Against Intellectual Property

Martin's chapter about the stagnating stance of IP today was interesting to read. The main idea, which was new to me, was his saying, that IP is a theft from the society, as one cannot produce any IP without the work of others before him.

I certainly agree with that position.

But some critique to that point of view still - all men are not created equal. It is fascinating and humane to say that every child has equal capabilities. This is however not the case, as there has been only 1 Einstein, 1 Gates and 1 Kennedy etc. This is a longer discussion so I will not open it now, but I wanted to point out some especially noticeable chapters from the text, so here it goes:

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Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work -- both intellectual and nonintellectual -- by many other people. This includes your teachers and parents. It includes the earlier authors and inventors who provided the foundation for your contribution. It also includes the many people who discussed and used ideas and techniques, at both theoretical and practical levels, and provided a cultural foundation for your contribution. It includes the people who built printing presses, laid telephone cables, built roads and buildings and in many other ways contributed to the "construction" of society. Many other people could be mentioned. The point is that any piece of intellectual work is always built on and is inconceivable without the prior work of numerous people.

This to me is the most important outtake of the text. Agreed 100%.

A person who is born with extraordinary natural talents, or who is extremely lucky, deserves nothing on the basis of these characteristics.

A rather socialist way of perception, but I can understand the origin of that thought, as it would be catastrophic, if people would gain benefits on the basis of their genetics etc. (which play more and more vital role in the success of one).

Where once copyrights were only for a period of a few decades, they now may be for the life of the author plus 70 years.

This is of-course an absurdity that needs to be dealt with. 10 years at max is the normal "durance" of a copyright protection I think.

As long as the competition is fair -- which means that all ideas and contributors are permitted access to the marketplace -- then good ideas will win out over bad ones. Why? Because people will recognize the truth and value of good ideas.

Exciting, but I disagree. The masses are stupid and I fear that bad ideas have such a great marketing behind them, that nowadays they always pass through.

One result is that quite a few ideas that happen to serve the interests of employers at the expense of workers -- such as that the reason people don't have jobs is because they aren't trying hard enough to find them -- are widely accepted although they are rejected by virtually all informed analysts.

EXACTLY! Right now everybody in Estonia is bashing the workers - under-qualified and overpaid. But the failure of our business model in companies has been neglected. I understand that doing business in Estonia by Estonians is hard, as we are bitter and jealous of co-citizens success, but one still has to admit, that (party because of the fact before-mentioned) our quality of business-management was and is low.

Others are challenging to much of the population, such as that imprisonment does not reduce the crime rate or that financial rewards for good work on the job or grades for good schoolwork are counterproductive.

What? Definitely part worth going into.

But speech without action is pointless. True liberty requires freedom to promote one's views in practice.

Amen!

It is usually argued that the most dynamic parts of science are those with the least secrecy.

Newton and Patents, no way, right!?

However, as governments reduce their funding of universities, scientists and university administrations increasingly turn to patents as a source of income.

How can this be? Educational spending has risen world-wide to my understanding (OECD reports). If that is not the case, then it is truly troubling.

The most common sort of plagiarism is built into social hierarchies. Government and corporate reports are released under the names of top bureaucrats who did not write them; politicians and corporate executives give speeches written by underlings.

GREAT! I have always thought of this, when listening or reading Ansip's speeches / Savisaar's blogs.

There is a large body of evidence showing, contrary to popular opinion, that rewards actually reduce the quality of work.

I need to read this! (Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and other Bribes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993))

Intellectuals are enormous consumers as well as producers of intellectual work.

This is of-course true and the most recent example of it was the news where Estonia's Academic Libraries revealed, how much do they spent on e-library's (scientific article bases) - the amounts were mind-blowing.

The way that an issue is framed makes an enormous difference to the legitimacy of different positions. Once intellectual property is undermined in the minds of many citizens, it will become far easier to topple its institutional supports.

This is to every extent true. A study called "Framing the War" (of Iraq in US Daily Newspapers) showed perfectly how the public opinion was manipulated by major dailies around US.

Unfortunately, illegal copying is not a very good strategy against intellectual property, any more than stealing goods is a way to challenge ownership of physical property. Theft of any sort implicitly accepts the existing system of ownership.

So why the proposition to justify piracy? I still think that piracy is stealing and it is criminal activity. One has to respect the authors wish to gain money from his or her's work. As there are plenty of free alternatives, piracy to me seems more and more absurd and obnoxious.

More fundamentally, it needs to be recognized that intellectual work is inevitably a collective process. No one has totally original ideas: ideas are always built on the earlier contributions of others.

Interesting. Again a socialist way of thinking to me but I guess if I focus on the thought more (read more), I would eventually agree with the notion.

And the perfect ending statement:

Intellectual property is theft, sometimes in part from an individual creator but always from society as a whole.

Review of Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book.