Actually, it’s still pretty bad. Also, dumb. Does Bowie think it has disappeared from the internet, never to be seen or acquired again? 'Cuz I just downloaded it…
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The implementation of copyright law (not the idea of copyright itself) as it currently exists is unreasonable IMHO. I think they should make copyright something like 20 years max. and perhaps only allow it to be transferred in limited situations.
You also have to remember that hardcore copyright enforcing companies like Disney are beholden to the same double-edged sword when they want to use another artists work in one of their movies. The very long copyright tenure that exists also makes a copyright more valuable which (hopefully) benefits the artists but perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part.
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Sort of. But the reality is based around who can sue who. If Disney decided to take something a small artist did and use it, what would be the odds that the small artist would have the resources to take on Disney?
Sure, Disney can’t go and make a Dora the Explorer movie, but the law doesn’t actually protect people with little money from people with a lot of money.
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Unfortunately, the edge facing towards Disney is quite dull… Disney can steal copyrighted material with impunity because they can outspend any challenges.
There is one Dog that has been fighting back for about 3 years now:
Dog eat dog world? - Ethics in Graphic Design
It sounds like the Disney lawyers have given up denial and are now trying to say that the stuff that they stole doesn’t have artistic merit:
“I just think this case has to be one of the most absurd in the history of copyright. They deny copying our dogs for months, then out of nowhere claim that our dogs are realistic depictions from the “natural world” so therefore not protected by a broad copyright anyway.”
edit: basically, what @anon50609448 said…
Edit 2: Synchronicity… Just was browsing my newsfeed and came across this:
1,000 Dog Portraits: How a David-vs-Goliath Copyright Nightmare Became an Illustrated Celebration of the Canine Condition | Brain Pickings
They created a book based on another Disney lawyer claim that there are only so many ways to draw a beagle…
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If only it worked that way, but that isn’t how it works, nor is it why it is implemented. The amount of time that patents lasts keeps getting extended and extended, because NO it was not ever about things being “public”. Enforced monopoly’s not only set back advancement more, they prohibit others from coming up with the same formula or invention on their own, or even building off of those. Enforced monopolies are the antithesis of the free market and capitalism, and drastically reduce the concept of offering value or better services to compete. It is the absolute worst case scenario, period.
patent law both prohibits reverse-engineering, and prevents others from arriving at the same formula or innovation on their own. it is much much worse.
They are NOW defined as property since they are now protected by law even if exposed, they were not previously and hence were not IP, they used to be fair game if they got out, that is where you are conflating things.
Advancements are seldom worthless if shared openly, that defies the very definition of advancement. In fact if open, they typically lead to increasing advancements at a more rapid pace and spur a vast amount of innovation and benefit to all. This is precisely how every golden age in history has come about and worked. But I get it, you are thinking of the benefit of the individual not the other 7.5 billion people, problem is the individual is almost never the person who benefits.
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Obviously I’m thinking of the benefit of the individual creator, since they are the ones who need to be incentivized to create. The disconnect between the utility of the creator and the utility of the consumers is why public goods are market failures. [quote=“redesigned, post:109, topic:31696”]
They are NOW defined as property since they are now protected by law even if exposed, they were not previously and hence were not IP, they used to be fair game if they got out, that is where you are conflating things.
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Just because trade secrets have additional protections now doesn’t mean they were not intellectual property before. A property system with a “finders keepers” rule doesn’t mean that personal property is not property.
I am aware of this, and it was my point: in the absence of patent and/or copyright protection (i.e., in your ideal world) there would be much less investment in technologies that can be reverse engineered. If you have to rely on old-school trade secret protection, the greatest incentive is to innovate only in areas that will be difficult to reverse engineer.
We can safely assume they’re gonna do the same things they do here - foment conflict, strip wealth and resources to create war and justify their own existence.
“Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!” General “Buck” Turgidson
Except the system you support does not do this, it hinders innovation and creation and consolidates it to primarily be the realm of a few powerful interests. Innovation and creation have existed since the beginning of mankind, this broken system has done nothing but disincentive them. And why would it be obvious to put the welfare of 1 over the welfare of 7.5 billion (assuming that the 1 was the person to benefit, which they are not under this system, but for the sake of argument lets say they were.)? Innovation, art, creation, almost always happen separate from financial innovation, get to know a few creators and get back to me. Most the major inventors, musicians, painters, writers, weren’t doing so for profit, at least that wasn’t the driving force when they started off, and most of those things that have been profit driven are far inferior. Many valid medicines are currently not being developed because they cannot be patented, many inventions are stifled because they would have to be built on the backs of technology that a competitor controls. Even the large innovate corporations that hold the highest number of patents, unanimously agree that the current system sucks and is broken. Apple and Samsung both made public statements to that affect.
Provide a better product, or a service with actual value and you will always profit. The IP system disincentives both of those things. Those are the tings that should drive innovation, those and pure inspiration, that is what has driven innovation since the beginning of humankind and the only true drivers. You’ve bought into a myth created by the people who profit off of the backs of the real innovators, which is a shame.
Seriously? Yes, yes it does. Property implies ownership, full stop. It is absolutely meaningless to try and define property without ownership.
History says this is wrong. The people who actually innovate disagree. Providing better products and services and being first to market with those was the foundation of the free market. That market is no longer free, it is a highly controlled and monopolized market and the antithesis of capitalism.
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[quote=“redesigned, post:114, topic:31696”]
Many valid medicines are currently not being developed because they cannot be patented
[/quote]But I thought you are arguing that the patent system disincentivizes creators? Creating an unpatentable drug is the same as working in a patent-free system, which is what you espouse. The fact that some drugs are not developed because they cant be patented is pretty strong evidence that patent protection is required to innovate on this level.
Furthermore, tell me what creators want a system with no IP protection and anyone can do whatever they want with their products. They may not begin with a huge profit motive, but everyone likes to eat and/or be employed.
[quote=“redesigned, post:114, topic:31696”]
Provide a better product, or a service with actual value and you will always profit.
[/quote]How many creators are equipped to provide better value than a corporate entity with vast resources and economies of scale? Without IP protection a corporation is free to rip off the creative output of authors and capitalize on their creations. We see stories on BB of kitsch-art manufacturers doing this all the time, and your regime would make doing so perfectly legal.
Such a bold and wholly unsupported assertion. I mean, by your measure hugely expensive R&D departments have produced absolutely no true innovation, because all of these investments in innovation only make sense if their results are going to be protected.
I guess there’s no such thing as real property in places that have squatter’s rights which can result in loss of ownership. And no such thing as personal property in jurisdictions that have rules for treating lost property as abandoned. And what of things like beachfront-access easements? Probably not property, then. Heck, even IP isn’t property since there are fair use rules for copyright and patent protection requires public disclosure of the idea, and both are for limited times only. Then there’s trademark law, which requires protection/defence of the trademark, in the absence of which the trademark protection can be lost. None of this is exactly consistent with strict ideas of “ownership.”
Actually, it appears that David Bowie owns his back catalog. This particular song is owned by Jones/Tintoretto Entertainment Co., LLC. It is currently exclusively licensed to EMI records. However, Bowie apparently turned his future royalties into an asset-backed security some years ago, farming the risk of not receiving royalties out to a bunch of corporate investors.
(Kraftwerk similarly own everything through their Kling Klang Music holding company, and license it to EMI. Beatles too. EMI does a lot of deals like that.)
Just to throw in some numbers here, if Chris Hadfield had gone through the legally required licensing for a cover version, he’d have been paying for a mechanical license at a cost of $0.0175 per minute of playing time streamed. Since his YouTube video had 22m views, if we assume those are full views of the 3 minute song, I make that a cool $1.155m in royalties. So basically, David Bowie was nice enough to get the appropriate investors to abandon all claim to over a million dollars of royalties. And for that, he gets slagged off.
I don’t think it’s good if cover versions are always free. Consider how Glee ripped off Jonathan Coulton, after all. If there was no mechanical copyright licensing, any independent artist whose work started to become popular would find corporate cover versions drowning them out of the marketplace.
So that just leaves the argument that a song from 1969 should be out of copyright by now. I have some sympathy with that argument. However, it seems a bit off to focus the blame on David Bowie, particularly since he was one of the artists who thought MP3s were a good thing and wasn’t rabidly against Napster.
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Not for the entities who have been created to be solely profit incentivised as your favorite system creates. I thought you’d get that point.
Most small entities provide better value. Most large entities provide better economy. That is how even the current broken system works and how most things have always worked. Small businesses couldn’t exist today otherwise. Besides the point you always FAIL to address, is that in the current system the creators seldom if ever are the beneficiaries. Your reasoning for the system, is that the people who do not benefit from the system would not be able to benefit without it, even though historically they have and now they don’t.
No, loss of ownership, implies that ownership exists and changes hands. why do i bother.
That isn’t what I said. I said that the innovation is inferior because of…and i listed several reasons.
God this is tiresome and pointless, not one of my points addressed or even understood correctly. reminds me of all our past conversations.
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awesome. I’m very glad to hear that, that is exceedingly rare these days.
I too have been arguing against blaming him.
I sure am glad he didn’t have to pay that for something he didn’t make a dime off if and if anything was a tribute to the man and humankind’s achievement that such a song could be played in such a situation.
I personally think anyone should be able to cover any song if they aren’t making a profit off of it. But that is beyond the scope of your reply.
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Should I address your point like you address big R&D, which is by making broad conclusory statements (such as saying small businesses provide better value)? HIstorically, how many life-saving pharmaceuticals were developed under the IP-free system? Can you give examples of huge research investments that were made, with the results widely publicized and immediately copied? Pointing to history doesn’t work so well unless you can say how the historical approach would work in the modern context.
As for creators profiting (or not) from their creative endeavors, its usually the case that the creators get something in exchange for giving up their rights (which they at any rate have a second crack at win terms of reversion rights). Advances, employment, whatever. There are lots of artists who never pay off their advances, but nobody thinks that’s a terrible thing. And there are plenty of artists who keep a hold of their rights, especially in the non-music context.
At any rate, whether the creators are the ultimate beneficiaries or whether they have bargained their rights away, the fact remains that public goods are a market failure and that IP laws create the market. Without this market, there would be few or no labels/corporate entities for creators to deal with, and no chance for them to bargain their IP rights away.And how exactly would creators benefit in the absence of IP laws, and how would the situation be any different? Corporations and labels would be free to take their creative output without even giving them an advance or otherwise bargaining with them, so its difficult to see how historical rules would help them.[quote=“redesigned, post:117, topic:31696”]
No, loss of ownership, implies that ownership exists and changes hands. why do i bother.
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So tell me what “ownership” is and what the difference is between historical trade secrets and other forms of mutable ownership. Is ownership the ability to exclude? Keeping a trade secret would seem to exclude others. Defending a trademark excludes others. Keeping your personal property secure excludes others. Occupying real property excludes others. Failure to do these things can result in loss of “ownership.” Losing ownership of a trade secret through publication or discovery doesn’t seem that much different than losing trademark through failure to defend it or losing personal property through failure to keep it within your control.
Why don’t you try addressing whether or not public goods are market failures? Blathering on about how free markets are based on “providing better products and service” may be all very well in many contexts, but completely misses the point when a market failure means there is no functional market for truly public goods (as IP would be in your regime). A creative can craft a better song, but what good is that if Apple can rip it off and stick it up on iTunes without any compensation or consideration to the creator?
And this doesn’t mean that the market in which creators and corporations bargain for IP control is perfect, just that failures and/or inefficiencies in this market doesn’t remove the fact that public goods are a market failure and that things like copyright and patent law are mechanisms by which a market is created. Also note that the problems with rights negotiations have little to do with copyright, but much to do with bargaining inequalities and are seen in a great number of non-IP contexts.
And as for your points which you feel I’m not addressing, they are little more than conclusory statements. “History says this is wrong.” IP law “hinders innovation and creation,” and “this broken system has done nothing but disincentive [creators].” Apple and Samsung don’t like all the patents they have to deal with, so obviously they support your position that zero IP laws is the way to go. “[E]very golden age in history has come about” through open sharing. Great points; very convincing!
But why don’t we examine your unsupported “history” argument: take a look at the pace of innovation in any of your golden ages and compare it to modern times. Let me know which is greater. Innovation was slow and technological limitations made it difficult to copy many innovations.Many innovators enjoyed a certain period of exclusivity because of this. Compare that to modern society, where things can be copied at breakneck speed and many of the most important innovations require considerable capital outlay. If you actually think that we’ve historically seen faster and better innovation, tell me why, and let me know how well the creators lived and how many of them there were.
I didn’t say all, don’t conveniently misread everything. I said that most small businesses survive by providing value added services that their larger counterparts cannot afford, whereas most large businesses compete by offering scale of economy and cheaper items/services then their smaller counterparts can afford. This is accurate and basic economics. Yes there are exceptions.
That is a ridiculous question. How many X of anything was developed IP free before we came up with the concept of IP? All of it. What about things that didn’t exist before IP? Well they didn’t exist. no rational point can be made out of that kind of thinking.
Again, you are asking the same thing as above. This is a fallacy in logic.
Because we already had that EXACT conversation previously, remember?
Just because you can keep an idea secret doesn’t mean you own the idea, or can prevent others from discovering it, or coming up with it independently. I’ve already answered all of that.
You aren’t conflating the curve of innovation increase with whether or not specific environments accelerate or decelerate the rate of growth within the curve are you? OF COURSE more innovation is happening on average at any given point in the future then in the past. Again that is a fallacy in logic to set up such false arguments. Why would you set up such ridiculous straw men?
Thanks! 
I’m sorry, but I never said anything about “all” of anything. What you did say is that small businesses provide “better value.”
So, basically you’re saying that your “history” model will always work because things that weren’t or couldn’t be developed under the old model are excluded from consideration. But how many drugs do you think would be developed under an IP-free regime? You’ve already said that corporations don’t develop drugs they can’t patent, so I’m guessing the answer will be “not many.”
That’s true. But it’s also true that Trade Secret law (which you do regard as property) doesn’t protect Coca-Cola or KFC from independent derivation of their trade secret. So, again, what’s the distinguishing feature or ownership that includes modern trade secret law but excludes historical trade secret practice?
No. But I assume if we had a public good conversation we also had this entire conversation before, too. Regardless of your reluctance to address it, public goods are market failures.
Hey, you’re the one saying that innovation in the past worked better and that there was more of it. I don’t see why you get to make these unsupported assertions (that also ignore a change in context) when it suits your fancy, but reject them on context grounds when I make them. And the change in context is the exact point I make in the sentence following the quote: you can’t make arguments about historical practice when the contexts, infrastructure, etc. are so very different.
And OF COURSE there was more innovation in the Middle Ages than in Athenian Greece or Ancient Rome. OF COURSE. And the innovation gap between Athenian Greece and the Renaissance was much larger than the innovation gap between the Renaissance and today. Because time.
No no no no no no…I’m not saying anything even remotely close to that. why do you always…i don’t get it. How many drugs would be developed under an IP free regime? All of them. Also I already explained to you my position last time you tried to inject that no drugs would be developed without IP…setting up the same straw many twice in one thread is clumsy at best. I don’t think any of this…seriously, wtf? its like you have you are having an argument with yourself. I don’t even need to be here for this.
Again this is your injected argument…not mine…oh my god. No I’m not saying that. I said previous to the concept of IP, secrets were not considered intellectual property because no thought or idea was property. I’ve already explained this twice. You brought the modern definition of Trade Secrets into things as if that was a way to refute my original point, but that was YOU not me, and it has nothing to do with my original point…
I did address it last time we had this conversation on this site. I don’t have reluctance to address it, I already did.
EXACTLY, too bad that refutes the exact point you were trying to use against me in the previous comment. That was the reason I GAVE as to why your point was a logical fallacy. please reread. you can’t have it both ways.
No, again that is not at all what i’m saying. geez.
Trying to have a discussion with you is so pointless it hurts. If you want to argue yourself please leave me out of it. No one like discussing things with someone who injects their own arguments into the other persons mouth and then tries to argue those. having to reply “no that’s not what i think” to every single injected point is tiresome.
I don’t get it. You’ve already said some drugs aren’t developed because they can’t get patents on them.Remove patents altogether, and you think not only that those drugs would be produced, but all the drugs being produced would also be produced? What incentive would pharmaceuticals have to spend billions of dollars developing a drug that others could immediately copy?
And what was your response to this “straw man”? All I see is some comment about “entities who have been created to be solely profit incentivised as your favorite system creates.” I’m not sure that actually answers anything as to drug development in a patent-free world.
Or were you just making the semantic point that every drug that somehow got developed under an IP-free regime would, by definition, be developed under an IP-free regime? If that was your point, thank you for pointing out the obvious while ignoring the obvious question of how many drugs would be developed in the absence of IP protection (as compared to how many are developed in the current IP regime). Straw men indeed.
Not quite. It started by you saying that IP is a recent development. I said that trade secrets have existed for hundreds of years. And you are the one who said that it’s only with modern trade secret law that they have become property. I argued that trade secrets have always been a form of property, even when you couldn’t protect against inadvertent release of them. You’ve pushed back against this, but haven’t been willing to say what property is (other than saying “ownership,” which really doesn’t get us anywhere) and why trade secrets don’t meet the definition of it when other things do.
And I’ll stand by my point: trade secrets are a long-standing form of IP. And I’ll stand by my point that they are the least productive form of IP and that in the absence of patent or copyright they are the most attractive form of IP for creators.
You honestly believe that time is the determinant of innovation? OK.
And I’m not trying to have it both ways. I’m trying to get you to actually say something more than “history shows this is wrong.” If you don’t want to explain these vague conclusory statements, then don’t get mad if I try to fill in the blanks.
Really? Here’s what you’ve said:
So you’ve said that the current system disincentivizes creators and sets back advancement, while also saying that history has proven it wrong that IP-free regimes have less investment in technology and that with an open, IP-free regime (such as seen in the golden ages of innovation) you see advancements leading to advancements “at a more rapid pace […] spu[rring] a vast amount of innovation.”
Yet I’m somehow putting words in your mouth by saying you believe that innovation in the past worked better and that there was more of it. OK. Maybe you’re saying that despite all these horrible handicaps and disincentives we are still more innovative solely because of the magical time factor, but that without the time factor we would be less innovative than other golden ages, but I think my original statement is a fair reading of your words.
Let me explain the main point of contention I have in discussing any of this with you. You are not arguing my points, you are arguing your own injected points. You take what you assume I’m saying, which typically I am not, reduce it reductio ad absurdum, then based on that draw a ridiculous conclusion that you then argue against. Conclusions that I don’t think or agree with. That is what I refer to as straw man. You are arguing against your own injected points not my original points, things I don’t even think. How can one have a sane rational discussion like that?
At least here you admit it because you claim you have to because I’m not providing enough detail.
Creating your own arguments to argue against isn’t “filling in the blanks” it is most commonly referred to as straw manning. setting up your own targets. moving the goalpoasts. etc.
onward one last time…but doubting that anything will change.
There are plenty of models that pharmaceutical medicines can successfully be developed under. The current one is one of the most corrupt industries on the planet with one of the highest profit margins. Ongoing treatment is more profitable then cure. It is a horrible model. Pharmaceutical medicines could be developed in the public sector and be cheap and readily available to all, for the benefit of all, owned by no one party. Profiting off of the sick is kinda sick. The USA is the odd man out with this model of health care.
Pharmaceutical researchers don’t get rich, the companies they work for do, they do it to help people. Greed is not their driving motivator. The entire world isn’t driven by greed. Likewise some doctors become doctors to become rich, but most do it to help people. Why is health care and medicine so expensive in the USA? Because companies are posting record profits due to artificial intellectual monopolies. This doesn’t serve the greater good at all.
I’ve already explained the difference between trade secrets prior to the advent of intellectual property 3 times now. If you don’t get my point then you don’t get it. fine.
No, and again I’ve already explained that I don’t think that. I don’t think time is the determinant of innovation, i think that innovations compound hence there is a growth curve that innovation follows. Any point in the future has more innovation then any point in the past. But you also said the exact same thing, in direct contradiction to your previous argument against me.
That is exactly what people mean by trying to have it both ways. All I mean is that you can’t contradict your own injected argument with my argument then once again jump back to your own.
Yes, if you totally misunderstand all those quotes and completely misinterpret them I can see how you could draw the incorrect conclusion that you could then follow several steps too far and then argue against that, but that wouldn’t even resemble what i’ve said at that point. Again you don’t seem to get what I am saying. At any point in history the openness of a society is directly correlated to the acceleration of innovation along the growth curve, while innovation is always compounding, sometimes that is at a much higher rate or slower rate. The variation in the acceleration of the rate of innovation is a fact (regardless of attribution). My argument was that the open sharing of ideas has spurred every great acceleration of innovation in history, and the isolation and control of innovation every deceleration. We could be seeing some amazing innovations right now if everything wasn’t locked down for some time to come.
Do you see how what i’m saying is totally different than the points you inject and what you have misconstrued my statements to mean? Or do you still insist that I’m arguing points that I don’t even agree with?
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