Chomsky on Intellectual Property • Hacker News Board

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#71

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #65

dexen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM in those paid-for projects? Scarcity is where it comes from (...) Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Google, IBM and the likes earn by selling services and goods rather than artificially limiting intellectual property. ((cue Android download link and AdWords control panel link))

> > Scarcity is where it comes from (...) > Sometimes yes, sometimes no. No. It always comes from scarcity of some kind. In the case of consulting, the scarcity might be expertise in putting together some kind of enterprisey system, but there is always going to be scarcity, otherwise no money will be exchanged. And you can rest assured that IBM has made plenty of money from IP itself over the years - they're no stran…

> It always* comes from scarcity of some kind.*

Meaning, if you want to gain any wealth, then work on something scarce, and make sure it stays scarce. Let everyone do that, and we get a world of scarcity.

Hmm…

I thought that a world of abundance was better?

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#72

Post by davidw » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #68

davidw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read what I wrote, I made no criticism of him for doing his job. I said it would be a poorer world were the only people who could afford to write those with independent sources of income. > artists earn money by performing What you're saying, in economic terms, is that musicians have rivalrous, excludable goods they can produce: the concert experience. That's not bad, although it would have the IMO negative ef…

> Authors don't really have that: they could sign books, but that would reduce their income drastically, as most copies would be freely had. Cory Doctorow seems to manage just fine. OK, that's not easy. But I'm not sure it's harder than earning money from a standard publisher, and it looks at least possible.

Cory Doctorow's work appears to be released under the "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" license, which means that only his publisher has the right to sell paper copies. Granted, he's being very generous and liberal, but he is still utilizing IP laws to create some scarcity.

http://craphound.com/ftw/Cory_Doctorow_-_For_the_Win.htm

Also, you have to look at these things at the margin: were all authors to do this, how many would no longer be able to support themselves with their writing, and thus be forced to stop or curtail their activities? He's a relatively well known writer: maybe it's ok for him to make, say, 100K rather than 200K a year. Some guy making 50K a year may have to give it up if his income is cut in half.

Furthermore, consider that just now the Kindle and similar systems are really starting to take off. In 2005 or so, you either bought the paper book and had yourself a nice read, or stared at an LCD for hours, which is not my idea of pleasant.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#73

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #51

calibraxis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue-sky research is much higher risk. Without the shorter term payoff that corporations seek. It's reasonable to call an endeavor "harder" when it's less certain of success. Particularly when we're talking about real innovations like computers and the internet, versus a company hiring a couple guys to toss together a "minimal viable product" with PHP. (If that description of corporate productization sounds unfair, I…

Blue-sky research is much higher risk. That wouldn't stop people from doing it privately. For example, biochemist Peter Mitchell ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Peter_D._Mitc... ) won a Nobel in Chemistry in 1978 for work he did entirely without government funding, out of a house he owned. (It's not some little thing he discovered, either - if you take an undergraduate course in biochemistry, you'll…

Conversely, the impossibility to exclude (copyright and patents) didn't stop the industry from funding the Linux kernel.

But both cases are probably marginal. In a world where one has to earn money to survive, innovation is slowed down, either because of copyright and patents, or the lack of funding.

The trick is to get a world where one doesn't need to earn money.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#74

Post by davidw » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #71

davidw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Scarcity is where it comes from (...) > Sometimes yes, sometimes no. No. It always comes from scarcity of some kind. In the case of consulting, the scarcity might be expertise in putting together some kind of enterprisey system, but there is always going to be scarcity, otherwise no money will be exchanged. And you can rest assured that IBM has made plenty of money from IP itself over the years - they're no stran…

> It always* comes from scarcity of some kind.* Meaning, if you want to gain any wealth, then work on something scarce, and make sure it stays scarce. Let everyone do that, and we get a world of scarcity. Hmm… I thought that a world of abundance was better?

Competition has a way of ensuring that scarce things become abundant. Look at, say, automobiles or computers or food or most normal goods. Sure, monopolies exist, but we also have laws to limit their harm as well.

You don't just get to wave your hands and make things "abundant", someone has to do the work, and in order to do the work they have to make a living at it, at the very least.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#75

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:47 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #72

loup-vaillant wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Authors don't really have that: they could sign books, but that would reduce their income drastically, as most copies would be freely had. Cory Doctorow seems to manage just fine. OK, that's not easy. But I'm not sure it's harder than earning money from a standard publisher, and it looks at least possible.

Cory Doctorow's work appears to be released under the "Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial -ShareAlike" license, which means that only his publisher has the right to sell paper copies. Granted, he's being very generous and liberal, but he is still utilizing IP laws to create some scarcity. http://craphound.com/ftw/Cory_Doctorow_-_For_the_Win.htm Also, you have to look at these things at the margin: were all a…

I hear you. Well, I even agree, you're probably right. And that sucks.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2334265

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#76

Post by dexen » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:48 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #71

davidw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Scarcity is where it comes from (...) > Sometimes yes, sometimes no. No. It always comes from scarcity of some kind. In the case of consulting, the scarcity might be expertise in putting together some kind of enterprisey system, but there is always going to be scarcity, otherwise no money will be exchanged. And you can rest assured that IBM has made plenty of money from IP itself over the years - they're no stran…

> It always* comes from scarcity of some kind.* Meaning, if you want to gain any wealth, then work on something scarce, and make sure it stays scarce. Let everyone do that, and we get a world of scarcity. Hmm… I thought that a world of abundance was better?

There exists concept of Gift economy [1] where scarcity is not a driving factor. The (historical) implementations we had so far aren't exactly shining examples of quick development. But it may have been just partly related, or even unrelated, to the economic model.

----

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#77

Post by dexen » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #74

loup-vaillant wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It always* comes from scarcity of some kind.* Meaning, if you want to gain any wealth, then work on something scarce, and make sure it stays scarce. Let everyone do that, and we get a world of scarcity. Hmm… I thought that a world of abundance was better?

Competition has a way of ensuring that scarce things become abundant. Look at, say, automobiles or computers or food or most normal goods. Sure, monopolies exist, but we also have laws to limit their harm as well. You don't just get to wave your hands and make things "abundant", someone has to do the work, and in order to do the work they have to make a living at it, at the very least.

> Sure, monopolies exist, but we also have laws to limit their harm as well.

A monopoly large enough is able to self-sustain, by adjusting the environment to its needs. And let's say that openly: including adjusting the law.

Of course, at some point their growth is stopped by growing pains of internal communication & management. What does the development of management theory and practice spell for the future, we shall see.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#78

Post by davidw » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:56 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #77

davidw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition has a way of ensuring that scarce things become abundant. Look at, say, automobiles or computers or food or most normal goods. Sure, monopolies exist, but we also have laws to limit their harm as well. You don't just get to wave your hands and make things "abundant", someone has to do the work, and in order to do the work they have to make a living at it, at the very least.

> Sure, monopolies exist, but we also have laws to limit their harm as well. A monopoly large enough is able to self-sustain, by adjusting the environment to its needs. And let's say that openly: including adjusting the law. Of course, at some point their growth is stopped by growing pains of internal communication & management. What does the development of management theory and practice spell for the future, we shal…

As I've said numerous times here, I don't think that IP laws in their current form are ideal, just that the idea of tossing them out entirely is likely to have some very serious consequences in terms of the production of information goods.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#79

Post by asher » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:59 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #35

hasenj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SO is the exception that proves the rule. Also, another thing. Linux/BSD push the bar way high up and force Windows to try and catch up. So even if you use windows, you're still affected by Linux. In the same way that you're affected (positively) by Apple even if you use Ubuntu.

The operating system is just one component. People had lives and did things before there were operating systems of any kind. Edit: For example, could you write CAD software without an OS as we know it today? It would be undoubtedly harder, but you could. People did this in the 60s.

It might be easier to write CAD software without an OS. At least, writing directly to a framebuffer is simpler than using X11 or OpenGL or Win32. Unless I'm missing something, a modern CAD system has to plot each entity twice; once to the display system and once to an internal grid. The internal grid is used for entity selection, possibly culling and other things.

The older AutoCADs (on DOS) apparently plotted the internal grid (hi-res), then resampled it to generate the screen display.

Thus, minor panning and zooming could be accomodated without "regenerating" -- replotting the hi-res grid.

Anyway, a CAD system doesn't really use the facilities of an OS; something like a web server, however, seems to benefit from an OS.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#80

Post by cma » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 11:12 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #17

First this: They don't make any economic sense or any other sense. Then this: They should be working for the public good. (Applause) And that means it should be available to the public. So... So...why aren't any of these (his 145 books): http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbo... in the public domain?

Chomsky is talking about institutional factors. He typically admits he is affected by them the same as anyone else. What kind of readership can a public domain book get? How would publishing it be funded? If it was a success, another publisher could just begin a print run. Old public domain books manage to get published, but, they have the advantage that they don't need to be advertised, have shelf space speculatively bought, etc. etc.

Chomsky also doesn't believe we should have regular property (at least not in the "rights" sense), but he still owns stuff.