The Debate on Intellectual Property, Copyright and Patents

[Askio]

Greetings,

this is a topic that I've thinking a lot about lately and that I'm really split on. What is your opinion on intellectual property, copyright and patents as well as piracy, open-source projects and the creative commons, GPL and Apache/Mozilla licences? Do you think IP is a morally just concept, a necessary evil or a needless restriction of freedom?

I'm asking this because for a long time I've been quite opposed to copyright - I still find it odd that ideas can be claimed. Afterall if I copy an idea, a drawing, a blueprint or a program, I have not taken the thing away from its creator - the creator still has his idea even if I copy it - this is in contrast to classical theft where taking some material property from someone (for example a car) means the original owner now doesn't have the thing you have stolen. Quite a lot of innovation and science gets stifled by aggressive patenting by big corporations and by having to pay for research papers. Large pharmaceutical companies can modify a drug and then patent it, effectively having a monopoly on the production and being able to raise prices exponentially, since the drug price cannot be set by market forces - a patent is in essence a temporary monopoly on an idea. Is it right to imprison someone just because he copied a part of a song? Afterall that person didn't hurt anyone, didn't violate anyone's freedom (Kantian principle) and merely used his freedom of speech. Additionally there's the ultimate question of copyright and AI. AI can be trained on a large dataset, which was created by humans and which is protected by copyright - are the creations of the AI thus a violation of copyright and/or should they be a violation of copyright? Afterall just like arteficial NN train their "skills" on the works of others, humans and artists also learn from the creations of others and copying and modifying is an important part of both learning and creating new content. There's also the dilemma of the right to repair

On the other hand the world economy is moving away from hardware and digital technology to information collection and content creation, even in biology and chemistry, investments in bioinformatics and new computational methods in chemistry currently drive the field ahead the most. Whole industries like animation, video games and music depend on the existence of Copyright. There are software companies which provide exclusively open-sourced code like Canonical, but is such a model truly viable in all industries? With the exception of Blender, most open source programs lag behind their closed-source competition. Venice and renaissance Italy which invented the patent saw an unprecedented rise in innovation, as there was suddenly an incentive to innovate - making something new could make you rich and did make many Italians rich. IP is even enshrined in the US constitution. Today IP allows people to live solely on content creation and seems to be the foundation of the modern information age. China copies a lot and creates cheap products, but innovators prefer the west, because they can make more money there

So what are your thoughts on IP? Should we pursue more lax or more restrictive IP policies? Are there any good books on the topic you could recommend?

[Nilokeras]

It's not really much of a debate. IP is a function of the state recognizing that ideas and creation are an important part of how people make money, and that it's in their best interest to tamp down on dog-eat-dog anticompetitive behaviour like stealing ideas that is, itself, a consequence of a capitalist economic system. If you have a problem with IP as a concept, your beef is fundamentally with capitalism, not the legal concept.

[Saiwana]

I do think I dislike so many products/software these days being sold as temporary "licenses" and not stuff that you keep permanently, especially if it is digital as opposed to physical copy.

Sony for example, is deleting tons of content that people purchased fair and square- with the expectation that it should be theirs in perpetuity. Inevitably, a corporation like Sony loses the rights to something or specific content changes owners and it's taken down or retroactively deleted or becomes impossible (outside of piracy) to find or legally obtain.

The situation is absurd enough that it has got some portion of all consumers avoiding digital platforms and going back to physical media where possible, because what they bought with their money won't necessarily still be theirs unless they have it archived or it's in a more analog in real life format.

https://movieweb.com/sony-funimation-merger-explained/

[BEEstreetz]

Greetings,

this is a topic that I've thinking a lot about lately and that I'm really split on. What is your opinion on intellectual property, copyright and patents as well as piracy, open-source projects and the creative commons, GPL and Apache/Mozilla licences? Do you think IP is a morally just concept, a necessary evil or a needless restriction of freedom?

I'm asking this because for a long time I've been quite opposed to copyright - I still find it odd that ideas can be claimed. Afterall if I copy an idea, a drawing, a blueprint or a program, I have not taken the thing away from its creator - the creator still has his idea even if I copy it - this is in contrast to classical theft where taking some material property from someone (for example a car) means the original owner now doesn't have the thing you have stolen. Quite a lot of innovation and science gets stifled by aggressive patenting by big corporations and by having to pay for research papers. Large pharmaceutical companies can modify a drug and then patent it, effectively having a monopoly on the production and being able to raise prices exponentially, since the drug price cannot be set by market forces - a patent is in essence a temporary monopoly on an idea. Is it right to imprison someone just because he copied a part of a song? Afterall that person didn't hurt anyone, didn't violate anyone's freedom (Kantian principle) and merely used his freedom of speech. Additionally there's the ultimate question of copyright and AI. AI can be trained on a large dataset, which was created by humans and which is protected by copyright - are the creations of the AI thus a violation of copyright and/or should they be a violation of copyright? Afterall just like arteficial NN train their "skills" on the works of others, humans and artists also learn from the creations of others and copying and modifying is an important part of both learning and creating new content. There's also the dilemma of the right to repair

On the other hand the world economy is moving away from hardware and digital technology to information collection and content creation, even in biology and chemistry, investments in bioinformatics and new computational methods in chemistry currently drive the field ahead the most. Whole industries like animation, video games and music depend on the existence of Copyright. There are software companies which provide exclusively open-sourced code like Canonical, but is such a model truly viable in all industries? With the exception of Blender, most open source programs lag behind their closed-source competition. Venice and renaissance Italy which invented the patent saw an unprecedented rise in innovation, as there was suddenly an incentive to innovate - making something new could make you rich and did make many Italians rich. IP is even enshrined in the US constitution. Today IP allows people to live solely on content creation and seems to be the foundation of the modern information age. China copies a lot and creates cheap products, but innovators prefer the west, because they can make more money there

So what are your thoughts on IP? Should we pursue more lax or more restrictive IP policies? Are there any good books on the topic you could recommend?

OP, I'm known for being rude in my responses, but will hold back here for reasons I'll elaborate soon. I've bolded some of your statements which are incorrect.
Your views are the ones I also held some 14-17 years ago when I was 11-14 and first discovered what Linux was and (subsequently), intellectual property. I held them for those 3-4 years only, as a few things happened, which I'll cover in answering the rest of your post.

Intellectual property, copyright, and patents (and trademarks*): Are not synonyms. Copyright and patents appear to be what you have an issue against. Trademarks are related and often abused (much like patents), though they are important outside of intellectual property law. Intellectual property in itself relies on trademarks (at the very least, attribution).
Piracy, open-source, and CC: CC can be very restrictive or completely liberating. It's a topic for itself. I will cover the other two very thoroughly.

Piracy: You're growing up in a much worse time than I have. While the web is stable due to V8, ECMA and WebAssembly -- Malware has gotten extremely good. Malware in my day would mean a virus, it would slow down the machine, it would send payloads, it would perhaps nuke the OS and display some 3D rendering graphic. It was mostly written 4fun. MALWARE TODAY IS INSANE. There are three types of malware.

1. Headless Memory-to-CPU persistent Malware which I've had to deal with. This malware persists upon OS reinstalls. It enters into your system (likely by the second type I'll cover), and installs itself into ROM (SSD/HDD) initially, with the payload injecting itself into the RAM. Upon reboot, it will perpetually run in the background on your RAM. As you do whatever it is you do, it will read your CPU architecture. The way you notice is LISTENING TO THE FAN AND SUDDEN SHUT DOWN of the device, due to the CPU receiving an illegal instruction. Depending in your architecture, the machine may be fine after a reboot, it may require a live disk of the OS for fixing the issue, it may be looped into perpetual kernel panics, or it may not boot at all past the bootloader.
2. CSS / XSS Cross-Site Scripting. You're given a page of a website which is a mirror of the real one. However, it has code injected into it. Without going into details, web pages of websites aren't the host/server website itself. Neither the client (your device) nor the host (server) are either responsible or can mitigate for it.
3. Ransomware Always has been there, always will be there, most boring one.

That is the issue with Piracy.
(Use a seedbox btw)

Open-Source Projects:
You're listing the incredibly restrictive GPL, the infamously insecure Apache, and Mozilla as example of Open Source Licensing....
IP is a concept.
"world economy is moving away from hardware and digital technology to information collection and content creation"
Completely untrue. Hardware depends on information gathering. Content creation has a place but not above Hardware. Not sure what you mean by digital technology
"Quite a lot of innovation and science gets stifled by aggressive patenting by big corporations and by having to pay for research papers"
...Who did Ken Thompson work for? Were PDP-11, VAX, VMS (...) not big corporations? Who made virtualisation available (20 years after bhyve but widely) -- Alphabet. Who made Torvalds' homebrew project usable on both big endian and little endian systems -- IBM (which I do despise). Why was Asahi Linux awaited for such a long time -- Because Apple did not find it useful to vectorise their raster graphic UI.
Pharma and patenting:
Correct. They patent their own brand of a substance... Brand. There are still generic medicines which are the same product that are much cheaper.

AI, DATASETS!!! YES! Correct! AI is proprietary BECAUSE THE DATASET USED TO TRAIN THEM IS NOT MADE AVAILABLE. HOWEVER, do you know which organisations and foundations changed the definition of open-source as define what an "Open Source AI project" is? The Open Software Initiative (OSI). Who did not complain? Here: Free Software Foundation (Stallman); Apache Software Foundation; Linux Foundation; nor the Linux Kernel Maintainers Mailing List. Who DID complain? Take a wild guess. Who do GPL and Apache criticise the most? Do they ever criticise the EULA? What specific licensing do they DESPISE seeing?
You've almost mentioned the answer near the end in: "provide exclusively open-sourced code" Correct that to "source-available".
Have fun exploring and take it slow.

---

Oh yeah btw, the single only open source (not FOSS) license which managed to win a court case against IBM other than NASA and AT&T is available here I also don't recall either of their cousin-projects being bought by the IBM and taking control of the entire kernel because....It isn't a monolithic kernel.

[Untecna]

I'll note to the above that skirting viruses really takes the correct browser (Firefox) and a small host of extensions, on top of "best judgement".

Really, with all the safety features we have today and the increased awareness among users of how to get around potential malware, it's safer, not worse.

[Kostane]

It's not really much of a debate. IP is a function of the state recognizing that ideas and creation are an important part of how people make money, and that it's in their best interest to tamp down on dog-eat-dog anticompetitive behaviour like stealing ideas that is, itself, a consequence of a capitalist economic system. If you have a problem with IP as a concept, your beef is fundamentally with capitalism, not the legal concept.

Lmao.
Hearing you say “it’s not really much of a debate” pains me. Physically. I am a high school debater and I have spent half a year debating this topic and will spend another half a year doing so. It is very much a debate. Not to mention the fact that there are numerous lawyers who have made their entire professions based solely off of intellectual property. Alas, I digress.

Problems with intellectual property rights can stem from pro-capitalist concerns. Intellectual property rights, or at least patents specifically, grant a temporary monopoly on a product, which is the exact opposite of free market capitalism. They promote government intervention in competition in order to reward first movers. This is a specific variant of corrupt capitalism, but it is not a feature of capitalism broadly. In a truly capitalist economic system, restrictions like intellectual property which artificially limit products would be considered anti-capitalist.

However, I believe that there are still situations in which intellectual property right is useful. OP brings p good points in terms of the use of evergreening (minor changes to renew a patent) in pharmaceuticals where a lack of effective controls of patents leads to abuse. However, unregulated intellectual property rights can lead to problems too — ultimately it is not a question of more lax or restrictive IP policies that the OP is asking about, but rather more effective intellectual property protection that avoids abusive monopolies while preserving competitive incentives. It’s not a yes/no question.

[Untecna]

To address the topic, though:

Copyright should be 20 years, max. No grandfathering. All works older than 20 years at this point should be released into the public domain.

Software should be FOSS by nature, and users should not receive a license to use but a guarantee to own.

Right-to-repair should be enshrined in law.

AI should not be trained on people's data. People's data should not be a commodity.

[Kostane]

To address the topic, though:

Copyright should be 20 years, max. No grandfathering. All works older than 20 years at this point should be released into the public domain.

Is there a reason why you think the limit should be a 20 years? I feel like the fair use standards for copyright make it so even copyrighted works can still be accessed by the public for reasonable applications. However, commercialization for copyright could continue long after twenty years — there are many books from twenty years ago that are still commercially successful. If those books were not copyrighted anymore, they could just be stolen, despite their authors still being alive. I think the copyright length should be based on the life of the creator for individuals, or 40 years for corporations.

Software should be FOSS by nature, and users should not receive a license to use but a guarantee to own.

Right-to-repair should be enshrined in law.

AI should not be trained on people's data. People's data should not be a commodity.

Reading that last line directly before reading your sig was certainly an experience…

I do agree with this point mostly. I think people should still have a right to sell their data (this is useful in order to do research studies and market studies), however I think that right is too often taken away by long terms & conditions that are practicable unreadable. In that way, data should be more of a commodity because it would have a higher value. However, it should not be a commodity owned by the corporations, it should be a commodity owned by the people, with their choice deciding what happens to it.

[HISPIDA]

It's not really much of a debate. IP is a function of the state recognizing that ideas and creation are an important part of how people make money, and that it's in their best interest to tamp down on dog-eat-dog anticompetitive behaviour like stealing ideas that is, itself, a consequence of a capitalist economic system. If you have a problem with IP as a concept, your beef is fundamentally with capitalism, not the legal concept.

unironically something that radicalized me

[Untecna]

To address the topic, though:

Copyright should be 20 years, max. No grandfathering. All works older than 20 years at this point should be released into the public domain.

Is there a reason why you think the limit should be a 20 years? I feel like the fair use standards for copyright make it so even copyrighted works can still be accessed by the public for reasonable applications. However, commercialization for copyright could continue long after twenty years — there are many books from twenty years ago that are still commercially successful. If those books were not copyrighted anymore, they could just be stolen, despite their authors still being alive. I think the copyright length should be based on the life of the creator for individuals, or 40 years for corporations.

Twenty years is a long time, for products. People will make their money quicker than the copyright will run out. Besides, the producer can still produce it past that point. It will just be freely available elsewhere. Classic books are still sold in stores, after all.

Twenty years is within most people's lifetime, too, so the consumers of that content need not wait as long to repurpose that work.

Yes, it's an arbitrary number, but it is reasonable.

And lifting of copyright does not mean works are "stolen", Kostane. Copyright being lifted frees it to the masses, to do as they please with it. That's creativity right there.

[Kostane]

Is there a reason why you think the limit should be a 20 years? I feel like the fair use standards for copyright make it so even copyrighted works can still be accessed by the public for reasonable applications. However, commercialization for copyright could continue long after twenty years — there are many books from twenty years ago that are still commercially successful. If those books were not copyrighted anymore, they could just be stolen, despite their authors still being alive. I think the copyright length should be based on the life of the creator for individuals, or 40 years for corporations.

Twenty years is a long time, for products. People will make their money quicker than the copyright will run out.

Twenty years is within most people's lifetime, too, so the consumers of that content need not wait as long to repurpose that work.

Yes, it's an arbitrary number, but it is reasonable.

And lifting of copyright does not mean works are "stolen", Kostane. Copyright being lifted frees it to the masses, to do as they please with it. That's creativity right there.

A lifted copyright does mean the work can be stolen. You misunderstand how copyright works. Creativity would be taking the work and using it in a transformative way. That is exactly what is covered under the fair use exceptions. That is why I said I was for the fair use exception — it promotes that kind of creativity. However, an end to a copyright means that the work is not protected from an exact reproduction, something which is distinct from a creative use. That is what I am referring to when I say the work gets stolen.

Explain how it is reasonable. Arbitrary implies the absence of any sort of logic / reasons

You haven’t explained why copyright prevents consumers from repurposing a work — it only prevents them from copying it. There’s also no reason why it has to be “within most people’s lifetimes” — the consumer’s lifetime is an arbitrary and ever-shifting goal that makes no sense. There could be consumers that die three years after the work is produced. I really don’t get what you’re trying to accomplish by saying 20 years is within most people’s lifetimes. The only person’s lifetime who matters in terms of the right is the person receiving that right. That is because copyright is the only way in which a work can be commercialized. People deserve the right to receive credit and compensation for their creative work — that is what promotes creativity, not reproduction of the same work with no apparent upside.

“People will make money quicker than the copyright will run out” is a nonsense statement. I can’t even fathom what you were trying to say here. Money and time are not two interchangeable objects — you can not make money quicker than a reduction in time. I think what you are trying to say is that people will make money even with a shorter time period. But this is not necessarily true — a lot of authors can make money by selling their copyrights. A copyright with a shorter term is inherently less profitable — if a company wants to make a movie, or sequels, all of that takes time that a shorter time period does not allow for. As such, the value of the copyright decreases exponentially. Twenty years is not a long term in terms of being able to fully commercialize a product. For reference, the copyright of Harry Potter would have expired, and therefore would be nearly impossible to commercialize, even as it remains popular and is still engaging in new markets. 20 years is actually a relatively short time period.

[Untecna]

A lifted copyright does mean the work can be stolen. You misunderstand how copyright works. Creativity would be taking the work and using it in a transformative way. That is exactly what is covered under the fair use exceptions. That is why I said I was for the fair use exception — it promotes that kind of creativity. However, an end to a copyright means that the work is not protected from an exact reproduction, something which is distinct from a creative use. That is what I am referring to when I say the work gets stolen.

There is no such thing as "stealing" a work post-copyright. Copyright ending means that the author loses the exclusive right to produce that content. Everyone is granted the right to do as they please with that content. That alone breeds creativity.

Explain how it is reasonable. Arbitrary implies the absence of any sort of logic / reasons

I already explained why.

Now, there is precedent for copyright terms to be much lower. At one point, copyright here in the States was 28 years.

You haven’t explained why copyright prevents consumers from repurposing a work — it only prevents them from copying it. There’s also no reason why it has to be “within most people’s lifetimes” — the consumer’s lifetime is an arbitrary and ever-shifting goal that makes no sense. There could be consumers that die three years after the work is produced. I really don’t get what you’re trying to accomplish by saying 20 years is within most people’s lifetimes. The only person’s lifetime who matters in terms of the right is the person receiving that right. That is because copyright is the only way in which a work can be commercialized. People deserve the right to receive credit and compensation for their creative work — that is what promotes creativity, not reproduction of the same work with no apparent upside.

Companies are highly protective of works under copyright. The copyright system allows them to strike down quite a few repurposings of content - copyright strikes on Youtube are a great example of this.

The majority of people dying within before that 20-year timeframe is up are already on the top end of the population pyramid. The majority of the population overall will still see many works released and go into the public domain in their lifetime. All I see now are things from before the second World War. I'd like to see Star Wars or some other work in the public domain.

“People will make money quicker than the copyright will run out” is a nonsense statement. I can’t even fathom what you were trying to say here. Money and time are not two interchangeable objects — you can not make money quicker than a reduction in time. I think what you are trying to say is that people will make money even with a shorter time period. But this is not necessarily true — a lot of authors can make money by selling their copyrights. A copyright with a shorter term is inherently less profitable — if a company wants to make a movie, or sequels, all of that takes time that a shorter time period does not allow for. As such, the value of the copyright decreases exponentially. Twenty years is not a long term in terms of being able to fully commercialize a product. For reference, the copyright of Harry Potter would have expired, and therefore would be nearly impossible to commercialize, even as it remains popular and is still engaging in new markets. 20 years is actually a relatively short time period.

The majority of money made on any work will be made in the short term. Take a movie, for example. It earns big at the box office, but twenty years on, it will not be making anywhere near enough money to justify retaining the copyright any longer.

Why does commercialization, or the author's profit, matter so much to you? Does the creativity of the masses matter less than how much money someone can make in twenty years?

[Chessmistress]

Wow, I just discovered that according someone Chuck Berry is still alive and therefore such page makes sense, even if the song is from 1958:
https://www.songfacts.com/licensing/chu ... ny-b-goode
Also John Lennon, he's still alive it seems:
https://www.songfacts.com/licensing/john-lennon/imagine



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKCt8ssC7cs

[BEEstreetz]

Ignoring the wonderland purity testing, some points not addressed earlier and small ones made in the mean-time:

Saiwana (as the most fax one here):

(X)aaS isn't what they meant but you are correct. Subscription services don't scale, as I've explained time and time again, using AWS as a full-stack solution. Once more:
AWS charges ¢50/1Hour:1User of viewed 1080p content. Suppose you create 10 2-hour long videos or streams (exponential growth to $10); Suppose you have ~1500 viewers of that content within a week (growth to $15 000 or the price of a physical database server). Suppose each week within 1 month you stream 5 days for 4 hours and have an average sum of 1500 viewers. That's $60 000 per month, which is the cost of half the full physical stack and maintainers. The gross gain an average creator generates from this with maximum adware would be ~$75 000. Each month, for a year.

Sony and Nintendo are known for doing that. Which is why there should be (as there is in most countries), expiration time on IP. Users should be able to take the software (purchased or otherwise), modify it, re-sell it, do whatever they want. This does not imply user or producer ownership, though does not negate profit. If I were to mod a Sony or Nintendo game which I enjoy (....hold on...) ok one which they've released and I enjoy (Gran Turismo), why would there be legal involvement if I were to sell that version?

Physical, analogue and hardware will ALWAYS be the better choice. This is a concept called "sneakernet", which I employ as back-ups.

Untecna

I'll note to the above that skirting viruses really takes the correct browser (Firefox) and a small host of extensions, on top of "best judgement".

Really, with all the safety features we have today and the increased awareness among users of how to get around potential malware, it's safer, not worse.

Yes, browsers and the high-traffic web have stabilised because of V8. I used to be an avid Firefox advocate until software engineering (especially FOSS) became prone to intrusion from Board Committees, specifically when a financial donor is introduced. However, I still talk to employees (granted, 75% sysadmins - those which are left after the CxO takeover - and 25% of devs) in most of these projects.
I wasn't talking about viruses when mentioning persistent malware, ransomware and (combined types of) XSS. In case of the first and the last, the user isn't aware.

Software should be FOSS by nature, and users should not receive a license to use but a guarantee to own.

AI should not be trained on people's data. People's data should not be a commodity.

Software should be source-available with no warranty or liability. It is not part of the developer department to ensure stability. In an ideal world, there would only be the User-Developer. No one should own software, everyone should have the right to demand payment for it, even if the source is available.
Distributed LLMMLAI systems are more in line of what you're advocating for than this statement. It shouldn't be a commodity, though, that I agree with.

There is no such thing as "stealing" a work post-copyright. Copyright ending means that the author loses the exclusive right to produce that content. Everyone is granted the right to do as they please with that content. That alone breeds creativity.

Copyright ending means that the author loses the exclusive right to produce that content. Everyone is granted the right to do as they please with that content. That alone breeds creativity.

Why does commercialization, or the author's profit, matter so much to you? Does the creativity of the masses matter less than how much money someone can make in twenty years?

Under restrictive licensing, this is not true. I agree with the sentiment that everyone having the right to do as they please breeds creativity. How do you not see the correlation between financial incentive with innovation? It should also be noted that, as we do not live in an ideal world, the creator or subsequent maintainer usually does 70% of the work on all projects (regardless of license). There are ~5 other people who contribute some 25% of the rest.

[Nilokeras]

Lmao.
Hearing you say “it’s not really much of a debate” pains me. Physically. I am a high school debater and I have spent half a year debating this topic and will spend another half a year doing so. It is very much a debate.

And there are some high school musical programs that still, inexplicably, put on 'Guys and Dolls'. What you do in your high school politics theatre program isn't that germane to reality.

Problems with intellectual property rights can stem from pro-capitalist concerns. Intellectual property rights, or at least patents specifically, grant a temporary monopoly on a product, which is the exact opposite of free market capitalism. They promote government intervention in competition in order to reward first movers. This is a specific variant of corrupt capitalism, but it is not a feature of capitalism broadly. In a truly capitalist economic system, restrictions like intellectual property which artificially limit products would be considered anti-capitalist.

They are a 'monopoly' in the same sense that a property title on a house is a 'monopoly'. Namely, not one at all, unless you are twisting yourself to try and demonize one and not the other.

[Forsher]

It's not really much of a debate. IP is a function of the state recognizing that ideas and creation are an important part of how people make money, and that it's in their best interest to tamp down on dog-eat-dog anticompetitive behaviour like stealing ideas that is, itself, a consequence of a capitalist economic system. If you have a problem with IP as a concept, your beef is fundamentally with capitalism, not the legal concept.

Isn't this just saying "it's a debate... in the sense it's a side issue of a much larger debate with no unique foibles of its own"?

I do think there's a moral argument to IP that I don't think exists with capitalism writ large. If there wasn't you wouldn't get "Original Character Do Not Steal" in fanfic communities.

Actually, isn't IP just about owning the means of production? I guess the author is bourgeois from the Marxist POV?? (This is a guess. I don't know.) This can't be the argument because I don't see how this isn't saying "enslave the authors so their labour benefits everyone". I refuse to believe any serious quantity of people believe this.

Problems with intellectual property rights can stem from pro-capitalist concerns. Intellectual property rights, or at least patents specifically, grant a temporary monopoly on a product, which is the exact opposite of free market capitalism. They promote government intervention in competition in order to reward first movers. This is a specific variant of corrupt capitalism, but it is not a feature of capitalism broadly. In a truly capitalist economic system, restrictions like intellectual property which artificially limit products would be considered anti-capitalist.

They are a 'monopoly' in the same sense that a property title on a house is a 'monopoly'. Namely, not one at all, unless you are twisting yourself to try and demonize one and not the other.

IP is an exercise of market power with strong monopolistic characteristics. Where the monopolist can choose the price, but not the quantity demanded, so too can the owner of IP since they have exclusive control over a resource. Similarly, they can choose the quantity produced, but not the price. Just because I've printed off two hundred copies of "The Collected Poems of Forsher" doesn't mean I'll find any suckers stupid enough to buy them at a desired price.

Where the monopoly comparison breaks down is that IP is both non-rivalrous (your consumption doesn't inhibit my consumption) and non-excludable... sort of. If I tell you a poem, you can, in theory, reproduce it freely. I suspect in practice you wouldn't remember its details entirely and would need a physical copy, which can be excluded and rivalrous (only so many people can read a given page at one time).

I would also suggests that real estate is treated as a monopoly in law by the distinction between real property and ordinary property. It's why specific performance is a remedy in essentially real estate and no other context. It's just, real estate is a natural monopoly.

[Nilokeras]

I do think there's a moral argument to IP that I don't think exists with capitalism writ large. If there wasn't you wouldn't get "Original Character Do Not Steal" in fanfic communities.

as we learned with Brian Thompson and the health insurance industry, there are absolutely never any moral arguments or debates to be had about the functioning of capitalism. none whatsoever.

Actually, isn't IP just about owning the means of production? I guess the author is bourgeois from the Marxist POV?? (This is a guess. I don't know.) This can't be the argument because I don't see how this isn't saying "enslave the authors so their labour benefits everyone". I refuse to believe any serious quantity of people believe this.

IP is, essentially, an act of enclosure: the transformation of a mode of human interaction with each other or their environment that was previously defined by custom or interpersonal contacts into a state-sanctioned legal construct.

Your class status in a Marxist sense is a function of your relation to that property and your own labour. If you're, say, an author you're still proletarian: you make your living off your labour producing novels, and IP is the legal construct that allows you to sell those products. If you're, say, an inventor that licensed their invention to a large corporation you're likely petit-bourgeois, as you make part of your living off your own labour producing inventions, but also get part of your living off of the financial instruments spun off those inventions.

[Forsher]

IP is, essentially, an act of enclosure: the transformation of a mode of human interaction with each other or their environment that was previously defined by custom or interpersonal contacts into a state-sanctioned legal construct.

I feel like this is a moral dimension. Moreover I feel like it's the moral dimension from my, possibly opaque, example of the double standard "do not steal" types and opponents of recursive fanfic more generally (by which I mean fanfic based on fanfic) exhibit.

Your class status in a Marxist sense is a function of your relation to that property and your own labour. If you're, say, an author you're still proletarian: you make your living off your labour producing novels, and IP is the legal construct that allows you to sell those products. If you're, say, an inventor that licensed their invention to a large corporation you're likely petit-bourgeois, as you make part of your living off your own labour producing inventions, but also get part of your living off of the financial instruments spun off those inventions.

I knew I had to be wrong. Makes sense.

[Valentine Z]

And lifting of copyright does not mean works are "stolen", Kostane. Copyright being lifted frees it to the masses, to do as they please with it. That's creativity right there.

Absolutely. On the semi-related topic of lifted copyright, many years ago Tom Lehrer did it with all of his work (which you can get from here). I thought this is pretty interesting and also generous but no surprise given the nature of the artist himself.

So... someone could, in theory, plagiarize it wholesale (instead of altering or remixing it) as their own work without credit. BUT everyone is going to well enough know that it's Tom's work. Same with a lot of the very old classical music (or even Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie); people are going to know where it is from.

-----

My short opinion on the matter is that these are good and all right for protecting smaller and more indie underdogs in various scenes. What I cannot tolerate, however, was shit like "Nope you can NOT use a floating arrow to point to an objective unless you pay SEGA". I said "was" because I think the patent expired. And to the surprise of no one, the system has been misused A LOT.

[Kerwa]

Lmao.
Hearing you say “it’s not really much of a debate” pains me. Physically. I am a high school debater and I have spent half a year debating this topic and will spend another half a year doing so. It is very much a debate.

And there are some high school musical programs that still, inexplicably, put on 'Guys and Dolls'. What you do in your high school politics theatre program isn't that germane to reality.

Problems with intellectual property rights can stem from pro-capitalist concerns. Intellectual property rights, or at least patents specifically, grant a temporary monopoly on a product, which is the exact opposite of free market capitalism. They promote government intervention in competition in order to reward first movers. This is a specific variant of corrupt capitalism, but it is not a feature of capitalism broadly. In a truly capitalist economic system, restrictions like intellectual property which artificially limit products would be considered anti-capitalist.

They are a 'monopoly' in the same sense that a property title on a house is a 'monopoly'. Namely, not one at all, unless you are twisting yourself to try and demonize one and not the other.

Guys and Dolls is easy to stage and has lots of ensemble stuff. It’s sort of ideal for high school. What do you suggest, Prokofiev’s War and Peace?

[Forsher]

And there are some high school musical programs that still, inexplicably, put on 'Guys and Dolls'. What you do in your high school politics theatre program isn't that germane to reality.



They are a 'monopoly' in the same sense that a property title on a house is a 'monopoly'. Namely, not one at all, unless you are twisting yourself to try and demonize one and not the other.

Guys and Dolls is easy to stage and has lots of ensemble stuff. It’s sort of ideal for high school. What do you suggest, Prokofiev’s War and Peace?

The Phantom of the High School Grease Production

It's The Phantom of the Opera's plot but in a high school... trying to stage Grease.

I don't believe it exists. But it should!

[Untecna]

Ignoring the wonderland purity testing, some points not addressed earlier and small ones made in the mean-time:

Saiwana (as the most fax one here):

(X)aaS isn't what they meant but you are correct. Subscription services don't scale, as I've explained time and time again, using AWS as a full-stack solution. Once more:
AWS charges ¢50/1Hour:1User of viewed 1080p content. Suppose you create 10 2-hour long videos or streams (exponential growth to $10); Suppose you have ~1500 viewers of that content within a week (growth to $15 000 or the price of a physical database server). Suppose each week within 1 month you stream 5 days for 4 hours and have an average sum of 1500 viewers. That's $60 000 per month, which is the cost of half the full physical stack and maintainers. The gross gain an average creator generates from this with maximum adware would be ~$75 000. Each month, for a year.

Sony and Nintendo are known for doing that. Which is why there should be (as there is in most countries), expiration time on IP. Users should be able to take the software (purchased or otherwise), modify it, re-sell it, do whatever they want. This does not imply user or producer ownership, though does not negate profit. If I were to mod a Sony or Nintendo game which I enjoy (....hold on...) ok one which they've released and I enjoy (Gran Turismo), why would there be legal involvement if I were to sell that version?

Physical, analogue and hardware will ALWAYS be the better choice. This is a concept called "sneakernet", which I employ as back-ups.

Untecna

I'll note to the above that skirting viruses really takes the correct browser (Firefox) and a small host of extensions, on top of "best judgement".

Really, with all the safety features we have today and the increased awareness among users of how to get around potential malware, it's safer, not worse.

Yes, browsers and the high-traffic web have stabilised because of V8. I used to be an avid Firefox advocate until software engineering (especially FOSS) became prone to intrusion from Board Committees, specifically when a financial donor is introduced. However, I still talk to employees (granted, 75% sysadmins - those which are left after the CxO takeover - and 25% of devs) in most of these projects.
I wasn't talking about viruses when mentioning persistent malware, ransomware and (combined types of) XSS. In case of the first and the last, the user isn't aware.

Software should be FOSS by nature, and users should not receive a license to use but a guarantee to own.

AI should not be trained on people's data. People's data should not be a commodity.

Software should be source-available with no warranty or liability. It is not part of the developer department to ensure stability. In an ideal world, there would only be the User-Developer. No one should own software, everyone should have the right to demand payment for it, even if the source is available.
Distributed LLMMLAI systems are more in line of what you're advocating for than this statement. It shouldn't be a commodity, though, that I agree with.

There is no such thing as "stealing" a work post-copyright. Copyright ending means that the author loses the exclusive right to produce that content. Everyone is granted the right to do as they please with that content. That alone breeds creativity.

Copyright ending means that the author loses the exclusive right to produce that content. Everyone is granted the right to do as they please with that content. That alone breeds creativity.

Why does commercialization, or the author's profit, matter so much to you? Does the creativity of the masses matter less than how much money someone can make in twenty years?

Under restrictive licensing, this is not true. I agree with the sentiment that everyone having the right to do as they please breeds creativity. How do you not see the correlation between financial incentive with innovation? It should also be noted that, as we do not live in an ideal world, the creator or subsequent maintainer usually does 70% of the work on all projects (regardless of license). There are ~5 other people who contribute some 25% of the rest.

I'm not a capitalist, BEES, I don't believe that financial incentives breed innovation. I believe that financial incentives just make things worse, which has been the case with copyright.

[The Two Jerseys]

What incentive do I have to write a novel or build a better mousetrap if someone can just steal my creation and profit off of my hard work?

[Mid-North County]

It cannot be used freely; there should be restrictions.

[Kerwa]

Guys and Dolls is easy to stage and has lots of ensemble stuff. It’s sort of ideal for high school. What do you suggest, Prokofiev’s War and Peace?

The Phantom of the High School Grease Production

It's The Phantom of the Opera's plot but in a high school... trying to stage Grease.

I don't believe it exists. But it should!

I approve of this idea.