Lessig on Property

A while ago I had some public discussions with RMS in which I said
there was nothing wrong with the notion of "intellectual property" and
that it could indeed be an enlightening notion if put into the proper
context.  I also said that software patents should be seen as a
dysfunctional (non-performant) set of rules for turning intellectual
achievements into (virtual) property objects.

I'm now quite happy to see that Lawrence Lessig uses the same
analytical framework as I (and some people at FFII) use:

Here's a quote from his introduction to the "property" chapter in
"Free Culture":

Lessig writes:

> The copyright warriors are right: A copyright is a kind of
> property. It can be owned and sold, and the law protects against its
> theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out for any price
> he wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially
> determine the price she can get. But in ordinary language, to call a
> copyright a "property" right is a bit misleading, for the property of
> copyright is an odd kind of property. Indeed, the very idea of
> property in any idea or any expression is very odd. I understand what
> I am taking when I take the picnic table you put in your backyard. I
> am taking a thing, the picnic table, and after I take it, you don't
> have it. But what am I taking when I take the good idea you had to put
> a picnic table in the backyard--by, for example, going to Sears,
> buying a table, and putting it in my backyard? What is the thing I am
> taking then? The point is not just about the thingness of picnic
> tables versus ideas, though that's an important difference. The point
> instead is that in the ordinary case--indeed, in practically every
> case except for a narrow range of exceptions--ideas released to the
> world are free. I don't take anything from you when I copy the way you
> dress--though I might seem weird if I did it every day, and especially
> weird if you are a woman. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson said (and as is
> especially true when I copy the way someone else dresses), "He who
> receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
> lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
> without darkening me."1 The exceptions to free use are ideas and
> expressions within the reach of the law of patent and copyright, and a
> few other domains that I won't discuss here. Here the law says you
> can't take my idea or expression without my permission: The law turns
> the intangible into property. But how, and to what extent, and in what
> form--the details, in other words--matter. To get a good sense of how
> this practice of turning the intangible into property emerged, we need
> to place this "property" in its proper context.2 My strategy in doing
> this will be the same as my strategy in the preceding part. I offer
> four stories to help put the idea of "copyright material is property"
> in context. W here did the idea come from? What are its limits? How
> does it function in practice? After these stories, the significance of
> this true statement--"copyright material is property"-- will be a bit
> more clear, and its implications will be revealed as quite different
> from the implications that the copyright warriors would have us draw.

It would be good if FSFE could update their rhetoric to this framework
(instead of the http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
framework).

--
Hartmut Pilch, FFII.org, Munich Office +498918979927, Brussels +3227396262
Data Processing is not a Technology      http://www.economic-majority.com/