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-By Caleb Jones
A few weeks back I posted this article where I laid out why I was for patents and other governmental protection of intellectual property. I asked for you guys to change my mind. I said that if you provided valid arguments, I would consider changing my mind on this.
Well, you did. You changed my mind.
Sort of.
As one of you pointed out (Anon), when talking about intellectual property, we’re really talking about four different things: copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. To (somewhat) quote him:
Copyright is a conflict around copying — you want to be able to provide your readers with copies of your books, yet you want to stop them from doing the same. The current solution is legal restriction of copying. It’s not great.
Patents are a conflict around disclosure — you want to use others’ inventions while keeping your own ones secret. The current solution is a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosure. It’s quite bad.
Trademarks are conflicts around a scarce resource of catchy names — which isn’t that scarce and the topic is not very controversial. The current solution is mostly fine.
Trade secrets is about revealing proprietary information to outside sources. Not a lot of disagreement on this one.
After the discussion we had regarding patents, here’s where I currently stand on those four things:
I am still for copyrights. They are a pain in the ass, but are sadly required until such time as technology can prevent the theft of income from content creators. I think this day will come, someday. Until then, I think they need to be protected. I’m a libertarian so I hate that they need to be protected, but again, please note the question I asked in the last article:
If there were no government involvement in copyrights, how would authors, artists, software developers, and other such creators make a living if everyone can just legally steal and duplicate their content? Many people (including me) would lose a lot of money and have literally thousands of work hours creating content wasted.
I did not receive one quality answer to that question the last time I asked it. Hold on though; in a minute I will go through the answers I did receive.
So I am still for copyrights.
I am now against patents regarding new inventions. Congratulations! You guys changed my mind on this. I used to be for patents, now I am officially against them. I think the US Patent Office should be abolished and the concept of patents removed. I might be for limited patents; a very short period of patent protection, like five years or less, but even that makes me uncomfortable.
Governmental protection of trademarks are required in my view, since they are regarding truly scarce resources (like a domain name, company name, or logo for example; there’s only one of each available).
I'm fine with trade secrets but it should not be a government function at all, and should instead be handled with private contracts where violators can be sued in civil court.
Regarding those of you who think there should be no copyright law at all, here are the points you made the last time, and my responses.
1. If you’re a writer, you can provide free content to sell consulting, speeches, and other labor.
Many writers, actually most writers, aren’t consultants or speakers, don’t want to be one, and/or don’t have that ability. They’re just good writers. George R.R. Martin is a good writer, but if you’ve ever seen him interviewed, it’s quite clear he could never be a consultant or speaker or whatever; he doesn’t have that kind of skill set or personality. He would never be able to make money that way. He’s just a skilled writer, and simply wants to be paid for the the thousands of man hours he's put into his writing.
Moreover, just think about what you said. “Hey man, just spend 500 hours of your life writing a book that everyone will get for free, then you’ll make zero dollars, but don’t worry, you can spend the rest of your life spending even more time consulting / speaking / whatever!” Does that sound like a good deal to you? It doesn’t to me, and I actually do consult and speak and enjoy those things.
2. Property rights are a system for efficiently and ethically allocating scarce resources. Ideas and digital goods are not scarce resources so it doesn’t make sense to apply property rights to them.
I agree philosophically, but out in the real world, that doesn’t address the serious problem I just described above. Writers, artists, etc, provide value to the marketplace that takes an extreme amount of labor and time out of their lives. Your time is your property, and the result of your work is also your property. Otherwise you will have a society with no value provided to it by writers (or at least most writers, the ones who don’t want to speak/consult/etc).
3. Someone copying your book can’t be stealing because that action does not deprive you of your copy.
Incorrect! That depends on whether or not that person would have bought the book if there was no other way to get it.
To demonstrate what I mean, here are two hypotheticals:
I want to buy the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark for my personal collection. I absolutely want it, no matter what. I will buy it if I have to. So, if I download it instead of buying it when I would have bought it if the illegal download was not available, I am indeed stealing from the creators of that movie. I’m stealing $20 for that DVD (or whatever), because I would have purchased it if I wasn’t able to illegally download it.
On the other hand, let’s say I want to watch Planet of the Apes. I’d like to own it, but I’m not dying to own it. I won’t buy it. But I’ll download it illegally. In that case, no, I’m not stealing because if the download was not available, I wouldn’t have given them my money anyway.
So in the first example, yes, I did indeed steal money from the content creator.
(FYI this is all hypothetical; I don't illegal download content. If I really want a movie for example, I buy the DVD/Blu-ray, rip a digital copy to my collection, then either give it away or sell it used on Ebay. Either way, the content creator got my money, which they deserve.)
4. Business endeavors are inherently risky and there is no guarantee that they will generate or continue to generate revenue.
Completely irrelevant to the argument. I’m not asking for nor expecting any guaranteed profits or monetary return on my work, nor should any other content creator.
5. Just create/use something like a streaming service!
Fine for videos, but how can this be done with books? Artwork? Sadly, we don’t yet have the technology to cover this area yet.
6. Future technology will prevent copying.
Correct, it will. Someday, none of this will be relevant because illegally copying content of any kind will indeed be impossible or close to it. But until that day, we, unfortunately, need copyright protection laws (as much as I hate to say that).
7. If someone can reverse engineer your “original” product, improve upon it, and market it better, they deserve to take all the profit.
I agree completely, but this is not a violation of IP in my view. You’re talking about improving. I’m talking about copying.
8 . A copyright is an unnatural construct. You conceived and shared your ideas on your own free will, knowing the consequences of how you shared your ideas.
I agree completely, but this is yet another purely philosophical argument that does not address the real-world problem I stated above. Not all sound philosophical concepts/arguments work in the real world. An example I've used many times before is communism. Communism sounds great philosophically and on paper. It really does. But if you actually apply it in the real world, it becomes a cluster fuck.
9. Nobody owes you anything. You are not entitled to any profits regarding anything you do.
Completely irrelevant to the argument. I’m not asking for nor expecting any guaranteed profits or monetary return on my work, nor should any other content creator.
10. You are not creating much of anything, just mostly rehashing content inherited from other people, much of which you got for free.
Read my answer to number 7 above.
11. Owners of taxi medallions in New York stand to lose a lot of money due to competition with Uber, so I don’t care if you didn’t get paid for your work.
Irrelevant to the discussion. Taxi drivers lost money because someone came along and created an improved system. For the third time, that is not what I’m talking about here. I'm talking about copying, not improving.
12. If I was not willing to pay a creator up-front for protection costs, why would I want to be forced to pay it regardless through taxes?
Why do you pay taxes for an army that protects my house?
I create my content in my house, so you’re already paying taxes for my protection, whether you like it or not.
If your answer is that you also have a house, but you aren't a writer, then my response is that I would be happy to pay some kind of government fee as a writer for copyright protection that you would not have to pay. That seems fair to me.
(If you’re an anarcho-caplitalist and you’re against the entire concept of taxes, that’s a different discussion, but if you’re not opposed to taxes, then I just answered your question for you.)
So if any of you have any new points to make regarding copyright law (not patents, since you already changed my mind on that), fire away. I’m still willing to listen if there’s anything new.
Well, you did. You changed my mind.
Sort of.
As one of you pointed out (Anon), when talking about intellectual property, we’re really talking about four different things: copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. To (somewhat) quote him:
Copyright is a conflict around copying — you want to be able to provide your readers with copies of your books, yet you want to stop them from doing the same. The current solution is legal restriction of copying. It’s not great.
Patents are a conflict around disclosure — you want to use others’ inventions while keeping your own ones secret. The current solution is a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosure. It’s quite bad.
Trademarks are conflicts around a scarce resource of catchy names — which isn’t that scarce and the topic is not very controversial. The current solution is mostly fine.
Trade secrets is about revealing proprietary information to outside sources. Not a lot of disagreement on this one.
After the discussion we had regarding patents, here’s where I currently stand on those four things:
I am still for copyrights. They are a pain in the ass, but are sadly required until such time as technology can prevent the theft of income from content creators. I think this day will come, someday. Until then, I think they need to be protected. I’m a libertarian so I hate that they need to be protected, but again, please note the question I asked in the last article:
If there were no government involvement in copyrights, how would authors, artists, software developers, and other such creators make a living if everyone can just legally steal and duplicate their content? Many people (including me) would lose a lot of money and have literally thousands of work hours creating content wasted.
I did not receive one quality answer to that question the last time I asked it. Hold on though; in a minute I will go through the answers I did receive.
So I am still for copyrights.
I am now against patents regarding new inventions. Congratulations! You guys changed my mind on this. I used to be for patents, now I am officially against them. I think the US Patent Office should be abolished and the concept of patents removed. I might be for limited patents; a very short period of patent protection, like five years or less, but even that makes me uncomfortable.
Governmental protection of trademarks are required in my view, since they are regarding truly scarce resources (like a domain name, company name, or logo for example; there’s only one of each available).
I'm fine with trade secrets but it should not be a government function at all, and should instead be handled with private contracts where violators can be sued in civil court.
Regarding those of you who think there should be no copyright law at all, here are the points you made the last time, and my responses.
1. If you’re a writer, you can provide free content to sell consulting, speeches, and other labor.
Many writers, actually most writers, aren’t consultants or speakers, don’t want to be one, and/or don’t have that ability. They’re just good writers. George R.R. Martin is a good writer, but if you’ve ever seen him interviewed, it’s quite clear he could never be a consultant or speaker or whatever; he doesn’t have that kind of skill set or personality. He would never be able to make money that way. He’s just a skilled writer, and simply wants to be paid for the the thousands of man hours he's put into his writing.
Moreover, just think about what you said. “Hey man, just spend 500 hours of your life writing a book that everyone will get for free, then you’ll make zero dollars, but don’t worry, you can spend the rest of your life spending even more time consulting / speaking / whatever!” Does that sound like a good deal to you? It doesn’t to me, and I actually do consult and speak and enjoy those things.
2. Property rights are a system for efficiently and ethically allocating scarce resources. Ideas and digital goods are not scarce resources so it doesn’t make sense to apply property rights to them.
I agree philosophically, but out in the real world, that doesn’t address the serious problem I just described above. Writers, artists, etc, provide value to the marketplace that takes an extreme amount of labor and time out of their lives. Your time is your property, and the result of your work is also your property. Otherwise you will have a society with no value provided to it by writers (or at least most writers, the ones who don’t want to speak/consult/etc).
3. Someone copying your book can’t be stealing because that action does not deprive you of your copy.
Incorrect! That depends on whether or not that person would have bought the book if there was no other way to get it.
To demonstrate what I mean, here are two hypotheticals:
I want to buy the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark for my personal collection. I absolutely want it, no matter what. I will buy it if I have to. So, if I download it instead of buying it when I would have bought it if the illegal download was not available, I am indeed stealing from the creators of that movie. I’m stealing $20 for that DVD (or whatever), because I would have purchased it if I wasn’t able to illegally download it.
On the other hand, let’s say I want to watch Planet of the Apes. I’d like to own it, but I’m not dying to own it. I won’t buy it. But I’ll download it illegally. In that case, no, I’m not stealing because if the download was not available, I wouldn’t have given them my money anyway.
So in the first example, yes, I did indeed steal money from the content creator.
(FYI this is all hypothetical; I don't illegal download content. If I really want a movie for example, I buy the DVD/Blu-ray, rip a digital copy to my collection, then either give it away or sell it used on Ebay. Either way, the content creator got my money, which they deserve.)
4. Business endeavors are inherently risky and there is no guarantee that they will generate or continue to generate revenue.
Completely irrelevant to the argument. I’m not asking for nor expecting any guaranteed profits or monetary return on my work, nor should any other content creator.
5. Just create/use something like a streaming service!
Fine for videos, but how can this be done with books? Artwork? Sadly, we don’t yet have the technology to cover this area yet.
6. Future technology will prevent copying.
Correct, it will. Someday, none of this will be relevant because illegally copying content of any kind will indeed be impossible or close to it. But until that day, we, unfortunately, need copyright protection laws (as much as I hate to say that).
7. If someone can reverse engineer your “original” product, improve upon it, and market it better, they deserve to take all the profit.
I agree completely, but this is not a violation of IP in my view. You’re talking about improving. I’m talking about copying.
8 . A copyright is an unnatural construct. You conceived and shared your ideas on your own free will, knowing the consequences of how you shared your ideas.
I agree completely, but this is yet another purely philosophical argument that does not address the real-world problem I stated above. Not all sound philosophical concepts/arguments work in the real world. An example I've used many times before is communism. Communism sounds great philosophically and on paper. It really does. But if you actually apply it in the real world, it becomes a cluster fuck.
9. Nobody owes you anything. You are not entitled to any profits regarding anything you do.
Completely irrelevant to the argument. I’m not asking for nor expecting any guaranteed profits or monetary return on my work, nor should any other content creator.
10. You are not creating much of anything, just mostly rehashing content inherited from other people, much of which you got for free.
Read my answer to number 7 above.
11. Owners of taxi medallions in New York stand to lose a lot of money due to competition with Uber, so I don’t care if you didn’t get paid for your work.
Irrelevant to the discussion. Taxi drivers lost money because someone came along and created an improved system. For the third time, that is not what I’m talking about here. I'm talking about copying, not improving.
12. If I was not willing to pay a creator up-front for protection costs, why would I want to be forced to pay it regardless through taxes?
Why do you pay taxes for an army that protects my house?
I create my content in my house, so you’re already paying taxes for my protection, whether you like it or not.
If your answer is that you also have a house, but you aren't a writer, then my response is that I would be happy to pay some kind of government fee as a writer for copyright protection that you would not have to pay. That seems fair to me.
(If you’re an anarcho-caplitalist and you’re against the entire concept of taxes, that’s a different discussion, but if you’re not opposed to taxes, then I just answered your question for you.)
So if any of you have any new points to make regarding copyright law (not patents, since you already changed my mind on that), fire away. I’m still willing to listen if there’s anything new.
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