to force exclusionary constrains upon digital property means we choose to abandon one of the key advantages of digital information.
it means we favor owning things over being free.
there's gotta be some equilibrium, which is precisely why copyright was originally intended to be a temporary thing.
Exceptions should include things like reverse engineering for making compatible accessories or compatible competitive products. They should include fair use for critique and criticism. They should include the right to resell your property and to repair or customize your own copy of a property. There are probably valid and important exceptions I'm not listing.
During that limited term and subject to those exceptions though copyright should be solidly enforced. Otherwise the people creating things will just be ripped off wholesale by people who do nothing but rip them off and relabel things.
Now, I think the copyright term is far too long. It is especially too long for abandoned works. I'd like to see something akin to trademark rules applied to copyright, in which if you're not offering a work or a work directly derived from it for X years the term ends early. The maximum term should be a bit shorter than it is for the specific work, too, but I think suing people for copying or modifying something you are no longer willing to sell them is asinine.
One might argue that we should prefer a world in which that sort of massive power is used sparingly.
Except in reality, you don't. The state very strongly enforces your property rights that's a good chunk of why the police exist, and most people do not own guns.
The OP argument is not unreasonable.
To wit: in Canada, there is actually no enshrined right to own property. The far left party opted to keep it out of the new constitution written in the 1980's so Trudeau Sr. was forced to keep it out if we were to have a new constitution at all. So it's an intellectual concept.
In some sense I enforce ownership of my house just by living here. Someone is here most of the time. The lights are on. There is activity. That keeps others out.
If I just abandoned the place, eventually someone might poke their head in and see if there was anything to take. Sure, that would be illegal, but the cops aren't going to post a guard for me under most circumstances.
You actually see this happen in downtrodden neighborhoods where whole blocks get abandoned. In theory that property is still owned by someone, but without anyone actually there, eventually houses get stripped of valuable goods and in some cases squatters move in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory is an academic theory of this point of view.
Another good example is house sitters. When traveling for extended periods of time, people will let trusted 3rd parties stay in their house for free. Why? Enforcement of property ownership.
When my 3yo kid takes a toy from another kid without asking and I tell him he has to give it back, that's socialization and that's not the state.
just because we don't walk on all fours and smell urine for information doesn't mean that we would not revert back to aggression and dominance if you remove all manmade recourses for settling disputes and enforcing property rights. why on earth would you think people would respect ownership of goods when you can just take what you want through intimidation? all ordered systems are at the mercy of entropy and it takes effort (i.e. the state) to maintain such order. it only takes one person to step out of line in times of anarchy for others to realise that it makes no sense to cooperate and follow rules when there is no one to enforce them, sending the whole system back into chaos.
It's feudal based on hard power in one way or another.
The way it's set up now is the cops enforce a common set of rules we agree upon.
You don't have the power to enforce your property rights. Nobody really does.
Sure, sometimes the dudes with guns show up and force them out, but that isn't a constant occurrence.
America's first copyright law goes back to 1790, or about 200 years before most people owned computers. It was adopted because people saw benefit in rewarding the people who created books and maps. We've extended IP protection over the years for reasons bad and good.
If you want to get rid of that, you need to explain how we'll get the same or better benefits with your approach. Because from my perspective supporting the current system means means I favor writers and musicians and researchers and artists getting paid for the good things they create over abstract principles.
Until we have a popular means of paying artists directly, or self-publishing, this will continue to be the case.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/05/25/about-that-deal/
(See under "Why are you sticking with traditional publishing!")
And I'll note that in addition to the obvious functions of editing, marketing, talent development, and vendor management, they also provide capital. One could say correctly that it's perfectly possible for software to all be sold by single individuals. But most software is produced by companies, quite a lot of whom take up-front investment.
Sometimes I have to stop myself from constantly grumbling "kids these days...", but wow, I'm seeing a lot of young people erecting mental barriers to acting on their dreams and aspirations. It's never been easier to make money in this country, but you have to a) put in the hours, b) stop giving away your stuff for free, and c) manage your expectations - nobody is saying that you're going to win the lottery by becoming the next Google or FB.
that seems contrary to wikipedia:
The 1790 Act [...] specifically noted that it did not prohibit copying the works of foreign authors.
it seems obvious the act was meant to reward some people. please drop the humanistic angle, it's simply not there.
It can be intended to spur creativity and innovation (and do so) while also being captured and circumscribed by different interests (in different ways over time).
This would include big identity-based interests, like nationality or ethnicity, that have been relevant in the history of this country (and every country).
It can be economically productive and unfair at the same time. So, do you work to make it more inclusive and target the benefits better? Or do you give it all up, the good with the bad?
That statement lacks a lot of nuance and presents it as a binary, mutually exclusive choice. Absolutist stances like this don't help the situation which is rife with many use cases that are and aren't valid. You can have this as a general principle you prefer, but it cannot work as an hard-fast rule for all digital properties.
But throurough my short life on earth I've perceived a stronger pull towards property which (again, seeking equlibrium) makes me use a more extreme language in support of the other viewpoint... counterbalance.
I mean, it's a contentious issue for China and the USA...
My view on the matter is that us (as global humans in a global civilization) have yet to figure out how to strike a balance in this world with an Internet.
In my experience its no different than the hyperbolic policy of hiring people to fill in holes someone else dug. Its a market built on fiction to feed the special interests that profit from it.
And my position has just grown more extreme in the last decade - I originally thought compromise had to be right because copyright has become so pervasive so relatively fast in human history it might have had merit. But in the day to day action of actually creating information in myriad forms and interacting with it I can't obscure the reality that none if it is meant to benefit anyone but a select few who built (or in modern times dramatically expanded) their temple to IP to feed their own greed.
For example: We're just wrapping up a new release of one of our products that I've been working on since August of 2017. It has over 1400 hours of work dedicated to it (single developer - myself). There's no way that we could possibly dedicate that amount of time to a software project without knowing that we could recoup the costs.
And that is the trick. People want software. We threw this extra, pointless step in the middle between "people C want X software" and "pay people D to make X" in the form of "have publishers / corporations P pay people D to make X to sell to C".
Every conservation on this always functionally boils down to "but that is so different from the way thing are now!" which of course it is. Its the same reason why the market for prohibited drugs is so much more convoluted, dangerous, and disconnected from regular commerce - you make things more complicated, like criminalizing posesssion of the good, or enabling the profiteering off information, and the market will warp to both meet demand and maximize profit using the framework the government provides to do so.
Its really no different from how you are told to get started in music or art or even how to get a job programming. You make stuff for free to start out to get a portfolio of work proving you know what you are doing. Once you can prove your ability you ask for money to make more, be it words, art, designs, code... its how the world has worked for all time. It is only in the last two hundred years this model of "make stuff and ask for money later with the backing power of the state" perverted commerce. And all of us commoners never even got to benefit. We still work in classical employment. We still need to do the work for free to prove we can make more information in the future. We still get paid for our time, not the fruits of our labor. Which is fine - its how the whole rest of the economy works!
There is only one scarce thing in the creation of new ideas and that is your time. You should be charging for it. Its all thats worth anything in the equation of creativity. Most people do charge for it with salaries. The world still predominantly runs in tandem with reality. Its only a very few people who get to throw a state backed wrench into economics to rent seek already made ideas.
And how to you prevent someone from just creating a piece of software, keeping it to themselves, and then charging others if they want a private copy of it ? Are you going to demand that software developers release their code to the public, and enforce that through the state ?
What about live performances ? Are you going to mandate that performers invoice each person in attendance for their time ?
You forget that another key advantage of digital information is that we can have a digital economy.
then again, I speak as a human being, not as a profit motivated institution.
There are strong arguments in favor of limiting copyright as it was originally intended (in the US constitution at least). Where the limited time monopoly exists to incentivize people to create, but where the goal is to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the public benefit.
Long term ownership and control can stifle science and art with owners shutting down tenuously connected derivative work.
If not, you should try it, it's a really eye-opening experience that will give you really valuable insight into the world that we live in. The one thing that you will learn is that we are all creatures of the environment we operate in, and very few of us actually have economic/political power that extends very far, so one should always be very careful about ascribing ulterior motives to other people. Most of the time, people just want to make a decent amount of money so that they can have a nice life with their families.
Jaron Lanier talks about this a lot in his books and speaking engagements, and I would highly recommend his books for a better perspective.
For example, if someone the software I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I loose out on revenue I would have otherwise received from them. If someone uses the car I own without my permission and doesn’t give it back; I am out thousands of dollars, I have no means to get to work, and no means of purchasing groceries.
Stealing is not black and white and rules and regulations should reflect that.
You could try to argue theft in contexts where the owner's willingness to give is ambiguous is not clear-cut (eg taking one piece of candy from the jar is fine but taking all the candy is theft), but that's ambiguity in communication and cultural convention, not in the concept of theft itself.
In order for something to be stolen it must be taken away. If you make an award winning painting and hang it on your mantleplace and I paint a perfect copy of it that doesn't mean that it is suddently missing from your house. I may have devalued it and I certainly would have infringed but not stolen anything.
Even ownership has such radically different meanings between the two they probably shouldn't have the same word. There is a vast space of things that nobody owns called the public domain. Saying you can't own a chair would be a bizarre invasion of rights. It doesn't matter how long chairs have been around - the fact it existed in the wood age doesn't mean you can no longer own one.
Saying that you own the concept of all chairs and all must pay tribute is a downright bizarre megalomania. They have existed from the wood age and long before any current civilizations were even alive - to claim exclusive ownership of something so universal and ancient is absurd.
Intellectual property isn't a natural right by any means - it is a pragmatic policy granted by governments meant to serve a purpose. It operates based upon treaties in the first place.
A hypothetical newly discovered underwater civilization copying from our airwaves would not be cause for military intervention. The same underwater civilization robbing freighters for cargo would be cause for intervention.
Society as a whole benefits from a robust system of copyright, trademarks and patents to incentivize art and innovation. But just as too weak a system will slow innovation by making it less financially viable, too strong a system will slow innovation by making it harder and more expensive to build new things out of old ones. We need to strike a balance, but the popular notion that ideas and expressions are strongly analogous to real property will likely lead to policies that are, on balance, harmful.
That IP law in the U.S. was conceived of as an economic incentive issue—and not an ethical one—is strongly suggested in the “copyright clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” [0]
Thomas Jefferson elaborated on his own views on IP in a letter to Isaac McPherson in 1813 [1]:
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”
To reiterate a bit of what you said, if “intellectual property” is not property at all, it cannot be stolen—only infringed upon. And the difference is important because whereas theft is a violation of natural law, infringement is a violation of the rules of a specific society.
China is a different society and it has different rules. If we want to make respecting our country’s copyrights, trademarks and patents a precondition of trade, that seems like a good idea—but we should just say that. The drama of calling it “theft” is unnecessary and wrong.
By the way, I recently read and recommend “Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction” [2] by Siva Vaidhyanathan for an all-around introduction to intellectual property.
[0] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/law/us-constitution/
[1] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....
[2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/intellectual-propert...