How about hosting a web site which fetches the contents of CNN.com every minute, from numerous different servers as to not get banned, and make your own arrangements with advertisers. Having practically no expenses you could try to attract CNN.coms visitors by making some nice extra features.
Let me help you out a bit, Onar. Imagine we have these “Pattern Vision Goggles”, abbreviated PVG.
Turned off, the PVG shows everything black, but once you put in it any pattern, like a song, a movie, any text, any image, any model or patent, any art, etc., the goggles will magically show, from white to dark red or purple (like a heat vision goggles) the correlation with which every particle and energy in front of you resembles the pattern. Any type of particle and energy, of any scale. Naturally it would be able to scan DVD’s, human brains, encrypted codes, everything Something like, almost impossible but okay. And THATS NOT ALL, it also has some alien time bending technology shit that is able to trace the origins of every pattern, and accordingly draw lines from every material found, including neurons, to their sources.
So if for example, some lowly bar band were to play a new song, with them goggles, you could input the song into it, or idk, might as well have some real-time app to recognize the new pattern… and you could see the lines go from the band’s composer, to the band members, then to the instruments (I guess the goggles can do that too), from the instruments to the air (sound waves), and that to everyone in the audience that has a brain + working auditory system. THE ALL SEEING GOGGLES. And the next day, if the band manages to puts that crap song on the radio, you would see even more arrows, and clouds of radio waves containing it, making all the chains necessary for that pattern to be disseminated.
And thats not all, because the PVG can see the entire pattern chain, it can also see whether someone who claims is an independent author is guilty of pattern theft or not! So basically, this would be a world where IP enforcement is really easy and many problems with IP are solved. All it would be left for the state or responsible agencies to settle IP disputes would be the level of correlation necessary (white? bright yellow? etc.), the mediums allowed (can you sing a song? what about in a private diary? etc.), and in the manner that is most convenient to the creators, but still with as many limits as it is popularly agreeable. Whatever.
This metaphysical hypothetical basically turned IP into private property. People aren’t exchanging “ideas”, or “information” anymore, those things are recognizable as what they are - patterns in many forms through many mediums. And those can be accountable in private property law as they are today. Sound kind of like what you wanted to get at? Information being recognized as property like everything else that’s materialistic, right?
Welp, EVEN THEN, there is a fatal flaw however. Well, two. Maybe more. But I can see two. First of all, Sound waves and electromagnetic waves (light) are very intrusive! You can’t easily stop them from getting into your head. The problem here is, that with conventional private property, humans are very much able to know who enters their house and who doesn’t. There is no such control with patterns. Patterns come and go like politicians in congress. The PVG can know, but what’s that worth, when people themselves can’t? They’ll be using other people’s patterns even without wanting to. And because they can’t control the way in, I don’t think it’s right to legislate the way out either. This is not purposeful behavior. Man hasn’t evolved into such a beastly (in a good way) rational being as to be able to note these things. It can with the conventional types of property much, much more easily than it can with patterns.
The second problem is, even though independent composition is solved and a non-issue with PVGs, you cannot know if there would be an independent author once a pattern is both patented and disseminated. That would be a sure way of attaining monopoly where otherwise there could be competition - you patent the pattern, then spread it to as many brains you can to stop anyone from independently coming up with it. In a sense, this is turning the argument of stolen potential upside down - the monopolist is also stealing the potential of there being independent creators once he invades people’s minds with his pattern. And because of the nature of human physiology, it’s almost impossible to prevent such things from happening (unless it’s a pretty dystopic world with no news, no open phones, radio stations, movies, youtube, etc.)
So basically, if you take IP all the way, it would be contradictory to regulate patterns that are disseminated second hand, but not regulate patterns released by original authors. The broadcast of patterns should be restricted both ways, as conventional private property is. Original authors should be disallowed to sing, write, or make anything in public, to anyone who hasn’t explicitly conceded it, unless it’s something old and now considered public, then of course it’s fine. But because pattern distribution is often irreversible, people would be even more cautious, for every pattern they accept, it is a pattern they can’t claim ownership themselves, and will have to pay royalties if they use it within the time and medium constraints of IP law. Transmitting something new to people without their authorization would be considered theft - theft of their creating potential.
Well at least this kind of negates industrial espionage. Industry engineers and scientists would be actually avoiding spying on their enemies, because if they intentionally did, then the PVG would forever point the spy as a ‘subject’ to the competing firm, and wouldn’t be allowed to claim a patent once a highly-correlated project is done (by either firm, wouldn’t matter at that point).
Is this the type of society you envision?
Hmm that’s all I can think of at the moment. This is too great of a mess. I hope you don’t ignore it, because I spent a lot of effort on it, and I hope to collect royalties in the future, ty. And sorry if I’m completely off the mark and just wasted your time. But that’s what you get from writing garbage on the internet, you get garbage back LOL
Hmm if I could sum up the above in a sentence, it’s basically that IP is much more different than conventional property, because it’s much more volatile, intrusive, (very) uncontrollable, and often irreversible.
also if you look at my avatar, it was made through a PVG lens, measuring the amount of awesome emanating from Alex Jones. true story
“information does not exist independently of the mind and it requires mental work to animate it and process it.”
If it’s not information that is encoded in DNA, then what is it? If it requires a homo sapien level mind, for it (DNA) to actually be information, then it means the Earth suddenly spawned into existance not very long ago…
Information exists, no matter if we humans are conscious about the fact (information) or not, just as the physical world exists independent of human thoughts and will. It doesn’t even require a mind for information to have value in the natural world, the more fit a DNA-sequence is to create a winning offspring, the higher value that information has.
My view on property is that they need to be scarce resources that can be protected by the owner. There has been plenty of land areas that previously had no owners, hence they wouldn’t be defined as property. As people have expanded throughout the history, we have homesteaded areas that previously was not a human property and/of little human value.
Ideas and information are not scarce resources, they are easily duplicates and shared at extremely low costs. I don’t understand the discussion of a finite universe or not, I’ve always thought that property are what I defined above and not about atoms and energy.
The difference between you and me, is that you want the state to protect one man’s discovery of information, such as specific DNA-sequences, photographs, paintings, music and writings - to create artificial scarcity where it doesn’t really exists. And I think you, and many other Pro-IP individuals, want to do this for the sole reasons, which has been the reasoning for intellectual property rights since it was first “invented”:
You want to ensure (“force the market”) that people and corporations invest money into discovering ideas, concepts, structures and the list goes on … While I believe, that the competition in a free market would force everyone to actually invest into these fields anyway to stay ahead of competition.
Sure, there would probably be less pop-music if it was harder to earn easy money, but it would be a more proper balance of goods and services that the market asks for.
It’s similar thinking to that of other state-promoted initiatives, used to give incentives to move (“force/effect/control”) the economics markets and development towards whatever the current political agenda is. One such example would be “Green Energy” as a initiative to mitigate the incredible political force which promotes “global warming” (or I guess it was renamed to “climate change”).
If it’s not information that is encoded in DNA, then what is it? If it requires a homo sapien level conceiousness to actually be information, then it means the earth suddenly spawned into existance not very long ago…
Information exists, no matter if we humans are concious about the fact or not, just as the physical world exists independent of human thoughts and will. The only difference is that you would want to use the state to protect one mans discovery of these information structures (DNA) and help him collect money based on his discovery, no matter how much work (or non work) was put into the discovery itself.
If it’s not information that is encoded in DNA, then what is it? If it requires a homo sapien level conceiousness to actually be information, then it means the earth suddenly spawned into existance not very long ago…
Information exists, no matter if we humans are concious about the fact or not, just as the physical world exists independent of human thoughts and will. The only difference is that you would want to use the state to protect one mans discovery of these information structures (DNA) and help him collect money based on his discovery, no matter how much work (or non work) was put into the discovery itself.
you don’t have to be violent to cause harm
“Explain fashion business. IP piracy is legal there.”
And also food recipes.
By the way, it’s extremely ridiculous to have IP enforced to researches about the nature of the world. It reminds me when Apple tried to patent the idea of reducing electricity consumption of a chipset by reducing the voltage. It’s like wanting to patent the idea of reduce kinetic energy of a moving object by reducing it’s speed.
Turned off, the PVG shows everything black, but once you put in it any pattern, like a song, a movie, any text, any image, any model or patent, any art, etc., the goggles will magically show, from white to dark red or purple (like a heat vision goggles) the correlation with which every particle and energy in front of you resembles the pattern. Any type of particle and energy, of any scale. Naturally it would be able to scan DVD’s, human brains, encrypted codes, everything Something like, almost impossible but okay. And THATS NOT ALL, it also has some alien time bending technology shit that is able to trace the origins of every pattern, and accordingly draw lines from every material found, including neurons, to their sources.
That is a violation of the laws of physics and an argument from miracle. Of course, in a universe where information scarcity does not exist, there is no point to intellectual property, or any form of property. That is not our universe.
People get all uptight about IP on books and such. I’ll bet if these people had to pay $1.00 everytime they wanted to use the letter “e” or any other symbol they wouldn’t be writing all that much.
dnixx wrote the following post at Tue, Oct 19 2010 7:26 AM:
The crop isn’t there anymore, is it?
So what? That’s not the question. The question is why is the crop his, and to what extent, instead of being free? When you copy a CD with a lien on it, the lien isn’t there anymore. The IP communist argument is that it isn’t true property. So what is?
What is the basis for IP communist property rights? There isn’t any.
People get all uptight about IP on books and such. I’ll bet if these people had to pay $1.00 everytime they wanted to use the letter “e” or any other symbol they wouldn’t be writing all that much.
We can adopt a new alphabet at any time. We can also choose to produce and consume any form of intellectual property. That is why there is competition and not monopoly.
New alphabet for EVERY PERSON. That would be awesome.
I see. When I read through the thread, I didn’t see anyone else bringing up my points, but maybe I need to read through it again.
On the other hand, I don’t see how I was simply nitpicking about liens. I showed how the common-law legal concept of liens was not at all as you described it. So that would seem to invalidate your entire treatement of liens in your blog post, wouldn’t it?
No, it would still be there. It just wouldn’t necessarily be on the copy. The original author would not necessarily have the same bilateral agreement with a 3rd party that owned the copy as he had with the original buyer.
I imagine that means you are free to go create your own alphabet, language, mathematics, system of weights and measures so that you can start distributing all of your works of IP in contract and I don’t have to read any pro IP posts by IP piracy freeloading hypocrites using the English language.
Just because you have a superior product or service, doesn’t mean anyone would use or buy your service. Even if you have a free product, doesn’t mean people would use it. Just look at a lot of open source projects, why aren’t everyone using Linux and Open Office, it’s free and open?!
People want experiences and simplicity, today it is actually simpler to download a movie you find on ThePirateBay than going to the official movie distribution sites and paying for the very same content. Not only that, if you go to the official services, there are Digital Rights Management restrictions on what you are allowed to do with that movie. So you get less service, less quality, yet there are some that will still pay for it…
I enjoy the superb quality of service from Spotify for most of my music needs. I pay a small subscription free a month, and gain full access to a huge library of music. Sure, I could probably find a lot of the same music on ThePirateBay, but the simplicity and functionality I get from Spotify outweighs the hassel I would have to search, find and download individual songs on ThePirateBay.
If you take money from me, then you rob me of that property. If you take crops from me, you rob me of that property. This has the effect on me and my family that I might not be able to survive.
If I tell you a story, and you share that story with your own family, then no harm is done.
eh, deleted
One of my intelligent friends just gave a decent defense of IP. He says that current IP laws are stupid, so you can’t look at any studies. Instead, for every invention, there is a “sweet spot” between 0 and infinity years of ownership. He says IP should be granted to make projects just barely profitable.
My response was to ask - how do you know that the sweet spot is still a net positive? You’ve found a “local minimum” in the function. So what? Lmin doesn’t mean you’ve got a sign change.
My reductio is this - suppose I spend 10 trillion dollars inventing foot-cream. It isn’t a very good product, so I’ll need a patent on it for the next 1000 years to pay it off. No one will be able to use the chemicals I’ve just thrown together during that time. Is it worth it? Probably not. How do you know? You make interpersonal comparisons of utility across time using hypothetical entrepreneurial and scientific knowledge of a far off future :I
And people that spend all that money building a grocery store, should get a monopoly on selling groceries in that neighborhood for X years, to recoup their costs, right?
Brodie (wonders why anyone would build a store without a monopoly)
I like the analogy presented by a one of the contributors here with growing grop.
This is not a proper analogy to the original premise and discussion. A corrected analogy would be as follows:
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Farmer A’s mind recognizes certain climatic and environmental conditions are favorable to growing certain crops including and obscure flower called crocus. Farmer A’s mind recognizes certain unmet consumer demand and high prices for products derived from crocus flowers (saffron). Farmer expends further brain power to study and learn the production techniques associated with saffron production. - these are all “products of the mind”.
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Farmer A plants acres of crocus flowers and begins saffron production. Before this, no one has ever planted crocus or produced saffron in this region. His “idea” is unique and original and the result of genuine intellectual efforts.
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Farmer B drives past crocus flowers and saffron stand and “steals idea” from farmer A, planting his own “copy” of the crocus field on his own land.
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Farmer A, enlists the state power to stop Farmer B and prevent him from profiting by the theft of Farmer A’s intellectual property, since such duplication of his plan and idea would diminish Farmer A’s “future profits.”
Now you have a farmer’s analogy that is consistent with the original concept and ownership of “products of the mind”.