Needless to say, both pieces of legislation are deeply flawed. They amount to prior restraint on expression, which is not permitted by the US Constitution, and they threaten to undermine the domain name system that’s central to how the Internet works. All that is a given.
The Recording Industry Ass. of America and the Motion Picture Ass. of America have both demonstrated themselves to be clumsy, arrogant, and hamfisted in their approach to copyright. The movie and recording industries are both firmly wedded to business models that are rooted in last century; neither has shown any inclination to change as technology changes. (The Motion Picture Ass. of America has, rather comedically, published a statement in which they say that anti-SOPA protests are a “gimmick” that will “turn us all into corporate pawns.”)
Robert Heinlein perhaps put it best when he said, “There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”
But… but… but…
In all the debate about SOPA, there is an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about.
The elephant in the room is that people who create things deserve to be rewarded.
The current crop of Internet users is in many ways incredibly entitled. There is a very deep vein of hatred for the idea of intellectual property throughout the Internet generation. A surprisingly large number of people seem to feel that if someone created it, they deserve to be able to have it.
I have often made the mistake of wading into Internet conversations about copyright, and been astonished by the viciousness and entitlement that I see there. A lot of the arguments are based on a profound ignorance of what copyright is, but even more arguments are based on a hatred of the entire concept of intellectual property that seems to be rooted in the notion that anything I want, I should be allowed to have, as long as it isn’t made of physical atoms. It’s amazing, terrifying, and sad in equal proportion. And I can see why content creators get exasperated.
For example, in a recent debate about copyright on Facebook, one person made the assertion that a person whose work is copied without pay should be flattered by it, and “enjoy the fact that what you have written/drawn/painted/shot has moved so many people that they wish to pay you the compliment of forwarding your work to others to enjoy.” Another person made the even more astonishing claim that “copyright is a tool of privilege” that “keeps art away from the poor,” an opinion he followed up with “Art shouldn’t be sold, it should be shared and traded.” He then followed up with the notion that “talent is a birth-given privilege,” artistic ability and creativity can not be learned, and selling an artwork or a song is inherently a tool of oppression because it’s a way for privileged creative people to exploit those who lack the ability to create by denying them art that can improve their lives unless they pay for it.
The amount of entitlement these arguments reveal can scarcely fit in a double-decker bus. It turns the idea of privilege on its head (what of the poor, disadvantaged person who has invested a great deal of time and effort in learning a skill; should she not be allowed to be rewarded for that effort?); it demonstrates a breathtaking level of entitlement (if I like some bit of artwork and I think it makes my life better, I am entitled to have it no matter what it cost to produce and no matter how much work went into its creation); it relegates the production of art to only those wealthy enough to do it as a hobby, and that any creative person who isn’t wealthy should, I don’t know, work at McDonald’s or something rather than creating; it spits in the face of the notion that people whose work benefits society deserve some measure of benefit themselves; and it cheapens and degrades the considerable effort that artists put into acquiring and building their skills.
And this is, amazingly, not an isolated opinion. It’s a worldview I see reflected again and again and again, everywhere the subject of copyright comes up.
People who hold these ideas can not, I think, be persuaded otherwise. A person who feels entitled to something will construct rationalizations about why his entitlement is justified, whether it’s by imagining creativity as some inborn thing like race or sex, or inventing a moral system whereby anyone who does something that could make another person’s life better like create a painting or, I don’t know, haul away garbage is ethically obligated to do so for free. Such people will often spout platitudes like “True artists do it for the love of art, not for money,” setting up a false dichotomy that ignores the fact that creative people also have to eat. This argument also creates a system whereby an artist’s merits are judged not on her technical proficiency or her ability to illuminate the human condition, but rather on how much stuff she gives the speaker for free.
Other arguments against copyright are based on simple ignorance of what copyright is.
Some of these are as inevitable as arguments like “Oh, so I should tell my partner every time I take a crap?” which I have heard, without fail, every single time I’ve ever seen a discussion about whether or not willfully withholding information from a lover is lying, or “So if someone asks me if her butt looks fat in these jeans, I should say yes?” that crop up as sure as night follows day in any conversation about the value of honesty. I have, to date, never once seen any conversation about copyright in which some person doesn’t say “Well, you better not use the word ‘copyright’ because I have a copyright on it!” or “There’s no such thing as an original idea.” These people don’t understand even the most basic principles about copyright; they simply don’t know that a word or a sentence can not be copyrighted, or that copyright covers only a particular expression of an idea rather than the idea itself.
Other ideas about copyright that are just as common and just as wrongheaded include such notions as “If it’s been posted in a public place, that means it’s legal to copy it,” which is approximately as inane as believing that if a car is parked in a public lot, that means it’s legal to drive off with it; and the idea that as long as you credit the person who made a particular piece of art, it’s permissible to copy and redistribute it at will.
These ideas are the Creation Science of copyright. They’re firmly woven into the fabric of beliefs held by a very large number of people, and they’re absolutely bogus. An emergent view that comes from these mistaken ideas is the smug, self-congratulatory notion that by copying someone else’s work, the person copying it is doing the creator a favor; after all, it’s giving the creator more exposure, right? (One has to wonder what good it is to have this “exposure” if we accept the notion that it’s wrong for someone to want to be rewarded for creating things of value, but that’s a subtle argument that’s generally lost on the caliber of debate one normally sees surrounding the idea of copyright.)
People who create things of value deserve to be rewarded for that creation, no less than people who build cars or make computers or cook McDonald’s burgers. This is a fundamental axiom without which there is no benefit in creation for any purpose save as a hobby. If we do not accept that idea, then what we are doing is we are saying that as a society we do not want the contribution of talented, creative poor people who can not support themselves in some other way; only the independently wealthy with plenty of time on their hands and the means to support their creation need apply. If I intend to invest in a camera, or canvas and paint, or studio recording equipment, I better do it without any expectation that my investment will be rewarded in any tangible way, and so I’d better have enough money to do so without the expectation of return. This idea is, I think, self-evidently horseshit.
Copyright matters. Intellectual property is important. This is not something that will go away, and because of it, the issues that drive dismal piles of misbegotten dreck like SOPA and PIPA aren’t going to vanish tomorrow.
SOPA and PIPA are at this point almost certainly dead in the water, and that is as it should be. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Internet is swarming with poorly-informed and entitled people who sincerely believe they have the right to have other people’s work for free, and so we can reasonably expect to see proposals for more legislation like SOPA and PIPA to appear tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. This. Is. Not. Going. Away.
It is absolutely, undeniably true that there is more than a little hypocrisy at work in the attempts of organizations like the MPAA and RIAA to take the moral high ground about copyright while lobbying for legislation that does an end-run around protected speech. It is unquestionably true that, to a large extent, the copyright problems they face are a monster of their own making, the result of hanging on to antiquated business models that simply no longer apply. It is also true beyond a shadow of a doubt that both of them, the RIAA in particular, have long histories of treating the actual creators they employ very poorly indeed, giving their artists only tiny dribs and drabs of money while executives profit obscenely on their work. All of these things are true.
But not one of these observations is an argument against the idea that people who create novel things deserve to be rewarded for them. We would not say that an inventor, a creative person who applies her talents to solving practical problems, should do so merely for the love of inventing, nor that “true” inventors would never charge for their inventions; and most of us would probably find it quite laughable if someone were to say that an inventor who sold her invention was an oppressor, using her innate privilege to deny other people of things that can benefit their lives unless they pay her.
So why is it that we are willing to accept these ideas when they are applied to someone who uses her talent to create photographs or paintings instead of widgets?
SOPA sucks. But the notion that people are entitled to benefit from others’ work for free also sucks. We are, or we should be, on the same side here; our lives are made richer by the artistic expressions of others, and so we should want to encourage creative people to create. Even if they’re not independently wealthy.
174 thoughts on “Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright”
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Thank the fracking ghods for and your ability to put good verbiage to the same entitlement issues I’ve been battling for Idunno HOW long.
Thank the fracking ghods for and your ability to put good verbiage to the same entitlement issues I’ve been battling for Idunno HOW long.
I work in IP (patents mostly), and am an artist… and I entirely agree.
I might have doubted your entitled folks but I have been reading @herpderpedia all day and am appalled by the (mostly) young folks retweeted there. *facepalm*
I work in IP (patents mostly), and am an artist… and I entirely agree.
I might have doubted your entitled folks but I have been reading @herpderpedia all day and am appalled by the (mostly) young folks retweeted there. *facepalm*
One of the least materialistic performers ever, Bob Marley himself said “When me work, we wanna get paid.”
Artists being compensated for their work doesn’t have to come at the expense of free expression and information.
One of the least materialistic performers ever, Bob Marley himself said “When me work, we wanna get paid.”
Artists being compensated for their work doesn’t have to come at the expense of free expression and information.
as both an artist and a fervent defender of the freedom of expression, I have nothing to add here but my user icon.
I just hope this post doesn’t get derailed by people taking your defense of artists’ right to compensation to the absurd conclusion that you therefore defend SOPA (because people on the internet, in my experience, tend to ignore the parts of a post they don’t like & “interpret” the post the way they want you to sound).
Which wouldn’t be your fault, of course, because you repeatedly said you are opposed to SOPA. But years of internet conversations that go:
Me: the sky is blue, but I don’t like being outdoors today.
Them: How DARE you say the sky isn’t blue! It totally is! I just looked out my window and it’s blue skies all the way!
Me: I know, I just said that it was. You clearly didn’t read what I wrote.
Them: You’re so mean! Moderator! Ban her from the forums forever! She called me names!
…have left me cynical. Here’s hoping I’m wrong!
as both an artist and a fervent defender of the freedom of expression, I have nothing to add here but my user icon.
Well said. I have to say the sense of entitlement is really insidious. Every once in a while I find myself unable to find something without having to pay for it and being deeply, deeply annoyed. And then I think about that for a moment and realise that I’m being silly. But it’s definitely a prevalent attitude among people my age right now.
Well said. I have to say the sense of entitlement is really insidious. Every once in a while I find myself unable to find something without having to pay for it and being deeply, deeply annoyed. And then I think about that for a moment and realise that I’m being silly. But it’s definitely a prevalent attitude among people my age right now.
I just hope this post doesn’t get derailed by people taking your defense of artists’ right to compensation to the absurd conclusion that you therefore defend SOPA (because people on the internet, in my experience, tend to ignore the parts of a post they don’t like & “interpret” the post the way they want you to sound).
Which wouldn’t be your fault, of course, because you repeatedly said you are opposed to SOPA. But years of internet conversations that go:
Me: the sky is blue, but I don’t like being outdoors today.
Them: How DARE you say the sky isn’t blue! It totally is! I just looked out my window and it’s blue skies all the way!
Me: I know, I just said that it was. You clearly didn’t read what I wrote.
Them: You’re so mean! Moderator! Ban her from the forums forever! She called me names!
…have left me cynical. Here’s hoping I’m wrong!
I hope you can spread this around far and wide…. This is excellent and more people need to understand what the real issues are.
I hope you can spread this around far and wide…. This is excellent and more people need to understand what the real issues are.
As a photographer who has to educate clients daily about copyright I love this post. Thank you.
As a photographer who has to educate clients daily about copyright I love this post. Thank you.
My last client! To quote “taking pictures isn’t real work, you shouldn’t get this kind of money for fooling around”
While this is more extreme than most, it is surprisingly common for clients to argue or try and convince me that i’m wrong about my copyright. (had a lawyer try and tell me that pictures of him made by me can’t be copyrighted!) I have a $30,000 education, $50,000 in gear and studio etc, i provide copyright information in my contract and even with all these obvious indicators that i am a business, it’s not uncommon for clients to be surprised that sharing my work is a copyright violation.
Photography
To play devils advocate, “clients” implies that they are paying you money. Given that in many other (non-photography) situations being paid to produce creative work would be “work for hire”, and the person paying for it would then own the result (including, eg, copyright), it’s not that surprising to me that the clients would be surprised to discover that they don’t.
And yes I understand the historical reasons why photographers typically retain copyright even in a “work for hire”-like scenario (eg, commissioned projects), and that people of the “I have a camera, I can take photos” mindset are (currently) unwilling to pay what it would really cost to do something other than that (eg pern some other business models). But at some level the legacy photographic business model is, itself, not keeping up with modern trends. And that’s part of the source of tension there. Sadly I don’t have a good solution to this problem. (FWIW, I say this as someone who has largely made their living for decades doing “work for hire” software development, etc. Including giving clients all source code, etc. Part of the reason why I’m still a software developer, etc, rather than trying to be a professional photographer is precisely that “business model” problem.)
Ewen
“isn’t real work” isn’t necessarily an objection from the same point, though; it’s a failure to recognise “work”. I’ve heard (in the past) people saying things like “I don’t see why you should paid; you do stuff on computers anyway” about my job. The person was unable to distinguish between hobby and employment.
My last client! To quote “taking pictures isn’t real work, you shouldn’t get this kind of money for fooling around”
While this is more extreme than most, it is surprisingly common for clients to argue or try and convince me that i’m wrong about my copyright. (had a lawyer try and tell me that pictures of him made by me can’t be copyrighted!) I have a $30,000 education, $50,000 in gear and studio etc, i provide copyright information in my contract and even with all these obvious indicators that i am a business, it’s not uncommon for clients to be surprised that sharing my work is a copyright violation.
“other than by making a profit out of a birth-given talent (privilege) which could improve other people’s lives, if they had access to, before becoming a product with a price tag on it. Also, it doesn’t hurt that artists love what they create: so, why they can’t focus on the happiness they bring to people instead on how much dollars per word, or image, or illustration they can scrape?”
“Your idea of what your talent is worth, and how it should be “used”… THAT is entitlement, my dear artist.”
“True artists do. They do it for the love and the need to create, and not the money.”
These are comments from the facebook thread Franklin’s referring to, and from more than one person. They’re not referring to a concept of post-scarcity society. A nuanced and subtle argument which I would heartily respond to, especially with current thoughts on social capital, which I’m studying and working to expand on currently. These guys were attempting to claim that, in the real world, right now, artists should work for free. Pro bono. Out of a desire purely to make people happy. Because somehow, magically, artists are the one segment of people who don’t need to eat, or pay rent, or buy clothes. And somehow, magically, if artists are not paid and in fact have to scrape for money doing miserable day jobs, even yet, the time will still be found for art to happen.
It might be naivety, sure, but it’s a dangerous kind of ignorance to encourage, and very very real.
As an artist myself, and one who has relied upon it entirely for my my income through various periods in my life, and at other times have found my desire to create art being utterly crushed by the need to pay rent, I would love to live in their world, but I worry that the marshmallow clouds wouldn’t hold me.
Wow, that first one is just mind-boggling. First of all, I think FOOD and MEDICINE could improve people’s lives a lot more than art, but no one is advocating that the producers of these things give them away for free.
And then…are they really implying that anyone who enjoys their work shouldn’t be able to make a wage off of it? What a horrible world that would be!
I am a writer, and I love doing it, and that motivates me to do it. Sadly, as a mortal human, I also need to eat and have shelter from the elements. How do these idealists suggest I pay for those, I wonder?
Yeah yeah, I know, I’m preaching to the choir here. /rant
Open-source software does just fine. I’m viewing this page using FireFox, and if you reply, I’ll get an email notification in Thunderbird. The machine I’m using for those programs, and others, is running Kubuntu, which makes Windoze 7 look like crap in terms of performance, stability, visual quality, and user-friendliness. I haven’t bought a piece of software in half a dozen years, and I’m able to do everything I could want with this computer, including running multiple businesses.
All the best software is free. The proof is in the pudding, and the real world says that open-source is perfectly workable, and often even better than closed-source. The same applies to copyrights on other forms of media, as well. If folks want what you create, you won’t starve, or have to live in a cardboard box.
Open-source software does just fine…when it has a wealthy patron.
Your free Firefox browser is funded to the tune of $300,000,000 per year by Google, which is decidedly a for-profit enterprise. Your free Kubuntu operating system was paid for by Mark Shuttleworth, a billionaire who owns his own jet and paid $20,000,000 for a ride to the International Space Station. I find your arguments underwhelming and less than persuasive; if anything, you have merely demonstrated my point that treating art and other easy-to-copy creative works as though they are post-scarcity merely makes them into hobbies for the wealthy.
Sounds like the creators would still get paid, though, right? Art was, throughout most of history, created at the request of wealthy patrons. How many of the famous paintings in museums were created in exactly that way?
But, thanks to the Internet, it doesn’t even have to be done that way. Large numbers of small payments can add up to appreciable capital. Look at setups like Kickstarter.
I read around a dozen different web comics, which are all presented on their respective sites, free for anyone to view. Oddly enough, folks will pay because they want the author to continue writing. They may pay for original copies of art, or the opportunity to give input which may influence the direction of the story.
I have been a graphic design professional, and an ardent Open Source advocate, and I dispute your claim that all the best software is free. The Adobe Suite still does things that Gimp and Inkscape cannot do.
I’d suggest that you do a web search for “open source graphic design,” because I just did, and came up with dozens of programs listed.
I’m not an expert of graphic design software, so maybe if there’s some specific feature that you believe is only available through Adobe, you could post that, and I’ll see if I can find a program that does it?
Did you miss the part about “Open Source advocate” ?
Believe me, I know what’s available, and furthermore, I *use* it. But there are things that I could do easily with Adobe products 10 years ago that I still can’t do with Gimp and Inkscape. It’s not a question of the *number* of programs available, it’s a question of what any one of them can *do*. (One of my great sorrows, the gradient mesh, is *finally* almost ready in Open implementations. (It showed up in Scribus. Which was somewhat less than useful.) TEN YEARS after I was using it in Illustrator. I’ve been kludging to get what is a simple effect under Adobe.
Once upon a time, I was part of a Linux-focused publication that got me access to devs beyond just being an interested civilian. I’ve had long talks about what’s what.
The problem I’m having with what was written was the claim of “better”. State of the state is “very nearly as good” and “frankly undetectable difference for most users”.
I use Open Office happily. I’m running Ubuntu with no commercial apps. The *only* commercial software I miss is for high-end image creation and manipulation.
“State of the state is “very nearly as good” and “frankly undetectable difference for most users”.”
Not true. Windoze 7 is rotting roadkill, compared to Kubuntu. Open source has far surpassed closed-source.
Even if we were to presume, for the sake of argument, that Adobe is better than any open-source alternative, that does not prove the general case.
You made the hyperbolic statement that “All the best software is free.”
Unless you mean something tautological, like “if it’s not free, maineshark will not assess it as best”, your statement is untrue.
State of the state IN GRAPHIC MANIPULATION SOFTWARE is that FOSS programs are ‘very nearly as good’ and ‘frankly undetectable difference for most users’.
I use Skype daily. The *nix port is workable, but it’s missing features from the Windows version. If you’re a hardcore gamer, it’s still hard to get away from MS. Denying these realities is ostrich-behavior that doesn’t improve the state of things, and I object to it as an Open Source evangelist. FOSS stands on its own merits, and doesn’t need lies and cult-like denial of problem spots to advance its message.
“You made the hyperbolic statement that “All the best software is free.” “
Yes, that was hyperbole, as you note. Hence, not intended to be taken as a 100% accurate claim.
“I use Skype daily. The *nix port is workable, but it’s missing features from the Windows version.”
Yeah. It’s almost like Microsoft owns Skype, and makes it work better on their own system, eh?
“If you’re a hardcore gamer, it’s still hard to get away from MS.”
Which has nothing to do with MS being better software, but rather on games being written specifically to run on their software…
Who was discussing OS superiority? You said *programs*.
Um, operating systems are programs.
I did not specify applications.
Definitionally valid, but it really doesn’t matter how hot the OS is, if there aren’t useful apps to run on it. We have many, many examples in the history of CS of good operating systems that didn’t go far. In assessing comparisons of various platforms, it really does matter how useful *users* find things.
I find it incredibly frustrating discussing this topic with FOSS OS/code/kernel purists. There are dozens of distros, but there’s a reason why it took Ubuntu for *nix to take off in the wider userbase.
I have been a professional graphic artist since 1992, and I started using Photoshop at version 1.0.3. Yes, there are things that Photoshop does that absolutely no open source program can do–and believe me, with Photoshop’s price tag hovering at near the thousand-dollar mark, I’ve looked.
Photoshop is a great illustration of one of the shortcomings of open source software development. A skilled computer programmer can sit down and write a word processor, or an operating system kernel, or an email client no problem.
However, writing a program like Photoshop requires more than skilled programmers. Adobe has those in droves, of course–the Photoshop image processing core contains hundreds of thousands of lines of carefully hand-tuned assembly language. But a programmer, or even a team of programmers, no matter how skilled, can not write Photoshop. It requires input from experts in color theory, prepress, color separation, matrix analysis, device profiling, and commercial printing–among other things–and those folks are going to be a lot less likely to contribute their considerable expertise to an open-source project.
As opposed to operating systems, which require no specialized skills?
Operating systems require specialized skills in a narrower range than Photoshop does. It’s easier to find programmers skilled in specialized areas of programming like task scheduling or memory management than it is to find programmers who are also experts on color theory and pre-press.
You’re not defining any reason why such programmers would not be accessible to open-source software.
The fact is that they aren’t, for reasons I can speculate about (pre-press experts are less likely to work for free, or Adobe can more easily capture them by paying them). If there weren’t any reasons, we could expect to see open-source software as goos as Photoshop. We don’t.
Actually, you’ve nailed the reason, right there. Adobe can afford to pay them more.
Now, let’s imagine that Adobe no longer has the ability to charge inordinate prices for their software, because “IP” has been dismissed as nonsense. Hmmm… now they can no longer afford to pay them more.
So, basically, the only reason open-source supposdely cannot compete with Adobe, is because of Adobe’s monopolistic practices. If those were ended, as I propose, then Adobe would no longer have that unfair advantage.
…Free software lives on donated time and money.
Unless you’re proposing a communist model where no one works for money, what do you envision?
You answered your own question in your first sentence.
Those who like things, will pay to help keep them around.
>.< SFAIK, Adobe isn't big on patents: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/software_patent_adobe.htm
“Those who like things, will pay to help keep them around.”
…and people pay for Adobe software, as it performs more reliably in high stress situations than any of its competitors.
I don’t understand why your model is based on free-as-in-beer, evidently.
Nice. So your solution, then, is to deny Adobe its intellectual property, throw all Adobe’s developers out of work, and then they…
…what, exactly? They have to eat too, you know. Give their skills away for free? Work at McDonald’s? Starve? Look for a rich patron like Ubuntu’s?
I can’t “deny” Adobe something it does not have. I can no more “deny” them their “intellectual property” than I can “deny” them their “rainbow-horned unicorns.”
Adobe’s developers aren’t magical and special. They aren’t the last of the elves of programming, and the only ones capable of producing that software. If there are so many users who want Adobe’s software, they will pay for it, regardless of whether they could get it for free, just like there are folks who pay towards web comics that they can view for free.
THANK YOU.
I am really sick of having this fight with FOSS advocates.
“other than by making a profit out of a birth-given talent (privilege) which could improve other people’s lives, if they had access to, before becoming a product with a price tag on it. Also, it doesn’t hurt that artists love what they create: so, why they can’t focus on the happiness they bring to people instead on how much dollars per word, or image, or illustration they can scrape?”
“Your idea of what your talent is worth, and how it should be “used”… THAT is entitlement, my dear artist.”
“True artists do. They do it for the love and the need to create, and not the money.”
These are comments from the facebook thread Franklin’s referring to, and from more than one person. They’re not referring to a concept of post-scarcity society. A nuanced and subtle argument which I would heartily respond to, especially with current thoughts on social capital, which I’m studying and working to expand on currently. These guys were attempting to claim that, in the real world, right now, artists should work for free. Pro bono. Out of a desire purely to make people happy. Because somehow, magically, artists are the one segment of people who don’t need to eat, or pay rent, or buy clothes. And somehow, magically, if artists are not paid and in fact have to scrape for money doing miserable day jobs, even yet, the time will still be found for art to happen.
It might be naivety, sure, but it’s a dangerous kind of ignorance to encourage, and very very real.
As an artist myself, and one who has relied upon it entirely for my my income through various periods in my life, and at other times have found my desire to create art being utterly crushed by the need to pay rent, I would love to live in their world, but I worry that the marshmallow clouds wouldn’t hold me.
right on!
You are absolutely correct Franklin. But its difficult for most to resist the free but awesome. The tricky bit …… has anyone invented an effective way to police piracy? Or has it gone beyond our ability to do so? What would you suggest to stop piracy and what do you think SHOULD be done?
Re: right on!
I think we need to take it as a given that piracy cannot be stopped and, from there, figure out how else we might provide good incentives for people to do creative work.
Re: right on!
what incentives would you suggest? I do like the idea of fomenting creativity & not copycatism 🙂 (I think that’s a new word lol!)
Re: right on!
It depends on the situation, and a lot of the options are going to make someone or another uncomfortable, because they generally involve the government (of course, so does copyright).
Responsible use of new antibiotics (used very sparingly, in emergency situations) is completely opposed to making a profit on them, so I think a government bounty (probably at least $100 million) for their development would be appropriate.
Architecture is fundamentally hard to reuse in different places, so private patronage, plus weak copyright protection, is probably fine.
Legal attempts to protect entertainment copyrights have been and will be a big problem for the technology industry, which is way bigger than the entertainment industry. I think we’d be ahead to pay for books, music and movies (not sure about games) through taxation. To avoid having bureaucrats decide what is and isn’t good, we would need an easy way for your PC, your Kindle, etc. to report what you watched and how often so that producers get paid; I’m not sure how possible it is to both protect privacy and prevent fraud, though. That one will have people upset about proper role of government, privacy, and that their taxes will be paying for porn, but I still think it’s better than where trying to keep copyright working could go.
Re: right on!
Executives of technology companies may dispute that things like DRM are a threat to their industry, but kids growing up where they’re heavily discouraged from learning how their computer and electronics work is a much bigger threat to the country as a whole than to a particular company.
right on!
You are absolutely correct Franklin. But its difficult for most to resist the free but awesome. The tricky bit …… has anyone invented an effective way to police piracy? Or has it gone beyond our ability to do so? What would you suggest to stop piracy and what do you think SHOULD be done?
Photography
To play devils advocate, “clients” implies that they are paying you money. Given that in many other (non-photography) situations being paid to produce creative work would be “work for hire”, and the person paying for it would then own the result (including, eg, copyright), it’s not that surprising to me that the clients would be surprised to discover that they don’t.
And yes I understand the historical reasons why photographers typically retain copyright even in a “work for hire”-like scenario (eg, commissioned projects), and that people of the “I have a camera, I can take photos” mindset are (currently) unwilling to pay what it would really cost to do something other than that (eg pern some other business models). But at some level the legacy photographic business model is, itself, not keeping up with modern trends. And that’s part of the source of tension there. Sadly I don’t have a good solution to this problem. (FWIW, I say this as someone who has largely made their living for decades doing “work for hire” software development, etc. Including giving clients all source code, etc. Part of the reason why I’m still a software developer, etc, rather than trying to be a professional photographer is precisely that “business model” problem.)
Ewen
Actually, it’s not a straw man argument. I was with on the FB forum where those quotes were actually quotes. That was the position, as stated, without embellishment or taken out of context.
Actually, it’s not a straw man argument. I was with on the FB forum where those quotes were actually quotes. That was the position, as stated, without embellishment or taken out of context.
Also, I have to say that telling a person that he did not have the experiences he claims to have had, and that no one exists who could possibly hold the position being brought forth is probably not your best debate tactic. It makes you look clueless, naive and insensitive, things that I know you are not.
I’ve also been in this argument more times than I can count, and it most certainly is all about entitlement and *right now* and has nothing to do with future prophesies about some fantasy post-scarcity society.
Also, I have to say that telling a person that he did not have the experiences he claims to have had, and that no one exists who could possibly hold the position being brought forth is probably not your best debate tactic. It makes you look clueless, naive and insensitive, things that I know you are not.
I’ve also been in this argument more times than I can count, and it most certainly is all about entitlement and *right now* and has nothing to do with future prophesies about some fantasy post-scarcity society.
i’m a musician and a photographer. THANK you. i once had someone email me and tell me that he’d tried to download some of my photos from flickr and couldn’t, because they were copyrighted, so could i just forward some? he’d like to make prints and hang them in his office. um, no, i responded, people usually, um, PAY for prints.
he never spoke to me again.
FYI, it’s trivially-easy to bypass Flickr’s copy protections. The file link is right there in the page source. Or, for those who prefer a graphical interface, clicking “page info” under FireFox’s “tools” and selecting “media” in the resulting window will show all image files that are displayed.
If you put something on the Internet, it’s available. That’s just the nature of technology; in order for a file to be displayed on a remote computer, the file must be transmitted there. Some software can make it more of a hassle to access the file, but if you’ve allowed someone to view it, there’s some method by which they can save a copy.
i’m a musician and a photographer. THANK you. i once had someone email me and tell me that he’d tried to download some of my photos from flickr and couldn’t, because they were copyrighted, so could i just forward some? he’d like to make prints and hang them in his office. um, no, i responded, people usually, um, PAY for prints.
he never spoke to me again.
Something non-scarce isn’t property. That’s true whether the system is capitalist, socialist, or whatever.
It has nothing to do with whether compensation is or is not possible. It has nothing to do with entitlement, or anything of the sort. It’s simply that non-scarce things cannot be property. And it boils down to basic premises. “Intellectual property” is a term without a real-world referent. Since the whole idea is based upon the false premise that non-scarce things can be property, the whole idea is inherently irrational.
Artwork isn’t non-scarce. An original Van Gogh or Jackson Pollock is not a non-scarce item. More to the point, the creation of any sort of art, even virtual or digital art, requires the use of scarce capital, equipment, and resources.
If someone spends time and money creating a work of art that can be trivially copied, and it’s duplicated for free all over the place, that doesn’t mean the thing that’s been created is somehow post-scarcity–it means that the thing that’s being copied has been subsidized by the wealth of the person who made it. Subsidized != post-scarcity.
The physical object is scarce. But digital copies are, by definition, non-scarce.
That original Van Gogh has certain value based upon the fact that the artist, himself, touched that piece of canvas and executed those brush strokes. It is a specific, scarce physical object.
If I take a digital photo of it, that is non-scarce, because any number of copies can be made, without disturbing the original.
Any architecture work I do, I do digitally, these days. So, let’s imagine that I draw up designs for a house, have a physical copy printed, and publish the CAD files online. The physical copy is scarce – it consists of paper and ink which I purchased, and if you take it, I no longer have it. The digital copy is non-scarce – if you make a copy, I still have my own copy of the file, so I’ve been deprived of nothing.
That’s simply what “scarcity” means. It’s an economic term, with a specific meaning.
While what you’re saying is true, I think you’re setting people up to make assumptions about what else you might think, intentionally or not.
Can’t control what folks may or may not assume, and making assumptions would be silly, since I’m right here, available to actually address any questions, directly.
Something non-scarce isn’t property. That’s true whether the system is capitalist, socialist, or whatever.
It has nothing to do with whether compensation is or is not possible. It has nothing to do with entitlement, or anything of the sort. It’s simply that non-scarce things cannot be property. And it boils down to basic premises. “Intellectual property” is a term without a real-world referent. Since the whole idea is based upon the false premise that non-scarce things can be property, the whole idea is inherently irrational.
Artwork isn’t non-scarce. An original Van Gogh or Jackson Pollock is not a non-scarce item. More to the point, the creation of any sort of art, even virtual or digital art, requires the use of scarce capital, equipment, and resources.
If someone spends time and money creating a work of art that can be trivially copied, and it’s duplicated for free all over the place, that doesn’t mean the thing that’s been created is somehow post-scarcity–it means that the thing that’s being copied has been subsidized by the wealth of the person who made it. Subsidized != post-scarcity.
Wow, that first one is just mind-boggling. First of all, I think FOOD and MEDICINE could improve people’s lives a lot more than art, but no one is advocating that the producers of these things give them away for free.
And then…are they really implying that anyone who enjoys their work shouldn’t be able to make a wage off of it? What a horrible world that would be!
I am a writer, and I love doing it, and that motivates me to do it. Sadly, as a mortal human, I also need to eat and have shelter from the elements. How do these idealists suggest I pay for those, I wonder?
Yeah yeah, I know, I’m preaching to the choir here. /rant
The physical object is scarce. But digital copies are, by definition, non-scarce.
That original Van Gogh has certain value based upon the fact that the artist, himself, touched that piece of canvas and executed those brush strokes. It is a specific, scarce physical object.
If I take a digital photo of it, that is non-scarce, because any number of copies can be made, without disturbing the original.
Any architecture work I do, I do digitally, these days. So, let’s imagine that I draw up designs for a house, have a physical copy printed, and publish the CAD files online. The physical copy is scarce – it consists of paper and ink which I purchased, and if you take it, I no longer have it. The digital copy is non-scarce – if you make a copy, I still have my own copy of the file, so I’ve been deprived of nothing.
That’s simply what “scarcity” means. It’s an economic term, with a specific meaning.
FYI, it’s trivially-easy to bypass Flickr’s copy protections. The file link is right there in the page source. Or, for those who prefer a graphical interface, clicking “page info” under FireFox’s “tools” and selecting “media” in the resulting window will show all image files that are displayed.
If you put something on the Internet, it’s available. That’s just the nature of technology; in order for a file to be displayed on a remote computer, the file must be transmitted there. Some software can make it more of a hassle to access the file, but if you’ve allowed someone to view it, there’s some method by which they can save a copy.
Open-source software does just fine. I’m viewing this page using FireFox, and if you reply, I’ll get an email notification in Thunderbird. The machine I’m using for those programs, and others, is running Kubuntu, which makes Windoze 7 look like crap in terms of performance, stability, visual quality, and user-friendliness. I haven’t bought a piece of software in half a dozen years, and I’m able to do everything I could want with this computer, including running multiple businesses.
All the best software is free. The proof is in the pudding, and the real world says that open-source is perfectly workable, and often even better than closed-source. The same applies to copyrights on other forms of media, as well. If folks want what you create, you won’t starve, or have to live in a cardboard box.
Open-source software does just fine…when it has a wealthy patron.
Your free Firefox browser is funded to the tune of $300,000,000 per year by Google, which is decidedly a for-profit enterprise. Your free Kubuntu operating system was paid for by Mark Shuttleworth, a billionaire who owns his own jet and paid $20,000,000 for a ride to the International Space Station. I find your arguments underwhelming and less than persuasive; if anything, you have merely demonstrated my point that treating art and other easy-to-copy creative works as though they are post-scarcity merely makes them into hobbies for the wealthy.
I have been a graphic design professional, and an ardent Open Source advocate, and I dispute your claim that all the best software is free. The Adobe Suite still does things that Gimp and Inkscape cannot do.
I agree, and it boggles my mind that anyone truly believes they are entitled to use, for free, the fruits of someone else’s labor.
Interesting. If someone copies something, he has expended labor in doing the copying. Those who support the notion of copyright and such are saying they are entitled to control his labor.
The person who copies it invests less work than the person who creates it. Were we to extend your analogy to a real-world, made-of-atoms scenario, it’d be a bit like someone working and investing a lot of money in building a house, then someone else coming along at the last moment, nailing the very last shingle in place, and saying “See! I invested the sweat of my brow in building this! I poured my labor into it! How DARE you suggest that I should not benefit from the fruits of my labor by living here!”
That’s not analogous, since houses are scarce, whereas digital data are non-scarce. We cannot both have the house. Two, three, or a a million individuals can all have copies of some data, without any of them being deprived of its use.
In the sense that as the creator of that content, I and I alone should control it’s use, yes, I am entitled to control his labor.
So, your argument is that they are wrong, because they want to control others’ labor, and that you are right, even though you want to control others’ labor?
Sorry, but that’s just not logical.
It’s not logical for you to assume it is somehow illogical for me to want to have a say on receiving compensation for any content I create. *shrugs* So we both think the other is illogical. Next?
I’m not merely expressing some personal opinion. I demonstrated, factually, that your position is illogical.
Maybe there’s some other position by which you could support your thesis, but the position you took – that the issue is control of others’ labor – is illogical, because it cuts down your thesis as much as it cuts down the other.
I agree, and it boggles my mind that anyone truly believes they are entitled to use, for free, the fruits of someone else’s labor.
Thank you for another insightful rant.
I’ve been on the “protect copyright is good, SOPA/PIPA is not the way to do it” and “get information about this issue” deal for a while now.
In Canada we have the Conservative government trying to pass Bill C-11 which will have many of the same consequences as SOPA.
As for it being younger people not understanding that there is value in work that does not produce an object.
My wife has been a CGA for over 20 years. She has people of all age groups question why she charges as much as she does and why they can’t have their files sent to Canada Revenue Agency until the bill is paid.
She gently explains she charges for her time and her expertise in keeping CRA from taking more of the clients money.
I guess they don’t realize the continuous education, the employees and the office all require money to help them keep more of their money.
Thank you for another insightful rant.
I’ve been on the “protect copyright is good, SOPA/PIPA is not the way to do it” and “get information about this issue” deal for a while now.
In Canada we have the Conservative government trying to pass Bill C-11 which will have many of the same consequences as SOPA.
As for it being younger people not understanding that there is value in work that does not produce an object.
My wife has been a CGA for over 20 years. She has people of all age groups question why she charges as much as she does and why they can’t have their files sent to Canada Revenue Agency until the bill is paid.
She gently explains she charges for her time and her expertise in keeping CRA from taking more of the clients money.
I guess they don’t realize the continuous education, the employees and the office all require money to help them keep more of their money.
Thanks
Linked into this post from nounsandverbs journal. This is an excellent, intelligent, balanced discussion of the issue. There needs to be more commentary like it out there.
Thanks
Linked into this post from nounsandverbs journal. This is an excellent, intelligent, balanced discussion of the issue. There needs to be more commentary like it out there.
I’d like to share this … everywhere. Okay?
By all means! 🙂
I hope you posted this on fetlife?
I’d like to share this … everywhere. Okay?
The actual physical object is still scarce. You can create a different physical object that looks or functions similarly, but you have not deprived me of my object; you’ve merely copied the idea.
“What does it mean for people who are mechanical engineers, architects, designers, and everybody else?”
As a mechanical engineer and sometimes-architect, I have no problem with it. Folks hire me to design things. Some of those who see my designs copy them. Some of those who see my designs say, “hmm, I like that, but I want something that is a bit different,” and they pay me to design that new thing. If they didn’t see my design work out there, as a result of it being offered free to the public, they would never have found me and hired me to do the new design they wanted.
“People who design things deserve to be compensated for their work.”
If I design an ugly house that will fall down within a couple years of construction, do I deserve compensation, just because I did “work” to create that design?
The value of an object or an act of labor, is precisely what that which folks will pay for it. The key to being compensated for work, is doing work that folks want, and offering it at a price they are willing to pay.
If someone writes two different stories and offers them online, a lot of folks are going to read them. Let’s say that I like Story A better than Story B. I might send the author $5, with a note saying how much I liked Story A, and how much I hope she writes more like it. If Story A is bringing in twice what Story B is bringing in, guess which one is getting a sequel? If she’s smart, she might even set up a voting system, where you can cast votes as to what you want her to write next, but only if you pay per vote. If the price per vote is low enough (say, $1), folks will pay it because having a say is worth that much to them. Some folks will pay to vote multiple times, even.
So what you’re really saying is that artists should be paid, but they should only work speculatively, and not *expect* to be paid?
(Thus making art, yet again, a hobby only for those who can afford to work without pay)
No, I’m saying that there are many ways that artists can work, without relying on the mythos of “intellectual property,” and I’ve listed a few examples, among many. There are numerous quality essays on the subject of creative work without relying on invented notions like IP, complete with numerous real-world examples.
The actual physical object is still scarce. You can create a different physical object that looks or functions similarly, but you have not deprived me of my object; you’ve merely copied the idea.
“What does it mean for people who are mechanical engineers, architects, designers, and everybody else?”
As a mechanical engineer and sometimes-architect, I have no problem with it. Folks hire me to design things. Some of those who see my designs copy them. Some of those who see my designs say, “hmm, I like that, but I want something that is a bit different,” and they pay me to design that new thing. If they didn’t see my design work out there, as a result of it being offered free to the public, they would never have found me and hired me to do the new design they wanted.
“People who design things deserve to be compensated for their work.”
If I design an ugly house that will fall down within a couple years of construction, do I deserve compensation, just because I did “work” to create that design?
The value of an object or an act of labor, is precisely what that which folks will pay for it. The key to being compensated for work, is doing work that folks want, and offering it at a price they are willing to pay.
If someone writes two different stories and offers them online, a lot of folks are going to read them. Let’s say that I like Story A better than Story B. I might send the author $5, with a note saying how much I liked Story A, and how much I hope she writes more like it. If Story A is bringing in twice what Story B is bringing in, guess which one is getting a sequel? If she’s smart, she might even set up a voting system, where you can cast votes as to what you want her to write next, but only if you pay per vote. If the price per vote is low enough (say, $1), folks will pay it because having a say is worth that much to them. Some folks will pay to vote multiple times, even.
Sounds like the creators would still get paid, though, right? Art was, throughout most of history, created at the request of wealthy patrons. How many of the famous paintings in museums were created in exactly that way?
But, thanks to the Internet, it doesn’t even have to be done that way. Large numbers of small payments can add up to appreciable capital. Look at setups like Kickstarter.
I read around a dozen different web comics, which are all presented on their respective sites, free for anyone to view. Oddly enough, folks will pay because they want the author to continue writing. They may pay for original copies of art, or the opportunity to give input which may influence the direction of the story.
I’d suggest that you do a web search for “open source graphic design,” because I just did, and came up with dozens of programs listed.
I’m not an expert of graphic design software, so maybe if there’s some specific feature that you believe is only available through Adobe, you could post that, and I’ll see if I can find a program that does it?
“isn’t real work” isn’t necessarily an objection from the same point, though; it’s a failure to recognise “work”. I’ve heard (in the past) people saying things like “I don’t see why you should paid; you do stuff on computers anyway” about my job. The person was unable to distinguish between hobby and employment.
I actually had an argument with a co-worker just yesterday about this issue, and I think you’ve summed up my thoughts wonderfully. Though he argued from the perspective of “information should flow freely, and a digital copy of something is just information” and “a digital copy of a thing has no value”.
I actually had an argument with a co-worker just yesterday about this issue, and I think you’ve summed up my thoughts wonderfully. Though he argued from the perspective of “information should flow freely, and a digital copy of something is just information” and “a digital copy of a thing has no value”.
Did you miss the part about “Open Source advocate” ?
Believe me, I know what’s available, and furthermore, I *use* it. But there are things that I could do easily with Adobe products 10 years ago that I still can’t do with Gimp and Inkscape. It’s not a question of the *number* of programs available, it’s a question of what any one of them can *do*. (One of my great sorrows, the gradient mesh, is *finally* almost ready in Open implementations. (It showed up in Scribus. Which was somewhat less than useful.) TEN YEARS after I was using it in Illustrator. I’ve been kludging to get what is a simple effect under Adobe.
Once upon a time, I was part of a Linux-focused publication that got me access to devs beyond just being an interested civilian. I’ve had long talks about what’s what.
The problem I’m having with what was written was the claim of “better”. State of the state is “very nearly as good” and “frankly undetectable difference for most users”.
I use Open Office happily. I’m running Ubuntu with no commercial apps. The *only* commercial software I miss is for high-end image creation and manipulation.
Reading back through these comments has been educational. I’m astounded to learn that there are so many people out there who think that anything digital has no value. What created this mind set? How is it that we only value something material? What about the millions of office workers out there who never actually produce a material thing…. They get paid for their time so why shouldn’t artists be paid for their time?
This is really bending my brain.
The “mind set” that non-scarce things are not private property has been the default “mind set” of humanity, for time immemorial. Take Native Americans and land; since there was far more land than they could use, so it was non-scarce. Hence, they used it and moved around freely.
The idea of “intellectual property” derives from privileges granted by medieval kings to the nobles that supported them. “Give me your allegiance, and I’ll declare that you are the only one allowed to make widgets.”
IP was invented for the purpose of exploitation, and it has never served any other purpose.
Oh, please.
Intellectual property exists to encourage people to invest the time and money it takes to create new things. A great example of why patents exist is the pulse detonation engine, a new class of jet engine currently being researched by several universities and companies. The pulse detonation engine promises to make jet engines with very few moving parts which are simpler, cheaper, far safer, and far more efficient than current turbine engines. Clearly, such a development would benefit society. It’s turning out to be a thorny engineering challenge in practice, though; Boeing has invested more than $200,000,000 so far into trying to develop a commercially viable pulse detonation engine.
Without patents, it would be possible for a competitor to wait ’til they bring it to market, then copy the design–effectively benefitting from a $200,000,000 that wasn’t theirs. And since they wouldn’t have made that initial investment to recoup, they could afford to undercut Boeing on price. In such an environment, it’s clear that nobody would have any financial incentive to develop anything…and society would lose.
Without the idea of intellectual property, you’re basically saying it’s OK for me to profit from your labor while returning you…nothing. That, more than intellectual property, strikes me as a holdover from the feudal age.
Interesting. So, is Boeing benefiting from the development work that the Germans did, in designing the V-1? Do they own payments to those dead German engineers? Do those dead German engineers owe payments to the French and Russian engineers who developed the technology, before them?
Let’s imagine that Boeing succeeds in developing some viable PDE, but it really only works well for small planes. However, it works so well, that a fleet of small planes could transport passengers cheaper than their fleet of large planes can. Since their business model is based upon large planes, they patent the new engine, and sit on the patent. Looks like society loses, eh?
Interesting. So, is Boeing benefiting from the development work that the Germans did, in designing the V-1? Do they own payments to those dead German engineers? Do those dead German engineers owe payments to the French and Russian engineers who developed the technology, before them?
You seem to have a profound lack of understanding of the concept of patents.
Patents persist for only a short time. The French and Russian engineers who started working with jet engines were able to patent those developments–and then, when the patents ran out, others were able to make use of their ideas. Patents persist for 3, 5, 7, 15, or 20 years, depending on the type of invention and other factors, and then after that the idea is open game. That’s the social contract: if you spend $200,000,000 to develop something, then you have the right to capitalize on your labor and investment for a short time, after which your idea is opened to whoever wants it.
As near as I can tell from your arguments thus far, your position seems to be “I have the right to benefit from other people’s creative labor and enterprise. If someone else spends hundreds of millions of dollars creating something, I have the right to do whatever I like with it for free, and any system that says otherwise deprives me of my rights. If someone makes a picture or records a song, I have the right to have it. If Adobe spends a boatload of money developing software, I am entitled to the use of that software for whatever price I, not Adobe, says–including free, if that is what I want. Other people’s labor and creativity belongs to me by right, to use in any way I see fit.” Which seems to me to be the very definition of entitlement–a position you dismissed as a straw man.
Given that I took law after engineering, and I’ve studied the subject in-depth, I’d say it’s rather certain that I understand patent law orders of magnitude better than you do.
The arbitrary government rules regarding patents are not the issue, though. That’s a whole other discussion.
The issue is the claim that ideas can be property. If ideas are property, then they would be property, ad infinitum, just like any other property. Boeing could not use others ideas, because that would be stealing, no matter how old those ideas are. It’s an absurd position to take.
You also ignore the practical issue I raised, where a big business can buy up patents that would threaten their business model, thereby denying society the use of those ideas for whatever term.
“As near as I can tell from your arguments thus far, your position seems to be…”
No. My position is that there is no such thing as “intellectual property.” I’ve not taken any stand upon the moral, ethical, or practical implications thereof.
Uh, no. Just 100% absolutely wrong.
The idea of intellectual property stems from the concept that time and effort exerted by a human being has value, and that a person who exerts themselves in such a way deserved to benefit from their own work. The idea that “the labors of the mind, productions and interests are as much a man’s own…as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.” (Justice Charles L. Woodbury, 1845) is an idea roughly as old as the printed word (but not, as far as I can tell, much older).
Production licenses (that is, the system you described): Totally different kettle of fish.
The whole point of intellectual property law was to *prevent* exploitation, to respect the fact that work a person does with their brain is just as much work as the work someone produces using their body.
Say you’d produced an essay in school, and before you got to hand it in, another student grabbed it from you, photocopied it, and handed the photocopy in as their own work. You’d be pissed right? Why would you be pissed? Because that person would be reaping the benefits of your labour without having done any of their own. (And no doubt would have prevented you from benefiting from the fruits of your labour as well, as a teacher surely isn’t going to accept that two people wrote the identical essay.)
*That* is what copyright is for.
Really? Could you provide some citation for your claim that IP predates feudal times? Last I checked, 1845 is significantly after feudal times, so that quote doesn’t help your claim.
“Say you’d produced an essay in school, and before you got to hand it in, another student grabbed it from you, photocopied it, and handed the photocopy in as their own work. You’d be pissed right? Why would you be pissed? Because that person would be reaping the benefits of your labour without having done any of their own. (And no doubt would have prevented you from benefiting from the fruits of your labour as well, as a teacher surely isn’t going to accept that two people wrote the identical essay.)”
Yes, I would. Because putting someone else’s name on my work is fraud, not because the essay was “stolen.” If the other student hands it in with my name on it, I can’t imagine that I would object…
Some reading comprehension might help you. Try again.
You were the one claiming that IP was ‘from feudal times’. My point was that the concept of copyright, and later the idea of intellectual property had no reason to exist before the invention of the printing press. The *printed* word: really not that old.
As for the rest… I throw up my hands in despair.
What, in particular, about what you said, do you believe I did not comprehend? Or are you just engaging in arbitrary ad hominems because you have nothing to support your specious claims?
Reading back through these comments has been educational. I’m astounded to learn that there are so many people out there who think that anything digital has no value. What created this mind set? How is it that we only value something material? What about the millions of office workers out there who never actually produce a material thing…. They get paid for their time so why shouldn’t artists be paid for their time?
This is really bending my brain.
nleseul, you know her
> “anyone who actually, seriously argues that artists don’t deserve to be compensated for their work”
You know her, specifically she’s in your Thanksgiving photo and (more loudly) her non-USA-partner
AFAIK, this is non-hypothetical, specifically referencing the unfriendly debate that pushed Joreth and one-or-more of her parners to depart the F…….P….. FB group
(apologies for vagueness, I am new on LJ, joining specifically to comment on this thread, I don’t know the protocol for naming a private FB group)
nleseul, you know her
> “anyone who actually, seriously argues that artists don’t deserve to be compensated for their work”
You know her, specifically she’s in your Thanksgiving photo and (more loudly) her non-USA-partner
AFAIK, this is non-hypothetical, specifically referencing the unfriendly debate that pushed Joreth and one-or-more of her parners to depart the F…….P….. FB group
(apologies for vagueness, I am new on LJ, joining specifically to comment on this thread, I don’t know the protocol for naming a private FB group)
While what you’re saying is true, I think you’re setting people up to make assumptions about what else you might think, intentionally or not.
people who create things deserve to be rewarded
Talking about who deserves what is really getting off on the wrong foot. Is Pat Robertson going to agree that Marilyn Manson deserves to be rewarded?
The way we should think of this is that we need to be sure people have incentive to create things and make them available to others. Copyright has always been admitted to be a contrived system to accomplish that, not a natural right. It worked pretty well for a long time, but it has gotten to be too easy to violate, and attempts to prevent that cause no end of trouble.
We should be talking about alternative incentives. Unfortunately, copyright enforcement is already a given, while anything else is going to have conservatives screaming about the proper role of government. Even proposing an exploratory committee would probably require a Democrat with a very solid electoral base, from an area that doesn’t get much income from the entertainment industry.
people who create things deserve to be rewarded
Talking about who deserves what is really getting off on the wrong foot. Is Pat Robertson going to agree that Marilyn Manson deserves to be rewarded?
The way we should think of this is that we need to be sure people have incentive to create things and make them available to others. Copyright has always been admitted to be a contrived system to accomplish that, not a natural right. It worked pretty well for a long time, but it has gotten to be too easy to violate, and attempts to prevent that cause no end of trouble.
We should be talking about alternative incentives. Unfortunately, copyright enforcement is already a given, while anything else is going to have conservatives screaming about the proper role of government. Even proposing an exploratory committee would probably require a Democrat with a very solid electoral base, from an area that doesn’t get much income from the entertainment industry.
Re: right on!
I think we need to take it as a given that piracy cannot be stopped and, from there, figure out how else we might provide good incentives for people to do creative work.
It think it isn’t so much as people thinking they need them for free in cases, but question the price they are being sold. Which leads back to the point you completely brushed over, poor people. Poor people can’t afford $60 for that new game, so they “steal” it. It comes down to the fact that certain artists feel they are entitled to a hunk wad of cash and the other people that are more than willing to pay a price, but your waaaay over charging. Like Apple.
Also speaking of inventions, drug patents. You feel that the people that create these drugs have a right to put an astronomical price on the drug? Hoard the drug? Now we are talking about people’s lives here. While an entertainment gadget is one thing, there are inventions that save lives.
It think it isn’t so much as people thinking they need them for free in cases, but question the price they are being sold. Which leads back to the point you completely brushed over, poor people. Poor people can’t afford $60 for that new game, so they “steal” it. It comes down to the fact that certain artists feel they are entitled to a hunk wad of cash and the other people that are more than willing to pay a price, but your waaaay over charging. Like Apple.
Also speaking of inventions, drug patents. You feel that the people that create these drugs have a right to put an astronomical price on the drug? Hoard the drug? Now we are talking about people’s lives here. While an entertainment gadget is one thing, there are inventions that save lives.
By all means! 🙂
I think you have a valid and legitimate point; the Recording Industry Ass. of America and the Motion Picture Ass. of America have done themselves no favors with their clumsy, heavy-handed attempts to enforce copyright. It also doesn’t help that they have a bad habit of throwing around dodgy statistics and make-believe “facts” to try to validate their claims.
I don’t know that that completely explains the entitlement thinking, though. I think there’s something else at work. Part of it is the fact that people don’t tend to see (or take responsibility for) the second or third order consequences of their actions, and that is something that goes way beyond copyright; people will often justify actions (“I snuck into the theater without paying, but it’s no big deal–I wasn’t going to pay for a ticket anyway, and that seat was empty, so it’s not like it cost them anything”) that do harm to others if they don’t see the harm directly.
And I do think that part of it really is just plain old ordinary entitlement thinking. The MPAA and RIAA may make it easier to rationalize entitlement thinking, but I don’t think they’re the source; I think the desire to have what you want for free is the source. Look at the weird logic a lot of music sharers will use to justify swapping pirated music: “Well, the RIAA treats its artists like shit anyway, so I’m not going to give my money to such a corrupt industry.” (Really? You are objecting to the fact that the RIAA pays its artists tiny amounts of money by…stealing the music and paying artists NOTHING? That’s the moral high ground?)
I think you have a valid and legitimate point; the Recording Industry Ass. of America and the Motion Picture Ass. of America have done themselves no favors with their clumsy, heavy-handed attempts to enforce copyright. It also doesn’t help that they have a bad habit of throwing around dodgy statistics and make-believe “facts” to try to validate their claims.
I don’t know that that completely explains the entitlement thinking, though. I think there’s something else at work. Part of it is the fact that people don’t tend to see (or take responsibility for) the second or third order consequences of their actions, and that is something that goes way beyond copyright; people will often justify actions (“I snuck into the theater without paying, but it’s no big deal–I wasn’t going to pay for a ticket anyway, and that seat was empty, so it’s not like it cost them anything”) that do harm to others if they don’t see the harm directly.
And I do think that part of it really is just plain old ordinary entitlement thinking. The MPAA and RIAA may make it easier to rationalize entitlement thinking, but I don’t think they’re the source; I think the desire to have what you want for free is the source. Look at the weird logic a lot of music sharers will use to justify swapping pirated music: “Well, the RIAA treats its artists like shit anyway, so I’m not going to give my money to such a corrupt industry.” (Really? You are objecting to the fact that the RIAA pays its artists tiny amounts of money by…stealing the music and paying artists NOTHING? That’s the moral high ground?)
Re: right on!
what incentives would you suggest? I do like the idea of fomenting creativity & not copycatism 🙂 (I think that’s a new word lol!)
I hope you posted this on fetlife?
I have been a professional graphic artist since 1992, and I started using Photoshop at version 1.0.3. Yes, there are things that Photoshop does that absolutely no open source program can do–and believe me, with Photoshop’s price tag hovering at near the thousand-dollar mark, I’ve looked.
Photoshop is a great illustration of one of the shortcomings of open source software development. A skilled computer programmer can sit down and write a word processor, or an operating system kernel, or an email client no problem.
However, writing a program like Photoshop requires more than skilled programmers. Adobe has those in droves, of course–the Photoshop image processing core contains hundreds of thousands of lines of carefully hand-tuned assembly language. But a programmer, or even a team of programmers, no matter how skilled, can not write Photoshop. It requires input from experts in color theory, prepress, color separation, matrix analysis, device profiling, and commercial printing–among other things–and those folks are going to be a lot less likely to contribute their considerable expertise to an open-source project.
Re: right on!
It depends on the situation, and a lot of the options are going to make someone or another uncomfortable, because they generally involve the government (of course, so does copyright).
Responsible use of new antibiotics (used very sparingly, in emergency situations) is completely opposed to making a profit on them, so I think a government bounty (probably at least $100 million) for their development would be appropriate.
Architecture is fundamentally hard to reuse in different places, so private patronage, plus weak copyright protection, is probably fine.
Legal attempts to protect entertainment copyrights have been and will be a big problem for the technology industry, which is way bigger than the entertainment industry. I think we’d be ahead to pay for books, music and movies (not sure about games) through taxation. To avoid having bureaucrats decide what is and isn’t good, we would need an easy way for your PC, your Kindle, etc. to report what you watched and how often so that producers get paid; I’m not sure how possible it is to both protect privacy and prevent fraud, though. That one will have people upset about proper role of government, privacy, and that their taxes will be paying for porn, but I still think it’s better than where trying to keep copyright working could go.
Re: right on!
Executives of technology companies may dispute that things like DRM are a threat to their industry, but kids growing up where they’re heavily discouraged from learning how their computer and electronics work is a much bigger threat to the country as a whole than to a particular company.
Yes, and YES!!!
I have long advocated a mechanism (which has yet to materialize) to allow micropayments. People who provide digital content have the unenviable Sophie’s choice of either giving their work away or incurring so much cost in facilitating the transaction that the price by definition becomes silly. Seriously, we all should be able to charge two bits for a thingie online and get actual money for it, rather than PayPal taking (IIRC) a dime more out of the buyer’s account and giving the seller nothing. Heck, I bet if such a system were extant we would be able to earn a living selling items for a nickle apiece, provided the volume were high enough.
Would some of you internet-savvy types please get on that micropayment system? I’m willing to forestall my personal and affordable jet pack for that.
Your second account has driven me mad for years. Seriously, allowing a drug’s market promotion to count for a drug’s development cost?!? That’s just insane.
Yes, and YES!!!
I have long advocated a mechanism (which has yet to materialize) to allow micropayments. People who provide digital content have the unenviable Sophie’s choice of either giving their work away or incurring so much cost in facilitating the transaction that the price by definition becomes silly. Seriously, we all should be able to charge two bits for a thingie online and get actual money for it, rather than PayPal taking (IIRC) a dime more out of the buyer’s account and giving the seller nothing. Heck, I bet if such a system were extant we would be able to earn a living selling items for a nickle apiece, provided the volume were high enough.
Would some of you internet-savvy types please get on that micropayment system? I’m willing to forestall my personal and affordable jet pack for that.
Your second account has driven me mad for years. Seriously, allowing a drug’s market promotion to count for a drug’s development cost?!? That’s just insane.
So what you’re really saying is that artists should be paid, but they should only work speculatively, and not *expect* to be paid?
(Thus making art, yet again, a hobby only for those who can afford to work without pay)
No, I’m saying that there are many ways that artists can work, without relying on the mythos of “intellectual property,” and I’ve listed a few examples, among many. There are numerous quality essays on the subject of creative work without relying on invented notions like IP, complete with numerous real-world examples.
Can’t control what folks may or may not assume, and making assumptions would be silly, since I’m right here, available to actually address any questions, directly.
Interesting. If someone copies something, he has expended labor in doing the copying. Those who support the notion of copyright and such are saying they are entitled to control his labor.
The “mind set” that non-scarce things are not private property has been the default “mind set” of humanity, for time immemorial. Take Native Americans and land; since there was far more land than they could use, so it was non-scarce. Hence, they used it and moved around freely.
The idea of “intellectual property” derives from privileges granted by medieval kings to the nobles that supported them. “Give me your allegiance, and I’ll declare that you are the only one allowed to make widgets.”
IP was invented for the purpose of exploitation, and it has never served any other purpose.
The person who copies it invests less work than the person who creates it. Were we to extend your analogy to a real-world, made-of-atoms scenario, it’d be a bit like someone working and investing a lot of money in building a house, then someone else coming along at the last moment, nailing the very last shingle in place, and saying “See! I invested the sweat of my brow in building this! I poured my labor into it! How DARE you suggest that I should not benefit from the fruits of my labor by living here!”
“State of the state is “very nearly as good” and “frankly undetectable difference for most users”.”
Not true. Windoze 7 is rotting roadkill, compared to Kubuntu. Open source has far surpassed closed-source.
Even if we were to presume, for the sake of argument, that Adobe is better than any open-source alternative, that does not prove the general case.
As opposed to operating systems, which require no specialized skills?
I’ve never patented any invention of mine. Nor have I copyrighted any piece of writing, photograph, or any other form of art.
How nice for you. And presumably you are lucky enough to have a pleasant enough day job that allows you some spare time in which to produce these things as a hobby without killing yourself through stress. Or is it perhaps a rich family or partner sponsoring your life of relative idleness?
My point is that having the spare time, and adequate money is a privilege you clearly have that not all of us share. Working speculatively, for pleasure and the public good is something one can only do WHEN YOU ARE NOT WORRIED ABOUT WHERE THE NEXT MEAL IS COMING FROM. The fact that some artists now work in digital media shouldn’t mean that they’re forced forever to work in their McDonalds lunch breaks, producing a tiny portion of the work they could be.
I would also like to note that Franklin was talking about the benefits *to society* of paying individual artists to produce art. Not the patent system, and not medicine. There’s a whole other conversation there, and a whole different and imperfect system to rant and rave about, but at the end of the day drug patents run for a limited time, and without them there would be far less incentive to research into new fields. Personally, I’d rather live in a world where research is actually happening, and we have to wait a few extra years until it’s cheap and generic, than one where the only research that exists is government sponsored. Have you seen the state of government sponsored research lately?
I’m kindof betting not.
Sorry, no, your presumptions are totally and completely inaccurate. I’m not independently wealthy. I’m a tradesman, and live by the sweat of my brow, and my creative skills.
And I will freely share my knowledge with anyone who asks. I’ve done so when I was much better off than I currently am, and I’ve done so when I literally did not have a penny to my name. Every principle I espouse, is a principle that I live by, without exception.
By the way, given that patents are government sponsorship, any company doing research under those terms is engaging in government-sponsored research.
I’ve never patented any invention of mine. Nor have I copyrighted any piece of writing, photograph, or any other form of art.
How nice for you. And presumably you are lucky enough to have a pleasant enough day job that allows you some spare time in which to produce these things as a hobby without killing yourself through stress. Or is it perhaps a rich family or partner sponsoring your life of relative idleness?
My point is that having the spare time, and adequate money is a privilege you clearly have that not all of us share. Working speculatively, for pleasure and the public good is something one can only do WHEN YOU ARE NOT WORRIED ABOUT WHERE THE NEXT MEAL IS COMING FROM. The fact that some artists now work in digital media shouldn’t mean that they’re forced forever to work in their McDonalds lunch breaks, producing a tiny portion of the work they could be.
I would also like to note that Franklin was talking about the benefits *to society* of paying individual artists to produce art. Not the patent system, and not medicine. There’s a whole other conversation there, and a whole different and imperfect system to rant and rave about, but at the end of the day drug patents run for a limited time, and without them there would be far less incentive to research into new fields. Personally, I’d rather live in a world where research is actually happening, and we have to wait a few extra years until it’s cheap and generic, than one where the only research that exists is government sponsored. Have you seen the state of government sponsored research lately?
I’m kindof betting not.
That’s not analogous, since houses are scarce, whereas digital data are non-scarce. We cannot both have the house. Two, three, or a a million individuals can all have copies of some data, without any of them being deprived of its use.
Patents and copyrights aren’t quite the same thing; they’re different legal and philosophical ideas governed by different laws.
Yes, there are people–including drug companies–who profit from patents, no doubt about it. And there are those who think that they profit “too much,” for whatever value of “too much.” I personally think that some drug companies expect returns on their patents which are excessive and far out of balance with the investment, no doubt about it.
Patents, however, have short lives. In the United States, a drug patent lasts for 3, 5, 7, or 20 years, depending on factors such as whether it’s an entirely new drug or a modification or reformulation of existing drugs.
Which isn’t to say that drug companies don’t exploit their patents in ways that are excessive, but it is something that happens over the short term rather than the long term (as opposed to copyrights, which can last more than a century).
Patents and copyrights aren’t quite the same thing; they’re different legal and philosophical ideas governed by different laws.
Yes, there are people–including drug companies–who profit from patents, no doubt about it. And there are those who think that they profit “too much,” for whatever value of “too much.” I personally think that some drug companies expect returns on their patents which are excessive and far out of balance with the investment, no doubt about it.
Patents, however, have short lives. In the United States, a drug patent lasts for 3, 5, 7, or 20 years, depending on factors such as whether it’s an entirely new drug or a modification or reformulation of existing drugs.
Which isn’t to say that drug companies don’t exploit their patents in ways that are excessive, but it is something that happens over the short term rather than the long term (as opposed to copyrights, which can last more than a century).
Oh, please.
Intellectual property exists to encourage people to invest the time and money it takes to create new things. A great example of why patents exist is the pulse detonation engine, a new class of jet engine currently being researched by several universities and companies. The pulse detonation engine promises to make jet engines with very few moving parts which are simpler, cheaper, far safer, and far more efficient than current turbine engines. Clearly, such a development would benefit society. It’s turning out to be a thorny engineering challenge in practice, though; Boeing has invested more than $200,000,000 so far into trying to develop a commercially viable pulse detonation engine.
Without patents, it would be possible for a competitor to wait ’til they bring it to market, then copy the design–effectively benefitting from a $200,000,000 that wasn’t theirs. And since they wouldn’t have made that initial investment to recoup, they could afford to undercut Boeing on price. In such an environment, it’s clear that nobody would have any financial incentive to develop anything…and society would lose.
Without the idea of intellectual property, you’re basically saying it’s OK for me to profit from your labor while returning you…nothing. That, more than intellectual property, strikes me as a holdover from the feudal age.
Sorry, no, your presumptions are totally and completely inaccurate. I’m not independently wealthy. I’m a tradesman, and live by the sweat of my brow, and my creative skills.
And I will freely share my knowledge with anyone who asks. I’ve done so when I was much better off than I currently am, and I’ve done so when I literally did not have a penny to my name. Every principle I espouse, is a principle that I live by, without exception.
By the way, given that patents are government sponsorship, any company doing research under those terms is engaging in government-sponsored research.
Operating systems require specialized skills in a narrower range than Photoshop does. It’s easier to find programmers skilled in specialized areas of programming like task scheduling or memory management than it is to find programmers who are also experts on color theory and pre-press.
THANK YOU.
I am really sick of having this fight with FOSS advocates.
You made the hyperbolic statement that “All the best software is free.”
Unless you mean something tautological, like “if it’s not free, maineshark will not assess it as best”, your statement is untrue.
State of the state IN GRAPHIC MANIPULATION SOFTWARE is that FOSS programs are ‘very nearly as good’ and ‘frankly undetectable difference for most users’.
I use Skype daily. The *nix port is workable, but it’s missing features from the Windows version. If you’re a hardcore gamer, it’s still hard to get away from MS. Denying these realities is ostrich-behavior that doesn’t improve the state of things, and I object to it as an Open Source evangelist. FOSS stands on its own merits, and doesn’t need lies and cult-like denial of problem spots to advance its message.
Uh, no. Just 100% absolutely wrong.
The idea of intellectual property stems from the concept that time and effort exerted by a human being has value, and that a person who exerts themselves in such a way deserved to benefit from their own work. The idea that “the labors of the mind, productions and interests are as much a man’s own…as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.” (Justice Charles L. Woodbury, 1845) is an idea roughly as old as the printed word (but not, as far as I can tell, much older).
Production licenses (that is, the system you described): Totally different kettle of fish.
The whole point of intellectual property law was to *prevent* exploitation, to respect the fact that work a person does with their brain is just as much work as the work someone produces using their body.
Say you’d produced an essay in school, and before you got to hand it in, another student grabbed it from you, photocopied it, and handed the photocopy in as their own work. You’d be pissed right? Why would you be pissed? Because that person would be reaping the benefits of your labour without having done any of their own. (And no doubt would have prevented you from benefiting from the fruits of your labour as well, as a teacher surely isn’t going to accept that two people wrote the identical essay.)
*That* is what copyright is for.
“You made the hyperbolic statement that “All the best software is free.” “
Yes, that was hyperbole, as you note. Hence, not intended to be taken as a 100% accurate claim.
“I use Skype daily. The *nix port is workable, but it’s missing features from the Windows version.”
Yeah. It’s almost like Microsoft owns Skype, and makes it work better on their own system, eh?
“If you’re a hardcore gamer, it’s still hard to get away from MS.”
Which has nothing to do with MS being better software, but rather on games being written specifically to run on their software…
You’re not defining any reason why such programmers would not be accessible to open-source software.
The fact is that they aren’t, for reasons I can speculate about (pre-press experts are less likely to work for free, or Adobe can more easily capture them by paying them). If there weren’t any reasons, we could expect to see open-source software as goos as Photoshop. We don’t.
Interesting. So, is Boeing benefiting from the development work that the Germans did, in designing the V-1? Do they own payments to those dead German engineers? Do those dead German engineers owe payments to the French and Russian engineers who developed the technology, before them?
Let’s imagine that Boeing succeeds in developing some viable PDE, but it really only works well for small planes. However, it works so well, that a fleet of small planes could transport passengers cheaper than their fleet of large planes can. Since their business model is based upon large planes, they patent the new engine, and sit on the patent. Looks like society loses, eh?
Really? Could you provide some citation for your claim that IP predates feudal times? Last I checked, 1845 is significantly after feudal times, so that quote doesn’t help your claim.
“Say you’d produced an essay in school, and before you got to hand it in, another student grabbed it from you, photocopied it, and handed the photocopy in as their own work. You’d be pissed right? Why would you be pissed? Because that person would be reaping the benefits of your labour without having done any of their own. (And no doubt would have prevented you from benefiting from the fruits of your labour as well, as a teacher surely isn’t going to accept that two people wrote the identical essay.)”
Yes, I would. Because putting someone else’s name on my work is fraud, not because the essay was “stolen.” If the other student hands it in with my name on it, I can’t imagine that I would object…
Actually, you’ve nailed the reason, right there. Adobe can afford to pay them more.
Now, let’s imagine that Adobe no longer has the ability to charge inordinate prices for their software, because “IP” has been dismissed as nonsense. Hmmm… now they can no longer afford to pay them more.
So, basically, the only reason open-source supposdely cannot compete with Adobe, is because of Adobe’s monopolistic practices. If those were ended, as I propose, then Adobe would no longer have that unfair advantage.
Who was discussing OS superiority? You said *programs*.
…Free software lives on donated time and money.
Unless you’re proposing a communist model where no one works for money, what do you envision?
In the sense that as the creator of that content, I and I alone should control it’s use, yes, I am entitled to control his labor.
You answered your own question in your first sentence.
Those who like things, will pay to help keep them around.
Um, operating systems are programs.
I did not specify applications.
So, your argument is that they are wrong, because they want to control others’ labor, and that you are right, even though you want to control others’ labor?
Sorry, but that’s just not logical.
>.< SFAIK, Adobe isn't big on patents: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/software_patent_adobe.htm
“Those who like things, will pay to help keep them around.”
…and people pay for Adobe software, as it performs more reliably in high stress situations than any of its competitors.
I don’t understand why your model is based on free-as-in-beer, evidently.
Definitionally valid, but it really doesn’t matter how hot the OS is, if there aren’t useful apps to run on it. We have many, many examples in the history of CS of good operating systems that didn’t go far. In assessing comparisons of various platforms, it really does matter how useful *users* find things.
I find it incredibly frustrating discussing this topic with FOSS OS/code/kernel purists. There are dozens of distros, but there’s a reason why it took Ubuntu for *nix to take off in the wider userbase.
Did somebody get the memo?
User referenced to your post from Did somebody get the memo? saying: […] oddly enough sound to me like football leagues. I saw some of the posts on it, the best of which […]
Did somebody get the memo?
User referenced to your post from Did somebody get the memo? saying: […] oddly enough sound to me like football leagues. I saw some of the posts on it, the best of which […]
Nice. So your solution, then, is to deny Adobe its intellectual property, throw all Adobe’s developers out of work, and then they…
…what, exactly? They have to eat too, you know. Give their skills away for free? Work at McDonald’s? Starve? Look for a rich patron like Ubuntu’s?
It’s not logical for you to assume it is somehow illogical for me to want to have a say on receiving compensation for any content I create. *shrugs* So we both think the other is illogical. Next?
Interesting. So, is Boeing benefiting from the development work that the Germans did, in designing the V-1? Do they own payments to those dead German engineers? Do those dead German engineers owe payments to the French and Russian engineers who developed the technology, before them?
You seem to have a profound lack of understanding of the concept of patents.
Patents persist for only a short time. The French and Russian engineers who started working with jet engines were able to patent those developments–and then, when the patents ran out, others were able to make use of their ideas. Patents persist for 3, 5, 7, 15, or 20 years, depending on the type of invention and other factors, and then after that the idea is open game. That’s the social contract: if you spend $200,000,000 to develop something, then you have the right to capitalize on your labor and investment for a short time, after which your idea is opened to whoever wants it.
As near as I can tell from your arguments thus far, your position seems to be “I have the right to benefit from other people’s creative labor and enterprise. If someone else spends hundreds of millions of dollars creating something, I have the right to do whatever I like with it for free, and any system that says otherwise deprives me of my rights. If someone makes a picture or records a song, I have the right to have it. If Adobe spends a boatload of money developing software, I am entitled to the use of that software for whatever price I, not Adobe, says–including free, if that is what I want. Other people’s labor and creativity belongs to me by right, to use in any way I see fit.” Which seems to me to be the very definition of entitlement–a position you dismissed as a straw man.
Some reading comprehension might help you. Try again.
You were the one claiming that IP was ‘from feudal times’. My point was that the concept of copyright, and later the idea of intellectual property had no reason to exist before the invention of the printing press. The *printed* word: really not that old.
As for the rest… I throw up my hands in despair.
I can’t “deny” Adobe something it does not have. I can no more “deny” them their “intellectual property” than I can “deny” them their “rainbow-horned unicorns.”
Adobe’s developers aren’t magical and special. They aren’t the last of the elves of programming, and the only ones capable of producing that software. If there are so many users who want Adobe’s software, they will pay for it, regardless of whether they could get it for free, just like there are folks who pay towards web comics that they can view for free.
I’m not merely expressing some personal opinion. I demonstrated, factually, that your position is illogical.
Maybe there’s some other position by which you could support your thesis, but the position you took – that the issue is control of others’ labor – is illogical, because it cuts down your thesis as much as it cuts down the other.
Given that I took law after engineering, and I’ve studied the subject in-depth, I’d say it’s rather certain that I understand patent law orders of magnitude better than you do.
The arbitrary government rules regarding patents are not the issue, though. That’s a whole other discussion.
The issue is the claim that ideas can be property. If ideas are property, then they would be property, ad infinitum, just like any other property. Boeing could not use others ideas, because that would be stealing, no matter how old those ideas are. It’s an absurd position to take.
You also ignore the practical issue I raised, where a big business can buy up patents that would threaten their business model, thereby denying society the use of those ideas for whatever term.
“As near as I can tell from your arguments thus far, your position seems to be…”
No. My position is that there is no such thing as “intellectual property.” I’ve not taken any stand upon the moral, ethical, or practical implications thereof.
What, in particular, about what you said, do you believe I did not comprehend? Or are you just engaging in arbitrary ad hominems because you have nothing to support your specious claims?