[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by gmw

Which is a problem.

Copyright is the name given to the set of rights defined in law. Those rights are valuable - by which I mean, they can be bought and sold, or licensed.

The protections are also defined in law, typically as penalties - much the same as with protections offered by law for any other property. The penalties imposed for copyright violation are separate to the rights provided by copyright itself. As is quite usual in law, the penalties tend to be imposed after a violation rather than as preventative measures. More below.

I agree copyright is the name given to a set of rights defined by law and that those rights are valuable.

I just don't understand your claim that copyright is the IP itself.

Either it is the set of rights defined by law or it is the specific expression of your IP that those rights protect under the law. I just don't understand how copyright itself can be both.

Originally Posted by gmw

It wasn't "steal" I objected to, but "idea". You said earlier you were trying to confine yourself to copyright, but you keep bringing up the protection of ideas, which is not what copyright is about. Either admit you are talking about about something other than copyright, or correct your mistakes.

My initial point about "idea" was specifically that copyright does not protect the "idea" itself!! That is exactly what I was trying to get across and why I confined my topic to copyright in the first place!

Basically put, copyright protects the right to control the specific expression of an "idea" for a limited time. For example, it protects JK Rowlings right to control the specific expression of her "idea" that resulted in the Harry Potter series.

This is why it is legal to write about wizarding schools for kids (the basic "idea") but it is not legal to write about Harry Potter, boy wizard, attending Hogwarts school of wizardry etc etc which is the specific expression of that idea.

Had JK Rowling never written Harry Potter, she would have no copyright over Harry Potter, boy wizard, attending Hogwarts school of wizardry etc etc even if she had thought it out word for word in her head a million times.

Copyright does not protect the idea! It protects the specific expression of that idea in a specific form. In other words, it protects the work JK Rowling did, not the idea she had!

Others in this thread have suggested copyright should extend in perpetuity so long as there is value in that work. No one should be able to use the Harry Potter character ever unless they want to pay for it.

Let's compare like for like.

Copyright protects the work of the author. If it should last in perpetuity then why should a builder not be paid in perpetuity for a house they build so long as anyone finds value in that house?

Originally Posted by gmw

If I bow to your insistence, now, that we include protecting forms of IP other than copyright, you would find that there are many mechanisms tried, with varying levels of success, to protect the ideas (electronic circuits embedded in material that destroys the circuit when tampered with .. and on and on and on).

And we might say exactly the same thing about PP. Locks have only varying degrees of success. Come to that, so do shotguns. You can only be awake for so long, and you have to avoid shooting yourself or your family (a big stumbling block for many), and when the time comes you have to be the first one to the trigger (defenders have to be right all the time, attackers only have to be right once). And, seriously, the community does not expect you to turn every minor property infringement into a life-and-death situation. Law is partly about avoiding such extremities.

Also, some physical property is complicated. The rights to irrigation water is one I've had some experience with lately: it's something not quite directly physical (you can't say this bucket of water is mine) but it is something few are likely to call intellectual (although understand the rights is definitely an intellectual exercise).

The difference is that with physical objects you know if someone is attempting to steal that object and there is the possibility of preventing them. With an "idea" you don't even know if they are infringing your rights until after they have done so and therefore there is no possibility of preventing them doing so.

That again, goes back to my central point that copyright does not protect the idea the author has had. It only protects the work they have done to express that idea.

So let's compare like for like. Let's compare the protection a builder, garbage collector, plumber, etc have for the work they do with the protection an author has for the work they do.

Let's see if a rational argument can be made as to why an author should receive protection for that work forever and ever and ever but all the others should receive protection to ensure they receive a one time payment for the work they do.

Originally Posted by gmw

So the rights to property are defined by law with the anticipation that law will protect the rights it defines. Retrospectively, yes. So? The law doesn't stop someone walking past your apple stall and pinching an apple - it never has. And short of being the biggest person around, or being ready to blow someone's head off for an apple, preemptively preventing theft is often not possible - PP or IP. Protection, for the individual, has never been about constant vigilance and being the biggest and strongest, it's about depending on your community and the rights and protections (laws) it provides.

Yes, totally agree with everything you have said here and I've never suggested otherwise.

I've only ever suggested (or meant to suggest anyway) that it is possible to protect physical objects from being stolen and it is not possible to do the same with "ideas" and that this is why treating copyright the same under the law as property rights is unworkable.

Originally Posted by gmw

You seem to be presenting a strawman, a distinction that doesn't really exist in modern/western civilised existence. You present the difficulties of protecting IP as peculiarly special. The are special, but in the same manner that so many different sorts of property are special in their own way.

No strawman at all. They are different and that has always been my only point. I have never claimed protecting IP is peculiarly special, only that it is not actually possible to physically stop someone from taking your idea.

Originally Posted by gmw

We have gotten so used to apparently owning physical property we've grown to think it is some inherent right. It's not. Both PP and IP are rights made available to us by the civilisation in which we live. They haven't always existed. IP is newer, and we're still coming to grips with it.

I never claimed owning property is some sort of inherent right.

Totally agree with you that both PP and IP rights are rights made possible by the civilisation in which we live.

That doesn't change the fact that regardless of what the law states or civilisation does, there is the actual possibility that if I have a rock in my hand I can deny anyone else from taking it from me. Difficult? Certainly. Close to impossible? Yep, totally agree. But still the possibility.

There is no possibility that I can stop you from silently walking away with an idea I have expressed to you and doing what you like with it short of preemptively executing you.

That's why IP and PP are so different that it serves little purpose to compare them and treat them the same under the law.