The 'intellectual property' oxymoron • Hacker News Board

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#111

Post by gnaritas » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

adsr wrote: post #108

gnaritas wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still not an argument for why intellectual property should be allowed. Physical property is different , you can try and say it isn't all you want, but you're wrong, it is. I can't copy your car, I can copy your novel in milliseconds; these things are radically different. One deserves to be called property, one doesn't.

Sure you can, first you measure the parts then you manufacture identical parts and assemble a car that is a copy of mine. I wouldn't have any issues with this, but you would violate similar laws and the car manufacturer might sue you if you went on producing and selling that car. Physical property is not different, your argument is: "it is" (in italic). But just to show you that a similar argument can be made that in…

> Sure you can, first you measure the parts then you manufacture identical parts and assemble a car that is a copy of mine.

OK, if you're just going to be ignorant, goodbye.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#112

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 5:48 AM UTC

gvb wrote: post #4

What I consider to be intellectual property is between my ears - it is my intellect and my property. I have an arrangement with my employer to rent my intellect for nominally 8 hours per day. What that arrangement produces are artifacts (ink on paper, magnetic domains on disk drives, charge on floating gates) of my intellect. My employer owns those artifacts, but not the intellect that created them. Companies can tal…

I think you're being overly picky about wording. Intellect creates intellectual artifacts, just as a mason puts down masonry. If such an intellectual artifact happens to be property then it is intellectual property.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#113

Post by wnight » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 7:29 AM UTC

ignifero wrote: post #63

Helianthus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it does in fact. It isn't society's responsibility to make writing profitable. Just because the internet et al are making it harder to make a living as a writer doesn't mean we have any responsibility to turn around and make it easier.

It isn't society's responsibility to make writing profitable. Society rewards everything that benefits itself (at least the society i have agreed to live into). For example it rewards good scientific research because it makes everyone more productive and happier. I believe it has a good reason to make it profitable for writers to write good books too.

If we wanted to help inventors we'd help inventors. If people found a started using a new thing we'd track it back and reward the creator, those who popularized it, teachers, etc. And we'd make education free.

But instead we have a system that, if you pay a large (to individuals) fee, and file a ton of complex paperwork, may be persuaded to give you the monopoly right to sue people who used 'your' idea even if they independently invented it. But you're responsible for hiring lawyers to persuade the court to give you the money we supposedly ruled you have a right to. The court won't help by investigating the issue but can be easily convinced to issue crippling restraining orders, an action more likely to kill the accused witch than prove her innocence. No rewards for inventors, but here's a club and license to use it for extortion.

We could reward inventors, instead we reward lawyers. Specifically lawyers who cheat inventors. Patents, and copyrights, are a huge negative force on society. We need to get rid of them or we'll be eaten alive by groups who did.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#114

Post by wnight » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 7:48 AM UTC

cschwarm wrote: post #76

hxa7241 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work That is not the premise, that is the matter in question. If it is simply assumed as the answer, nothing has been said. As to the idea of harm here, it is not in the actions or materials themselves. It depends on assuming the particular law is the baseline, and then saying without that the person would b…

> Why is IP justified? From an economic point of view, by trying to prevent something like the tragedy of the commons. Since everyone can make copies if there is no ownership, the majority of authors have no incentive to make their works public. And since authors can figure this out before starting to work, there's less production of works than beneficial. In other words: Nobody would have spend the money to make mov…

> In other words: Nobody would have spend the money to make movies like Lords of the Rings, or whatever you fancy.

Sure. Like how nobody would write encyclopedia articles, operating systems, fiction, manuals, textbooks, etc, for free.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#115

Post by uriel » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 2:57 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #95

tzs wrote: post #53

There's an economic justification for the current type of IP law in societies that philosophically believe that the free market should be used whenever possible to determine the allocation of resources. It goes like this: ------ It can be shown by the mathematical economics folks that the free market leads to economically optimum results if and only if the goods in the market have certain attributes. If goods do not…

A tax on internet connectivity to fund creators of intellectual goods sounds like an awful idea to me. Who qualifies as a "creator of intellectual goods"? Do you have to register for that? Can you have another job as well? How is popularity measured, especially where multiple works by the same person are involved? Multiple contributors to the same work, with varying degrees of input? You can assume that the number of…

That hasn't stopped taxes on CDs, DVDs and even external hardisks in many countries which supposedly then get redistributed to "creators" (ie., the record/film industry cartels).

So yea, it is pretty horrible, like most of the "intellectual property" system (just look at patents..).

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#116

Post by uriel » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 3:00 PM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #14

hxa7241 wrote: post #11

A basic roundup of ethical problems for IP: * Conflict with fundamental personal liberty: Mill's idea that we have unrestricted liberty except to the extent that it injures someone else, is fairly standard. But IP conflicts with that, yet IP is not fundamental, not grounded in physical fact. (See Koepsell: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip... ) * Cannot be justified on the basis of harm: On…

None of these are ethical problems if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work, and can contract (exclusively, for a period of time) with a publisher for the distribution of said work. Put another way: you may (or may not) be old enough to remember when an American paperback company, Ace books, produced and sold paperback copies of Tolkien's "Lord…

This is a strawman, nobody is arguing that people should not be allowed to demand compensation for their work, authors and musicians were able to demand compensation no differently from anyone else before IP came around, the problem is the demand that they should be granted a monopoly and control over the physical property of others, that is what IP is.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#117

Post by uriel » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

m__ wrote: post #7

sp332 wrote: post #5

Here's the rest of that letter from Thomas Jefferson. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... It's interesting to realize that even such a fierce supporter of personal rights in our country didn't recognize ideas as something that should be "protected" like personal property.

Actually, "protecting" ideas as if they were property is in direct opposition to personal rights, so this should be expected. It's weird how "intellectual property" somehow got associated with personal liberty, the free market etc., when in fact it totally goes against those ideas.

Yes, intellectual property is completely contrary to free markets and personal liberty, in its essence is a system of government-granted and government-enforced monopolies, and how anyone can think that is compatible with liberty economic or personal boggles the mind.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#118

Post by uriel » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 3:12 PM UTC

aaavw wrote: post #87

Given that (1) most people are or are becoming "authors" now that the tools to create and distribute have become much more distributed then ever before; that (2) the way copyright works at the moment is to reward only popularity, not original creativity; that (3) for any author obscurity is a much larger problem then infringement ever could be; that (4) creativity may not need encouragement as becomes obvious seeing…

Your idea sounds a bit like Milton Friedman's negative income tax.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#119

Post by adsr » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 4:27 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #111

adsr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can, first you measure the parts then you manufacture identical parts and assemble a car that is a copy of mine. I wouldn't have any issues with this, but you would violate similar laws and the car manufacturer might sue you if you went on producing and selling that car. Physical property is not different, your argument is: "it is" (in italic). But just to show you that a similar argument can be made that in…

> Sure you can, first you measure the parts then you manufacture identical parts and assemble a car that is a copy of mine. OK, if you're just going to be ignorant, goodbye.

It's a pretty common cause for law suits actually and is known as reverse-engineering. It touches on exactly what we are talking about here. You seem to believe that the inherent value of something is exclusively associated with the cost of the material, but of course it's not. Let me give you some examples. Dirt doesn't have any value to most people, but if someone creates pottery from it that people deem valuble, then it becomes a commodity that can be sold. The difference between the dirt and the pottery is the labor and the skill of the creator, that is what creates value. Similarly with a book, what creates it's value is not the paper or the ink but the narrative, it's what makes you pick one book over another or even an empty notebook.

Re: The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

#120

Post by eropple » Mon, Jul 04, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

johnnyjustice wrote: post #97

eropple wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's very realistic (Cory Doctorow aside, and he's a special case). It's foolish besides--speaking engagements, etc. take away time from actually producing creative works . It's the sort of miss-the-point silliness often espoused by the anti-IP sorts: "spend an incredible amount of time doing X to maybe, if you're lucky, sell a marginal number of Y, where Y is totally unrelated to X." It's silly and a misal…

Well that's not fair, its not simply foolish. He prefaced his comment with "Or" meaning that its a possible business model. I think it would be fantastic to speak to my favorite writers and I know their time is valuable so I would pay to. But I am not stating that it is the perfect path. Though it would be nice if people considered it as a possibility.

It certainly is possible revenue source--once you have a big enough fanbase to support it. Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero.

It is not, in the general case, very viable. Which is why nobody takes it very seriously as a good path for all, or even most, writers. Because they have to eat, too.