Should intellectual property be abolished? (make all file sharing legal) (1 Viewer)

Graney

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Intellectual property refers to the exclusive rights to own the property of minds, including copyrights, trademarks, patents and related rights. It includes creations such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.

There are several clear problems with intellectual property in the 21st century.

First of all is the absurdity of trying to enforce intellectual property laws in a post-internet age. The stupid, fruitless battles of the traditional music industry vs. file sharing companies make it plain that trying to enforce intellectual property for creative works is now impossible, pointless, and the will of the people no longer resides with the traditional owners of creative works. Plainly the only practical morality demands that we do away with the idea of intellectual property.

Other trends can be seen growing in opposition to intellectual property laws; the growth of open source software, public media like google books and wikipedia etc… The internet in general has been a marvel for the free distribution of information. And the world is much better for it.

In evaluating the need or otherwise for intellectual property laws, we must look at how the greatest good might be achieved. Under traditional intellectual property rights an effective intellectual monopoly was created. You can’t share, use or modify another’s ideas, regardless of the benefit society as a whole might obtain from this. In so many ways, the greater public interest is harmed by intellectual protectionism.

The most popular criticism of freedom of intellectual property in recent times has come out of sympathy for artists working in the music industry. I propose that this criticism is misplaced.

Artists claim all the benefits of the new globalised information age, of which there have been a great many, while trying to reject and control others rights to information when it benefits them.

The music industry has changed so much since the pre-internet days of the 1990's.

Distribution and access to new artists has become completely globalised. People are by and large, far more musically literate. Think about how much music festivals, and gigs have grown in that time.

The Big day out started in 1992. There are now so many more festivals, so much bigger, Australia can draw bands from all over the world and the crowd is absolutely aware of every artist and their work.

General entry to a single performance by a major artist can cost $150+, the average price of a ticket to a major gig has shot up dramatically. More gigs are being played, more are selling out, and the prices are hugely increased over what they used to be.

Smaller gig attendance is up, and the whole live music scene in Australia has been bouyant for years.

All these benefits are directly attributable to the rise of the internet.

Artists can't take all the benefits of the information age and expect no downside. The music industry and artists as a whole are way better off in a post-file sharing world. They should recognize this and be grateful. Record companies are the only ones really suffering. Fuck record companies.

No one should have an inviolable right to own and control information of any sort. The world is a better place without it.

The dotCommunist Manifesto by Eben Moglen @ wrevolution.org
 

bigb0yjames

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industry should try to protect itself, however going around lobbying the govt to ban bit-torrenting is not the solution
 

Graney

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Yeah, my criticism is pretty incomplete in focusing largely on how it harms creative freedom. Didn't want to make it even more tl;dr.

Business too is much more efficient with the free exchange of ideas.
 
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Captain Gh3y

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If there was no copyright, people couldn't make any money from their music/art etc.

because anyone could just copy it and distribute it as much as they want

so then all the artists, musicians etc. couldn't make a living from their work

so then we'd have no more music or art anymore at all

WHERE'S YOUR INFORMATION AGE NOW?
 

Trefoil

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Captain Gh3y said:
If there was no copyright, people couldn't make any money from their music/art etc.
Please don't buy into the RIAA and Microsoft's bullshit. Read Graney's first post or read about a thing called Open Source to learn why that claim's a load of bullshit.

Moreover, I direct you to the music and art that existed before copyright did. What of that?

Personally I support taking copyright back to its original time period of 5 years (perhaps 10 at the absolute maximum) instead of the pathetic 75 years or so it is now.
 

Graney

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Captain Gh3y said:
so then all the artists, musicians etc. couldn't make a living from their work
Value adding, live performances, merchandise etc... is where the money's at. Adapt or die.

Captain Gh3y said:
so then we'd have no more music or art anymore at all
"It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property in ideas and culture all creative work will cease, for lack of “incentive,” and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, there ought to have been no music, art, technology, or learning before the advent of the bourgeoisie, which alone conceived of subjecting the entirety of knowledge and culture to the cash nexus. Faced with the advent of free production and free technology, with free software, and with the resulting development of free distribution technology, this argument simply denies the visible and unanswerable facts. Fact is subordinated to dogma, in which the arrangements that briefly characterized intellectual production and cultural distribution during the short heyday of the bourgeoisie are said, despite the evidence of both past and present, to be the only structures possible."

The dotCommunist Manifesto by Eben Moglen @ wrevolution.org

It's a joke to suggest that people only create art to make money, and that without this incentive genuine artistic drive will decline. The contrary is true. By the free distribution of digital tools and ideas, art will be much more easily created. The artist will be able to reach a larger fanbase much easier, and thus be inspired and motivated in his creation.
 
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Graney

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Tulipa said:
You're all talking about music here - which is fine - but what about literary works or visual artwork?
Why should they be different?
 

Tulipa

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Graney said:
Why should they be different?
If you get rid of the copyright on a literary work then how exactly are they going to make money in the same way as a musical artist? They don't do merchandise or shows (for the most part).

It'd be taking away the majority of the money they would make from their work which, to be honest, takes a lot more creativity and time than putting together an album.

I know that's just a few basics but I think there's a large difference.
 

Graney

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Why is there an assumption people should have an inherent right to make money from ideas?

Why should they be paid for their ideas?

If the greatest good is served by ideas being free, so they should be.

Let them try to sell their ideas in a free market (if their idea is unique and valuable enough it will find a buyer), and use whatever free market mechanisms they please to try to protect their ideas, but it would be better if there were not legislation to protect these ideas.

There are many obvious benefits to ideas being completely free...

If the ideas are good ones, someone will produce them regardless of whether there is capital and profit attached to them.

I am willing to conceded that perhaps, a five or ten year at most, term of copyright is a reasonable idea.
 

Graney

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If ideas were free, twilight would never have been written.

Engineering textbooks still would be.
 

Tulipa

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Why should they be paid for their ideas?
Because a literary work is not just an idea. To me, that's sort of like saying why should anyone be paid anything for any of their work? Being an artist is a job and royalties for an author are the closest thing to a salary they can obtain.

I would concede that the 70 year (after death) copyright term is excessive but I would argue that, at the very least, as long as an author is alive they should receive royalties from their work.

If ideas were free, twilight would never have been written.

Engineering textbooks still would be.
Twilight serves its own purpose, just like Dan Brown and Jodi Piccoult do. They write McFiction, books that are easily devoured and an entertaining form of escapism. Not everything has to have a strictly practical purpose. Without people reading fiction, you won't have many who are interested in reading non-fiction after awhile.

You don't seem able to grasp the difference between an idea and an artwork nor the differences in the professions of artists.
 

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Specifically relating to music sharing and file downloads the actual analysis of statistics of illegal downloads contradicts claims that it actually has an effect on cd sales. Track dowloading rise and decline are caused by factors unrelated to a song's popularity and uses the ebbs and flows to analyze file-sharing's impact on CD sales.

Research also supports the idea that most people download music that they wouldn't buy anyway. The Internet is more like radio than anything else, people listen to two or three songs, and if they like it, they go out and buy the CD.

Where as the intellectual properties of things such as art and literature, the pursuits of postmodernism and avant garde movements prevent any sort of originality in the first place. Literature is nothing but remake of the canon, and art will never be original, what with entire movements dedicated to the reworking of past peices, Dada etc.

When you allow your circumstances to undermine your search for self development you let freedom of information and creativity imprison yourself.

The concept of "Intellectual Properties" should be abolished, however with correct allusions to the original work, the standard ethics of copyright should withstand.
 

Graney

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Tulipa said:
Because a literary work is not just an idea. To me, that's sort of like saying why should anyone be paid anything for any of their work? Being an artist is a job and royalties for an author are the closest thing to a salary they can obtain.
I'm not saying artists shouldn't be paid, I'm saying the market should decide their worth, it shouldn't be legislated through copyright law. If it's something valuable, people will pay. If there is sufficient demand and it won't be produced without being paid, then people will pay. But if any idea is great, someone will almost certainly produce it regardless.

Tulipa said:
You don't seem able to grasp the difference between an idea and an artwork
Fundamentally, there is no difference. An artwork is an elaborate expression of an idea with an investment of time and effort attached. Excuse me, I'm using the word 'idea' as general shorthand for all sorts of Intellectual property.
 

Graney

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EbonyTW said:
Specifically relating to music sharing and file downloads the actual analysis of statistics of illegal downloads contradicts claims that it actually has an effect on cd sales. Track dowloading rise and decline are caused by factors unrelated to a song's popularity and uses the ebbs and flows to analyze file-sharing's impact on CD sales.
Apparently since the financial crisis, there have been record high CD sales in Australia because people are moving back to cheaper entertainment media.
 

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It is all very well and good to speak of how ideas should be able to travel freely through society. But in a market society like our own there has to be an incentive - very very few people will truly do something just because they love it at a decently high opportunity cost - and copyrights, while unpopular, are the only forseeable way to maintain the levels of artistic quality that we enjoy. Perhaps the length of the copyright regulations might be cut a little. But if you go too far and abolish intellectual property it might well be at the risk of losing some future artistic works from people who don't have the time or money to just do things they love without an incentive to at least see them through it and make it worthwhile.
 

Graney

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georgefren said:
But in a market society
Copyrights stand in opposition to free markets.

georgefren said:
very very few people will truly do something just because they love it at a decently high opportunity cost
Why did people create art before the advent of copyrights?
Why do millions of people publish for free on the internet?
Why do artists generate creative works with no guarantees of a return? Why do people persist in becoming artists despite the truth of the artist starving for his work?

If rationality was truly involved they would obviously invest their opportunity cost elsewhere. Becoming an artist is a terrible investment. Returns have little to do with why it is done.


georgefren said:
But if you go too far and abolish intellectual property it might well be at the risk of losing some future artistic works from people who don't have the time or money to just do things they love without an incentive to at least see them through it and make it worthwhile.
Even assuming artists must have an income, visual artists obviously don't need intellectual property, since an original work, hand signed and auctioned will always be worth something, and there other obvious models for authors and others to generate a reasonable income in a free market model without copyrights.
 

Trefoil

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Tulipa said:
You're all talking about music here - which is fine - but what about literary works or visual artwork?
What about them? They are no different in this context. People can still make money off their work, you know?

Take a look at the GPL. It's a software license that basically says "You can sell copies of this software and alter it as you wish, but you must always produce the source when asked, and you must credit anybody who has contributed code." So basically if you're selling the software, you're actually selling the medium it comes on, and lots of companies like Sun, IBM, Nokia, Google, etc generate revenue by adding 'value': advertisements, helpdesk support, a mobile phone, etc.

Is it really that hard for you to think of a copyright that's less restrictive than the current model? Why don't you try this one: "This work is free to distribute and perform as you please, however, you may not alter it without asking permission, and you may not sell it without permission."

Want to be able to let people build on your work but not leech off your work? Add a clause about derivative works. If a person adds a 'sufficient' amount of 'creative input' to your work, let the copyright grant them the right sell their work so long as they credit your original work. In this way, your income and intellectual property are defended from clones, but people can build on your work to create their own income and works which won't overlap with yours.

There we go, problem solved. :rolleyes:
 

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