I don’t believe in the concept of “intellectual property” so any laws built around that concept are nonsense to me.
Laws about protecting intellectual property are to me, like laws preventing the poaching of unicorns, they don’t make sense because the thing they are built around doesn’t exist.
I do think there should be protections against fraud, ie: falsely attributing somebody else’s work or not giving due credit. But the idea that a person, group of people, or a company can “own” a concept in the same way somebody owns a shovel or owns a house, that just makes zero sense to me.
It’s a fallacy, it’s like somebody saying, “I tried to go see Harvard University, but the tour guide just spent hours showing me a bunch of different buildings. I never actually saw Harvard University.”
I can understand owning an object, I even understand owning a piece of land to some degree, although that’s somewhat dubious IMO. But an idea? It just makes no sense to me.
I’m thinking of a planet right now called “HS-9970 Xagian Prime” where the oceans are all honey and the land is all gingerbread. How do I “own” that idea? What does that even mean?
I came up with the concept in my imagination sure. I’m the person that originated it, I put some kind of labor into it. But it’s impossible to steal from me, unlike land, a shovel, etc. Unless you literally went into my brain, removed the idea somehow and placed it into your brain.
Do I have some sort of rights to that idea? What rights though. Rights of ownership with normal property seem to be rooted in some kind of basic violations of person. As in, the only way you can steal my shovel is if you deprive me directly of the ability to use it. Your stealing directly entails me losing the ability to use that thing. Stealing my land entails kicking me off of it by force against my will, depriving me of using it.
But if you “steal” my idea of Xagian Prime, what am I being deprived of? Anything you add to it is your own creation, it follows the same rules as my ideas I came up with. One could argue that you couldn’t have come up with your new ideas without starting from mine, but that seems somewhat dubious, and even if true, it’s not like my idea of Xagian Prime was 100% original. It required concepts and ideas that other people already came up with too, and we don’t see that as “stealing.” I still have full access to my ideas of Xagian Prime.
One might argue that I am deprived of potential profit or social gains, but that seems extremely dubious. How am I “owed” potential profit that isn’t guaranteed?
It seems to me that the only arguments that are compelling for so called “Intellectual Property” are actually just arguments about fraud. Like it’s wrong to claim my idea of Xagian Prime is actually yours and then sell books on it. Sure, but that has nothing to do with property ownership, that is just fraud. That’s the same as saying it’s wrong to go around pretending I’m selling medicine when actually it’s just water with food coloring.
I am open to changing my position, but I’ve been discussing this for years with folks and I’ve never heard a compelling argument for the existence of IP. The most compelling arguments I’ve heard are ones about rights of people to have their work represented in ways they allow. That makes sense, but again, that seems like an argument against fraud, not for IP.
Copyright laws, specially author’s right, have one good reason to exist : it legally tied up a work with a person or an entity.
This allows to create a responsibility about the work itself.
For the audience, it allows the audience to held responsible the author for the content of the work. Before copyright laws a work of art was the voice of gods and such…
Sure, but you don’t need copyright for that. You can just have a registry of works or many other solutions that don’t involve all the baggage and nonsense of copyright.
You need a law of some kind, that will make clear the relationship between the author and the work.
A simple registry is just there to retain informations, it doesn’t make magically people care about things… Laws are better for this.
I don’t believe in the concept of “intellectual property” so any laws built around that concept are nonsense to me.
Laws about protecting intellectual property are to me, like laws preventing the poaching of unicorns, they don’t make sense because the thing they are built around doesn’t exist.
I do think there should be protections against fraud, ie: falsely attributing somebody else’s work or not giving due credit. But the idea that a person, group of people, or a company can “own” a concept in the same way somebody owns a shovel or owns a house, that just makes zero sense to me.
It’s a fallacy, it’s like somebody saying, “I tried to go see Harvard University, but the tour guide just spent hours showing me a bunch of different buildings. I never actually saw Harvard University.”
I can understand owning an object, I even understand owning a piece of land to some degree, although that’s somewhat dubious IMO. But an idea? It just makes no sense to me.
I’m thinking of a planet right now called “HS-9970 Xagian Prime” where the oceans are all honey and the land is all gingerbread. How do I “own” that idea? What does that even mean?
I came up with the concept in my imagination sure. I’m the person that originated it, I put some kind of labor into it. But it’s impossible to steal from me, unlike land, a shovel, etc. Unless you literally went into my brain, removed the idea somehow and placed it into your brain.
Do I have some sort of rights to that idea? What rights though. Rights of ownership with normal property seem to be rooted in some kind of basic violations of person. As in, the only way you can steal my shovel is if you deprive me directly of the ability to use it. Your stealing directly entails me losing the ability to use that thing. Stealing my land entails kicking me off of it by force against my will, depriving me of using it.
But if you “steal” my idea of Xagian Prime, what am I being deprived of? Anything you add to it is your own creation, it follows the same rules as my ideas I came up with. One could argue that you couldn’t have come up with your new ideas without starting from mine, but that seems somewhat dubious, and even if true, it’s not like my idea of Xagian Prime was 100% original. It required concepts and ideas that other people already came up with too, and we don’t see that as “stealing.” I still have full access to my ideas of Xagian Prime.
One might argue that I am deprived of potential profit or social gains, but that seems extremely dubious. How am I “owed” potential profit that isn’t guaranteed?
It seems to me that the only arguments that are compelling for so called “Intellectual Property” are actually just arguments about fraud. Like it’s wrong to claim my idea of Xagian Prime is actually yours and then sell books on it. Sure, but that has nothing to do with property ownership, that is just fraud. That’s the same as saying it’s wrong to go around pretending I’m selling medicine when actually it’s just water with food coloring.
I am open to changing my position, but I’ve been discussing this for years with folks and I’ve never heard a compelling argument for the existence of IP. The most compelling arguments I’ve heard are ones about rights of people to have their work represented in ways they allow. That makes sense, but again, that seems like an argument against fraud, not for IP.
Copyright laws, specially author’s right, have one good reason to exist : it legally tied up a work with a person or an entity. This allows to create a responsibility about the work itself. For the audience, it allows the audience to held responsible the author for the content of the work. Before copyright laws a work of art was the voice of gods and such…
Sure, but you don’t need copyright for that. You can just have a registry of works or many other solutions that don’t involve all the baggage and nonsense of copyright.
You need a law of some kind, that will make clear the relationship between the author and the work. A simple registry is just there to retain informations, it doesn’t make magically people care about things… Laws are better for this.
In what way would you be “making clear the relationship?” Like restrict usage?
Yes or granting usage. Being an author isn’t always about forbidding, it can be about changing the work or adapting it as well.
The author can defend the work against uses that would change the meaning of the work itself (integrity).
Lastly, the author can’t deny the work is his own. And for a bunch of artist this is a bummer.
All this is more of an author’s right thing, but I think it’s slowly coming to copyright laws as well (online publication).