Showing messages 1 through 6 of 6.

• Except...
  2005-04-26 16:14:20  Spencer Critchley | [View]
  
  
  But I'm beginning to think the characteristic of being capable of infinite duplication may not be as salient as it at first appeared. I think it may still have a mystical aura about it, like electricity did when it first came along and people thought it would be good for everything from curing disease to executing prisoners, just because it was so different from everything else at the time.
  
  Economic growth over the centuries has been tied to the development of IP, from the design of digging tools to digital technology. It seems to be better for some kinds of information to be free (because we decide it is) such as information about what the government is doing on our behalf, or how music theory works. But some people make their living, and contribute to economic growth, by coming up with original information. If no IP product should have economic value just because it's IP, I'm not clear on what the realistic model is for a healthy economy.
  
  So I'd suggest, in the case of musicians and other artists in digital media, that it's up to us to decide if we think they should be paid for their work and how, and it may not be something decisive in the technical nature of the medium. The choice whether they get paid a few cents each for (potentially) many copies of a work vs. getting paid a larger amount one time seems to me to come down to a decision.
  
  Although the former model is open to abuse, as when large IP-holders tie up copyrights through many extensions, for many decades, I think it can also be democratizing, in that the pre-sale value of copy #1 is zero, and any further value ultimately depends on how many ordinary people like the work, as opposed to whether or not a prince or a duke likes the work.
  
  At least that's how it looks today...
• Except...
  2005-04-27 13:48:35  brianiac [View]
  
  
  I'm not sure what reason we have to believe that this is merely a case of perception. Concrete items have intrinsic value: raw materials, construction and distribution. Given an existing loaf of bread, you cannot solve world hunger by making copies of it; giving it to anyone else deprives you of the item--this is the distinction. If you have a video file of a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech that could positively impact millions by offering it via a BitTorrent, that can be shared, at no cost, without depriving you of the data.
  
  Concern about jobs or economic impacts is an ends-justifies-the-means argument, and is also an excellent rationale for legalizing professional killers (they need to make a living!).
  
  Arbitrary distinctions are stupid. Are tomatoes fruit or vegetable? It depends who you ask: a lawyer or a botanist. Blue Man Group: musicians or performance artists? Treating different data sources differently based on subjective criteria is similarly troubling.
  
  IP will always be abused, and always seems to find its way into the hands of large corporations.
  
  With schemes like Amazon Donations, PayPal Donations, SourceForge, and others allows patronage on a much more democratic scale, encouraging future development on merits of past successes.
• Except...
  2005-06-30 07:21:42  Tim_Myth [View]
  
  
  I find your use of the loaf of bread analogy interesting. I am reminded of a man that fed a rather large audience by infinitely reproducing a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. I'm not particularly religious, so I'll have to read that bit again, but it is an interesting parallel.
  
  The fact with Nature is that offering a reward is a great motivator; rats press buttons to get food, dogs sit up for table scraps, etc. If you don't offer the reward, a few rats will still learn to press buttons and a few dogs will still learn to sit up, but on the whole very little progress will be made. We are wired this way by Nature too, except that its more than just food for us humans. We learned to think abstractly so we like to acquire wealth which can be converted to food, shelter, or luxuries.
  
  Everything started with an idea. Man did not stumble upon a round bit of stone with an log in the center and a set of instructions on how to use the wheel. It started as a simple round log. The idea was refined by others and is still being refined today. No where in any holy book does it describe the gods as handing down the secrets of selective breeding to improve livestock or create super grains like emmer wheat. These ideas led to great rewards like the ability to move massive stones or the ability to feed a burgeoning population.
  
  With improved communications, ideas could be spread more rapidly. Common languages allowed cavemen to physically spread an idea. Writing allowed the spread of idea through time and space. Printing allowed for consistency and even more widespread communications. Add the telephone, telegraph, and I can instantly tell a friend on the other side of the globe about my idea. Add radio, and TV, and you have nearly instant communications of ideas to groups of people. Now add the internet, and you have 2% of the world (and growing) able to instantly access your idea at any time: the permanency of writing, the consistency of print, and the instantaneousness of TV. All that’s left is the inclusion of one collective mind so everyone’s thoughts are instantly available to everyone else.
  
  Am I doomed because Bell’s idea allows someone to instantly spread my idea to the world? Where did my reward go? What was my reward in the first place? Is wealth finite?
• Except...
  2005-04-27 22:00:22  Spencer Critchley | [View]
  
  
  I think in the case of basic staples like food and shelter, concrete items have intrinsic value, but beyond that it quickly becomes IP-driven. If we were to restrict value to concrete items, wouldn't we have to go back to a barter economy, or at least gold coins vs paper currency and credit cards? If so, we'd have to find a way to greatly reduce the population in a hurry because the economy would shrink so much.
  
  I don't think that these distinctions are arbitrary. We find a good pen and some paper valuable because of a whole structure of other decisions that have been made, while someone living in a non-literate society would find them worthless. The fact that they're physical objects doesn't seem to be decisive - valuable in one context, not in another. If I follow you right, it seems to imply that I could just take (maybe in exchange for what I thought was a fair donation) anything that happened to be IP, like someone's plans for a new invention, or a company's confidential marketing strategy, or a songwriter's new song. But if they had baked a loaf of bread it would be wrong to do that? That's what is striking me as arbitrary. It may be that there's no help for it, that we can't help but go where the technology leads, but if so I think that's a problem in itself.
  
  I was excited for a while about the fact that I could give someone a copy of my digital file and I wouldn't have lost anything, and I think it's good and often smart to voluntarily share files. But as it happens I think that something is lost if anyone can just take a copy - the more copies, the less my file or, more importantly, its content, is worth. If my job is creating the content of the file, or if my company depends on the content, copying the file may cause a problem.
  
  I'm not sure I see why IP will always be abused. This is the idea I'm exploring - lately this kind of argument is sounding religious or at least essentialist to me. Similarly with large corporations. I don't have problem with them because they're large per se, though I do see that because they're large they pose extra risks because it's more serious if some of them do bad things.
  
  I'm not sure I see how there's an ends-justifies-the-means problem. It seems to me that in discussing the design of an economy, jobs and economic impacts are pretty much what we're talking about.
  
  The donations model is one I like in theory and have been following, but I suspect if it had worked well so far we'd see Tower and others trying it in their stores.
  
  
• Except...
  2005-04-28 12:31:25  brianiac [View]
  
  
  Sure, a keyboard would be worthless 200 years ago, but that's why no one produced or distributed them at that time. I really don't see what your point is. You may not have to think about it much, but paper money and credit cards are backed up by gold or silver. Currencies without this backing, as pure IP, fail immediately.
  
  I did not intend to imply that taking information without permission was acceptable (this is a fairly typical strawman argument); secrets can still be kept using encryption. Once you've shared something that exists purely as an idea or data, you've surrendered control of it.
  
  If the concept of mass consumption of your work doesn't excite you, then you aren't really an artist, per se, in that you aren't trying to communicate an idea, emotion, or point of view. If you want to make things for money, you should probably choose a medium that doesn't lend itself to perfect duplication.
  
  IP is itself abuse. When is an idea original? At what point does it move from being derivative to being just original enough to merit protection?
  
  Making decisions based on impacts is the definition of ends justifying the means.
  
  The music and movie industries have been very successful in vilifying free content channels by branding them as being used only for piracy. The open source movement in particular, plus Creative Commons, and other works (Penny Arcade, for a time) have proven donation-patronage works.
• Except...
  2005-05-01 09:23:43  Spencer Critchley | [View]
  
  
  I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on some of this (e.g. IP is itself abuse), although in many areas my position is fluid. I'm exploring these ideas from a skeptical point of view, and am not committed to one opinion - I'm skeptical because I don't think we know enough yet.
  
  I would note though that the world has largely been off the gold standard for a while, with the value of currencies determined by economic strength and government fiat. Gold is used as a hedge. But the argument goes on over whether gold should be the standard, and I think it partly reflects the argument we've been having here.
  
  I hope Creative Commons works, I just don't think it's been proven yet.