Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chomsky on Intellectual Property

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#61

Post by dexen »

davidw wrote: post #58
dexen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is `set' because he continuously fulfills the expectation of the employer: he publishes (and teaches etc.). And expectations of the wide public: he provides information to us. The employer (university) is happy, because those publications bring them money, even if indirectly. And you were going to say that's a bad thing because...? Sure university is a somewhat special case; we don't expect everybody to become a p…

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…

> (...) 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))

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#62

Post by jbooth »

maxharris wrote: post #55
jbooth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, pardon my phrasing here, but all you're doing here is doubling down on the hand-wavey bullshit in longer form. I could give you a similar academic paragraph from a trotskyist, it would be just as substantive and just as wrong. To his point, in the last 30 years, we've slashed taxes for the rich and really slashed welfare. Shouldn't the poor be picking themselves up by their bootstraps by now? Or is something a…

You haven't laid out the first reason why I wouldn't be poisoned by a bottle of cough syrup from duane reade or why it should be on me vs the drug company to prove that their cough syrup is safe. No, just see the other comment right below: You should be free to do this yourself or to seek the advice of those you've chosen to trust on scientific (or any other) matters. As to your comment about the financial industry:…

.. and my trotskyist would argue that the Soviets failed because they never achieved "true" communism. He's just as right as you.

Gotta go, but on that whole federal reserve thing, go take a look at the boom/bust cycle in the US prior to and after establishing the federal reserve.

Again, it's not about what you find ideologically satisfying, it's about what actually works in the real world.

EDIT: btw, the fed and fannie/freddy had almost zero to do with the housing crisis. The problem was the multiplied leverage much more than the housing debt itself, and fannie/freddy's rules about loans to minorities only affected a miniscule % of total defaults.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#63

Post by davidw »

rbranson wrote: post #60
davidw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright and patents are very different bits of IP. Creative works like books are under copyright. You don't think that the ability to earn a living benefits the public by allowing a higher level of production of books, movies, music, etc...? I'm certain that things are tilted too far in favor of companies like Disney, but that doesn't mean the system should be thrown out entirely. Patents seem like they depend more…

I wrote a gigantic direct reasoning post in response to this, but I think a gigantic anecdotal analogy will work better. In the state of Tennessee, where I live, there is currently a debate about repealing some laws that regulate the sale of wine, which would allow grocery stores to sell it. Polls put 70% of consumers favoring the measure. Arguments are being made mostly by liquor & wine store owners and employees th…

I sometimes enjoy a "big production movie", along the lines of Avatar (although I wasn't wild about that one), and think the world would be worse off without them.

Movies cost millions of dollars to produce. With no IP, we would be left with either movies produced by some rich patron or only by very low-budget amateurs, because otherwise, how do you recoup the money?

I am not sure why you are discussing wine; it is not a good analogy, as it is not an information good, and while you may feel that the "laws are all outdated", any reasoning about the purchase and distribution of wine is likely to not apply much to information goods.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#64

Post by maxharris »

jbooth wrote: post #62
maxharris wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't laid out the first reason why I wouldn't be poisoned by a bottle of cough syrup from duane reade or why it should be on me vs the drug company to prove that their cough syrup is safe. No, just see the other comment right below: You should be free to do this yourself or to seek the advice of those you've chosen to trust on scientific (or any other) matters. As to your comment about the financial industry:…

.. and my trotskyist would argue that the Soviets failed because they never achieved "true" communism. He's just as right as you. Gotta go, but on that whole federal reserve thing, go take a look at the boom/bust cycle in the US prior to and after establishing the federal reserve. Again, it's not about what you find ideologically satisfying, it's about what actually works in the real world. EDIT: btw, the fed and fan…

Again, it's not about what you find ideologically satisfying, it's about what actually works in the real world.

Actually, it's got to be both. Being smart is being able to correctly predict things, and that requires both theory and empirical observations. While everyone has some sort of philosophy, some philosophies are better in the real world than others.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#65

Post by davidw »

dexen wrote: post #61
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…

> (...) 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 strangers to software or any other kind of patents, nor selling software like DB2. Also: do you think that IBM's services division would make as much money if they posted all their code to the internet? I bet many of their clients believe (right or wrong) that the custom solutions they're getting are a competitive advantage and do not want to freely share them with the competition who is not shelling out big bucks to IBM.

With regards to Google's IP, you can be very sure that they would invoke all kinds of IP laws were someone to walk out of their HQ and post important bits and pieces of their search engine tech to the internet. These days, they're in a pretty good position to survive in any case, but think about trying to start a company and have no way of doing anything if people walked out and posted your "crown jewels" to the internet.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#66

Post by danielsoneg »

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…

You're right, he was an exceptional individual.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#67

Post by dexen »

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…

Agreed.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#68

Post by loup-vaillant »

davidw wrote: post #58
dexen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is `set' because he continuously fulfills the expectation of the employer: he publishes (and teaches etc.). And expectations of the wide public: he provides information to us. The employer (university) is happy, because those publications bring them money, even if indirectly. And you were going to say that's a bad thing because...? Sure university is a somewhat special case; we don't expect everybody to become a p…

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.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#69

Post by danielsoneg »

To my knowledge, one of the reasons Universities were granted the right to patent their work was as a defensive measure - work patented at the University was intended to be available to the public, or at least, a whole lot easier to access than work patented by a private entity. The idea was to make the results of publicly funded research more, not less, accessible.

Re: Chomsky on Intellectual Property

#70

Post by dexen »

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.

Paulo Coelho, Trent Reznor, Bruce Eckel, at least to some extent.
Post reply on HN