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The excuse for a limited copyright in the United States is that an author who has produced a book and has had the benefit of it for that term has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes the property, which does not belong to it, and generously gives it to the eighty-eight millions. That is the idea. If it did that, that would be one thing. But it does not do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author’s property, merely takes from his children the bread and profit of that book, and gives the publisher double profit. The publisher, and some of his confederates who are in the conspiracy, rear families in affluence, and they continue the enjoyment of these ill-gotten gains generation after generation. They live forever, the publishers do. -Mark Twain

The questions you ask are complex legal questions but they aren’t novel by any means. There is over 100 years of case law in the US and I promise the courts have dealt with more interesting facts, cite more historical perspective, and use better logic and reasoning than you get in this thread.

Hell you could read Mark Twain’s entire statement to the House and Senate Committee on patents and walk away with a richer person and in Twain like fashion I’ll even link you his statement in perpetual property rights via https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/19/mark-twain-on-the...

That mark twain quote was pre-internet age. Nowadays you don't need publishers to disseminate your work.

All the most successful authors in the world all seem to use publishers.

All you need to do is replace publisher with online ad companies, like google, who will reap all the reward. Say there was no publisher you, me, everyone publishes Harry Potter books on our website. People will use google to find them and google AdWords on own websites to try to monetize someone else’s property, but Only the ad company wins.

Honest question have you ever created anything of value that someone with deep pockets cane along and ripped off?

Twain's quote seems to be that when copyright expires, the retail price of a book stays the same, just the publisher stops paying the author (or their descendants).

It's a long time since something went out of copyright in the United States, but I've seen similar things in other fields. In ~2008, Saleae figured out a way to make a (24MHz 8-channel) logic analyser with an off-the-shelf microcontroller, and sold it for $149 [1]. Today, you can get a chinese clone using the same microcontroller for $9 [2].

Seems to me the retail price didn't stay the same, rather it dropped by 94%, presumably due to multiple clone manufacturers competing on price.

[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/378 [2] https://www.banggood.com/USB-Logic-Analyzer-24M-8CH-Microcon...

Removing the context from copyright into the larger umbrella of IP (patents and trademarks) you touch on the other half of the coin (consumer experience) whereas obviously Twain focused on the creator side.

From the consumer side, I don’t purchase anything from amazon because of the counterfeit problem. Now consider counterfeits scaled to every facet of your life. In a world of no IP protections consider walking into a mall and seeing 10 Apple stores and not knowing which is the real Apple store selling real products, and which are low quality fakes. Consider the problem with fake negative reviews by competition paid for by competition scaled out to fake, shit products to destroy good will in your company/products/brand.

That is a trademark issue though. Most of the criticisms of IP seem to be about patents and copyrights, not trademarks.

The Twain quote says "[IP right expiry] generously gives it to the eighty-eight millions. That is the idea. If it did that, that would be one thing. But it does not do anything of the kind."

I propose copyright and patent expiry _does_ do that, as illustrated by the example of a logic analyser being 94% cheaper.

Trademarks are another matter, I agree.

You’re talking about price. That’s not what Twain was talking about, read the statement.

In your example, Twain would have been the original creator and owner of the equalizer IP. He could have licensed that to one or all of the manufacturers, it’s his choice, so if he licensed to many manufacturers and one sells it for 94% cheaper the consumer has their choice, but whether you buy the generic or name brand the Creator is going to get paid a royalty for their idea no matter what.

But the law says after a term the government takes the creators idea and gives it to the public...but that’s not what happens, really what happens is the government takes the creators ideas and now says deep pocket business can now make money on the creators ideas....like in your example, you didn’t take the IP and make it, you bought it from another company who cut the creator out and they are making money.

Further what Twain would say is...well why doesn’t the government come and take the property of the manufacturer (like the actual land, building, machines) after a term, is there really any difference between Twain’s ideas that manifest into a book or the business owners ideas that manifest into the business (land/building/machines).

What do you think Twain means by giving it to the 88 million? When he says "If it did that, that would be one thing" what do you think is the "that" he's talking about, the acceptable result of copyright expiry, in terms of regular people reading his writing?

I don't think Twain expects that out-of-copyright books should be available for less than the cost of paper, or that everyone would have a printing press at home, or that he was anticipating photocopiers or smartphones or e-book readers.

I think Twain meant a larger number of people having access to the content, such as by serialisation in newspapers and super-cheap printed copies.

> International trade in real goods demands cheap. IPR demands rent which is "not cheap" -So the US demands for IPR rents on goods made in china, is like cutting your nose to spite your face: If you drive China to pay IPR taxes, you will drive china to seek IPR inside itself to avoid the taxes and charge YOU to copy them.

Back in Shanzhai days, there was a popular saying about the attitude of American "Big Business" to Chinese industry: "you do all the hard work, and we will do all the money." That's a very equitable separation of labour :) American Big Co. people are mad because they can't continue doing that.

Seems like a believably self-serving local attitude held by biased humans thinking in their own self-interest.

Funny how these kinds of accusations work, no? :)

> "I have the cake you don't unless you pay me" is very distinct from "You are not allowed to sing happy birthday without paying me"

Sure, but what about "You are not allowed to make this cake unless you pay me"?

There is no strict gap between what is and what is only an idea, which is what you seem to be implying.

The problem isn't about what exists and what doesn't, the problem is a (necessary) bug in the way value is assigned.

You can’t copyright a recipe

If you're being literal, sure, but you can copyright an algorithm.

Nope, but you can patent it with a bit of fiction about inventing a computer that performs the algorithm.

But you can copyright a list of steps to make other things.

The expression, possibly, though strong limitations exist. The functional consequence or idea, no.

See Sega v. Accolade or Feist v. Rural Telephone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

Patents cover ideas and inventions, including processes.

No, it is pretty clearly established that lists are not afforded copyright protection.

The US has a 150 year head start on IP production, of course it benefits us to play by these rules. It also benefits China to say “yea IP isn’t real” but then again neither is the idea of the chinese nation or the unified states of America. human rights and property are also intersubjective reality.

Human rights turn out to be very real to people who do not have them.

When the world economy worked on real goods, people frequently started wars to take them.

I feel like your (and most) anti-intellectual property arguments are built on terrible strawman, so let's go through your terrible strawman.

>One is an absolute. The cake is and moves. The other is an idea. You get rent from me expressing an Idea. Do I have to pay if I hum it inside my head?

Obviously not, and to suggest that intellectual property laws would require rent payments for thinking about a song is so odious and unfair that the speaker must be assumed to be acting outside of the realm of honest discourse.

>Do I have to promise not to tell anyone in written form?

? How is your concept of intellectual property so divorced from reality? In what country does one make a promise not to hum a song to a rights holder in written form? This beggars belief that you are anything other than some uninformed radical.

>What if I change more than 90% of the notes but keep one theme?

As with all of intellectual property, unless you are attempting to commercialize your idea, you aren't going to be seriously targeted for using someone's intellectual property.

I struggle to treat this post as anything but the uninformed ramblings of a true radical. I mean, could you at least pretend to have a real world understanding of intellectual property when you create your examples?

Here's a question for you: Have you ever created anything in your life with value that could be protected by intellectual property laws (copyright, trademark, patent, etc)? Have you ever created anything of value and given it away? Or are these ruminations about intellectual property purely hypothetical?

Are you sure you're on the right track? The least you can do is not make the same mistake that you're accusing other of.

> How is your concept of intellectual property so divorced from reality? In what country does one make a promise not to hum a song to a rights holder in written form? This beggars belief that you are anything other than some uninformed radical.

Fallacy: 1) Ad Hominem

> As with all of intellectual property, unless you are attempting to commercialize your idea, you aren't going to be seriously targeted for using someone's intellectual property.

Fallacy: Appeal to probability

> I struggle to treat this post as anything but the uninformed ramblings of a true radical. I mean, could you at least pretend to have a real world understanding of intellectual property when you create your examples?

Fallacy: Ad Hominem

> Here's a question for you: Have you ever created anything in your life with value that could be protected by intellectual property laws (copyright, trademark, patent, etc)? Have you ever created anything of value and given it away? Or are these ruminations about intellectual property purely hypothetical?

Fallacy: Ad Hominem

You could have ended your post by pointing out the fallacies, but Internet has taught you to go a step further (Look at me doing the same thing)

Fallacy: Fallacy fallacy.

The worst kind of munchkin is the one that thinks A) a fallacious argument is a wrong one B) that reducing arguments to fallacies is a beneficial way to communicate and C) who misuses fallacies as a tool to avoid arguing merits.

For shame. Utterly, you provided the worst response possible. Meta, petty, inherently fallacious and ultimately pointless.

As with all of intellectual property, unless you are attempting to commercialize your idea, you aren't going to be seriously targeted for using someone's intellectual property.

Yeah, tell that to Thomas-Rasset. Ordered to pay $220,000 for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa.

Many others have had their internet connections cut off or worse.

Come on, sure you can produce historical outliers, meanwhile, the vast majority of every person reading this has stolen far, far, far, far more than 24 songs worth of software and media.

It's absolutely absurd that you would ignore the reality on the ground for hundreds of millions to pretend that the ultra-rare exception is somehow the rule.

Be honest: have you stolen ANYTHING online ever? Have you ever been caught?

I have infringed on copyright, and I have gotten two warnings over it, which were enough to get me to stop doing so on my home connection.

This post is all critique but no counter argument, all style and no substance. Maybe include some concrete examples?

Well aside from your snide tone this is actually a good rebut. Since I've earned money from IPR and earn money from working on openly available code I do actually understand more than one side of this story. Chinese IPR theft is not about mp3 downloads. It's industrial in scale and extent. I believe it's self abnegating because they would do better to overcome it by out competing. But IPR is a very odd social construction which in modern terms applied to services and not goods probably impedes the "march of progress" more than it helps regarding inventors. Truly, it just sucks money out of emerging ICT and replaces it by rent seeking behaviour.

In real goods, trade protected methods are as good. Cost of inventing is a compete mishmash, most fundamental IPR lies in publicly funded research. Much medical IPR is ethically complex. Human DNA patenting had to be fought off. Monsanto and Roundup resistance and wild crossbreeding.. wierd law.

So.. stripped of your ad hominem you make good points and I made facile ones. Well done.

Why be an arrogant prick btw? Is your ego on display here? Can you not think beyond the words to the concepts or are you so glued to IPR income models that even theorized weaknesses offend you?

What flaws in industrial IPR can you acknowledge?

Do you think the google-Motorola-lenovo sell around patents in mobiles and other things was sensible? I mean sure, it defended googles core business but it was a giant potlach of competing patent baskets. Samsung and Apple at war is good for who ? Cisco holding patents on sfps? Epson and chip marked ink cartridges? C'mon man, these are broken business models.

China is big. It's a big market. We can build a better market and not give in to protectionism. IPR fights are all about keeping money in the USA but cheap labour in China.