you to believe in "intellectual property", it has no support in nature or law. Copyrights, trademarks and patents are very different things, and are only in existence because we as a society (of the people), through the government (by the people), have decided that it is beneficial to society (for the people) to encourage people to create by giving them financial incentive to do so. There is no such thing as "intellectual property". There is copyright, patent and trademarks. Lumping them all together is not only foolhardy, but short sighted and misleading.
See the Disinfopedia article [disinfopedia.org] and the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] for more details.
What the DMCA did (Score:4, Insightful)
The DMCA made it illegal to break the encryption, even if you legally bought a copy, without explicit permission from the copyright holder. Combined with encryption methods that were themselves protected by IP law (like CSS, on DVDs), and suddenly the copyright holder can legally control how you can use their work in the privacy of your own home. You can decrypt the DVD by using a player that is either licensed by the CCA -- thus limiting what you can do with the DVD, since the CCA only licenses players that have a restricted set of functions -- or by using a player which is not licensed by the CCA (and allows you to do whatever you want with the DVD) -- but doing so violates the DMCA.
So now, even though the right is not explicitly spelled out in law, copyright holders can legally control what you can do with the work in the privacy of your own home. This is a right they do not need and should not have, and thus the DMCA should be repealed.
Re:What the DMCA did (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, for one thing, DivX isn't "a program," it's a video codec. I'd explain the difference, but I doubt you'd understand. The "legitimate reason" is that there is no good reason for it to be illegal to do things like decrypt a DVD and rip it to your local hard drive. It does not benefit the copyright holder at all to do this, and it limits the ability of the end user to watch the DVD the way he wants (str
Re:What the DMCA did (Score:3, Insightful)
Bzzt! Wrong. Before the DMCA, it was already illegal to put the movie up on the filesharing network. The DMCA just made the decryption part illegal -- not harder, just illegal. All this changed is that it made those of us who want to do reasonable things with copies of movies we buy -- like rip them to a private fileserver -- into criminals, while doing nothing to those who we
Of course it's not property (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's face it - patent and copyright laws are utilitarian. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution grants Congress the power to promote science and the useful arts (that's copyright and patent, respectively) by providing authors and inventors exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries. Therefore, once the advancement of science and the useful arts is hobbled by copyright and patent laws, we've gone too far.
Re:My Thoughts are my own (Score:2)
Re:Your Thoughts.... (Score:2)
But my point still stands
I own my thoughts. You own your thoughts. And we both get to choose who owns which.
Ted Tschopp
Re: (Score:2)
Re:now for something actually on topic... (Score:3, Insightful)
The flip side being: should Rowling's grandchildren still be raking in the royalties?
Remember that in America, copyright length gets extended every time Mickey Mouse is about to pass into Public Domain. I believe it's happened at least two times already.
This is very ironic when you consider how much of Disney's body of work involves taking works which have fallen into public domain and selling them.
Re:Two examples to consider (Score:3, Insightful)
Hi, and thanks for googling....
The Statute of Monopolies modified the power of the crown to establish monopolies--limiting it, ostensibly, to granting monopolies for devices. Like a lot of English law, there was a gulf between word and deed--the crown kept right on issuing monopolies (the Hudson Bay Company springs to mind, and I expect that the East India Company had not been chartered yet). And inventors were not given property rig