BitTorrent is to movies what "bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles"
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
A physical property right refers to a physical good, whereas an intellectual property right refers more to behaviors (making a nondestructive copy) and to classes of goods (eg. storage media).
It's also relatively easy to define a physical good or a physical boundary of land, but 'original creations' are much less precise. Indeed, nothing is really created in isolation and oftentimes, the same invention is developed independently (and near at the same time) by multiple entities.
We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.
>We should rather call IP an intellectual monopoly privilege, than a right to a piece of property.
I hope you don't overestimate what physical property rights are, in particular that typical "fee simple" title is basically the license ("monopoly privilege"?) to a real estate vs. allodial title which is almost impossible, at least in the US nowdays.
But I would distinguish rights from their actual recognition. Rights can exist without them having to be recognized. They can't be taken away, just infringed against. If someone has been wrongly imprisoned, his rights still exist, even if they are being broken systematically.
Also, the difference between IP as a 'right' and as a 'privilege' consists in the difficulty of arranging for a system of IPs in a world without a monopolistic enforcer (or 'privilege granter'). It could be just that IP is a new phenomenon and our social systems are not yet prepared to deal with it. It could also be that IP is falsely recognized and their enforcement further breaks existing rights.
Property rights - it is government license to you for the exclusive (subject to zoning and other laws/rules) use for a specific parcel of land. That infringes upon all Earth's creatures' (humans including) rights for that specific parcel of land. The same way IP rights - government grants you the license for the exclusive (subject to various laws/rules) use for an idea, sound, symbol... That infringes upon all Earth's creatures' (humans including) right for that idea, sound, symbol...
It is like in logic/mathematics - the same basic rules create the same structure. The nature of individual objects doesn't matter. The IP space is undergoing the same parcelization, zoning, fencing, etc... (RIAA as a crazy city council) Actually, so far we've seen only beginning of this process ...
>Also, the difference between IP as a 'right' and as a 'privilege' consists in the difficulty of arranging for a system of IPs in a world without a monopolistic enforcer (or 'privilege granter').
This is what World Wars are for - solving such problems in the specific areas of rights, specifically real property rights, human rights, etc...
I could not have said it better. It's not property, and no allowance for treating the intangible as property exists in the US constitution. It grants a monopoly for a limited time in order to encourage artists and inventors. Obviously that's been perverted into what's now called IP -- fake "property" that is "owned" by corporations rather than artists and inventors.
The clause in the Constitution about granting exclusive rights was not creating something brand new, but just assigning the power to do it to the federal government instead of the states.
Allowing copyright and patent monopoly was allowed, yes. That's not the same thing as "property," which is the point I'm making here.
clause in the Constitution about granting exclusive rights was not creating something brand new, but just assigning the power to do it to the federal government
It was not new, agreed. It went beyond just naming who had the power to do it, however. The Bill of Rights laid ground rules for laws Congress could make. There was a lot of debate about the Copyright Clause in particular -- Thomas Jefferson in particular had a lot to say about it, including serious concerns about attempts to treat the knowledge in someone's head as "property". (Yes, he actually addressed that particular issue.)
To make twenty dollars you have to create and sell something that is worth more than twenty dollars to the buyer. This is possible because not everyone values things the same. If you have a bread factory you have enough bread that you will value it less than me, who would otherwise go hungry.
So yes, you lose a bread and I gain one, but you value the price higher and i value the bread. Who lose?
Agree. And the pernicious thing with this is that, while of course publishers and creators should be renumerated, doing this through scarcity, which is a natural condition in the physical world, does not make sense, as it is not a given in the virtual world, and scarcity should be avoided where possible, right?
Markets basically are good because of three things: 1) enabling efficient investments, 2) decentralized decisions, 3) and efficient use.
But in the virtual realm, while the first two of these are the same under scarcity, the 3rd is not, as without natural scarcity, efficient use is 3) as much use as possible.
Therefore a market-like popularity algorithm (no council of old men deciding what receives money, but popularity / appreciation / number of downloads) + a levy system, or something similar, would make the on-line market work much more in the spirit of the first, physical goods market, rather than according to the letter of that market.
And as the importance of virtual goods grows, it becomes more sensible to create a second market for it, so we have two free markets, instead of one.
For those interested, I wrote more about this in my (history) thesis: http://www.logilogi.org/pub/Enclosures/paper.pdf
Our IP laws basically give intellectual goods those attributes that allow a free market to work with them. Essentially the law makes intellectual goods behave like physical goods so that the market can deal with them.
Given that, I see nothing wrong with applying the term "property" to intellectual goods.
-- Jack Valenti, MPAA president, in testimony to Congress, 1982 http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm
I guess the film industry has gotten a bit less hyperbolic in the intervening years.
That is in the first sentence of the article.
For comparison, here is the introduction in his testimony:
"My name is Scott Turow. I'm the president of the Authors Guild, the largest society of published authors in the U.S., representing more than 8,500 book authors and freelance writers. Our members represent the broad sweep of American authorship, including literary and genre fiction, nonfiction, trade, academic, and children’s book authors, textbook authors, freelance journalists and poets. Guild members have won countless honors and all major literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature."
>The bolt-cutter quote comes from the president of the Author's Guild, not part of the film industry.
I said:
>The president of the Author's Guild, Scott Turow, is part of the film industry.
You said:
>On what basis do you make that claim?
I said:
>Scott Turow is a famous author who has had multiple books made into successful movies.
Now you have attributed to me an argument that:
>If a person's novel is adapted into a film that [...] mean[s] that every subsequent thing they say can be sensibly attributed to "the film industry".
I would submit that although I am a programmer, every subsequent thing that I say shouldn't be attributed to "the programming industry," but that it would be reasonable to attribute every subsequent thing that I say to "a member (or an ex-member) of the programming industry."
As the only reason that I commented was because of your statement that the president of the Author's Guild was not a part of the film industry, unless you dispute that a person who has a novel adapted into a film is part of the film industry, I'm not exactly sure what we're still talking about. Being a part of the film industry doesn't make his opinion any less legitimate, as it should be judged on its own merits, just as denying that he is part of the film industry doesn't make his opinion any more legitimate.
My original post was meant as something like "That quote is from someone who is not part of the film industry, thus attributing it to the film industry is wrong."
You seem to have mistaken that for something more like "The quote is correct because it is from the president of the Author's Guild, who is in no way, shape, or form connected with film."
I knew who Turow was the president. I knew Turow who was. I knew there were films of a few of his books. I did not consider any of that relevant given that he was speaking on behalf of the Author's Guild and not the MPAA or some other film industry organization. This is obvious from the article. Only if the quote is taken out of context to do people assume that the source is someone speaking on behalf of the film industry, as Jack Valenti was. I did not foresee that some would considered adaptations of Turow's books relevant, but I should have.
I should have been explicit in my original post that the problem I had with the parent was not really this trivial point but with digging up the Valenti quote as a lazy argument done evidently in lieu of reading even the first sentence of the article. It doesn't matter how wrong Turow is, he's not so wrong that mis-attributing his position for the sake of recycle something that a different person representing a different organization at a different time in a different context can be considered a mature reaction.
So yes, I was disputing from the start exactly something you thought I wasn't:that having a novel adapted makes you part of the film industry. Likewise, I mistook you for addressing an argument I thought obvious but hadn't been explicit about.
I apologize for wasting your time.
Check out these jury instructions from Massachusetts: http://www.mass.gov/courts/courtsandjudges/courts/districtco...
You expect a company to put in the time and money necessary to develop a good bicycle so they can sell one and then have it copied forever? How can a system like this possibly survive?
People in the developed world have lost almost all sense of the true cost of what they consume. We buy gasoline without paying or knowing the cost of undoing the environmental damage. We buy plastic cups and bowls and plates and forks and knives and spoons and bottles and packages without even thinking about the cost to recycle them or hold them in landfills until they decompose (if they even do). We buy clothes without considering the wage of the person that made them. We buy meat without concern for the suffering of the animals or the environmental degradation from the production of livestock. Or the impact to the soil from monoculture farming. Or the impact to our health from the monoculture farming. We buy technological gadgets without even knowing what chemicals they contain, where they come from, and what their global supply looks like. Then we think nothing of throwing those gadgets in the garbage five years later. We rely on minimum wage workers every day to stock our stores and clean our offices (and many other things) without caring about the struggles of low-income families.
And yes, we copy music without considering the financing required to produce art.
No, no one loses their bike with a bike copying machine. But quite a few people lose their jobs. And everyone loses the benefit of their innovation.
Bit torrent is a genuinely useful tool, that happens to be useful for both fully legitimate purposes as well as other uses.
I'd accept some lobby group applying pressure to make bit torrent "illegal" right after they get majority public agreement that cars should be illegal (bank robbers use them to make their escape!) and spray paint (graffiti taggers use it!)
He also wants DMCA's safe harbor provisions curtailed.
They want to levy egregious fines against anyone using BitTorrent for piratical ends, and make ISPs just as liable as their users. They don't need to outlaw BitTorrent when they can ban people from the Internet at will.
And furthermore they're not stupid. They know that BitTorrent is just a protocol, and it's presently just as easy to get pirated content over plain old HTTP as BitTorrent.
It's this sudden increase of processing power that allows millions of computers to run protocols like BitTorrent. That creates the infrastructure to run them in the first place. Although now they appear to be hardly computationally expensive, but even 20 years ago in 1991, would this have been possible?
Their problem is that this exponential nature of computing has vanished the floor on the price of distribution. Since, they're fighting an exponential this means that iteration also becomes far more easier. It's just a question of just a few more processor cycles.
The real world systems they're using to clamp down are fairly constant. Politicians and the art of law making hasn't really changed over the past 80 years or so. So, by the time it takes them to iterate and be ready for the next wave. It's successor would have knocked them off their feet.
So, in one corner you have a constant system. In the other you have an exponential. Who do you think wins?
That aside as Fuller would say, "don't fight forces. Use them."
note: as donaldc points out it really is more of a result of hard drive growth & bandwidth than pure processing power.
I think that this doesn't seem to be quite true. There is ample evidence to support the idea that it's current laws and litigation that are stifling innovation and "business plans". I'm of the opinion that if there is anything that is promoting or enabling piracy, it's the lack of innovation.
(edit - voicing agreement with the parent)
no innovation?
We've gone from CDs to online streaming music like pandora,last.fm, and grooveshark.
I remember when Napster first came out and the pirates of the Internet tried to legitimize their actions by saying that music was just too expensive and you couldn't "try before you buy". Next, it was DRM.
Now that music is 99 cents/song (and many times less than this), you can get it with no DRM, and you can pretty much listen to any song you want for free before buying, you would think that sales would increase and piracy would decrease.
Instead, it's worse than ever and sales have been tanking, which is exactly why the music industry wanted to stop it in the first place.
What "laws and litigation" are stifiling "business plans' and innovation?
I can still go down to my local hardware store and buy bolt cutters.
The funny thing to me is, I would think if they want effective tools for tracking down who is infringing on their copyrights, BitTorrent is great, because it's easy to see who is transferring what. Before BitTorrent came around, everyone was using ftp, irc, nttp, etc. which are harder to track.
Anyway, DVD decryption software would be the bolt-cutters.
ummmmmm ... how does this analogy work?
Bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles, a tool that facilitates and simplifies an activity.
So the analogy goes, BitTorrent facilitates and simplifies movies.
I think they left out a verb and meant to say "BitTorrent is to watching movies what bolt-cutters are to stealing bicycles".
They can be smart and embrace the change before it overwhelms them or be stuck culturally in traditional distribution and get swept away before recovering as music has done through iTunes and indy.
And, contrary to what those guys might want you to think, it cannot even be used for stealing.