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Trademarks, copyrights, patents - The IP thread - Upd p6 - EU music copyright.
Posts
1. AngelHedgie is pretty spot on in this thread, even with his overuse of bold and italics
2. He pointed out that many people who claim to be "Anti-patent/copyright," specifically for IP, are really more anti-corporation (RAWWWRR Amazon for example). Which is odd, because I can be pretty anti-corporation at times (because there are many big evil ones out there), which is exactly why I am pro-copyright/patents.
Take the example of China lifting patents and undercutting other companies left and right. Without the protection of a copyright/patent, how successful do you think an entrepreneur in this country would be? I have a feeling the giants of the field would be able to out-produce and all around out-business any single person from now until the end of time that came up with a great idea. So you have the problem of people not releasing these ideas for fear of them being stolen, which has been pointed out as one of the original reasons behind patents in the first place.
The Amazon thing is like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit (by most people's interpretation, let's not get sidetracked with the specifics of that one). It's a great example of how a very good system (our court system / patents) can be implemented poorly. It doesn't mean either system should be scrapped.
I will put forth to you the same challenge I did to him then - find me a single good software patent.
And considering that by most accounts, the mcdonalds coffee suit makes MORE sense the more you read about it, I think it's kind of the opposite of the amazon case.
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Here's the problem: When you say "making", what you mean is "thinking of". And no one is going to argue that intellectual property is a bad thing, but intellectual property is not the same thing as real property, and it exists for different reasons.
The proof of that should be obvious simply from its implementation. If I make a table, that table is mine until I die— and I can even decide who gets it after I die. If I invent a table, I can stop other people from making tables only for 20 years, after which time the idea of a table belongs to everyone. We want to incentivize invention, but we recognize that over the long term society is benefitted by ideas being public.
Well, I wouldn't say it quite like that.
You can call that hippie bullshit if you like.
So, define good. This is, and always has been, the problem with your side of the argument - you rig the rules so that you win. I would argue that the LZW compression algorithm patent, when one looks at the scope of it, is a properly formed software patent - it covers a specific encoding algorithm.
No, I would call it the words of a man born into the gentry of the US, and who made his living on the backs of others. And no, pointing that out is not, as much as you would like to think otherwise, an argumentum ad hominem. It's funny that you can't pull up similar quotes from say, Paul Revere (being a silversmith, his livelihood was built on the designs that he developed).
To the contrary, his livelihood, while he was a silversmith, was built on the sale of exquisitely worked silver, the product of decades of experience (his own and that of his apprentices) which could by no means be made public. That's not really relevant at all, though, and I'm not sure why you brought it up.
I will note that you seem to be attributing some kind of moral sentiment to Jefferson's words, while it seems to me to be a fairly factual, if poetic, statement on the nature of ideas. I'm not so much tempted to accuse you of logical fallacy as to ask why you feel the need to argue with the quote at all?
Not to be combative, but to call IP a modern issue ignores a lot of history. To be sure, it's important on a scale that even our grandparents never could have imagined, but that doesn't invalidate the preexisting philosophy.
...okay?
Edit: Right, that's a bit facetious. I know what you're saying— but it's what I'm saying. A hundred years ago, the idea that intellectual property could be the foundation of an economy was— well, it didn't even exist. However the nature of intellectual property, the concept that ideas have value both to the inventor and to everyone in a way which is related to but at the same time fundamentally different from physical property, is well-trod soil.
Customer signs contract for product, which includes both design and manufacturing. Customer gets prototypes a few months before production, hires Chinese company to reverse-engineer it. Customer buys out of our contract (never as much as we would have made, even subtracting cost of labor and materials), pays Chinese company to produce product at 20% of our cost.
Result is, an American company loses a deal and a customer, and THEIR customers get a shittier product. Works out nicely for C-levels and major shareholders of the theiving company, as well as the Chinese government. Everyone else in the deal is screwed.
There are a lot of assumptions and oversimplifications in that explanation I'd be willing to explain if asked, but that's the short version from one of the more impartial sources in this industry. I'm not old enough to be so jaded that I can't wonder, "Does it have to be this way?"
edit: Thought about adding my thoughts on manufacturing processes and their inherent difficulty in reproducing as a "natural patent," but thought better of it. WTB some engineers up ins.
The concept of intellectual property in other regards is fair less obviously a good idea.
While everyone supports the right for producers of IP to make money and to do so by virtue of their skills, that is in no way the same thing as supporting the right to make money by exploiting ill concieved laws regarding intelletual property. Claiming that they're the same thing, or that the current model is the only one which works is entirely misguided or lacking in imagination. Most importantly, however, it's clearly unsustainable.
There are both economic and ethical ways of looking at things, and neither favours the current system.
The facts, as they stand are that artificial scarcity is detrimental to the consumer, and consumers these days are more aware of that fact and have a far greater number of tools for circumventing this scarcity. There are infinite goods and scarce goods and the marginal costs of infinite goods is zero. Recordings, blue prints, software are all infinite goods. Concert tickets, product development, personal time and professional and technical support services are scarce goods. The advance of technology is unstoppable and consumers are getting ever more savvy and cannot be prevented from exploiting properies of infinite goods. So, things have to change because consumers are not going accept their devices being crippled, and are not going to pay for an inferior experience or an equal one they can otherwise get at a lesser cost (be it in terms of financial cost or effort and convenience) and while business models are predicated upon the assumption that things are otherwise will crumble and then those who do intellectual labour find they're unable to make a living.
So, what is the solution? Find mechanisms to exploit the properties of infinite goods to make scarce goods more desireable or valuable (i.e. free music ala NIN increases the fan base and makes the Collector's Editions valuable commodities upon which money can be made). Use infinite goods platform for other scarce properties (i.e. Google - a powerful free search engine attracts many users which allows them to utilise the scarce good of customer attention and advertising space to make money). Take advantage of the fact that we overestimate the value of free goods, so including them in other limited transactions makes them seem additionally attractive beyond their strict value to consumers. And so on, and so forth.
The other thing to consider is - are you paid for the manual labour your grandfather did 70 years ago? What about the work you did 10 years ago? Why should someone continue to be paid for the intellectual work for they did 6 months, let alone 6 years ago?
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
Manual labor is easily replicable by anyone willing to undertake. "Inventiveness" on the other hand, is not, but it is easy to copy it's products.
So, the discussion should start from the point that "people will pirate" and then evolve to business solutions?
So pay them for the inventiveness. The scarce resource of one's expertise is marketable, the infinite resource that is IP is not.
Take advantage of being advantage of being an innovator. Capitalise on being the first to market and the advantages of consumer trust and brand identification, not to mention the headstart on further innovation.
And the contrary comparison to your statement is the products of manual labour are limited and have a cost of reproduction, the products of intellectual labour are not and do not.
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
Re: Software patents
If people continue to say how good software patents are and don't address any of the points in post #37 it really isn't much of a discussion.
I agree with what you're saying and I'm going further by claiming that a discussion to make the appropriation of infinite goods without commercial intent morally acceptable should take place.
Does that mean that you believe that without current IP Laws the R&D sector would suffer?
It's already a big concern that research by drug companies doesn't get output as academic papers for example.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
There is a specific case study of the pharmaceutical industry in chapter 8 if you're interested.
It's not really 'rigging' so much as 'definition of patent'. By good I mean non-obvious to most programmers, and also more than just a mathematical algorithm. A compression algorithm is actually a good example - probably non-obvious, I'll give you that - but it treads dangerously close to the mathematical algorithm problem.
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Well, you really can't define good. How about, find a patent that's not absurdly simple, or an obvious extension of any programming practice or idea.
EX)
Double linked list, would be the logical extension of a singly linked list
Yes, I agree. The LZW compression is probably one of the few good software patent. Algorithm patents are one thing, but what irks me is the large amounts of non-algorithm patents for software.
There as an "if clause" and you should probably keep reading....
If you're suggesting that physical property and intellectual property are abstractions in the same sense then you've lost your mind. The fact that they are both abstractions doesn't tell us anything - there are good and bad abstractions and intellectual property is a bad one.
Unlike physical property intellectual property can literally be possessed and brings with it exclusivity of possession. Not everyone can drive a car at the same time, everyone can watch the same recording, experience the same story or use the same program simultaneously.
Now, this doesn't necessarily tell us what ought to be regarding IP, only what is the case.
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
I think we agree.
That they don't always work that way, particularly in reference to software, is another issue. The small firm point is not minor.
Intellectual labour does, yes. The products of intellectual labour have a zero cost of reproduction.
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
Hooray for us/the universe continues to make sense/that practically makes us family.
Es-annon NEVA 4GET
I understand what you're saying, but (that's how it seems to me) you're doing it from a position of ignorance. I also heard that "Patents are good."(tm).
The report makes a very good case about why almost all the attributed to IP direct benefits are not in any way a cause of the legislation and has several industry studies showing how the effects persist without the presense of IP laws.
I haven't been able to find significant flaws in their logic & examples, but I'm not saying there aren't any. Won't mind being presented with one. I'm way more inclined to believe statements backed by examples than plain statements.
Oh yeah, also, "there has never been a good argument" is kinda....kinda lame.
And again, I'm going to point out that your "problem" is a false one. The argument given for why algorithms shouldn't be patentable usually boils down to "well, we haven't done it in the past", ignoring the points of the fact that developing new techniques is a non-trivial process, taking time, labor, and money to do so. It is a cop-out in so many ways.
Hello, sir. Can you read?
Seriously, this argument shows why consumerism really needs to just die. "Let's ignore the fact that actually making the original product cost time and money, and just focus on that it's easy to make copies!" This is the mentality that's gotten us into the mess we're in with regards to resource depletion - the shallow "it's all about me" attitude that lets people ignore that, amazingly, there's more to the matter than "I want." Please, explain to me why someone who creates something you want shouldn't be recompensed for their work because they work in intangibles that doesn't make you look like a greedy pig?
Or, let's shitcan the consumerist model (which, let's face it, hasn't really worked all that fucking well for us so far) and go back to the model where the needs of both the producer and purchaser are balanced against one another. Something tells me that my plan ends up being the healthier one in the long run.
Nice crab thinking you got there.
The reason why mathematical algorithms are illegal to patent is because you don't 'invent' them, you 'discover' them. It's the same reason why you couldn't patent long division, or the pythagorean theorem. They're natural laws, which are not 'invented'.
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In the marine and auto industries, only the Big Three can get contracts like that. They basically crap all over their suppliers. Anyway!
Our canned contract clause says that they owe us for about 1 year of manufacturing of our own design. Any more than that and people wouldn't sign the contract to do business with us. The Detroit 3 automakers can afford to do that basically because of massive contracts that people are willing to take risks with. The rest of us, however, cannot get any customer to sign a contract that guarantees us five or ten years of manufacturing, no matter how good the design is.
So there is basically a built-in 6 month to 2 year patent coverage based on manufacturing contracts, but it's frustrating to watch. It used to be that a customer would come to a company like ours, get a design for a product they need, and get it from that company. Then when they needed a new design, the some company would redesign something for them and produce that as well. That's slightly different than the modern version.
"Hey, let's do business! Oh, actually.... we already got the good part from you, so we're gonna take the lucrative profitable section of our deal to a much cheaper source that you can't possibly match."
Bah.
If you're having such difficulties on the manufacturing side, perhaps your company should dump that part of its business. Subcontract it to those same Chinese manufacturers that are apparently able to build it at 1/5 the cost.