Topic: Why is it so hard to regulate Bitcoin? (Read 2951 times)

...and yet artists still find time to create and monetize what inspires them.

Possible non-monetary motivations.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

I am not suggesting money doesn't motivate art and profit isn't a catalyst. I merely contend that those who suggest the lack of IP laws enforced by states will lead a "creative vacuum" are grossly exaggerating the consequences.

Page 6 refers to Sui generis used in the EU database directive of that citation.

I am also influenced by Richard Stallman, but he is definitely not arguing for any anarchist political position.
Both you and Stallman make great points that each right and law is a subject in its own category and there are many details one should consider. The reason I can make such broad sweeping attacks across all these IP regulations is I am arguing from an anarchist perspective. Foundationally, these regulations are unethical with the means at which they are enforced.

I'll Elaborate:
Currently, Trademark, copyright, and patents are all enforced through legal systems and treaties which ultimately result in you being kidnapped and tortured if you don't comply. Regulating a society by violating the non-aggression principle is fundamentally unethical and we as a people should think of more creative ways to address concerns that IP laws speak to solving.

Bitcoin is a fantastic first step created by crypto-anarchists where contracts and money can be peacefully used without breaking the non-aggression principle as the cryptography and protocol itself regulate the ecosystem rather than threats behind the violence of the state.

Lets take one example of how IP can be protected peacefully: trademarks. Namecoin and nameId could be used in the ecosystem to digitally watermark brand logos so when a customer scans the product a query request can made to a database to authenticate that the product is genuine. Knockoffs with similar logos and trademarks can exist but any retailer that sells such knockoff can quickly be identified by the general public and socially ostracized due to introducing consumer confusion which will lead to a decrease in sales for the retailer due to fewer customers.  

The technology will remain and will go on. It is apeared already an email and a twitter clones, based on bitcoin technology.

Your forgetting the part about having to work a separate 40 hour a week job
and what that does to ones time , energy, and output.

Does that include obscure ones like plant breeder's rights and the EU database directive?
Edit: I am having fun wrapping my head around "moral rights", of which the statute of Anne appears to be a simplification.

I bring it up because I am influenced by Richard M Stallman's Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage

In that essay, he argues that you should not talk about "Intellectual Property" like it is one large neat category. Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, and even the more obscure ones all have different purposes.

The main benefit of the term appears to be to convince people that this "virtual property" deserves strong legal protection. Since the 1996 WIPO "Copyright" and "Performances and Phongrams" treaties, copyright has started to trump physical property rights. General-purpose computers are no longer a commodity you can easily buy in the store: the ones you find all implement multiple forms of DRM. Gone are the days when your computer comes with a circuit diagram.

Yes, I am aware of the legal distinctions and historical purposes of all the different forms of IP law. What I am discussing are reasons why those laws are unethical and inconsistent.

There is a very detailed rebuttal of IP laws and rights here for more information:

http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

Here is a quick synopsis -

1) Patent and copyright unfairly allow the theft of real and tangible assets owned by others to those with a the patents /copyrights because they are given a monopoly by the state on every physical representation of that idea.

2) Ideas are not scarce and property rights must be clear , consistent and applied to scarce resources.

3) Copyright results in a weaker incentive at creativity

4) IP laws are moot and obsolete because they cannot effectively deal with decentralization and cryptography.

5) IP laws stifle freedom of speech and fair use isn't wide enough to allow for needed liberties

6)  The "author" of IP is under dispute as uniqueness and originality of ideas that are commonplace are often questionable.

 

Pretty easy to argue here I think. Call of Duty is an online game requiring actiation with a key that can only be used once. You don't pay for the game, you basically pay for the key and it's a consumable. By creating more keys that allow the key owners to play online, copying them doesn't matter anymore. Same for other online games.
That shows companies are already adapting to the copyright problem, and how do they do it? By selling a unique consumable every single sale - and it works.

You keep talking past me by explaining to me how IP laws apply in society under current laws. Yes, I am aware of all the above. Grimm was in the public domain but my point was that so should a lot of Disney copyright. Disney keeps moving the goalposts to keep their copyright from entering the public domain. This is corrupt and unethical. Additionally, there exists recourse in societies without laws regulated at gunpoint.  


Yes, paying for a drivers license is an extortion measure to collect a bribe and gather information by the state. I have traveled in many countries where direct bribing is more common. In the US theft and bribing is merely more institutionalized than in other countries.


Physical property and Intellectual property are very different categories altogether. Treating IP as property is a very recent notion in society and wasn't started being used until the 19th century and commonplace till the 20th century .

Physical property is tangible and physically exists. Intellectual Property is virtual and isn't stolen but copied. You cannot assume that those doing the copying would have made a purchase had they not copied the idea. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies while digital fall into a third category because they are scarce and limited. Stealing the private key isn't copying because its a unique digital resource that deprives the owner of their money.

I am not trolling you but these concepts may seem very foreign to you because most in society aren't exposed to anarcho-capatalism or any anti-copyright arguments.

I guess the Pull request was mostly closed because it was based on an old version of bitcoind and was not in a working condition at the moment of the request.

it is interesting video about the legal aspects of bitcoin regulation from TEDx Talks: "The concepts of Bitcoin and their impact on the worldwide legal space." Today bitcoin needs some tech knowledge, but it is only question of front end interfacing and ecosystem. So, it is only matter of time. Like a photography - "wet" darkroom skills and expensive optics were limitations which are already forgotten in the age of digital photography. Of course, it took some time (about 200 years since the first daguerrotype)

You appear to know what you are talking about, but I disagree on this point.

It is good that you are making a distinction between Patents, Trademarks and Copyright, but inBitweTrust appears to have missed that.

Copyright law is censorship. It currently gives the author exclusive control over their "creative expression of ideas" long past their death. There are necessarily exceptions like fair dealing (fair use in the US). Without such exemptions, copyright law would violate human rights.

Patents give a person or entity exclusive control over a novel invention for a period of about 20 years. It is stronger than copyright in that they are able to prohibit competitors from using that invention during that time-period. With the current trend towards "patent thickets", patents no longer protect the small inventor. It is not clear how many new patents meet the standard of "non-obvious to somebody skilled in the art". I am temped to say we should scrap the whole system.

Trademarks, as you mention, never expire unless they fall into common usage as a generic term (they probably expire if neglected as well). Despite their indefinite life-time; I have no problems with trademarks (other than occasional abuse). They are not "property" though. They are a way to identify a product or company in the market-place. Trademarks are essentially an anti-plagiarism rule for goods and services.

I think the available wallet options make regulation impossible. Proxy payment services are available too to make detection difficult. But a country's bitcoin regulation may prevent new users from entering the crypto world.

Art is sometimes about money, but then it's often shitty art
Art is for personal pleasure, as creation or as a collectible, as is money.
It's just another form of money.

And bitcoin is a protocol, regulation is in the code! People can try to regulate it but it wouldn't change a thing, like gold, its use is sometimes regulated but not gold itself.

The reason we have art is not (entirley) related to money, markets or IP.
Artists would continue to create for free. They have no choice in the matter. Ask any artist and they will explain.

Agree.

It's like, if I put something on a website , and say: "you can use this, if you agree to pay $1,
if you don't agree, please leave, those are my terms."...and then someone comes along
and says "screw the terms, i'm taking it, and im not paying you, fuck you".

Even if they are not thinking that literally, that is the implications of their
beliefs and actions...because they lack an honest philosophical base,
or morals, or both.

Hard to argue this point. Most open source games are pure crap. Even open source technologies such as the id Tech 3D engine started off as closed source.

What you write sounds like you don't understand.  Forgive me for making that assumption.

Youtube doesnt own NBC content.   Nbc's content is protected.   If NBC doesn't want youtube to broadcast they can use the law.   They can also have an agreement as well if thats what they choose.   Without the ip laws youtube can do whatever. The laws protect content owner but doesn't prohibit private contracts

Grimm is public domain.   Disney or even you can make your version of Snow White without persmission from Grimm

Doesn't matter where trademarks come from or how I got inspired.   The reason it's property is because I made it valuable.   I put in the investment and time.   It doesn't matter where FUBU came from,   the founder made the brand well known.   So the trademark is his property.   If someone wants to use it he can grant license.. Or not.   Its his choice cuz its his property.   Even one of my trademark was designed by a hire.   Its still my property since I paid her to do the work

So a drivers license is also bribing the state to let you drive?   Where do you get  fees=bribing?   Thats a bit of a stretch.   Live in Vietnam or China and bribing will be more obvious to you

You think people can own physical property but not intellectual property?  Contradiction here

I can't even respond to your post cause I can't tell if you're serious or trolling.   You seriously believe what you write?   Its so far out there

[1] who exactly do you regulate?

[2] if you try an make bad regulation, bitcoin allow capital flight to more bitcoin friendly jurisdictions, so bad regulation gets economically punished.

when btc gets to a 100 Billion ~ 1T cap, somewhere in there it will become irritable to gov to be come pro BTC as they will be able to attract 100's of billions in investment etc.

Also remember BTC is not like micros ft that say has 100 Billion in cash, once Microsoft spends that cash, its gone, it has to earn more. BTC is 100 Billion/Market cap buying power always.

You keep insinuating that I have no experience with copyright/trademark law or business which is untrue.

Microcosms that are voluntary can exist and have some use. Example 1- This forum is a microcosm where your username is issued as a forum "IP trademark" and no one is forcing anyone to participate. Example 2 - Youtube may choose to make agreements to respect NBC and ABC IP and vice versa. Again, its their servers and their company and no one is forcing you to use it.

I agree with you there are many benefits for a business who wants to compete by stifling innovation and driving out competitors. When you pay for filing fees, expediting fees, and legal fees these are all bribes to the state for temporary or perpetual monopolies within a certain geographic region.

Disney ripped off many of the Brothers Grimm's Fairy tales and other artistic works  to originally build their empire than hypocritically proceeded to continually lobby to extend copyright law and sue anyone that comes close to publishing similar material.

Your 2 trademarks you license didn't come to you out of thin air. You didn't create them because you received some direct revelation from a supernatural creature. You drew on different ideas and art created by others. You don't really own the ideas behind them any more than society and history do as well.

I believe in self ownership and private property and I can make a strong case for why simply recognizing you own the effects of yourself you also own the product of your labor, but not when it comes to speech. Ideas and Speech(code, art, writing, music) should not be abridged to create monopolies even if the creators of the US constitution suggested(20 years , and later to be extended for copyright). There are many societal and creative abuses that are well documented by restricting free speech at gunpoint.

There are many of us who don't recognize or respect the arbitrators who enforce exiting IP regulations and for good reasons. There is a very long and corrupt history and you can start to explorer it with some of the links that you are getting exposed to.  

The "rules" you speak about should not be followed because they are corrupt within their very core as they assume you agree to them at birth, they are as impractical to enforce as the war on drugs, and they are arbitrary and capriciously enforced to benefit the rich(Copyleft is routinely infringed and players with more lawyers usually win)