Intellectual Property, Harmful and Immoral?

[Kerbface]

I'd still argue that the law is a problem though, because it's an enabling tool which allows people to subvert competition and obtain private monopolies. Without the law, mindset wouldn't matter. Without the government's willing participation, these people like the RIAA/MPAA would simply be loudmouthed bullies (and would be held accountable for breaking the law when using aggression to intimidate others).

Sure, people can create monopolies using copyright law to help them, but on the other side of the coin, without copyright law, it's the entity with the greatest capacity for distribution that would get the most benefit. Like I said before, if you make a book and give it to a publisher, what's to stop a larger and more powerful publisher from taking the first copies released and redistributing them on a much larger scale for a lower price due to lower production costs and getting all of the money the creator should have got for writing the book?

That's just one example of how you could abuse a system free of intellectual property rights. No system will be unabusable, and I think that some level of copyright should exist. A few ideas off the top of my head.

-Derivative works like fanfiction should not violate copyright (except perhaps maybe if the released work is almsot identical, so things like the Men at Work scandal wouldn't happen).

-You should be able to perform a copyrighted song in a live venue without fear of legal action.

-Copyright should last for 20 years or until the death of the creator. Some people will lose income if their work becomes a cult hit 21 years later, but generally it will help I think. Shared copyright will last until the death of the last creator.

-Movies are a difficult thing to say who the copyright belongs to, but I think the copyright for the picture should be shared between the director, writers, producers and composer.

Just a few ideas. I really think that if there were no copyright, in a business heavy society, it would be taken advantage of so easily and it would be very difficult for a creator to earn money.

[jwenting]

I agree wholeheartedly. Copying intellectual property or patented ideas for private use should be entirely legal, and I'm certain most areas of business would be positively boosted by the influx of competition.

right, so it should be legal to give copies of KSP to all your friends as gifts? After all, giving things away is "private use"...

Thanks, but no thanks.

[jwenting]

I don't know why I didn't mention this earlier but at one time I was in college to become a mechanical engineer but dropped out. One of the major reasons for dropping out was current copyright law and how it was applied in employment contracts. Basically to be hired as an ME anywhere part of the contract was anything you worked on belonged only to the company, not just on company time, and not just with company resources. Anything you even so much as considered during your employment became the companies property. Even if you quit and invented a device and made good money off it the company would come back and sue you with a claim that you started the idea while still working for them, and standing case law left the burden of proof on you to refute that claim, a nearly impossible task. This was in America for reference.

Had you taken care to look up things, you'd have found such clauses to be unenforcable and illegal.

I've personally challenged them with several companies that tried to sneak them into contracts, always successfully.

Mind I fully agree that things created on company time and/or company tools belong to the company. That's what you get paid for and get those tools for after all. Talking about things created in spare time or past employment here.

[Garoad]

Sure, people can create monopolies using copyright law to help them, but on the other side of the coin, without copyright law, it's the entity with the greatest capacity for distribution that would get the most benefit. Like I said before, if you make a book and give it to a publisher, what's to stop a larger and more powerful publisher from taking the first copies released and redistributing them on a much larger scale for a lower price due to lower production costs and getting all of the money the creator should have got for writing the book?

...

I really think that if there were no copyright, in a business heavy society, it would be taken advantage of so easily and it would be very difficult for a creator to earn money.

You're (like most people) focusing on a utilitarian type of view, which is useful, but it can be tricky compared to a logical/moral view. But if we're to focus on the utilitarian view, to favor copyright on those grounds (the benefits outweigh the negatives), we'd have to assume a few things that there's little historical evidence for:

-IP (Intellectual Property) helps society (innovation & creation) rather than hindering or harming it

-Artistic talent / innovation would not be exercised in the absence of copyright & patent (respectively)

-It's (nearly) impossible to financially profit from your creations, in the absence of IP (i.e. there are absolutely no alternative business models from the ones that exist today - IMO this is an absurd position to take)

There's one well researched book which debunks these conventional assumptions by Boldrin and Levine named Against Intellectual Monopoly (free online download). Their conclusion after years of research (which few people even entertain) is that the evils and damage have historically far outweighed the alleged benefits. I'd bet that your hypothetical doesn't prevent the original author from getting paid. If copyright were gone today, and JK Rowling wrote another Harry Potter book, she would still make an obscene amount of money selling it to some big publisher. Why would a well known author go to a tiny publisher which has little capacity for distribution?

But I agree that the changes to current law you suggest would certainly be huge improvements. Any reduction in the power of IP law is a good thing (not that it ever gets reduced).

So, since we're speaking on utilitarian terms, there's two things I want to point out:

-The alleged benefit to society, and creators/innovators, is vastly overestimated and very questionable

-The known (and unknown) harm to society is vastly underestimated (and based on the book I referenced here, the harm is serious and unquestionable)

Edited June 23, 2013 by Garoad

[Garoad]

right, so it should be legal to give copies of KSP to all your friends as gifts? After all, giving things away is "private use"...

Kerbal Space Program End-User License Agreement

IMPORTANT PLEASE READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY BEFORE CONTINUING WITH THIS PROGRAM INSTALL

...

1. GRANT OF LICENSE.

The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed as follows:

(a) Installation and Use.

Electro Chango S.A. de C.V. grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computer running a validly licensed copy of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed [e.g., Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Mac OSX].

( Backup Copies.

You may also make copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT as may be necessary for backup and archival purposes.

2. DESCRIPTION OF OTHER RIGHTS AND LIMITATIONS.

(a) Maintenance of Copyright Notices.

You must not remove or alter any copyright notices on any and all copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

( Distribution.

You may not distribute registered copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to third parties. Evaluation versions available for download from Electro Chango S.A. de C.V.'s websites may be freely distributed.

© Prohibition on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, and Disassembly.

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.

(d) Rental.

You may not rent, lease, or lend the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

Of course, EULAs like this do mention copyright, but it's a redundancy.

[jwenting]

I know what the TOS say, Garoad, was responding to the kids claiming that any "non-commercial" copying should be legal.

They just want to make piracy legal, and never have to compensate creators again for their work in any way, then demand free customer support as well.

[satcharna]

Excuse me, kids?

As a matter of fact, I would like to make piracy legal (not that it is technically illegal where I live). If a game I've pirated is good, I pay for it. It's free advertisement, because I've bought games I would never have even considered otherwise.

[Kerbface]

I'd bet that your hypothetical doesn't prevent the original author from getting paid. If copyright were gone today, and JK Rowling wrote another Harry Potter book, she would still make an obscene amount of money selling it to some big publisher. Why would a well known author go to a tiny publisher which has little capacity for distribution?

That's just circular logic. J.K Rowling is a famous, rich person. Of course she's going to go to a massive publisher. The question is if when she made the first book and WASN'T extremely rich and popular, would she have had the success she did if any publisher could just take her book and sell it without her earning a cent? In fact I believe she was rejected many times before someone finally took her on. What's stopping those people from simply publishing it without her anyway?

[Canopus]

Excuse me, kids?

As a matter of fact, I would like to make piracy legal (not that it is technically illegal where I live). If a game I've pirated is good, I pay for it. It's free advertisement, because I've bought games I would never have even considered otherwise.

Not all the pirates have such "noble" intentions like you. Pirating games is illegal and always will be.

[technicalfool]

I tend to regard "copyright" and "intellectual property" as two different things.

"Copyright": No, you may not distribute your copy of KSP far and wide.

"Intellectual Property": No, you may not make a silly rocket-science simulator of your own.

Personally I think "Intellectual Property" is an insidious term that leads to people being charged rent to use algorithms, and companies like Microsoft making it their main business model to try to extract a tax out of the sale of anything with a microchip in it. It leads to the completely broken current state of the patent system, which now utterly beyond repair, largely thanks to people being able to patent software, and things like "slide to unlock".

Edit: And trying to stop people from selling their own stuff, spyware being installed in toys like the Xbox and Steamworks games, the ever-increasing nastiness of DRM that only affects paying customers... you get the idea.

Edited June 24, 2013 by technicalfool

[technicalfool]

then demand free customer support as well.

How can you demand customer support if you're not a customer?

[KateJak]

I tend to regard "copyright" and "intellectual property" as two different things.

"Copyright": No, you may not distribute your copy of KSP far and wide.

"Intellectual Property": No, you may not make a silly rocket-science simulator of your own.

Personally I think "Intellectual Property" is an insidious term that leads to people being charged rent to use algorithms, and companies like Microsoft making it their main business model to try to extract a tax out of the sale of anything with a microchip in it. It leads to the completely broken current state of the patent system, which now utterly beyond repair, largely thanks to people being able to patent software, and things like "slide to unlock".

Edit: And trying to stop people from selling their own stuff, spyware being installed in toys like the Xbox and Steamworks games, the ever-increasing nastiness of DRM that only affects paying customers... you get the idea.

You are right but how can we protect our own inventions without some rules or laws such as IP?

[[email protected]]

IP is a distortion of the free market, as are all regulations and government actions. Personally I'm an Anarcho-Capitalist so I say abolish all government restrictions on free trade.

[Tery215]

The system is designed to benefit creators of original content.

For example, it would be great if you could manufacture medicine at low costs, but the inventor of medicine at low costs would need money because he invented it.

But then people who need medicine die because they can't afford it and the pharmacy can't afford to sell it any lower.

[KvickFlygarn87]

You are right but how can we protect our own inventions without some rules or laws such as IP?

Not by necroing dead threads

Also, doesn't this thread have politics?

[Kinglet]

We have to force very mod author to use the GNU license. It is a useful and sensible license that actually makes sense.

[Dispatcher]

I think inventors, writers, artists and coders have a right to benefit (inc. financially) via patents and copyrights if they so choose. I also think that intellectual property rights should be obtainable on a level playing field; the individual being equal to the corporation, in terms of access to the path in terms of legal requirements, costs, etc.

Most of the things we use in life are patented, and without a reward incentive for the inventors, we'd not be enjoying most of those things right now, including our computers, smart phones, automobiles, shoes, etc.

[Omicron314]

I think there is a line that needs to be drawn between patent-able inventions and non-patent-able inventions. I see the validity in allowing a (reasonable) amount of time after the invention of an item for it to be sold exclusively by the inventor until it is allowed to be built upon. However, I think there are some inventions, specifically those with the capacity to save lives, that should not ever be patented but instead distributed by the government to humanitarian organizations (such as, say, Red Cross) for their use.

Imagine if a company patented a cure for a terrible disease, insisting that their personal gain is more important than the lives of other people. I understand that the market of any country, however regulated it might be, needs a certain degree of leniency in order to operate efficiently, but allowing the above would simply be criminal.

[cpast]

I think there is a line that needs to be drawn between patent-able inventions and non-patent-able inventions. I see the validity in allowing a (reasonable) amount of time after the invention of an item for it to be sold exclusively by the inventor until it is allowed to be built upon. However, I think there are some inventions, specifically those with the capacity to save lives, that should not ever be patented but instead distributed by the government to humanitarian organizations (such as, say, Red Cross) for their use.

Imagine if a company patented a cure for a terrible disease, insisting that their personal gain is more important than the lives of other people. I understand that the market of any country, however regulated it might be, needs a certain degree of leniency in order to operate efficiently, but allowing the above would simply be criminal.

The trouble with that is that if a company can't make any money whatsoever for curing a disease, why would they go through the long and difficult process of developing the drug and taking it through an approval process? Academic labs might still do it (they could get grants or something), or potentially the government could *buy* patents of necessary drugs, but saying "you can't make money off this expensive-to-develop thing" just results in no one wanting to make that thing.

Again, not saying there are no alternatives. Government grants can work for developing that kind of drug. But there needs to be some economic incentive to developing the medication, or else no one gets it.

[Omicron314]

The trouble with that is that if a company can't make any money whatsoever for curing a disease, why would they go through the long and difficult process of developing the drug and taking it through an approval process? Academic labs might still do it (they could get grants or something), or potentially the government could *buy* patents of necessary drugs, but saying "you can't make money off this expensive-to-develop thing" just results in no one wanting to make that thing.

Again, not saying there are no alternatives. Government grants can work for developing that kind of drug. But there needs to be some economic incentive to developing the medication, or else no one gets it.

I didn't say that the inventors of such a drug would not be compensated, however. Essentially, the government would buy the patent, as you said. There's nothing preventing the government from offering monetary compensation for the trouble that the team/company/whatever went through before distributing it, and I think this is preferable to a private entity withholding the cure until they can directly profit from its distribution. This way, the cure is delivered to those who need it most, not only those who can afford it, and those who invented it are compensated.