It seems like my proposed solution would be an effective compromise, unless you want to get overly argumentative about reason and economic theories that are untested.
I’ll write it again here…
Eliminate (most) patents - these are clearly monopolies in broad ideas, not investments in any specific consumer product. The concept of patents can be retained in gathering capital for an idea through contracts, such as non-disclosure…or simply keeping quiet until you have a product.
Reform copyright as financial entitlement to the commercial profits of those who use it, including redistribution or resulting products from unlicensed usage, such as mods. Let juries, not judges or bureaucrats determine what is and isn’t infringement on a case by case basis. Clearly, a letter for letter copy is infringement…unless the work is significantly simple…or derived from some prior work. Quoting part of a work in another, satiring an idea in a profitable setting, etc. are gray areas. Let juries figure it out. The amount of commercial revenue due from a user to the copyright holder would be based upon the extent of the copyrighted content used, the amount of original information vs the copyrighted information used, the time since the copyright was first issued, and the cost of producing the copyrighted work before being made available to consumers. Should copyright holders wish to license use/redistribution outside of this legal mechanism, they are free to do so.
In this environment, prices should be calculable for scarce factors required to make infinite goods, as well as expected market demand, also expressed in the form of entitlements from other providers. No legal force could be used to prevent the dissemination or knowledge of ideas or flow of information, only financial gains directly related to their use.
The commercial distinction is completely abritiary. For example, I uploaded a music video that I don’t have a copyright up to youtube. Youtube is now making money from my video. Read techdirt’s excellent article on this.
Beside people who want to make contracts forbidding people to distribute stuff can do so in a free society. They can make all sort of requirement if they wanted to. Isn’t that good enough for you already?
@all, I know these IP discussions get heated, but they are fantastic. Some of the best, most practical and relevant stuff we could be discussing. I really enjoy it, and learn new things every day from people for and against.
Only because you are misconstruing it. Patents have a life of 20 years before they go into the public domain. You get to keep your house until you die, at which time you can leave it to whomever you like. If you do not leave it to anyone, it gets sold. Someone can always own property.
So, if IP really is property, it should not “expire”, or, if it makes you happy, go into public domain after 20 years.
Both the letter A and books are “ideas”. And yes, I own all the bricks to my house, and the house as well. But my argument does not imply anything about owning all bricks.
The analogy is that I own the letter A and the bricks to my house. You are saying that it should be OK to take my bricks to build your house, just like you think it is OK to take my letter A and write your book.
Your “logic” will always fail when it comes to IP, because there is no IP. Just monopolies.
Uhh.. no. There were numerous copyright houses during the time of mozart (even more during the time 1800, such as the Schott Muzic firm - which was sought out by Beethoven to sell publishing rights.) But your argument is deceptive. Mozart did not need to copyright since he was a beneficiary of the state, and the state controlled the market in such a way which made normal copyrighting unnecessarry. (thank you to Charles Anthony for first bringing this point up, which I have subsequently been reading up on). This is why many music historians observe other composers who were more proficient than Mozart taking a hugely minor role, since the state was in fact propping up Mozart - and was why Mozart was able to get away with direct plagarism in some of his compositions.
No one has even attempted refutation of my Economic argument for IP, which naturaly would need to exclude any appeal to natural law, or morality. I would like to at least see some recognition by someone of both Mises’ argument (good G, requiring a complementary good F which fetches a 0 price on the market) - and my own (that the disconnect inherent in IP based goods, would, without IP, naturaly create no difference in the relative prices of the IP based good, thus leading to no real economic indicators on what areas of IP based goods entrepeneurs should devote scarce resources… This would cause a blindness of investment, which would lead to not satisfying consumer demand, leading to an eventual demolition of the IP based goods market. Thus this follows the same line of argument Mises puts forward on the failure of socialism - namely economic calculation is dislodged since relative prices do not exhibit consumer demand.) For a more elaborate thought process refer to posts above.
This is entirely an economic theory argument, using Mises’ own assumptions (that I outlined previously - and are more extensively found in “Human Action”), and as such makes no appeal to natural law or morality or ethics.
Thats all copyright is, a contract. What we are debating is if third parties can be bound by a buyer/seller contract. I, and so does Rothbard (read what I quoted) argue that all subsequent receivers of the good are bound by that contract. This is similar to a reserved rights land agreement.
In a lawsuit brought against someone for copyright infringement (breaking a contract) it would be the duty of the accuser to show that the good was an actual copy, and not the other man’s own independent invention - In the cases of specific copyright, this would be no problem.
Sure, but if I hear you singing a song you wrote, I have agreed to no contract that could prohibit me from singing it in the shower, on the way home, or for 30,000 screaming girls.
JonBostwick made an excellent point. IP basically claims every idea can only be owned by one person at a time, and if you come up with it second (doesn’t necessarily work this way with all state IP claims) then you are stealing someone else’s idea as though two people cannot hold the same idea or invention or concept at once. Totally ludicrous.
The Randians struggle with stuff like this, because they also believe you can sue for defamation of character, that you can own what someone else thinks or says about you, which is of course false. It’s actually very silly to think someone is required to believe in your reputation and cannot dissent against it. Walter Block has covered this extensively.
Economic calculation is complete nonsense with infinte goods because it isn’t subject to economization like scarce resource is. I am sorry but my experience and the thousand of examples tell me otherwise, as well as reasoning.
Dude fund me to develop game. I developed game according to what this dude want according to what I would like to be paid. I get paid for it and this dude is happy. Where is the hell is the economic calculation chaos? There is none!
Dude doesnt fund you anything, because dude cannot sell the game for any amount of money, it being an infinite good. You have no job, unless dude is a philanthropist who wants to feel good about himself by funding ‘the arts’. Without something protecting the code, your labor will be worthless.
Now, Kiba and LS keep arguing as though the IP proponents support the current IP system. I know I certainly do not. I support more of a copyright system. The issue you seem to have with this is that a copyright (contract between buyer/seller) doesnt apply to third parties. I would think that copyright law could be a contract to anyone who possesses the item, binding them to not mass distribute or profit from the item in question, be it code, a book, music, etc without consent from the author. This would be very similar to the idea of you buying a stolen car. You may not directly be a criminal, but if you knew it was stolen, you are liable. If you buy a book, and proceed to copy its entirety, you know that you are breaking the contract you agreed to with the author when you purchased it. Dont want to deal with this restrictive contract? Dont buy the book. You may argue that a contract that restricts human action is invalid, as it is claiming ownership of the human. Yet you also argue that in your free society you would prevent mass atrocities by signing contracts with your neighbor compensating him for not building a bomb and blowing up your houses. This restrics human action, with just compensation. Copyright restricts people no more than this, and they are compensated in the form of possession and enjoyment derived from the book/code/music/art/etc.
This copyright could expire upon death of the author, or upon his releasing of the item to public domain. Because anyone who possesses the item is bound by the contract of the copyright, there is no problem with this situation I see. If you come up with the exact same code, it would be my job to prove you had my code and copied it in a court.
You also keep bringing up putting an arbitraty number on copyright. Well that didnt originally happen. It was life of the author, until Walt Disney died, and his company decided that they wanted to keep mickey mouse as their property, and lobbied congress to extend the copyright past death. Every few years now, when Mickey Mouse is close to expiring, they lobby some more to extend it further. This is BS, but it is not the system we are wanting to have.
it is not necessary for Dude to be able to sell product A for some definite price >0 in order for him to commision kiba to produce good A.
as Dude can transform or combine A to create A* and sell that. (A* != A)
it is not necessary for Retailer to be able to sell 'tomatoes in tomatoland]*( a fantasy utopia where although tomoatoes are pleantiful no one likes to eat tomatoes and they are a nuisance))
yet he can still pay a definite price to purchase tomatoes from a Tomatoland farmer and repackage the product (by act of transportation/delivery/distribution) to be ‘tomatoes in america’
in other words, you are ignoring the free market methods whereby non scarce non rival concepts or ideas, add value to real pyhscial scarce and rival goods by virtue of their combination. i.e the various exmaples cited in this thread of subscriber models, customized/personalised products, charging for supporting products that are themselves scarce and rival. etc. et.c
note:good A that Kiba would be producing is a pattern of zeros and ones encoded onto a definite physical medium.
You’re suggesting we sell computer software on another planet? Or somewhere where they dont have the internet, and thus the ability to pirate said software the second it is available? The earth is tomatoland if nothing is protecting software, as everyone will take for free whatever they wish.
If you’re suggesting I fell into a logic fallacy, please tell me how to use computer programs without running them on a computer? They have no other use. You would have been much better off trying a SAAS argument, though thats easy enough to refute as well due to the custom nature of all that software, as well as how the buyer has no intent to resell, and in fact never would.
Subscriber models: easily debunked. Google free WOW servers. Blizzard collects nothing from the hundreds of thousands of people who play on them.
Customized products: Usually installed on closed systems, protected all to hell with armed guards etc, and utterly useless to anyone but a direct competitor of the purchaser in question. And what, pray tell, is a customized book? You actually expect an author to write one book for every customer? Who would ever pay the price that would cost? This is bunk.
Charging for support/add on products: these will be scarce how? Is unbutu support scarce? Hell no. Sure, they charge for it ‘officially’. How many linux users actually pay for their support? Why would they when its all available in the free support forums scattered across the net. Anyone smart enough to pirate software is smart enough to find this kind of support, they will not pay for it.
,look i ws trying to gently point out to you a logic error in your critieuq of kiba.
the fact that you respond with a diatribe containing nothing but strawman and bizarre contradictions. (subscriber models arent a way for producers to package their concepts with physical services and gain a revnue for the package deal, because Blizzard dont get money doing it somehow means no-ones doing it or it cant be done???)
i dont think i can feel motivated to dialogue with you on this given this anti-rationality and over emotional response
I’m not trying to be emotional, if it came off that way I’m sorry. It is merely slightly annoying when people say the market will find a way, or give broad concepts of how something is possible, while not giving concrete details as to how. I know this is difficult to do, seeing how we have never had a world w/o IP, thus we cannot theorize on how the market would react. I am just asking for detail on how the rights of the owner wouldnt be violated. Yes, in the case of a corporation contracting me to write software, the author would willingly give away his rights to the code in exchange for compensation he deems just. I just wonder how exactly the corporation could possibly profit from the software when it is an infinite good the second it touches a consumer’s hands? Saying he’ll add * to A to create A* doesnt help. What is *? What * can be added to music? To books? I am open to being proven wrong, but with logic and examples, not asterisks.
As for the blizzard example, yes they still earn money. They are very successful with their subscription service. But their rights are still being violated. The people on pirated servers are still illegally using the software.
As for my listing the methods you listed, I dont see how I contradicted myself. I discussed your point about packaging concepts, and moved on to your other point where you listed out the methods.
Do you have the rudamentary capabilty for reading comprehension? I have already explained the disconnect, where IP based goods become infinite in supply - but do not have that property before development. Using Mises’ complementary goods assumption - and seeing that there is demand for IP based goods- we can see that ideas are just another market. Thus, in the development of ideas, there is the employment of scarce resources (because, at the time, the idea, or IP based good, is super scarce) to create what will (outside of any form of IP) become a good of infinite supply. But since the whole Idea market acts in two functions, as complementary goods and as a system of development, it is necesssary for developers to follow market signals that would be set by relative prices. But here is the issue. If everything is of infinite supply then all IP based goods hold the same relative price and the entrepreneur has no signals of consumer demand – and as a result enters into the development of ideas blind (remember that the Idea at the moment is super scarce). Relative prices are the whole theory of economic calculation, and since real resources and capital are used in the development of IP based goods economic calculation fits right in and must be observed within the debate over IP.
ok, so you have some lack of faith in the freemarket.. lets save that for another topic.
the rights of the owner would not be violated because there would be no owner who would have rights which could be violated. If you are looking for an example of how a new concept could be pionered by an entrepeneur in the market place, earn lots of $$$ to providers of the products based on the concept, with no ip monopoly privaledge granted to the individual who first demonstrated the concept on the marketplace. I can provide examples. are these the kind of things you want? (if so ask, i have some up my sleeve)
perhaps this wonderment should fill you with greater awe and respect for the practice of ‘entrepeneurship’ . Our lack of imagination does not preclude others from having imaginative ideas. (although some would prohibit more than one person acting on such an idea until some arbitrary period of time had passed)
musicians are able to earn music through perfomance, endorsements and customized branded products.
also, how much money do you want authors of books to make? if a publisher is afraid of a rival publishing competing with them to publish the same book, it just means they will keep their book price low, i.e. thier profit low so as not to encourage competitors in. this doesnt mean that they wont publish it or that they will not find some profit publishing it. it just limits the extent. but why is a monopoly price superiour to a market price?
so your argument here is that blizzard arent rich enough ? and that there arent thousands of companies who have subscribers and also can turn a profit regardless of whether they have IP protection or otherwise?
You treat the market as some magic entity, which it is not. It has inherent forces which act as signals to members of the economic system. We cannot say, the market is an all knowing and always correct without saying what makes it correct, i.e. what forces act upon the economy.