UK Report Proposes Changes To IP Laws 146
NKJV writes "A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a UK think tank, has some concrete suggestions on how to reform the UK's dated intellectual property laws. The starting point for its deliberations is the notion that knowledge is both a commodity and a public good, and it recommends that the UK move from a model where knowledge is 'an asset first and a public resource second' to one where knowledge is primarily a public resource and secondarily an asset. Is that an anti-business attitude? The report's authors don't think so."
It has to be right (Score:1)
Won't SOMEBODY think of the investors! (Score:2)
Without the ability to sue thousands of people and hold everyone hostage for 20 years to your IP, there won't be any progress!
Imagine if there wasn't capitalism at the time of the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, and the creation of Linux.. er, wait a minute......
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
False dichotomy 101 (Score:2)
What died when the Berlin Wall fell, is a horribly anti-Democratic state. America's economy has been partially socialist in nature since the 1930's, and the last time it wasn't - in the 1920's - it resulted in a Great Depression.
The facts clearly say that while Godless Communism died in the 1980s, Godless Capitalism died in 1929.
Get over it, neither are never coming back.
Anthem, anyone? (Score:1)
If you believe that ideas are generated from individuals and that thinking and ideas are hard work, you should probably be opposed to the change.
If you believe that you'll have another beer, you're undoubtedly in the majority.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's an interesting concept that I've been tossing around in relation to your rebuttals: What is valuable is not the created idea, but the ability to create ideas. That is, you can still be economically valuable as an idea producer because you can develop ideas, not because some idea has already been disseminated.
That's my take, anyway, and I think if "idea producers" - or anyone in the creative arts for that matter - took that stance, then you wouldn't have any issues with any intellectual property law,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because the ability to produce them is scarce, even though the ideas themselves aren't scarce once they've been produced initially.
Think of it this way: the speed of light is a useful value to know, but although it has utility value (you want to know it because you can do stuff with it), it has zero economic value (because it has no marginal cost of distribution; a rational buyer wouldn't be w
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. All you need is a restriction on the supply of the ability.
(Also, it's important to distinguish between the supply of all ideas that ever will be produced, and the supply of one idea that already has been produced. The former is restricted inherently, due to the fact that not everyone can or will come up with every possible idea. The latter is not restricted, except by copyright and patent laws, because sharing an idea costs nothing and doesn't deplete any resources.)
That's missing the point. We know
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can back it by reference to standard economic theory: public goods are underprovided, because there is an incentive to freeride on others' contributions.
Why won't IBM pay for it? If it gives them a competative advantage they *will* do it, even if it means that their competitors follow (months or years later...) giving IBM a first-mover advantage. Let's also remember that making CPUs has a natural barrier
Re: (Score:2)
Er.. it's just a service. You can capture its value the same way a barber captures the value of his labor: by finding someone willing to pay him for doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
Lets look at this as a simple piece of Game Theory. Let say there are some fab owners who all make money from chips. New chips would increase consumer demand and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Er.. it's just a service. You can capture its value the same way a barber captures the value of his labor: by finding someone willing to pay him for doing it.
Nobody can copy a barber's haircuts, whereas I can copy someone's chip designs. I am not claiming that nobody would get paid at all in the absence of IP, just that they would get underpaid compared to a reasonable system of IP.
And who'd be willing to pay for it? Anyone who stands to benefit from advancing the state of computers: computer manufacturers,
Re: (Score:2)
Such a system is only "reasonable" if you consider funding these industries more important than preserving the rights to speak freely and share experiences, which are necessarily restricted by copyright. One might say just as well that they're currently overpaid compared to a free market.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't consider the right to copy other people's work, against those people's will, an important free speech right. But you may differ.
Re: (Score:2)
BTW, the system I've been advocating is quite the opposite of "socialism" - it's more like "IP libertarianism". Copyright is government intervention; abandoning copyright would simply mean the government stops handing out and enforcing monopolies on information.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
A sibling post of mine has a good reply to this (what's the value of an idea-producer if the ideas have no value?), but another reply is that the value of an idea has a strong component of luck. That is, while Beethoven and Einstein produced a consistent sequence of good ideas, there are many thousands more people who had one great idea. A butterfly flaps its wings in Malaysia and maybe he doesn't have that great idea - or the idea doesn't become recognized as great.
You might say we don't want to reward l
Re: (Score:1)
If you can't have Einstein's works without Einstein, you probably want to start with Einstein.
quick FYP (Score:2)
"If you believe that ideas are generated from individuals in isolation and that thinking and ideas are hard work, you should probably be opposed to the change."
If, however, you believe that most of the progression of ideas is incremental advance upon previous ideas, you should probably support the change.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Composer Beethoven believed that artists should deposit their works in a large warehouse; from which he could withdraw those that he needed to create his own art.
Thoreau believed that a poet should live on his poetry as a steam planer is fired from its shavings.
I believe that thinking and ideas are har
Re: (Score:2)
That's not too hard to grasp considering our thoughts are simply the by products of 10,000 years of civilization.
You didn't come up with your language on your own did you? Did you come up with math either? How about problem solving?
Did you think your personality and thought process came about over night or perhaps it was the evolution of our language, past thinks, philosophers, and var
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who has ever had a truly original, individual thought uninspired by having learned of the thoughts of others, raise your hand.
Put your hand down, you liar.
Thinking is hard work, but the nature of human beings, our power, is that our thoughts are built up from the thoughts of others, and our thoughts will further inspire others to have new, but necessarily de
Re: (Score:1)
Things may have gone a bit further than is ideal, but the basic idea of intellectual property is that if you come up with something *first* that you get to exploit it a bit, hopefully leading to more firsts. The "I got food poisoning so I'm not going to eat anymore." approach to evaluating things like patent laws is just as crazy as not eating.
To eliminate confusion... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Irony (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
CC.
Re: (Score:2)
It would if the purchaser had to agree not to talk about it to anybody who had not also bought the report. As it stands the £9.95 is first sale.
Re: (Score:2)
And while you're at it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure for some people, it really is only about getting shit for free, but that's a stupid generalization. You might as well say "when you realize this is simply about creating one good thing and milking it for the rest of your life you'll finally understand the pro-copyright movement" - also arguably true of some copyright supporters, but not the majority.
There are plenty of people, including
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know all about the idea/expression dichotomy, but you forget about the rent-seeking behavior of copyright holders. They frequently try to expan
Re: (Score:2)
By definition you can not copyright anything other than idea.
Incorrect (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Another poster has already pointed out that I was referring to speech--expression--not simply ideas.
But let me address this. First, (as a different poster pointed out) you're likely to get sued anyway if your book is similar enough to Harry Potter. Second, the character of a young wizard called Harry Potter is an idea which is expressed throug
Re: (Score:2)
You miss the point of reducing copyright's lifespan, which is to allow people to freely enjoy stuff once it has been <subjective>fairly</subjective> exploited by its creator. Once they've made their cut selling something, they should lose the copyright so that the information can provide a greater good than it does if it is locked away. Anyone that argues that reduced copyright will harm the economy is merely asking for us to ignore the overvalued, bubble-like falseness of our current informat
Re: (Score:2)
The point of copyright having any end whatsoever is so that works get added to the public domain to be remixed/reimagined by the next artist.
The public "freely enjoying" is only a distant second to ensuring that the next generation of artists has something to work with.
That is entirely
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how this remixing/reworking/whatever is not included in the broad definition of the public freely enjoying previous works. Artists, businesses, they are all members of the public, and public domain includes all of them. In an
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I don't think our opinions differ in any great way. But I guess for me the distinction is important to make: afterall, if a CD is available on the store shelf for $20 then I buy it and I can enjoy it.
But as long as the copyright exists on that CD I can't remix and re-interpret that art without negotiation with the rights-holder.
So what is (to me) important is that cr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How did this garbage get modded up as insightful?
Re: (Score:2)
Meaning what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Those sound at odds to me. The record labels/movie studios don't care that you're not making a profit by distributing their music/movies P2P. They care that a whole bunch of people have it but didn't buy it, and that they're not making a profit. Do they get to enforce their IP rights or don't they?
If you tell them that it's now completely legal to distribute their content as long as it's "non-commercial", that dramatically changes their entire business. Fine with me, but don't try to tell me that it's not anti-business. New businesses will spring up, and we may well all be better off for it, but you're legally killing off the old ones or forcing them to completely alter their models.
You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one. Either I own the distribution rights, or I don't; telling me that my distribution rights come second is as good as saying I don't have them. Feel free to tell the RIAA/MPAA where to stuff themselves, but don't piss on their heads and tell yourself it's raining on them.
Re: (Score:1)
There is a thing called "change management [wikipedia.org]". Let them do their homework.
CC.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm glad you posted this. This is an entitlement, and it's precisely the problem. Owning a patent or copyright currently entitles you to sit on your butt while other people do work and you get to collect mone
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not zero-sum: copyright benefits the public good (Score:2, Insightful)
If you believe that copyrights, patents, and so forth encourage the creation of new works, then you must also believe they serve the public good. So placing the public good first and business second doesn't mean IP will go away. It means designing those laws so that the optimize the public good, rather than maximizing profits.
This is not necessarily bad for business. Maximizing the public good aspect of information benefits everyone. Reducing the costs of information benefits businesses who rely on it
Re:Not zero-sum: copyright benefits the public goo (Score:2)
No. There's more to the public good than encouraging the creation of original works. There's also encouraging the creation of derivative works, and having the most freedom with regard to works, soonest. It's entirely possible, when you consider all the different kinds of public good, that merely encouraging more works to be created still harms the public more than
What's the difference? (Score:2)
What's the difference? Really?
Re: (Score:1)
This is obvious, as there is no shareholders value. The public is not authorized to gain from resources. </cynical>
CC.
... good idea, that's why it'll never fly (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anti-human attitude. (Score:3, Insightful)
So is treating information as a public resource first anti-business? Um, maybe, if they can only conceive of information as commodity, but I don't care. More importantly, treating information as a public resource is pro-human, accepting that the natural status of information is that it can be shared freely without it being lost to the sharer. If, after acknowledging this, we wish to add on what are necessarily artifical regulations which prevent information from being shared freely, then so be it. But it should always be seen as what it is: an artificial restriction, given for a specific purpose, on top of the natural unrestricted state.
It is not copyright or other IP law that is the problem. Not inherently, at least. The base problem, the cause that results in the laws becoming a problem, is the mentality that information is something to be owned first, and only if nobody wants to own it should it then be public. The right mentality is to view information as an infinitely shareable resource that we allow, in some select circumstances and for limited times, to be "owned" as long as it benefits society at large.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's the foundation of every animal's existence (details of mating behaviors of every animal intentionally glossed over). It's the sharing of ideas that makes us different.
By the way, arguing about how to handle sharing of abstract ideas necessarily involves the sharing of abstract ideas, thus as part of the process
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's language that makes us different. Sharing of ideas is a consequence of language.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually the ability for language is genetic. The ability to form a sentence is genetic. You don't have to teach kids language, they learn it even if no-one teaches them. A group of deaf and dumb kids who were never exposed to any form of language created their own form of language. So, language is more genetic than an idea.
Re: (Score:1)
Natural is a pretty loaded word to be using. Natural in what context, etc. At the moment, if I have a momentous idea, given that we have a patent system, the most natural thing for me to do is patent it and try to profit from it. Perhaps it isn't the ideal thing to do, but I am pretty sure it is the most natural.
Re: (Score:2)
Without culture and accumulated knowledge, we'd be just another species of primate.
Natural is a pretty loaded word to be using. Natural in what context, etc. At the moment, if I have a momentous idea, given that we have a patent system, the most natural thing for me to do is patent it and try to profit from it. Perhaps it isn't the ide
Re: (Score:2)
No, we aren't just another species of primate. Sure, we're animals, but we are also the animal whose works can be seen from space, and who has been to space in order to see them. As a direct result of the sharing of ideas.
That was my point, how do we know that what we do is anything other than natural, in the comes-from-nature way.
Because it was working that way until we agreed to change it, and we have to ac
Re: (Score:2)
And this difficulty in exchange of information is what held humans back from progressing (and still does: look at countries that repress knowledge transfer). In other words, as the rate of information exchange increases, the rate of advancement also increases.
So we finally eliminate these natural barriers, and we get our
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Complex to us, humans maybe but probably not that complex.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So, you don't think that there is knowledge contained in expression, beyond the idea expressed? I'd say there's a lot of knowledge locked up in the expression, otherwise the exercise of creating a specific expression of knowledge would
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it only prevents distribution, and passing around a single copy isn't distribution. So yeah, you can loan, and that's a good thing. Copyright law in the U.S. is actually a pretty reasonable tradeoff, at least before the Sony Bono Never Let Micky Free infinite extensions regime began, and until the DMCA criminalized things like loaning if the copyright holder didn't want you to. Roll back th
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it is. But there's an exception that permits it -- for certain copies, to certain degrees, anyway.
Copyright law in the U.S. is actually a pretty reasonable tradeoff, at least before the Sony Bono Never Let Micky Free infinite extensions regime began, and until the DMCA criminalized things like loaning if the copyright holder didn't want you to.
No, I'd say that the last time it was good was in the 19th century,
Wow (Score:2)
There have to be a lot of these so-called "think tanks" there in UK, is was just about two days that... another... think tank proposed something very similar. More info, on slashdot [slashdot.org].
Exactly twice the info!
--
Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 200GB Storage, 2TB bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95
Suggestion for tags (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Foundations (Score:1)
Whoops, that's backwards! (Score:2)
It's a public good first, that to, as the Americans say "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", is made into a commodity for a limited time.
To suggest it is a commodity or private good by nature is to fall into the same trap as to say a Crown or Constitutional grant of privilege is "intellectual property".
--dave
Not gonna happen... (Score:1)
There are far too many well-financed players that want things to at least stay the same, if not move towards a model where knowledge is treated even more like an asset than it already is, for a move in the opposite direction to ever get off the ground pretty much anywhere in the world. The entities in question are mu
Good to see someone restating the obvious -- (Score:1)
What is happening (and has been happening for a while) is a concerted, well-f
UK turns out some of the most bright people... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IPPR predictably wrong yet again (Score:2)
The problem is that it underestimates the rights of buyers as opposed to those of sellers, and
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you. It's so nice to see a well-argued, coherent post from someone who understands where the real problems come from and attacks the right target.
"Intellectual Property" - "Intellectual Monopoly" (Score:2)
I'm not suggesting that Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents are fundamentally bad. Relatively minor restrictions on our freedoms in order to reduce confusion and deception in marketin