Physical things aren't copyable (though their brand logos are, but product imitation is another story). Perhaps currency is the only thing that really needs to be protected against copying for an economy to function, and many governments are the main culprits in "copying" (i.e. inflating) currency.
Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are database rights?
A form of copyright on a collection of facts. In the U.S., the famous "telephone books aren't copyrightable" case ( Feist v. Rural ) held that mere compilations of facts aren't copyrightable, because they aren't a creative work, and copyright is intended to protect only original, creative works. Collections with some degree of creativity in the selection and arrangement might count, but an alphabetical listing of all…
Thanks, I was not aware of that aspect.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#23I haven't seen any evidence that people here are "pro-piracy" but concerning your first paragraph I'll argue one reason for why many software developers may not be terribly thrilled with the current notion of "intellectual property". The majority of software developers are employees of corporations. As such they typically receive only a small fraction of the economic benefit derived from the value they create. The cu…
The majority of software developers are employees of corporations. As such they typically receive only a small fraction of the economic benefit derived from the value they create.
If I choose to work for myself, then usually I am accepting a much higher degree of risk. Maybe I am developing a new product, and I don't have a portfolio of other products to fall back on should my idea fail. Maybe my business is too small to take advantage of certain economies of scale.
If I choose to work for a corporation, there is a good chance that the two risks above, and many of the risks you may come up with, have been mitigated to some extent. Also, chances are I probably work in a large team. So the economic benefit is divided among more people. Furthermore, the mitigated risks warrant less return.
It's all about the trade-offs that economics so wonderfully covers. I have to disagree with your statement.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#24I don't think the attitude is so much pro-piracy as anti-regulation and pro-getting-stuff-done. Hackers tend to be naturally averse to the two traditional means of combating piracy: government regulation and DRM. Government regulation requires bureaucracy, which hackers hate. DRM creates obstacles to getting stuff done, which hackers also hate. I agree that piracy is probably a big enough problem to make the aforemen…
piracy is probably a big enough problem to make the aforementioned potential solutions a lesser evil.
Got any particular citations for that? I happen to think exactly the opposite, that we've already gone way to far to mititage an almost non-existent problem.
I'm dreading the day when I can't use "bittorrent" to download the latest Slackware distribution, because using "bittorrent" automatically makes you a theif.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
A form of copyright on a collection of facts. In the U.S., the famous "telephone books aren't copyrightable" case ( Feist v. Rural ) held that mere compilations of facts aren't copyrightable, because they aren't a creative work, and copyright is intended to protect only original, creative works. Collections with some degree of creativity in the selection and arrangement might count, but an alphabetical listing of all…
Thanks, I was not aware of that aspect.
Which basically proves the point that "Intellectual Property" isn't property: not everybody has even a similar view of what the phrase denotes.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#26People who do math (in a large sense that includes programming) often have a streak of Platonic realism: the idea that ideas are less invented than discovered . Lots of important code boils down to identities: a^0.5 == sqrt(a) == (b such that b×b == a) == (a certain line of x86 assembler) == (a certain line of python) Or equivalences: Turing machine == lambda calculus == Java Virtual Machine == Haskell == Conway’s ga…
The original question seemed to pertain more to copyright than to patents - the patentability of software is very much debatable, but the copyrightability of the works of science/art/cobbled together messes that we make seems pretty clear?
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#27I haven't seen any evidence that people here are "pro-piracy" but concerning your first paragraph I'll argue one reason for why many software developers may not be terribly thrilled with the current notion of "intellectual property". The majority of software developers are employees of corporations. As such they typically receive only a small fraction of the economic benefit derived from the value they create. The cu…
The majority of software developers are employees of corporations. As such they typically receive only a small fraction of the economic benefit derived from the value they create. If I choose to work for myself, then usually I am accepting a much higher degree of risk. Maybe I am developing a new product, and I don't have a portfolio of other products to fall back on should my idea fail. Maybe my business is too smal…
Sure there are trade-offs but it's very difficult to quantify how much you're giving up and how much you're getting in return. A corporate developer is constantly building up the IP portfolio of his company, but how good an idea does he have of the long-term value of his contributions ? If you knew that the value to the company of your work was 10x your salary would you still want to accept the trade-off or would you start looking for other options ?
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#28People who do math (in a large sense that includes programming) often have a streak of Platonic realism: the idea that ideas are less invented than discovered . Lots of important code boils down to identities: a^0.5 == sqrt(a) == (b such that b×b == a) == (a certain line of x86 assembler) == (a certain line of python) Or equivalences: Turing machine == lambda calculus == Java Virtual Machine == Haskell == Conway’s ga…
The original question seemed to pertain more to copyright than to patents - the patentability of software is very much debatable, but the copyrightability of the works of science/art/cobbled together messes that we make seems pretty clear?
I’m not an IP scholar, but my impression is that patents and copyright have basically the same intent; the only big difference is that patents are for methods and copyrights are for expressions.
Where you draw the line between methods and expressions, or discovered and invented things, depends on how much you like Plato’s style of thinking. We can imagine people on either extreme of realism/idealism arguing (A) that 1 = 1 is an invention of our mathematical system, or (B) that Girl with a Pearl Earring is merely the discovery of the pre-existing fact that that pattern of paint is pleasing.
Likewise, as things stand now, I can copyright a map. There’s an obvious argument against this: I didn’t make what the map shows, and I can’t own the fact that land is the shape it is. And an obvious argument for it: it took real work to research, design, and produce, and this deserves a reward. I think that hackers generally tend to come down further on the first argument’s side than most people do.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#29I don't think the consensus here is particularly strong in any direction. As for reasons, it varies by person, but a few common reasons for not being hugely in favor of "intellectual property" despite working in an intellectual area: 1. Even if well-meaning originally, intellectual property may actually harm innovation and innovators in certain areas (especially with the terrible state of patent law, but also with ve…
Intellectual property is an interesting issue because of what it says about people and how they approach things.
(a)Your opinion is your own. There isn't a political left-right position here. If you have a position climate change, nationally provided services and welfare, etc. that are associate with a political camp you can't derive an IP position from this. It's also hard to derive an opinion from fundamentals. A person's opinion here, is more than on other issues, his own.
(b) It's very easy to know enough to be dangerous. Understanding why 'patents encourages innovation' or 'IP fragmentation' discourages innovation. But, issue is multifaceted and hard to reduce to a manageable number of parameters. Even the most theoretical advocates of one side or another generally talk about balances (tweaking patent expiration, fair use laws) rather than fundamentals. Knowing enough to sound smart is easy. Knowing enough to have what is a well thought out position is pretty hard.
Put these two together and it tells you about how a person thinks. For example, if one has a lot of knowledge, some interesting insight but still doesn't have a strong opinion that tells you a lot about them.
Re: Why do many programmers defend/support intellectual property theft?
#30Violating the terms of a copyright license by making an unauthorized copy is not the same thing as theft. If I steal your car, I have one car and you have none; if I copy your data, I have a copy of your data and so do you. You have not been deprived of property, so there is no theft. If you offer to sell me a copy of your data for $X, but I decline, then choose to get a copy of the same data from someone else for fr…
If you look up what property really means, it is not a physical object/possession, it's an abstract right of disposal over something. If you steal my car, I cannot dispose of it how I choose, and if you take my data without permission, again I can no longer dispose of it how I choose. So you have, in fact, deprived me of property in both cases.