Intellectual Property in the Information Age

Great Debates
1

OK, my first GD topic. I was thinking about this the other day.

Property, including intellectual property, has value because it is scarce or, in the case of intellectual property, labor was used to create it. Thus, we have a several-hundred year old tradition of intellectual property law, with protections such as Copyrights and Patents.

It seems to me that the destributed nature of the Internet will inherrently devalue all Intellectual Property, since it will be infinately distributable and copyable, and enforcement of copyright protection will become impossible. (Witness MP3’s, the DeCSS case, etc.)

It would follow that if this were to happen, we would have to question the ethical validity of Intellectual Property itself, like Richard Stallman has done on numerous occasions.

So, now for the debate. Does the distributed nature of the Internet and the availability of all types of Intellectual Property in digital formats necessarily lead to the devaluation of Intellectual Property and/or the invalidity of Intellectual Property traditions such as Copyrights?

2

OK, I’m bumping this thread back up because I got exactly zero replies. Surely someone has an opinion on this topic? I think we will soon see the death of Intellectual-Property-As-We-Know-It.

3

OK, friedo, I’ll toss you a bone. :smiley:

I think you’ve found the heart of the argument right there. If I remember my college Civ course correctly, the earliest economists argued on exactly this point.

If a thing has value because it is scarce, then your assertion is correct and intellectual property is gonna go the way of the dodo. But, if things have value because someone worked to create them, then intellectual property has inherent value and always will.

Of course, if that were true, then you could sell ice to an eskimo as long as you worked really hard making it.

There is a big difference between the answer to these questions and what the law will turn out to be. Me? I’ve decided to wait and see.
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In the meantime, want to trade MP3’s?

4

i can’t say i have any real answers [but no one else has given it a go]…

music sales for example have not been hurt yet. [sales are at record levels, and corporate profits are high.] the internet is changing the way music is bought, sold, listened to, and distributed. change is painful. change is also inevitable. if the labels don’t figure out how to adjust to the interenet, they will be left behind. i’m not going to cry for them.

my hopes are that teh new ways will improve teh variety of music available to consumers, and thus allow a larger pool of talented musicians to earn a living from their craft. i don’t really care if the music companies survive or not, they are just parasites.

perhaps digital distribution will increase teh real earnings of those that create intellectual property. here’s a hypothetical senario: up til now a handful of authors or musicians or directors can make a real living. teh distributors hype a few pieces of art chosen for their certainty to return a profit. they want that certainty because they are going to spend a whole lot of money creating “interest” in the piece. [this is the safe way. but in my opinion, safe does not make the best art. teh best art comes from new approaches and risktaking.] they write teh contracts such that they artists will will make money only if it is a bestseller. teh distributor will make money on most of their offerings, and big money most of teh time.

in teh new age, artists can offer their crafts at much lower costs because the inherently lower costs of copying and distributing digitally. lower prices shoudl increase sales. they do not need to make very much [in comparision] per sale, because they haven’t risked as much cash, and they have cut out the expensive middleman. perhaps some artists will still choose the old method?? but the consumers really win… products cost less, and choice increases manyfold.

5

Intellectual what? property?? That’s my thought, give it back! No, I think that intellectual property is on its way out the door. I can think of no realistic way that could prevent a person from taking a song, or a picture, or a story, putting it on the net and making it available to millions of people for practically no cost. Ya just can’t stop those ones and zeros from floating around on the internet. It is a completely unregulatable medium.

6

I would make the arguement that something is not valueable due to scarcity or difficulty in making. Their are plenty of things that are “rare” and downright impossible to make, yet are valued very lowly, like say brain tumors. Who would pay for a brain tumor? You also have that issue that even in the exact same circumstances two people will place a different value on an object. Take two identical twins who just went bankrupt (all they own are the identical sets of clothes they are wearing) and give each of them $1,000. They will not both be willing to spend the same amount of money for different objects. Say one is a vegetarian, he/she will not buy a cheeseburger for $1.00 even though the twin might be willing to spend $1.25 for the same cheeseburger. The cheeseburger has the same rarity and labor required for production in both cases, and both twins worked just as hard for the $1,000 and each twins money has the same “scarcity”.

I hold that value (in a monetary sense) is NOT an intrinsic value, it’s a psychological concept or construct. Put bluntly something is worth exactly what you are willing to pay for it (to you) and is worth exactly what the person owning it is willing to sell it for (to that person).

As for profits on intelectual property rights, I’ve often wondered what the reaction of authors were when public libraries were first introduced. Think about it, a library buys your book and then perhaps hundreds of people get to read it! That library has just cost you profits if just two people would by that book if the library didn’t carry it! I’ve personally read thousands of books from libraries (I’m only 19, hopefully I’ll get up to 10,000’s before I die =) other than for plane or bus trips I can’t remember buying a single book in the last 5 years. Now, overall I do belive that libraries help authors (I’m sure the Asimovs, Clancys and Kings of the world would agree) but really, wouldn’t an author complaning about the advent of the public library have just as valid complaints as anyone does against MP3’s?

I will admit that these are different situations, so let’s change it a little. You get a book from the library and read it out-loud to your child in the park, nothing wrong with that right? Now you read it out-loud over a megaphone to hundreds of people at the park. Now you read it out-loud over a website audiocast. At what point, if any, does this become morally wrong? What’s the difference between webcasting it in audio form and webcasting it in text form. How does doing the same with music differ morally?

As for Eonwe, you’re partially right, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up. I can’t see any way that we’ll stop computers from developing into a music on demand service (hear any song you want, any time you want) this does not however mean that we have to give up intellectual property rights, or assume that artists won’t be able to make a profit. How you ask? New technology. Imagine this, it’s 50 years in the future every audio device (Radios, tape machines, cds) that we currently use for music has been replaced by a portable device with a 10gb HD and a wireless modem. The government has set up a big server in the sky that will allow you to download, save and play any copyrighted song that has been submited to it. Each song has a watermark embeded in it, and your player keeps track of every song you play. Every night your player will send a short e-mail with a list of every copyrighted song you listened to that day to a server that will compile on a nationwide level how popular each group/artist is, who will then get paid an appropriate portion of tax revenues from a special tax levied for this purpose.

Yes, there are “Big Brother” concerns as well as cheating. I woudl rather we deal with these problems (i.e. each player will only keep track of the first 10 tracks you play per artist per day, so that people don’t just put a player on repeat) than see profit potential for musical artists drop severly. I seriously think such a system could help everyone, music on demand for all, no incentive to pirate music, small bands could make money off of a nationwide “underground” popularity, and big bands could still make money.

Whew, I can’t belive I wrote all that, and it’ll really impress me if you read it all too!

Kerinsky

7

I have a lot more to say on this, but I have to organize my thoughts first, and I’m at work. But I need to point out that DeCSS is NOT in any way related to reproduction (copying). The encrypted files on a dvd can be copied just as easily as any other file. I know several people who have been making copies of dvd movies for a long time, and have never even heard of DeCSS.

What the CSS protection scheme does is to prevent playback on any device manufactured or programmed by somebody who has not paid fees to the media companies.

DeCSS was written to facilitate DVD playback on operating systems other than Windows (Linux, in particular). The problem is that the courts are ignorant of technology and are hearing this case as a copy protection case, when in reality it is about the distribution companies wanting to prevent you from viewing a movie that you PURCHASED from them on any player that they didn’t get a cut of profit from.

In other words, it’s akin to buying a movie on 8mm film and getting sued for holding the frames up to the light or converting it to avi format, because the distributors didn’t get paid when you bought your 8mm projector, since you didn’t buy one.

8

It really is a question of owning the rights to the distribution of the intellectual product. I have almost 100% origianl material on my website and I would be damn upset if someone compiled all of it and published it, whether in a book or on their website, without my permission, esp. if they are making money. If someone wants to show a copy to someone that is fine. In fact that is good for exposure. All I would want is proper credit and maybe a link back. Some folks think it is all about money, but it is more about not having your creative efforts co-opted. Although the digital age makes it a more difficult to maintain intellectual property rights I think the concept needs to remain viable. It just needs to be adapted, not done away with.

9

Yes, I’m quite aware of this. I was referring the rapid proliferation of the DeCSS code after the Evil MPAA Propagandists tried to snuff it.

10

Just some disjoined thoughts:

(1) If it gets to the point were a creator will not see any reward for his work (painting, writing, whatever) do you really think anybody will put any effort into something that does not pay?

(2) I never understood the logic behind the durations of patents vs copyrights. If you right a book your copyright is something like 75 years but if you invent the cure for AIDS your patent rights are something like 7 years. It does not make any sense to me.

11

I think so. Look at the Open Source movement. When the necessary tool (distributed networking) became available, people put millions of hours into projects for which they would get only credit.

Linus Torvalds has mentioned numerous times that he doesn’t even care that other people (Bob Young, especially) make gobs of money off of something he created and gave away for free.

It works because while everything is infinately available for the taking, when I take it, I’m not taking it away from someone else. This is a totally new concept that has never been explored before.

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I think the reason patents are so short lived is so the inventor can maintain his “rightful” monopoly, while not being able to prevent competition indefinately. (How would capitalism work if patents were perpetual?)

12

[self: do not cite Cecil’s comment about historical awareness and tree squirrels, do not cite Cecil’s comment about historical awareness and tree squirrels…]

(deep breath) Okay! This is an interesting discussion but I think it’s lacking a certain perspective on the pre-intellectual-property-law (and pre-printing-press) past. Recall that early libraries, in educational, research, and religious institutions in the classical world and medieval Asia and Europe, predated the widespread acceptance of the idea of protecting the monetary value of intellectual property. All authors used to do what Open Source authors now do: they wrote things that other people copied, and other people could in many cases make money off those copies, often more than the original author ever made. (The tenth/eleventh-century scientist Ibn al-Haytham, for example, supported his research in Cairo by making and selling a copy of Euclid’s Elements and of Ptolemy’s Almagest every year.)

Why did this work? Because (1) in the days of the manuscript, before the comparatively cumbersome process of printing made it feasible to control the reproduction and distribution of texts, there would simply have been no way to stop unauthorized copying, even if authors had wanted to; and (2) the production of a book in those times was generally much more valuable to an author as a source of prestige and authority, which could translate into solid advantages like court appointments and teaching jobs, than as a commodity sold by the piece like a potter’s jars. They were thrilled to get their books into libraries. (This same perspective still prevails in the more obscure academic subjects, where authors seldom or never make money directly from their publications but need them for prestige. These authors will gladly give away or web-publish their work (say, anybody want a copy of my paper on an example of the secant method of iterative approximation in a fifteenth-century Sanskrit text?!? :)), while the publishers, who do get paid by the copy, are sterner about enforcing intellectual property laws.)

So basically, we’re returning to the conditions of authorship that prevailed in the ancient and medieval world (except that reproduction is more accurate, distribution is faster, and our handwriting is worse), and therefore the OP is probably right on target: we will also return to the corresponding notions on intellectual property. C’mon over and we’ll have a symposium on it. :slight_smile: