In this comment (read the whole thread for the context) Midwesterner said:
I cut and pasted this out of the SD thread. why don’t we drop it on the ice and chase it around a bit.
If we concede that as an individual, I have a right to have a secret, and
if we concede that as an individual, I have a right to enter into contracts with other individuals, and
I require a contract from another individual in exchange for telling my secret to him, and
that contract places restrictions on if and how he may relay that secret to others, and
someone finds that secret ‘with the doors unlocked’, then
they can no more claim entitlement to it than if they find my house or car unlocked.
They say that because stealing my car denies me the use of it, it is theft. No. It is theft because it is my car.
Furthermore, stealing my intellectual advantage (IP) does deny me the use of it. Whether you are a moralist or a pragmatist, it’s still wrong.
IP is intrinsic to individualism. Denying IP is pure intellectual collectivism.So, starting from the top down, let’s find the first statement that is not stone cold obvious, and debate it. By working one at a time from the top down, we can reduce confusion. I’m on way too many threads right now.
If we establish IP as a general concept, then we can go onto to details. But they will be easier if we can keep track of how we got to where.
I can’t find anything in that to disagree with, if the secret bestows upon the originator and any contracted keepers some kind of advantage, ie it has a practical application or is useful in some other way. A treasure map for instance or some kind of industrial secret. The words “intellectual advantage” must have triggered something in my brain and I realised where I’d been misunderstanding and misunderstood.
Through entirely my own fault I was looking at the issue from the perspective of the secret being a work of art (music, writing, film, painting etc.) which has no practical applictaion. Its what immediately came to mind when copyright was mentioned. There is no intellectual advantage to be gained from keeping art a secret, it is meant to be shared/distributed as widely as possible otherwise it loses any meaning. A book is meant to be read, a painting to be seen, music to be heard and a film to be watched. The only advantage gained by anyone with regards to art is by those with the means to distribute it as widely as possible.
Until these digitised times a book had to be printed, music pressed onto discs, films transferred onto film and these physical things had to be transported around the globe by a variety of slow and expensive means. Various industries grew up around the need to distribute art, and they made an awful lot of money at it. That all changed with the dawn of the internet. I can access a symphony recorded in Tokyo and have a copy stored on my computer in a matter of seconds. I can read a book as it is being written half a world away (Its a very good book aswell I can reccommend it.) And though I don’t think anyone’s done it yet I could feasibly watch a movie as it is filmed, live, right on my desk.
The old distribution systems are no longer necessary and so neither are the giant companies which grew up around them and made so much money from them. The distribution network is much cheaper and as such is available to every Tom, Dick and Harry who feels the urge to put finger to keyboard, digicam to eye, mouth to microphone, or stylus to graphics tablet. I’m doing it myself, no-one in their right mind would publish what I write in a traditional medium, it just wouldn’t be cost effective (and most of it isn’t really good enough anyway). Instead of the distributors getting rich of the backs of the artists, if they want to the artists can get rich themselves or give their art away for nothing. The whole brouhaha about copyright (of art) is to do with the passing of the old order and the various distributors resisting the change. They’ll give in eventually and find other revenue streams or they’ll go the way of the dinosaurs they are.
As to their ownership of the art they distribute, they never had that, they were only contracted to distibute it (The film industry is a special case where the distributor is more often than not the creator aswell, see Disney). Its a pity that the musicians and writers of the past whose works are still under copyright can’t reclaim the distribution rights.
Having read that back to myself I realise that its a bit of a ramble and probably slightly off topic. As I said the idea of IP is a valid one, as it is explained above, and I have no objection to it when applied to practical, profitable and useful ideas. If you can convince me that keeping art to yourself bestows an advantage, in and of itself, which would be lost if it was freely distributed, then as I said before go right ahead.
