Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 6. (Read 105893 times)

It does the opposite of speeding it up, since it puts a 10 year halt on anyone playing around with that invention to make it better.

There is no such thing as a patent on a bracelet . Maybe on the shape of a bracelet or the pattern on it (a bracelet shaped as a snake or a bracelet with the face of Jesus on it). And it might be worth for you . For me it ain't. Se at this point you have to  start hunting me because I'm in contradiction with your thinking , and not because i caused any damage to you or your property. Just don't expect me not too try to escape your hunt or even retaliate because I believe it is stupid.

I believe it's stupid to initiate violence against someone who didn't act violent in any way and also didn't deprive anyone of anything.

deuxmill - people have been around 100,000 years and patents on things like bracelets last 10 years.  If the grant to the patent speeds up the rate of invention, then that 10 year patent is worth it.

The concept of physical property is everything but "fair". A poor peasant might work 20 hours a day for a few dollars, while a rich land owner might earn millions from rent and live a life of leisure, simply because he owns capital and the peasant doesn't.   

So why, then, intellectual property should be "fair" is beyond me.
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I actually don't see the unfairness . Or did the rich land owner got his riches from God or something? Why isn't the poor peasant rich? Because he is poor maybe , we have to protect him until he finds a way to become rich then. If he can't then what the hell should we do , should the rich bastard which clearly  can do something with his wealth split this wealth with the poor guy which didn't prove yet that he can. Maybe he should . But maybe the fact that there is IP law for example is making the rich bastard rich ... and the poor bastard could very easily recreate what the rich bastard has only he would be hunted by masked armed men if he does it. EVEN if that information is INFINITE and if the poor guy recreates it doesn't deprive anyone of anything.

 

Physical property is psychical , therefore finite , and you can't recreate it out of thin air so you would need to deprive someone of it or find some more that ain't owned.

"IP" on the other hand is not physical it's fiction on a piece of paper , or a CD , or a hard drive , and you can easily recreate it with the use of a pen for example or just by copy paste , or with the push of a button , and that action alone won't deprive the originator of the "IP" of NOTHING because he would still have his work .
 

That is why one is fair . Because if someone has property is because he did something or his forefathers did something . I don't know , Kings did murder and oppressed serfs , inventors invented things then they also created something psychical based on that invention , and sold it and made huge profits and wealth , Americans murdered Indians and took over their lands . They could do this because the laws at that time allowed it or maybe because no one wanted to enforce the existing laws because people believed it's better not to.

OUR hole world works because of FICTION like the law and information. Even a gold bracelet , or the fire , or a weal was at one point invented or more exactly discovered by a human. Al this things have a combination of Physical and FICTIONAL property. The bracelet for example is composed of the physical material called/defined as gold and the IP called/defined as bracelet (a circle to put around your arm) We can all create bracelets because at the time of it's invention there weren't laws that would recognize Intellectual Property. IF there were ,then the inventor's offspring would still be extremely wealthy and you wouldn't be able to create one without paying them. Think about how much we have discovered so far and then think about what we might invent from now on and remember that by accepting IP you grant the OWNER of the IP a monopoly on an infinite resource that can be recreated out of thin air , that could be at one point , vital to our existence. Think that if IP existed at the moment of the writing of the first document that contained GOD in it , and the authors copyrighted their works , the authors would have monopoly on the use of the word GOD in all future works , even speech . No Bible , No church , No nothing without payment to the owner. This would be wonderful from my view but still pretty stupid. Also remember that if you don't manage to make people believe that a inventor is an absolute OWNER of the IP , they  won't obey that law unless you attach some risk to it's braking , so you end up initializing violence against someone that never deprived anyone of anything. It would be like getting arrested for killing someone's imaginary friend and it's just as stupid as getting burned on a stake for blasphemy or just as stupid as ending in the concentration camps of Hitler because you believed you were jew , just as stupid as getting arrested because you brought injury to state institutions by swearing a cop etc and just as stupid as considering a whore doesn't produce value through sex but a singer does by singing.

The purpose of property rights is not fairness, it's justice.

The purpose of property rights isn't to "fairly reward people for their work", "create incentives" or any utilitarian nonsense like that.  These modern perversions of the concept of property come from ignorance of what property means in the first place, and where it came from originally. 

Property rights have nothing to do with morality. Property rights are nothing but a way for humans to settle disputes over who controls scarce resources.

Property rights serve one purpose and one purpose only: To answer the question, "when is violence justified"? 

Property rights are strictly negative rights, ie. the right not to be interfered with while using one's body, whether applied to physical property or information.   

The modern concept of intellectual "property" is a positive right, ie. the right to arbitrarily violate other people's self-ownership because their behavior is deemed immoral by some central authority.  Thus it isn't a property right at all.


The pro-IP brigade fails to make this distinction between morality/fairness and justice.

When a kind stranger helps me with directions on the street and I return the favor by being rude to him, most would consider that behavior immoral or unfair.   But that alone doesn't give the kind stranger the right to force me to say "thank you" or to return another favor.  Though he certainly has the right to ostracize or denounce me.

When I make money off an idea that I "stole" from a friend without giving him credit I might be an asshole,  but that alone doesn't give my friend the right to point a gun at me, or steal my physical property as "compensation".

The concept of physical property is everything but "fair". A poor peasant might work 20 hours a day for a few dollars, while a rich land owner might earn millions from rent and live a life of leisure, simply because he owns capital and the peasant doesn't.   

So why, then, intellectual property should be "fair" is beyond me.

Sadly, until BitTorrent starts working over Tor or I2P, or until we finally get truly distributed wireless mesh networking for all our web access, "ignoring" those laws still won't be easy. We still have to keep an eye on our downloads and stop they as soon as they finish, lest we get angrygram  from Comcast (I know I2P is supposed to work with bittorrent, but I had no luck with it).

http://c4ss.org/content/8683

Relevant to this topic.

You would be wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

I would have thought you live in a state that is both a democracy and a republic but I'm conscious that goes wildly offtopic.

What do you get when you combine a sociopath and a narcisist?

A congressman.

I don't really blame you!


It's pretty sad people can't get that concept when it's written at the beginning of the law.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_35_00000101----000-.htmlWhoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

It has to come out of your head before it qualifies.


Most importantly, you have to make the ideas available to everyone before they qualify.
This isn't going to be any fun! We agree on everything.


Even this! But how come the people who so obviously cannot be trusted to govern themselves, always want to govern me?

No, I won't.


We likely will.  The great disagreement between sides in this thread thus far is the definition of property and whether or not 'products of the mind' qualify as property.  The framers of the US Constittution considered that question, and soundly rejected the notion that such 'products' were property of their creators, and with that the concept that copyright is a 'natural right' that can be inherited or even transfered.  However, they also recognized the social value in 'patronage' of artists and thinkers.  They encoded copyright into the constitution as an intentionally limited term monopoly on commercial copying of works in order to promote the arts, but this monopoly was not only limited to 15 years originally, it wasn't absolute either.  It didn't apply to the average man in any real sense, it applied to copying for personal gain.  Anyone not in the business of publication could copy any book that he could get his hands on, by hand or otherwise, for his own needs or the education of others, but just couldn't sell the end result for 15 years.  This kind of exception also applied to libraries and educational institutions, and largely still does.  A library can copy any work in their possession, no matter how they came to possess it (including inter-library loan) and lend it out to valid membership without risk of getting sideways with copyright laws.  I've seen it done with music CDs, as well as lending out of self-made copies of reference only books.  The key differences in approach are important, because in order to balance the net effect of copyright, the Constitution also explicitly established the Library of Congress, which has the privilage under the law to receive a copy of every published work without cost to itself, and to do with it whatever they wish.  This was to allow a citizen access to culturally significant works even if they didn't have the means, as well as provide for an archive of works.


Certainly at the time, but that's now debatable.  It would take quite a large hard drive, but it's now possible for an individual to own a computer with every book, movie and music ever produced in the US saved onto it's drive.  The Internet has largely made archives such as the Library of Congress redundant.  Also, the Constitution is a social contract that predates all of us.  Thomas Jefferson openly questioned whether it was even proper for one generation to establish such a social contract to be imposed upon following generations by default, and without their explicit consent, but he couldn't offer a better solution either.  And neither can I, since unlike our more anarchist membership, I recognize that there really are a small minority of the population that (even with a proper and functioning educational system) cannot be trusted to govern themselves, even though the vast majority of the population undoubtedly can do exactly that.

Exactly! US law was almost complete plagiarism of this.

An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.

An act for the Encouragement of Learning! That is the whole point of copyright law. It means the people must be allowed to READ books. If you read the act it mandates books be given to libraries, and that reasonable prices be charged. Anyone can bring price gougers up on charges!

It means most importantly NOBODY can claim ownership of secrets! Your secret diaries were not originally copyrighted. Nobody can buy up the patent on a magically efficient engine and hide it from the world. Patented means it is already public knowledge.

The opposite of Intellectual Property is not rampant freedom of knowledge. It is trade secrets, private licensing and a tangled web of secret self-interested interdependencies kept hidden from the public through the privacy of contract law.

Digital Rights Management sucks bad enough. Imagine if people where implementing more Physical Rights Management. "I tried to open the hood of the car, but once I did, the engine melted itself down!" Duh, shouldn't have messed with the tamper resistant seal! Time for you to buy another!

I guess you could say that my issue is with representative democracy, but since this is a federated republic and not a democracy, is such a complaint unfair?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society

That's society. I've linked it before.

Once you have a society, it will organise itself to prevent harm to its members.  Where there are conflicts, laws will be made to resolve them.  Ideally, the body that makes those laws should be elected so that as broad a range of people as possible get represented.  In the best systems, the "losers" will still have sets in the parliament so their opinions cannot be ignored.  I would content that the US where you live and the UK where I live have good examples of the best systems. 

If your issue is that the elected don't represent society, then you have a basic issue with democracy.  That's sort of off topic to this thread. 

If you want to talk about the original intent of copyright law, you'll have to go back further than the constitution, further than the Statute of Anne. The printing press was allowing faster and easier distribution of information. This worried the church and the state, so the Stationer's guild was given a monopoly on the right to make copies in exchange for an agreement to censor any unwanted materials. This was great for the guild, not so much for anyone else. After a change in parliament, this monopoly was revoked. Shortly afterward, the Statute of Anne was passed, which as its stated prupose was to benefit artists. However, what ended up happening was quite different...

"Authors themselves were excluded from membership in the company and could not therefore legally self-publish, nor were they given royalties for books that sold well."

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_1709

Cool! will you start another thread? This one is kind of bloated!

I'm pretty sure we are going to end up arguing on the same side. What industry is trying to do to copyright law is completely contrary to why people created it in the first place. However, at the time, and quite probably today, the original intent/consequences of copyright/patent/trademark laws was much better for *everyone* than the consequences of not having them at all.

Ironicly, they do suck.  And it's not that I'm arguing that IP is akin to slavery.  I'm arguing that their support for IP laws are forced upon a wider public that did not agree to the terms; and like slavery and (more recently) segregation, society will eventually look upon such laws as fundamentally immoral favoritism of one group of people over another.

I shall address the reasons why copyright exists in the Constitution, and why it's there in another post.

Really, I was going to argue in favor of intellectual property laws.
But you guys are so bad at it, that I don't want to be associated with you!

It's not like the concept was imposed on people. We willingly wrote it into our constitution. Nobody will even acknowledge why. It was one of the most successful decisions "we the people" ever made. Now you are arguing to let Hollywood turn it into the one thing it was meant to prevent. I refuse to argue "with" you people. As such I will not argue "against" the libertarian views.

I'm still trying to understand where various entities have placed MoonShadow into indentured servitude or are going to place him into indentured servitude because the other entities have been granted intellectual property rights to the numerical data which represents some particular film.

All of his arguments of indentured servitude are either nonexistent, or require a leap of faith and long chain of actions in which MoonShadow himself would have to knowingly commit acts that he knows would be to his detriment, and would not even be acts that he could commit had it not been for the production of the film.

Let me understand this:

1. The Coen Brothers make a film.
2. MoonShadow knowingly copies it.
3. MoonShadow is arrested.
4. MoonShadow pays a fine.
5. MoonShadow must now work to pay the fine and/or is incarcerated.

Or:

1. Consider if the Coen Brothers did not make the film.
2. MoonShadow cannot copy it because it does not exist.
3. MoonSahdow is never arrested.

Now, how is the third alternative below different from the second?

1. The Coen Brothers make a film.
2. MoonShadow does not copy it.
3. MoonShadow is never arrested.

Now, consider the virtually infinite number of films which are never made:

1. An infinite number of films are not made.
2. MoonShadow is not copying all of those infinite quantity of films.
3. MoonShadow is never arrested for copying those infinite quantity of films never made (because MoonShadow didn't copy them).
4. He is no wiser or less wiser for not having had the opportunity to see them.

Consider this:

1. I make a spaceship which can take MoonShadow to the nearest star.
2. MoonShadow knowingly uses it to go where no man has gone before.
3. He arrives, and aliens enslave him.

In the last example, I have empowered MoonShadow to do something which nobody could do before. The wise person will tread carefully, glad for the empowerment.

The Coen brothers have, in a sense, empowered people the opportunity to see something which nobody has seen before, nor will see otherwise. The wise person will enjoy the benefits of that empowerment without demanding a free ride.