As I've been thinking lately about file-sharing and the "Information wants to be free" argument, I've had a couple of reminders that all property is intellectual property:
And I passed a sign letting me know that while my previous steps had been on public property, the next ones would be on private property:
What was the difference? If I had asked the trail I was walking on, it would have had nothing to say on its legal status. Some people decided that part of this land is public, and part is private. If we all agree, the private part can be bought, sold or rented for money.
2) I learned recently that the "real" in "real estate" doesn't refer to reality, but to ownership by the king. (Does everyone else already know this?) Here's an explanation from laborlawtalk.com:
"...in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term real estate was equivalent to "royal estate", real originating from the French royale, as it was the French-speaking Normans who introduced feudalism to England and thus the English language; cognate to Spanish real."
3) Today, we bought some crackers from Whole Foods, a great organic food store which nevertheless is sometimes referred to as Whole Paycheck. The crackers were eight in number, and $5.00 in price. 62 cents a cracker. What is being sold here is not the crackers, but the experience of paying that much for crackers. It makes you feel, uh... Healthy? Wealthy? Inattentive? Well, one of those things, but it ain't the crackers.
Property is an intellectual concept, in the real world or the digital world, and it's up to us to decide what gets paid for and how much, not some mystical quality in being information -- it's all information.
Spencer Critchley
is an award-winning producer, writer and composer with experience in digital media, film, broadcasting and the music
business.
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Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.
Ideas are not property
2005-06-22 05:52:16
Alkon
[Reply | View]
Ideas cannot be intellectual property. There is a manipulation of
concepts here. Yes, the concept of property, like absolutely any concept under
the Sun, is intellectual, notional - that's trivially true. But reverse is
trivially not true - intellectual activity CANNOT be made property, obviously.
If A, then B is in no way means that if B, then A, but it is seductive to
revert things when nobody is looking.
We should make a distinction here, cause things are often deliberately mixed
to be able to "catch fish in a mud waters". One can perfectly hold copyright on
work of art or specific software implementation of underlying ideas, and charge
for using them. It would be grossly unfair to deny people right to use their
work the way they like. But one absolutely should not be able to lock
away ideas. Imagine a sign that tells: "Notice. Ideas that you try to think or
implement are privately owned. Please, stay away from those ideas" - this is
exactly what patents on software, algorithms and business methods all about.
Turning ideas into someone's property is actually a crime against humanity.
Society that turns ideas into someone's property is totalitarian by definition.
The issue of evil big corporations was touched in the discussion. Actually,
of course, not sheer size is evil. The true evil thing that big evil
corporations enjoy is the monopoly. Big corporations are evil, if they use
their sheer size to destroy competition from small innovative companies and
individuals. In general, it is well known from economic theory that market
economy is plagued with a number of imperfections. Most dangerous imperfection
is that self-interested economic agents are constantly try to build monopolies
to lock away profits for themselves and keep most (small) competitors at bay.
They use every means, including covert ones and fake propaganda, to achieve
monopolies and would succeed in that, unless face strong opposition from public
in general.
All current buzz around intellectual property has objective reasons.
Currently, big corporations, with help from self-interested legal profession
and organizations of intellectual property, extensively and increasingly abuse
intellectual property law, in particular special legal devices called software,
algorithm and business methods patents, to turn ideas into their legal property
to block competition and keep emerging high-technology markets for themselves
only (the plain greed motivation), and wage propaganda war to deceive public
opinion and sell themselves as "innovators". Patents are, in essence,
artificial monopolies on ideas. The public wealth in general suffers as a
result, cause innovation in fact gets killed by patented monopolies. This is
where marginal self-interest of few large corporations goes against interest of
society. These things are well known in economic theory. Now things have got so
out-of-control, that it is obviously the time for general public to intervene
and rectify market imperfections accumulated so far i.e. reform patents low and
abolish patentability of software, algorithms and business methods, at least.
But even more important, ideas should NOT be someone's property (e.g. should
not be patentable) for deep philosophical reasons of freedom and humanity,
similar to freedom of speech and a like.
Ideas are not property.
IP is an idea
2005-06-15 23:25:36
GerardM
[Reply | View]
IP is something that was for some time increasing its grip on society. All knowledge was turning more and more into property. The big achievement of Open Content projects like Wikipedia is that they destroy much of the opportunity to make information IP.
Universities are also making more of their research open to everyone like recently many of the Dutch universities did.
The same thing is happening with images; Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is a project started in October it has already 123.000+ digital files and increasingly it will allow kids to illustrate their projects without "breaking the law".
If anything the trent towards open content is growing. The technology to make content IP will increasingly turn people away from an industry that does not serve culture because if it was, the industry would take the responisibility to maintain the content that is still copyrighted and preserve it for the future.
The analogy fails because the landscape and the cracker-experience cannot be infinitely and precisely duplicated.
IP is a new concept (historically) for people who have no moral problem charging over and over for the same work. Since antiquity, artists have had to prove themselves worthy of a patron.
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Weblog authors are solely responsible for the content
and accuracy of their weblogs, including opinions they
express, and O'Reilly Media, Inc. disclaims any and
all liability for that content, its accuracy, and
opinions it may contain.
Ideas cannot be intellectual property. There is a manipulation of
concepts here. Yes, the concept of property, like absolutely any concept under
the Sun, is intellectual, notional - that's trivially true. But reverse is
trivially not true - intellectual activity CANNOT be made property, obviously.
If A, then B is in no way means that if B, then A, but it is seductive to
revert things when nobody is looking.
We should make a distinction here, cause things are often deliberately mixed
to be able to "catch fish in a mud waters". One can perfectly hold copyright on
work of art or specific software implementation of underlying ideas, and charge
for using them. It would be grossly unfair to deny people right to use their
work the way they like. But one absolutely should not be able to lock
away ideas. Imagine a sign that tells: "Notice. Ideas that you try to think or
implement are privately owned. Please, stay away from those ideas" - this is
exactly what patents on software, algorithms and business methods all about.
Turning ideas into someone's property is actually a crime against humanity.
Society that turns ideas into someone's property is totalitarian by definition.
The issue of evil big corporations was touched in the discussion. Actually,
of course, not sheer size is evil. The true evil thing that big evil
corporations enjoy is the monopoly. Big corporations are evil, if they use
their sheer size to destroy competition from small innovative companies and
individuals. In general, it is well known from economic theory that market
economy is plagued with a number of imperfections. Most dangerous imperfection
is that self-interested economic agents are constantly try to build monopolies
to lock away profits for themselves and keep most (small) competitors at bay.
They use every means, including covert ones and fake propaganda, to achieve
monopolies and would succeed in that, unless face strong opposition from public
in general.
All current buzz around intellectual property has objective reasons.
Currently, big corporations, with help from self-interested legal profession
and organizations of intellectual property, extensively and increasingly abuse
intellectual property law, in particular special legal devices called software,
algorithm and business methods patents, to turn ideas into their legal property
to block competition and keep emerging high-technology markets for themselves
only (the plain greed motivation), and wage propaganda war to deceive public
opinion and sell themselves as "innovators". Patents are, in essence,
artificial monopolies on ideas. The public wealth in general suffers as a
result, cause innovation in fact gets killed by patented monopolies. This is
where marginal self-interest of few large corporations goes against interest of
society. These things are well known in economic theory. Now things have got so
out-of-control, that it is obviously the time for general public to intervene
and rectify market imperfections accumulated so far i.e. reform patents low and
abolish patentability of software, algorithms and business methods, at least.
But even more important, ideas should NOT be someone's property (e.g. should
not be patentable) for deep philosophical reasons of freedom and humanity,
similar to freedom of speech and a like.
Ideas are not property.