Re: [OS:N:] Does "Intellectual Property" beg the question?

On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 08:25, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> Les Bell wrote:
> > The term "intellectual property" is actually a fairly recent fashion. 
> 
> Richard Stallman essentially makes the point that the phrase 
> "Intellectual Property" is a marketing term to beg the question of how 
> patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and a few other things 
> should be treated. If you use that term, then it is unfortunately a 
> no-brainer to assume "Intellectual Property" should be treated as 
> property as opposed to something else. The cause of freedom is generally 
> not served by using that term to discuss seperate items which are 
> treated seperately by the law. See:
>    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
> 
> It would be more accurate to call them "intellectual monopolies".
> 
> People who promote a term like "Intellectual Property" (as opposed to 
> the rest of us who often throw around such a term to try to sound 
> sophisticated and knowledgeable, and I was guilty of using it that way 
> for a while myself) often try to rig the political landscape of laws to 
> work in their favor through political influence that has little to do 
> with "promoting the general welfare...".
> 
> For example if patents, trademarks, trade secrets, trademarks, etc. were 
> really like "real estate" why are they not taxed annually based on a 
> self-assessed public domain buyout value?
>    http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=889
> Clearly patents, trademarks, etc. impose a burden on society like real 
> property as they are monopolies which cost society money to enforce 
> (police, prisons, judiciary, chilling effects, judiciary, registration, 
> record keeping, etc.) yet rightholders do not have to directly pay most 
> of these costs which their monopolies create for society. And now that 
> copyrights no longer go into the public domain in practice, the part of 
> the bargain for copyrights that said copyrighted material entering the 
> public domain somehow justified this process is now completely broken in 
> the US.
> 
> In general, somewhat similar sorts of advertising spins were made by 
> slave holders to argue their "fundamental human right" to hold property 
> (i.e. keep and breed human slaves like livestock, including sometimes 
> their own children) were in danger of being violated by talk of 
> abolition of slavery. Sadly, many US citizens, including some blacks, 
> supported slavery as a concept in hopes they too would become slave 
> holders (in general, only a small minority of relatively wealthy US 
> citizens in the 1800s actually owned slaves).
>    http://www.issues-views.com/index.php/sect/23000/article/23018
> 
> While obviously the human suffering by both slaves and slaveholders (who 
> were turned themselves into beasts by the practice) is not equivalent to 
> what goes on under copyright, there are parallels. For example, millions 
> of people in Africa are dying annually of curable diseases because of 
> drug patents making drugs inaccessible financially. Common medical 
> problems worldwide (malaria, river blindness) are not being addressed 
> significantly by drug researchers who focus mainly on "me too" clones of 
> financially succesful drugs (e.g. the next Viagra). We spend time 
> discussing this issue instead of creating more free content and more 
> free software.
I agree with you to some extent.  The problems with drug research are
true.  I think the the pharma companies are basically immoral and place
themselves above society.  Having said that it is not necessarily their
job to go after everything.

We do have governments.  At one time government sponsored much research
for the good it its citizens and often for the good of the world in
general.  That does not much happen anymore because in part we have come
to let the multi nationals pick out politicians for us.

Much as Berkely pushed the advancement of UNIX better that AT&T did,
universities should still being doing this in all areas.  Instead the
get the funding to just teach removed more and more every year.
> 
> I think it is a fair question (though maybe offtopic for this list) to 
> talk about patents, copyrights, trademarks etc. and the fundamental 
> human rights of both rightsholders to earn a return on investment and 
> and licensed property users for fair use, but only as long as we then 
> also discuss the whole picture related to "intellectual monopolies":
> * billions of people in poverty,
> * the widening gap between rich and poor,
See comment above.  What members of congress have given a shit about the
citizens in the last years.  Reelect them and turn down the others.
> * the failure of the computer industry to spread innovative concepts 
> rapidly (e.g. Memex (1940s), Smalltalk (1970s), IBM's VM (1960s), or QNX 
> (early 1980s), which only now decades later have become widespread in 
> somewhat crippled forms in HTML and the Web, Java and Windows, the 
> Common Language Runtime, and [ducks, even though I use it preferrably] 
> GNU/Linux).
> * the potential impending imprisonment of millions of US citizens for 
> copyright violations based on laws passed in the last few years and 
> related stress on society even now,
If you are talking about music and movie copying then make this clear. 
This is simply theft.  Unfortunately it is so rampant that trying to
eleminate it is affecting more areas than it should.
> * the chilling effects of works not produced or time wasted determing 
> who owns the rights to something for creation of a derivative work, etc.
The laws do need much cleaning up and making clearer.  But then again
this would but the people who need to do it out of work so it ain't
going to happen.

Johnnie

> 
> --Paul Fernhout
> 
> This email is placed into the public domain (except where noted, e.g. 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
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