Evils of Copyright and Intellectual Property in General

[darryl]

The intellectual property laws of all of the major developed nations is irretrievably broken. Whilst intellectual property laws are desirable and even necessary they have become a travesty. With few exceptions, they no longer serve the public policy aims which purport to justify their existence. In fact, in many cases, they now do outright harm.

One of the areas where this is most apparent is the area of scientific publishing which has become news with the suit by Elsevier seeking to shutdown the pirate science paper website. Thanks to Nate for his blog's link to an article on Techdirt which can be found at (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...assively.shtml)


Our dysfunctional intellectual property system has in turn lead to the development of a similarly dysfunctional system of academic publishing which leeches money from the education system, exploits authors and places severe restrictions on access to academic papers. The pirate website has arisen as a result of this, and is undeniably in breach of copyright laws on a massive scale. To use the language adopted by some, they are "pirates" "stealing" academic papers. I'll resist the Robin Hood analogy, because I have no idea what if anything the site's operators in fact gain, though they seem to be making these papers available for free to all who seek them. It is ironic that the breaking of the Copyright law in this instance seems to in the public interest where the law itself operates against it. In this case I suggest to you that the moral high ground (though not the legal) belongs to Long John Silver. These laws badly need review free of the lobbying of those who benefit from them, generally huge companies with huge lobbying budgets. We need laws that are truly in the Public Interest badly. And yesterday. But I'm not holding my breath.

[rkomar]

The problem is that big money is betting on Intellectual Property, and their influence and power is shaping the business and laws to their needs. Academic publishing, software and drug patents, books, music, video,... it's all the same.

[frahse]

"Cash cows" are always hard to shut down.

Of course so is "rustling!"

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by frahse

"Cash cows" are always hard to shut down.

Of course so is "rustling!"

You mean something like Mickey Mouse? Oh come on give them some slack, Disney gotta feed their children too.

[darryl]

I picked this example because it is one area where the law is doing real harm and its operation is difficult if not impossible to effectively defend. We have scientific knowledge being locked-up for no good purpose. The public interest is being damaged for the profit of largely a single organisation. It is not the only area where these now ridiculous laws do not work. Patents often make new drugs, some life-saving, prohibitively expensive, and people literally die for the lack of their affordability. In this area there is of course the argument that such drugs would never have been invented without the statutory monopoly a patent grants. And there is some validity to this argument. However, now that the serious inadequacies of this approach have become apparent, it is long past time that we look at whether there are other, more appropriate methods of conducting and rewarding research. Even if there are not, we need to look at whether the current provisions are too generous and at ways of ameliorating at least the worst of the unwelcome effects. But the current situation in academic publishing really calls for an abolition of intellectual property rights in this area.

[darryl]

Yet more on this disgraceful situation:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/...ar-double-dip/

[darryl]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ll-over-again/