

Intellectual Property Rights Same Advantages As Barbed Wire? - ckuehne
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/ip-like-barbed-wire.html

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bryanlarsen
The whole article is based on this statement: "You have no fundamental right
to enjoy the innovations produced by others without compensating them."

This is one of those statements that sounds good on the surface but falls
apart when you dig deeper.

There are probably literally millions of people who have contributed
intellectual innovations that have gone into your shiny iPhone, yet the money
you give to Apple only compensates tens of thousands of them.

~~~
billybob
True. Civilization itself is made up of a dense web of people's contributions,
only a small number of which are protected by law. Maybe the most important
ones, in fact, have no protection. Writing, steel, structural engineering,
etc.

Imagine a world where you have to pay for every innovation you use. It would
make it impossible to do anything or create any new innovations on top of
existing ones.

I'm not saying IP is always bad, but it does have a double edge: it rewards
innovations which HAVE been made, but it hinders new innovations from BEING
made.

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hxa7241
Here is the ideal: we pay people for the time/effort/resources to create, then
we all copy and use that product freely and unrestrictedly. Everyone gets
compensated for any loss, and everyone has freedom to access all gain.

The idea of property really does not apply. It is the wrong way to think about
the problem. We want new and better systems of organisation, but the
restrictions of property are what we want to _avoid_ if at all possible.

> You have no fundamental right to enjoy the innovations produced by others
> without compensating them.

That seems quite wrong; in fact the _opposite_ is more like the truth. The
form of a moral obligation is to put the interests of others before yourself.
That is, to put it simply, you have a duty to help others. If others enjoy
your products without compensating you, that is _good_ \-- it is pretty much
what a moral act means.

Now, you might object that someone has sacrificed effort to produce, they must
deserve something. But that _adds_ something else: the idea of loss or harm,
and this is precisely where IP/abstract-goods and property fundamentally
diverge. Abstract goods can be used by any number of people without reducing
anyone else's use or causing loss.

If you want to solve the problem you _must_ see that thinking in terms of
property is to make a mistake right at the beginning.

~~~
praptak
_"Here is the ideal: we pay people for the time/effort/resources to create,
then we all copy and use that product freely and unrestrictedly. Everyone gets
compensated for any loss, and everyone has freedom to access all gain."_

This would be perfect, but the obstacles to implement this ideal are enormous.
The first tough question: who are "we", how do we decide how much to pay for
an invention and how do we split the costs?

~~~
hxa7241
Yes, but let's face the hard questions, but right questions, in favour of
doing the obviously wrong thing just because it looks easy.

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dctoedt
Historical note: A famous U.S. Supreme Court patent-law case is known as _The
Barbed Wire Patent_ , 143 U. S. 275 (1892).[1]

Quotable quote: " _The difference between the [prior] Kelly fence and the
[patented] Glidden fence is not a radical one, but, slight as it may seem to
be, it was apparently this which made the barbed wire fence a practical and
commercial success. ... Under such circumstances, courts have not been
reluctant to sustain a patent to the man who has taken the final step which
has turned a failure into a success._ " 143 U. S. at 282-83.

[1] <http://supreme.justia.com/us/143/275/case.html>

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bediger
The whole concept of "intellectual property" rests on a pretty shaky
intellectual and moral foundation.

The big problem I see with "IP" is independent invention. If the act of
inventing something is so important that we must give special rights to
someone who invents, then we should also be looking at the quality of
independent inventino. And note that such independent invention happens all
the time. Look up the Bill Maher/The Onion "Afterbirther" saga. Who invented
the telephone? Who invented the telgraph? Who invented radio? Who invented
"the computer"? All cases where there's a legitimate claim to independent
invention. So, given that independent invention happens all the time, why
should we give ownership to the first person to file papers? Shouldn't we give
ownership to the person who had the biggest inspiration to get the idea? The
least incremental conception should get ownership.

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praptak
_"You have no fundamental right to enjoy the innovations produced by others
without compensating them."_

While I believe this is true, the other end is also true: nobody has
_fundamental_ right to enjoy the compensation from me. If they don't like it,
they can keep their "methods for highliting text" to themselves.

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ynniv
Is modern copyright even valuable? Except for brief moments in time (early
music recording, early software sales, the recent iOS store, occasionally
writers), copyright has mostly benefited the people who enforce it (the
publishers) and not the people whose works are protected (the authors). I
morally support compensating creators, but legal (and now criminal) copyright
seems to have no benefit.

~~~
hxa7241
Here is a good quote for you:

"Economic analysis has come up short of providing either theoretical or
empirical grounds for assessing the overall effect of intellectual property
law on economic welfare." \-- 'The economic structure of intellectual property
law'; Landes, Posner; 2003. (Conclusion, p422, s3.)

Landes and Posner are the accepted orthodox authority on the subject, and even
they are telling us that we do not even know if copyright is doing any good.

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wccrawford
Fences were never good at keeping people out. DRM will never be good at
keeping people out, either. Sure, DRM will prevent livestock from downloading
MP3s, but then, what wouldn't?

Also, I like how the ranchers could let their property invade and destroy
other people's, but the reverse wasn't true. If you tried to kill their
livestock, they'd see you hanged.

