Why public domain

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

But that is theft and the perpetrator should be prosecuted.

Theft is taking the property. They still have their property. I have a copy. Or I copy parts.

And remember this is dealing with IP alone since IP is not copyright and copyright is not IP.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

But that is theft and the perpetrator should be prosecuted.

No it's not.

Currently it is copyright infringement. You want society to protect your IP just the same as your PP so copyright would go out the window.

In that brave new world, (see what I did there? ) I wouldn't be allowed to steal your IP just like I wouldn't be allowed to steal your PP but I could copy your IP just like I could copy your PP.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

No it's not.

Currently it is copyright infringement. You want society to protect your IP just the same as your PP so copyright would go out the window.

In that brave new world, (see what I did there? ) I wouldn't be allowed to steal your IP just like I wouldn't be allowed to steal your PP but I could copy your IP just like I could copy your PP.

A comparison might be TV's. If LG has a royal monopoly to sell TV's and I buy a Sony TV, am I stealing from LG? That was the world that the founders lived in, royal monopolies for all sorts of things. Buying a TV from Sony isn't stealing from LG. It was a lost sale for LG and a violation of the royal monopoly. That is what copyright is. When someone violates copyright, they are not charged with stealing, rather they are sued in civil court for copyright violation. The author still has his manuscript, so nothing was stolen from him or her.

I point back to the quote from Thomas Jefferson that I referenced earlier in the thread on why things such as patents and copyrights were not property.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Copyright expires because there are laws making it so.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Only because it's the law.

Fine though, you own the IP, but since copyright isn't property, and it's the copyright which prevents the IP from being used by others, well....

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Exactly

It sounds like you want it both ways. If it wasn't for the law giving you the copyright, would there be a law protecting said copyright?
Apache

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Mickey told me he’s fine with copyright expiring.

That's just because Trademark protection works really, really well for him.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Here is the fundamental flaw why intellectual property is not property that can be owned. You can have it, and once you have it you own it, because it is stored as an idea inside your brain. So far so good, it is yours in every way imaginable. Now if you share that idea with someone else, then they have it. It is inside their head, they own their own personal instance. That instance they own, you don't own it, because you don't have it inside your head. How do we share a thought or an idea? We write down instructions on how to infuse that idea into someone's brain. The instructions are written down in a book. If you follow the instructions by reading them, you will infuse your brain with your own idea inside your head, similar to the original. What copyright gives you is a monopoly on exploiting those specific instructions.

So what exactly do you own? The IP itself you don't own, everybody that read the book now has it, owns it. The instructions itself printed in a book you don't own, because you sold those instructions. The only thing that you got left is being marked as the creator of those instructions to have first published them. And laws give you the exclusive rights to exploit them.

Can't argue with much of that, but to say much of it hangs on uniqueness.

It is possible for two or more to have essentially the same thoughts (instructions), for whatever reason, and determination is then made on time ... who got them first or who declared them first. And very little in our heads is unique, except perhaps the way we put things together. We are essentially the end result of a bunch of influences.

So sometimes things can get tricky, things can be hard to definitively prove, and some judge in a court may need to make a ruling on whether something is different or unique enough ... and their expertise to do so may be limited.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Here is the fundamental flaw why intellectual property is not property that can be owned. You can have it, and once you have it you own it, because it is stored as an idea inside your brain. So far so good, it is yours in every way imaginable. Now if you share that idea with someone else, then they have it. It is inside their head, they own their own personal instance. That instance they own, you don't own it, because you don't have it inside your head. How do we share a thought or an idea? We write down instructions on how to infuse that idea into someone's brain. The instructions are written down in a book. If you follow the instructions by reading them, you will infuse your brain with your own idea inside your head, similar to the original. What copyright gives you is a monopoly on exploiting those specific instructions.

So what exactly do you own? The IP itself you don't own, everybody that read the book now has it, owns it. The instructions itself printed in a book you don't own, because you sold those instructions. The only thing that you got left is being marked as the creator of those instructions to have first published them. And laws give you the exclusive rights to exploit them.

One of the things I have tried to say, but not well, is that it seems to me that what we actually own - regardless of the property type - is a set of rights.

Possession is one thing: what you sit on or grasp in your hand or in your head. But ownership is something else, something entirely abstract - like the law, like rights expressed by law, and like property in the sense used by law and commerce (a thing owned).

Thus, whatever the various generalisations and simplifications that otherwise exist - because it can be difficult to separate a thing from the rights to that thing - we have two aspects to any property: the thing, and ownership rights to that thing. The thing exists regardless, but ownership (rights) only exist as defined by law. So property-ness is inherently linked to ownership and the law; if the law does not define your ownership rights then the status as a property in this context may well be up for grabs.

When we own a piece of land what we actually own are the rights that law gives us to that land (and these are not absolute). Eminent domain, or it's equivalent, still exists in many (most/all?) jurisdictions, so at least in theory the law can be changed such that your rights to the land that you currently think you own could be set to expire 70 years after your death. It is the abstract nature of ownership and ownership rights (the law) that makes all property (in the sense used by law and commerce) so similar (but still not identical, since the reason for law to define rights will vary with the nature of the thing).

And this...

Originally Posted by Apache

It sounds like you want it both ways. If it wasn't for the law giving you the copyright, would there be a law protecting said copyright?

is central to IP: Copyright only exists as a property because the law has defined rights and undertaken to protect those rights. The law is what makes intellectual property a property. It's almost circular logic but we have a couple of centuries of evidence that this works, whatever theoretical objections may otherwise arise.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Timboli

Can't argue with much of that, but to say much of it hangs on uniqueness.

It is possible for two or more to have essentially the same thoughts (instructions), for whatever reason, and determination is then made on time ... who got them first or who declared them first. And very little in our heads is unique, except perhaps the way we put things together. We are essentially the end result of a bunch of influences.

So sometimes things can get tricky, things can be hard to definitively prove, and some judge in a court may need to make a ruling on whether something is different or unique enough ... and their expertise to do so may be limited.

Yes, of course. Everybody will get it a little bit different. Unless you are copying whole sentences or paragraphs, it will get hard to decide if you used the story. If you take LOTR, for example, and retell it in your own words (not directly copied), you will still see that it is simply retelling (or rewriting) the whole story and should be easy to detect. Still would depend on the judge whether you infringed on copyright or not. And since it is unclear where the line should be definitely drawn, that would be a strong argument for copyrights that expire after a while, as to not tie up the court system forever on ever increasing amount of forever copyright.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Yes, of course. Everybody will get it a little bit different. Unless you are copying whole sentences or paragraphs, it will get hard to decide if you used the story. If you take LOTR, for example, and retell it in your own words (not directly copied), you will still see that it is simply retelling (or rewriting) the whole story and should be easy to detect. Still would depend on the judge whether you infringed on copyright or not. And since it is unclear where the line should be definitely drawn, that would be a strong argument for copyrights that expire after a while, as to not tie up the court system forever on ever increasing amount of forever copyright.

This is the major issue. I've read a number of books where a particular character, situation or plot twist sounded a lot like something I had read in a different book. It's really the norm. But since infringement depends on what a lawyer can convince a judge or jury, there is no absolute guideline. These lawsuits can drag on for years. Sure, one can say "Oh, you can't copyright wizard schools", but one never knows what a jury is going to decide.

[Alanon]

Originally Posted by gmw

One of the things I have tried to say, but not well, is that it seems to me that what we actually own - regardless of the property type - is a set of rights.
...
It is the abstract nature of ownership and ownership rights (the law) that makes all property (in the sense used by law and commerce) so similar (but still not identical, since the reason for law to define rights will vary with the nature of the thing).

Exactly! I think you said it quite well! This is why it seems to me that the best counter-argument to those in favour of perpetual copyright would be to have everyone understand and agree on the fundamental abuses and loopholes that such an idea would have in the legislative process. We have centuries of experience and legal precedent in the field of property rights law. That's how we know that the situation is not as simple as some claim it is.

I've tried repeatedly to stress such practical points, to no avail. It appears that adherents of perpetual copyright do not care if their principles are actually practical or enforceable in anu just manner. While it's certainly much easier to repeat I made it, it's mine, end of story, everything else can be done through laws, that doesn't magically make perfect sense, nor does it resolve any practical issues. Good intentions do not necessarily make good laws.

[MGlitch]

It’s funny you should mention law suits over magical schools being a possibility since history shows they are a certainty

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega..._Potter_series

This goes over law suits going both ways.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

It’s funny you should mention law suits over magical schools being a possibility since history shows they are a certainty

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega..._Potter_series

This goes over law suits going both ways.

I was doing a search for wizard school books on Amazon because of this thread. From what I could find, while there are some YA wizard school books that seem to be oriented towards the Harry Potter crowd, most of what I saw seemed to be more urban fantasy romance books oriented towards the Twilight crowd, i.e. teenage girls and those remembering being teenage girls.

Of course, the key to all those lawsuits is that it takes money to hire a lawyer and all. Rowlings seems to have a reasonable approach to it, as do most authors. The problem is that handful of authors, a la Harlan Ellison, who aren't so reasonable.

[leebase]

People can sue for anything in the US. Doesn't mean their lawsuit has merrit.

You come up with your foundational principals. That someone will try to work the system doesn't change your foundational principals.

The foundational principal of copyright SHOULD be: the author who creates a unique work, owns the work....and all uses of the work. Forever...as long as the work remains economically active. Orphaned works fall into the public domain.

Someone who creates original work that builds on elements of public domain - only the original aspects can be copyrighted.

For fiction which has no element of scarcity - there is no time limit on ownership.

Now...build out the laws from these principles.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

People can sue for anything in the US. Doesn't mean their lawsuit has merrit.

You come up with your foundational principals. That someone will try to work the system doesn't change your foundational principals.

The foundational principal of copyright SHOULD be: the author who creates a unique work, owns the work....and all uses of the work. Forever...as long as the work remains economically active. Orphaned works fall into the public domain.

Someone who creates original work that builds on elements of public domain - only the original aspects can be copyrighted.

For fiction which has no element of scarcity - there is no time limit on ownership.

Now...build out the laws from these principles.

No.

You continue to state how things should be without giving a reason why and then demanding the laws be changed to support your view.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by leebase

People can sue for anything in the US. Doesn't mean their lawsuit has merrit.

You come up with your foundational principals. That someone will try to work the system doesn't change your foundational principals.

The foundational principal of copyright SHOULD be: the author who creates a unique work, owns the work....and all uses of the work. Forever...as long as the work remains economically active. Orphaned works fall into the public domain.

Someone who creates original work that builds on elements of public domain - only the original aspects can be copyrighted.

For fiction which has no element of scarcity - there is no time limit on ownership.

Now...build out the laws from these principles.

Ok.

Since no work can be deemed unique and original since all authors are influenced by culture in general and all work builds on previous work whether the author wants to admit it or not, there can be no copyright at all.

Problem solved.