I think we're finding out the absurdity of copyright and patents by forcing these kind of concepts to face the redutio ad absurdum of the day, which are technologies like 3D printing.
On the other hand, the past is full of interesting example of PATENT FAIL like Whitney's failure to enforce the cotton gin, but he got rich with producing munition for the US army, while at the same time inventing the concept of interchangeable parts.
We saws that American writers hating their competitors from England because of the massive piracy of British literature leading domination in the American literacy market. Some English writers managed to make more money from the American than he could collect via some amount of royalty years. It was only when large publishing house finally change their tune that the American finally recognize British copyright.
We also saw James Watt's partner using the parliament to extend patents for Watt's steam engine invention. This waste to tremedous wasteful effort from Watt suing various people for violating his patents. In reality, Watt was just one of the many steam engine inventors, who hampered other steam engine inventors' ability to make a living and build on top of his work. He also ironically got hampered by some other guy's patent, forcing him to use inferior design for his steam engine.
There's a great book about all of this, "Against Intellectual Monopoly." [1]
There's an interesting bit about the English/American writer thing you mention, specifically Dickens. From chapter two:
The amount of revenues British authors received up front
from American publishers often exceeded the amount they
were able to collect over a number of years from
royalties in the UK. Notice that, at the time, the US
market was comparable in size to the UK market.
More broadly, the lack of copyright protection, which
permitted the United States publishers’ “pirating” of
English writers, was a good economic policy of great
social value for the people of United States, and of no
detriment, as the Commission report and other evidence
confirm, for English authors. Not only did it enable the
establishment and rapid growth of a large and successful
publishing business in the United States; also, and more
importantly, it increased literacy and benefited the
cultural development of the American people by flooding
the market with cheap copies of great books. As an
example: Dickens’ A Christmas Carol sold for six cents
in the US, while it was priced at roughly two dollars
and fifty cents in England. This dramatic increase in
literacy was probably instrumental for the emergence of
a great number of United States writers and scientists
toward the end of the nineteenth century.
Arguments about intellectual property now seem to always focus on the ability of the author to make money, and not about the basic reason that the concept of IP was created: it was a gift from society to creators to both help them and encourage the enrichment of society at large. The dramatic rise in UGC demonstrates that 'creators gonna create' anyway, so the deal makes less and less sense for society to keep up.
There's also a part in the book about the steam engine stuff, too, but this is already getting long...
UGC is one thing, but without financial backing largely enabled by IP, it’s hard to imagine the most epic and polished movies & games would still be made.
He did. It was also available to download for free on the Internet.
"No IP" does not mean "You can't charge for things." Enough people would rather go to a movie theater than get on Bittorrent that he made his money back.
Side note: I was one of those people. I wear Pirate Bay tshirts around, I'd throw out all IP law if I was in charge... but I did pay money to go to the theater to see Avatar. Going to the theater and getting that crazy huge screen, great sound system, and (maybe) the 3D was totally worth it.
Patents and copyright were a tremendous progress back in the 1700s when you need a "privilege" from the King to undertake about anything. Nowadays they're just some sort of fossilized roadblock from the past. Here's another fine example of this sorry state of the matter.
Next step: automated home chemistry setups that turn near-arbitrary feedstock containing the right elements into soap, food, shampoo, beer, plastic resin, ...
This whole copyright vs 3D printing thing is interesting, but the bigger, more important battle right now is actually patents vs. 3D printing.
The entrenched players in the industry have large patent portfolios, and this hurts the ability of projects like the RepRap to actually make improvements. We probably could have had all of these kinds of projects years ago, but the patents are only now starting to run out...
Secondly, it would appear to me that MakerBot, for example, is pretty blatantly infringing on the FDM patents that Stratasys has. Those are about to run out Real Soon Now, though, so they're probably fine.
Third, the industry has shaped up the way that it has because of patents. There's a reason there's 14 different ways to do 3D printing. Yeah, some are better at some things than others, but realistically, we'd really have like 3 or 4 processes if there were no patents to force new hardware companies to reinvent the wheel all the time.
The fact that there's pretty much a 1-1 mapping between companies and processes suggests that it's difficult to start a business in this area, due to the large amount of capital needed to invent a new way of doing things.
I would assume it would be almost exactly the same as digital media works today, while it is best to manufacture things in mass quantities a CD of the machines components will be shipped with the dish washer. The opening of the box will imply acceptance of the licensing agreement for the machine. An alternative, is you get access to the washing machine support site with the warranty number included. You would be purchasing the right to the design, and maybe 1 working copy of a part at a time.
if we ever got to the point where it makes more sense for you to manufacture the entire product at home, then the concept would be the same. You are purchasing the rights to manufacture 1 working copy. If you give the files to another person who uses them, technically they are breaking the law.
Of course I think this is all kind of ridiculous. However the only solution I can think of to combat piracy is to crowd source the funding to the creation of new plans, and release the product in the public domain.
On the other hand, the past is full of interesting example of PATENT FAIL like Whitney's failure to enforce the cotton gin, but he got rich with producing munition for the US army, while at the same time inventing the concept of interchangeable parts.
We saws that American writers hating their competitors from England because of the massive piracy of British literature leading domination in the American literacy market. Some English writers managed to make more money from the American than he could collect via some amount of royalty years. It was only when large publishing house finally change their tune that the American finally recognize British copyright.
We also saw James Watt's partner using the parliament to extend patents for Watt's steam engine invention. This waste to tremedous wasteful effort from Watt suing various people for violating his patents. In reality, Watt was just one of the many steam engine inventors, who hampered other steam engine inventors' ability to make a living and build on top of his work. He also ironically got hampered by some other guy's patent, forcing him to use inferior design for his steam engine.