Comment by jdreaver | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdreaver | Hacker News Reader

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EDIT: I'm sorry three of us replied at the same time. I didn't mean to gang up on you.

> All "property" is imaginary.

When it comes to the current legal notion of property, then yes, assigning something as someone's "property" is imaginary.

The problem is "real" property cannot be duplicated without expending resources, whereas IP can be duplicated for free. For example:

If I make a car, you can't just "copy" it. Taking the car is stealing, and I think that is immoral because you have deprived the original owner of their work.

If I make a short story, then "copying" the story means using your own pen and paper (or your own hard drive to place a sequence of bits) to copy. I don't think this should be illegal. That is, I don't think that having a particular sequence of bits on your hard drive should legally allow men with guns to enter your home, label you a criminal, fine you, and/or send you to jail.

In that sense, not all property is "imaginary." We can make a distinction between tangible property, that exists as mass, and intellectual property, which is a set of ideas/words/code/etc. Tangible property is rivalrous; we can't both use it at the same time. Intellectual property can be used by many individuals at once, so calling it someone's "property" and enforcing that claim with force creates artificial scarcity.

I do feel bad that people who expect and rely on IP laws could feel cheated if IP laws were to disappear tomorrow. But to pretend IP law is some sort of natural thing is a bit naive. People have been creating ideas since we evolved a brain. People will continue to create without IP law. To make money off of your creations just requires a different business model.

There are no natural laws. Just because you (or your forefathers) were first on a piece of land, what natural right grants you it? Surely it's far more natural that, if I can overpower you and take it, it's mine? That's actually how nature typically works. The notion that it's "immoral" is a purely human construction. Why is that immoral, but my spending 5 years writing a book, only to see nothing in return because everyone hands it around for free is moral?

I'm not saying people will stop having ideas, or creating music, etc. What I am saying is that people without private means or patrons will have to stop performing creative acts that require a significant time investment. If I've got a wonderful idea for a book/film/game/whatever, but know it will take 5 years to make, how do I make it when I need to work 8-6 to pay for food/shelter etc?

Eliminating IP is to construct a return to patronage; the very wealthy deciding what creative output it worthwhile. IP is actually a hugely egalitarian concept; the world can decide what has value, and reward the creator post-hoc, because the creator is ensured a return.

>because the creator is ensured a return.

No it is not. There can be ideas and "copyright" without having IP. But IP does also mean that the "property" can be owned by people that did not create it. This notion is fundamentally wrong and de-valuates any creative work. In patents you can already see it (most inventors are getting just a little fixed money -- the most of the value goes to the companies) -- but also in copyrighted work. The most of the value goes not to the performers of the art (eg music) but to the distributors.

Why is it "fundamentally wrong"? I created the work, I'm free to do with it as I please. I can give it away for free. I can charge $10 a copy. I can come to an arrangement that someone else has the right to set the price, in return for something else I want. That many musicians choose to sell their creations to distributors is entirely their choice. It obviously didn't "devalue" it to them at the point of sale, else they wouldn't have sold it. That many patents are owned by companies is because they were created by employees whose creative output was owned by the company in exchange for a salary.

If creative output has a value, then people should be free to exchange their creations for anything they like. To create restrictions that prevent people from writing a book then making an arrangement with a publisher, is just to prevent people from actually being able to do anything with their creations.

>I created the work, I'm free to do with it as I please.

Under the current law: NO!

That is just a dream from the people that are pro-IP -- they know, that is a dream, but they want you to dream it.

If you are working for a company and have an idea, the company gets the patent and you get (if you are lucky) a fixed amount (~$500 is a typical amount in my country) and the patent belongs to the company -- you don't even have the right to use the stuff for yourself.

IP means, in its conclusion, that the creators are disowned and the "owners" own your ideas. You created it, you are busted!

I'm guessing you're being deliberately obtuse here. You were completely free to do with your work as you please, and you "pleased" to sell your work to a company in exchange for some consideration. If you don't want IP transfer, or first-refusal fixed price patent transfer, then don't sign that employment contract. I had them negotiated out of my last agreement, and I'm free to spend my personal time creating whatever I want, knowing the rights to it will be owned entirely by me.

No I am not "obtuse".

I guess, you are.

When you still find an employer, that makes a contract like that, call yourself lucky. In my country, it is a law -- and you can't cancel out laws in my country in contracts.

Not everybody is so lucky, that he has enough money or finds fitting freelancer work.

Ask the music people. They (oftentimes) can't sell their music without having contracts with big companies -- and they have to sell out all their rights.

But it seems that you just view the world from your standpoint -- fading out any negatives -- and everybody that has different experiences as you do, is just stupid or "obtuse" in your view. With such an attitude on your side, a discussion makes little to no sense.

>But IP does also mean that the "property" can be owned by people that did not create it. This notion is fundamentally wrong

How is that that "fundamentally wrong"?? It's just a natural extension of giving exclusivity to the creator of the work. Are you saying it's "fundamentally wrong" to, say, commission a creative work from an artist for your exclusive use, the way it was done for thousands of years?!? Treating creative works as a kind-of property, greatly simplifies things.

>and de-valuates any creative work.

HOW?!?! How is _paying_ for a creative work, devaluing it? I'm sure there are multitudes of examples when the artist was screwed out of profiting from their work, then again there are multitudes of examples when artists greatly profited from their work (Hey there, George Lucas).

>The most of the value goes not to the performers of the art (eg music) but to the distributors.

Sometimes that's true, and sometimes that isn't true. But even in the former case, there are good reasons why that may happen. Furthermore, it's not like this is limited to music or creative works. A condo developer may sell a piece of (physical) property, for moderate profit, to a savvy real estate agent who then flips it for twice the amount. Did the developer get screwed? Maybe, maybe not. That's just the way things are.

Personally, I think Jefferson's take on patents illuminates this subject pretty well:

It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. 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 any body.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter...

The thing is, there are good arguments for many aspects of patents, copyright and trademarks, however to try and establish them under the banner of Intellectual Property is both inaccurate and damaging.

In the long run, the pushing of IP is to the level that a Google search for "Mickey Mouse Law" lists the first result as the Copyright Extension Act https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mickey+mouse+law is the factor that might lead to laws being dialled back so far that patronage will be the only option.

The reformists are the IP industries only real hope at this point, because if they are not paid attention to, then the abolitionists will win the argument.

Personally, I think there are other ways to fund intellectual creation like this than to return to patronage, but I want to lay out a hypothetical since your comment intrigues me.

In a world where we had a basic income guarantee, you could think of that as basically universal patronage. Sure, artists and other "thought workers" might not make as much money as others, but it would be a viable way to spend your time. And, actually, you could probably even make more money since the stuff you do in your free time would act as effective advertising for hiring you for your services (e.g. a commissioned work, or consultation etc).

Would you have any objection in principle to such an arrangement? I ask because it actually sounds pretty nice to me.

The artificial scarcity is the point.

The fundamental problem is that, as you noted, IP is free to copy. It is not free to create, and some arrangement must be made to pay for creation.

The approach of current IP law is to artificially imbue IP with attributes that make copies rivalrous and excludable, so that the creator can sell them on the free market. The free market will decide which IP should be produced and which should not, and the creation costs are paid by the people that use the IP.

Advantages of this approach: costs paid by users--if I don't read your novel, I don't pay for your novel; free market controls production decisions.

Disadvantage of this approach: price to users is higher than the "economically correct" price.

There are ways to deal with IP that do not involve artificial scarcity. One alternative approach, which was popular a long time ago, is the private patronage approach. Artists find a rich person to pay them to create. I'm not sure there are enough rich patrons to make this work at the scale consumers like to consume art today, and I don't think we'd have the artistic diversity we now have under a private patronage system.

Another approach is the begging approach.

Probably the best alternative to the current approach is the public goods approach. Treat artistic works like we treat public parks. Anyone could freely copy and share, and the creation would be funded by the government out of tax revenue.

The main problems with this approach are (1) determining the budget for art funding, and (2) deciding which artists get funded and by how much. The budget can be dealt with by tying it to a tax on something that correlates well with public consumption of art. Probably the best way to deal with deciding which artists get funded is to track consumer use, similar to the way we now do in order to determine royalties, and base funding on that.

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