Why public domain

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by gmw

It might be a reason for not treating IP as a property at all, but only once we understand how it fails to self-annihilate due to the paradox of successfully behaving like a property for the last couple of centuries.

Apologies if I seem like I'm flogging a dead horse but....

IP has been acting like intellectual property for the last couple of centuries. It has not been acting like physical property.

The issue isn't that IP has been acting like "property" but that some argue IP should be treated the same as physical property.

It is not the same and and that itself is a "genuinely useful reason" to not treat it the same as physical property.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by gmw

I'm a fan but not a Trekkie, so did a search and assumed this page was good enough as a reference.

It might be a reason for not treating IP as a property at all, but only once we understand how it fails to self-annihilate due to the paradox of successfully behaving like a property for the last couple of centuries.

It didn't self annihilate because society deterrmined there was a value in monetizing something that had no value under the standard rules of property. So rules were written to provide an incentive for creating new IP. Societies did not do this for moral reasons, but to get more IP. The reason to not extend IP for great lengths, it the blunt fact that dead people don't create.

Creating rules to monetize IP did not suddenly turn it into PP. It created a pseudo PP thing that is inherently a wasting asset (it goes to zero). There are other wasting asset that exist, such as options.

As to late Star Trek, I'm not certain that the "money free" economy really existed. If it did, why didn't everybody have their own interstellar spacecrafts? And why were there cargo ship? Why would anybody (other than maybe the Ferengi) want to waste their intellectual development on moving boxes around the galaxy? Food for thought.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by Greg Anos

It didn't self annihilate because society deterrmined there was a value in monetizing something that had no value under the standard rules of property. So rules were written to provide an incentive for creating new IP. Societies did not do this for moral reasons, but to get more IP. The reason to not extend IP for great lengths, it the blunt fact that dead people don't create.

Creating rules to monetize IP did not suddenly turn it into PP. It created a pseudo PP thing that is inherently a wasting asset (it goes to zero). There are other wasting asset that exist, such as options.

As to late Star Trek, I'm not certain that the "money free" economy really existed. If it did, why didn't everybody have their own interstellar spacecrafts? And why were there cargo ship? Why would anybody (other than maybe the Ferengi) want to waste their intellectual development on moving boxes around the galaxy? Food for thought.

Picard briefly explains it in the movie ‘First Contact’ people work for the betterment of mankind (which seems to include alien species as well). However I’m not sure if this is just within Star Fleet, The Federation of Planets, or if it’s got some limits even within those.

Though certainly the replicators play a large part in this, I’m not sure when they pop into existence I don’t recall them being in the original series. Another factor is warp power which seems to, with the tech they have, be a highly efficient and extremely clean source of energy which takes up a rather small amount of space.

Of course another thing which probably helped was World War III which was pretty devastating. Oh and of course the revaluation that not only were we not alone in the universe but the aliens were friendly (well as much as a Vulcan can be friendly) and way more advanced than us.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Greg Anos

It didn't self annihilate because society deterrmined there was a value in monetizing something that had no value under the standard rules of property. So rules were written to provide an incentive for creating new IP. Societies did not do this for moral reasons, but to get more IP. The reason to not extend IP for great lengths, it the blunt fact that dead people don't create.

Creating rules to monetize IP did not suddenly turn it into PP. It created a pseudo PP thing that is inherently a wasting asset (it goes to zero). There are other wasting asset that exist, such as options. [...]

Which pretty much corresponds to what I was saying earlier: IP is a property because the law says so. IP might not be inherently consumable, but we made it illegal for others to consume it without permission. The main point is that as long as this works, and it has demonstrably been working up to date, then law and commerce can continue to treat it as a property.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

For the sake of debate I will grant you that.

So if we are treating IP the same as PP why should I not be allowed to copy your IP? I am allowed to copy your PP after all?

ETA: You seem to want to apply all the positives of PP to IP and remove all the negatives that go with it. While this is completely understandable from a selfish human nature point of view, I don't think there is much rationale for it besides an attitude of "gimme gimme gimme" that you accuse others of.

Perhaps You can explain what you mean by copying my physical property. Are you saying that I can have a chair....and you can make yourself a chair...and since that’s ok, it should be ok for your to copy the books I write?

I’m sure you realize that there are trademarks, patents and copyright type laws that would indeed prevent you from making and selling exact copies of Idea furniture.

But, unlike with fiction, I do support time limits on patents because there isn’t an infinite number of ways to join wood together.

And yes, I agree that the “gimme gimme” accusation can be flipped. How greedy farmers are for thinking that their farm should be able to go to their children. Or that land can be owned in the first place. There is nothing special about intellectual property. If one doesn’t respect the concept of property....even physical property can be deemed “no longer yours but ours”. I won’t go further down that trail as it’s politics.

Society is best served by encouraging creation. Without ownership, creation will suffer.

[leebase]

Dead people don’t create. Corporations don’t die. Disney the corporation employs more than 100,000 people, produces movies and theme parks and merchandise and television shows and on and on. The books that people write fan fiction for...are the ones kept relevant by all the advertising, all the spin offs, all the merchandizing, all the branching out into other types of media.

There is a reason people still talk about Star Trek and not Space 1999.

It takes a lot to create beloved characters and a lot more keep them relevant long past the death of the authors.

But sure, for the truly economically dead works...let them enter the public domain to be resurrected if someone else wants to make them relevant again.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by leebase

Perhaps You can explain what you mean by copying my physical property. Are you saying that I can have a chair....and you can make yourself a chair...and since that’s ok, it should be ok for your to copy the books I write?

I’m sure you realize that there are trademarks, patents and copyright type laws that would indeed prevent you from making and selling exact copies of Idea furniture.

Actually what I am not allowed to copy is the IP that goes into your chair.

Nothing in physical property law prevents me from copying your actual physical chair.

So if we agree to treat IP the same as PP then it should be ok to copy your IP just like it is ok to copy your PP right?

Originally Posted by leebase

Society is best served by encouraging creation. Without ownership, creation will suffer.

As someone else mentioned, dead people don't create.

And how is using the Harry Potter character in a brand new story not creating?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Dead people don’t create. Corporations don’t die. Disney the corporation employs more than 100,000 people, produces movies and theme parks and merchandise and television shows and on and on. The books that people write fan fiction for...are the ones kept relevant by all the advertising, all the spin offs, all the merchandizing, all the branching out into other types of media.

There is a reason people still talk about Star Trek and not Space 1999.

It takes a lot to create beloved characters and a lot more keep them relevant long past the death of the authors.

But sure, for the truly economically dead works...let them enter the public domain to be resurrected if someone else wants to make them relevant again.

Works don't remain relevant because of advertisement, but rather because people like the original work. There was almost no advertisement and merchandising for LOTR before the movies came out.

There was no advertising and the like for Star Trek for the decade between the last episode of the original Star Trek series and the first Star Trek movie. It was the fans who kept the franchise alive.

[Alanon]

Originally Posted by leebase

But, unlike with fiction, I do support time limits on patents because there isn’t an infinite number of ways to join wood together.

And yes, I agree that the “gimme gimme” accusation can be flipped. How greedy farmers are for thinking that their farm should be able to go to their children. Or that land can be owned in the first place. There is nothing special about intellectual property. If one doesn’t respect the concept of property....even physical property can be deemed “no longer yours but ours”. I won’t go further down that trail as it’s politics.

I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't the application of physical property rights for IP involve a whole stretch of new legal problems? In your vision of things, there ought to be some sort of inheritance or "death" tax for IP just as for farms? Who would perform the valuation? Wouldn't there be a speculation market? What would happen if the heirs couldn't pay the tax levied against them? Would the state take over? Earlier on you mentioned farms passed on from generation to generation. Since many people use their property as collateral for loans, a more apt expansion of that analogy would be a bank foreclosing on a farm due to debt/insolvency, etc. But then the bank would own the property, wouldn't it? And it would have no obligations to develop the property, it could burn it down if it so desired. There would be nothing to prevent the appearance and growth of what is the equivalent of hawkish real-estate developers from buying up foreclosed properties and using them for their own profit.

In that system, you would be opening up creative works to: price hiking, market manipulation, bank fraud, IP bubbles, speculative trading, which would most likely create a system of nefarious practices (like expensive and frivolous litigation) designed to force the heirs of middle-of-the-road IP rights to sell to a conglomerate. Or worse, practices of systemic IP devaluation in a virtual market that no one truly understands. And once things go corporate, how would that play into the aforementioned abandonment of IPs that would slide into public domain? Again, the state would have to define legal requirements as to what constitutes "minimal investment" in an IP to retain the rights. You can be certain of one thing - corporate lobbyists would craft those regulations in a way that suits their interests, not the interests of all IP holders.

As I've stated, I'm no lawyer, but I see plenty wrong with the state of property rights across the globe to believe it is a good alternative for anything, as some of the dangers I've mentioned here point to. You seem to believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that property rights empower the individual, and because of that you seem to ignore the abuse by corporations of these same rights. Heck, even with the current legal framework we see scores of copyright outsourcing agencies taking down videos on YouTube and squeezing the pennies from hapless creators for 20-second clips of audio. Can you imagine the havoc corporations would wreak if empowered further? There are things implied in what you're suggesting that can't really be dismissed through blanket statements or hyperbole. Rather than argue with you on what the starting principles should be, I'm more interested in taking your position as a basis for further discussion. How do you believe it would actually work?

[leebase]

Property rights are a social construct. There is nothing that can't be solved....and nothing that can't be screwed up by society.

I think the invention of IP is a societal good. Clearly, copyright makes stories able to have value. That is a societal good.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think the invention of IP is a societal good. Clearly, copyright makes stories able to have value. That is a societal good.

I don't think anyone has disagreed with that.
It is the extension to time-unlimited copyright that people disagree with.

[hildea]

tubemonkey: If I understand you correctly, you see property rights as a good thing in itself. To you, anything that restricts property rights is automatically a bad thing. Is that correct?
To me, property rights is a tool in the toolbox of civilization. I will look at a specific instance of property rights, consider whether the result of that specific instance is good or bad for society as a whole, and be willing to ditch it if it's more bad than good. The stance that any restriction of property rights is theft makes even less sense to me than the classical "property is theft". To me, eminent domain is a good thing, just like copyright limits.
This means I hit a dead end when I try to argue about copyright with you. I can argue that eternal copyright will have more negative than positive effects on society. But if you see those effects as secondary, and see a restriction -- any restriction -- on property rights as an evil in itself, then the discussion can't go anywhere.
Please correct me if I've misunderstood you!

leebase: Unlike tubemonkey, you seem to argue for eternal copyright because you think it will have good effects on culture and creativity, not because you think it's a good thing in itself. In other words, if you concluded that eternal copyright would be negative for culture and creativity, you would change your stance about eternal copyright. Is that correct?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by hildea

tubemonkey: If I understand you correctly, you see property rights as a good thing in itself. To you, anything that restricts property rights is automatically a bad thing. Is that correct?

Not necessarily. It depends on the restriction.

To me, property rights is a tool in the toolbox of civilization. I will look at a specific instance of property rights, consider whether the result of that specific instance is good or bad for society as a whole, and be willing to ditch it if it's more bad than good. The stance that any restriction of property rights is theft makes even less sense to me than the classical "property is theft". To me, eminent domain is a good thing, just like copyright limits.

I have a problem with this because the system is generally unfair to those in the lower economic classes. When eminent domain comes into play, it frequently impacts those classes. Try building a strip mall or adding lanes to a road in an upper class neighborhood.

As I've frequently stated, I see no difference in terms of property rights between Lord of the Rings and the family farm. If LOTR has to go into the public domain, then so should the family farm. If you see a benefit to society by getting the right to read and use someone's characters for free, then I see a benefit to society of being able to use the family farm to offset taxes by either selling or renting it.

This means I hit a dead end when I try to argue about copyright with you. I can argue that eternal copyright will have more negative than positive effects on society. But if you see those effects as secondary, and see a restriction -- any restriction -- on property rights as an evil in itself, then the discussion can't go anywhere.

They are secondary. I bought it, it's mine. I wrote it, it's mine. If you want it, make me an offer

As I've already said, I don't see all restrictions as evil.

[barryem]

Tonight on Youtube PBS News had a video about data influencing the arts. Their focus was on clothing design, not writing. But at one point they interviewed a couple of lawyers about how this could affect copyright and there were some interesting questions raised.

One was, with artists (dress designers but it could eventually apply to authors and may already) being influenced by data does the artist still have as strong a claim on his/her creation. And, since that data comes from their customers initially, how much claim do the customers have on both the data and the creation.

Of course these were questions, not answers, meant to provoke thought. The one sort of answer they had was that these questions would influence the shape of copyright in the future. They wouldn't guess how.

So, Amazon, if you're reading this, if you use data generated from my habits and preferences to determine which books to make available to me I want royalties on those books.

Anybody think that might happen?

Barry

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

As I've frequently stated, I see no difference in terms of property rights between Lord of the Rings and the family farm. If LOTR has to go into the public domain, then so should the family farm. If you see a benefit to society by getting the right to read and use someone's characters for free, then I see a benefit to society of being able to use the family farm to offset taxes by either selling or renting it.

So something I haven't seen in this thread from the supporters of perpetual copyright, and treating IP as PP, especially with the case of the family farm.

You pay property tax. This is true whether you use the family farm to make money, or just as a home, or even just letting it sit unused.

Currently, afaik, copyright holders are not charged for holding the copyright if they just let it sit, and even when they do something with it it's just the costs of achieving that thing. Now it's all well and good for a copyright which has a finite life, the creator will hopefully make back enough to have made a profit for time+energy spent on the creation. But with never ending copyright they can constantly make money off something which they don't use.

And before you start in on 'they need to work to promote the work', this isn't always the case. And will likely become less and less so with the ability to preserve their creation be it a book, or movie, or whatever, becoming easier and cheaper. Which allows it to stay in the social consciousness much easier. Thus it's possible for a creation to essentially become self sustaining.