[radu_floricica]

According to Hernando de Soto (among others), copyright is the reason for pretty much everything good that happened to the western countries in the last couple of hundred years. And he makes a very convincing case about it, too.

The issue is a bit more complicated. The last part of the article was the most interesting. If they can put into law something against commercial lobbying (not a ban of course, but a damper) that could mean changes that are more profound and long term. And might be for the best, too.

[ig1]

I think you're misreading de Soto's work. His argument is about real property rights (land, etc.) rather than intellectual property.

[radu_floricica]

I can't find the quote I was looking for, but it doesn't really matter. Hes argument is that "capitalism" is a thing which is harder to define then it seems at first glance, and it includes various property rights of higher order (i.e. I don't only own my house, I also own the right to sell/rent/mortgage/use as collateral). Copyright fits right in.

Anyways, my point was that it would be dangerous to mess with an important part of this "capitalism" without understanding how it works. It is true that extending copyright and patent inflation stifle, to a degree, original research. Is even more true that abolishing them would instantly kill all significant private original research.

[kiba]

The improtance of property in capitalism is that it allocate scarce resources such as land, computers, etc efficently.

I do not see how musics and source code fit in the overall scheme of property rights. Rather, copyright and patents actually violate property rights by forbidding people who actually own a copy from distributing new copies at will or building on the copy at will. (Remind me why it needs to last 20 years or 13 years, or whatever years? If it is property rights, than it should last infintely.)

In any case, your assertion that without copyright and patent, there would be no innovation is well contested by a book called Against Intellectual Monopoly.

[radu_floricica]

My main problem is with taking an issue which is very complicated and offering a simple solution: just remove the copyright.

Most decisions in economy are taken in a very rational. A pharmaceutical company will decide how much to invest in researching and getting approved a certain drug based on the chance of success and the potential profits. The profits depend directly on the time it has exclusive rights on that product. If it's only until a competitor reverse engineers the product, then it could only be a few months. If it's 20 years, the profits are completely different. It will invest in both cases, just very different amounts. The length of the copyright should be computed to maximize overall benefits to society. A large enough investment, but not too long.

Another case is software patents. There is a very big difference between patenting ideas (usually considered a very bad idea) and patenting software (usually considered necessary). An interesting example: most people decide to use (and pay for) Windows, even when there are free alternatives. Why? Because it simply is better. All those money invested in developing it (based on the expectation of future profits) just make a difference.

Or collections of otherwise non-copyrighted data, like maps. Making a map is extremely expensive. Copying one on the other hand is extremely cheap. What incentive would a map maker have to do all this work?

All these are very different cases, and they have to be treated as such. Simply saying all IP laws are not necessary because RIAA is evil is not a solution.

My personal preference tends to be towards eliminating copyright for non-commercial purposes, with a broad definition of what is commercial. Listening to music at home would not be commercial, but in a restaurant (or any other public place) it would be. But I only consider this my _opinion_. I admit it's limited and with flaws, and I am aware that "the devil is in the details". And most of all, I firmly believe this is a complex problem, which does not have a simple solution.

I will take I look at the book you mentioned. I am curious how it treats some particular cases, like some of the above.

[kiba]

Economic calculation and resource allocation is a very complicated problem. How complicated? We're talking billion and trillion of calculations made everyday by humans.

When you talk about government solutions, inevitabley, you talk about command economy insitutions that have to determine calculations that affect every single area of the economy. Even if it can gather the informations it needed to do the calculation, it must understand all the consequences that will happen when they decide whether to grant a patent.

How long the copyright term should last? What is the unintended consequences? What kind of artistic work will emerge? What resource will need to be allocated to this sector of the economy? Will it really satisfy the consumers? Is there enough supply for the demand in the right time?

This is not a mere "complex problem", my friend. It is an espitemology problem.

When I said the solution is to remove copyright, I don't say this as a mere naive solution.

It is reached by my conclusion that the regulatory agencies cannot calculate, therefore it cannot calculate how long copyright should exists or it should at all. What they relies on is called statistics but it is inferior to the profit and loss check and balance that exists in the market. Without those profit and loss, they do not know if a particular solution or implementation is profitable to society at all. They are not accountable to the market at large because it is largely immaterial to their nature as a political machinery.

There's more to what I have to said(including emperical evidence as well my reasoning behind this), but I think it will turn into some half-ass super long eassy if I keep on talking.

[kiba]

Just because copying is easy compared to development does not neccesary lend to the credence that copyright must exists.(Originally I stated that development alway cost more than copying. Apperantly that is false by a few counterexample such as Soviet's reverse engineering of the b-29 bomber)

For example, a programmer may spend weeks writing a particular feature. These day, it only take a git clone for somebody to make a few new features and called it a competing software project to the original. With clever marketing, he might be able to overtake the original project. Obviously that often does not happen in reality, as the original project keep some of the momentum and the knowledgebase that come with working on the project for years.

Even though there's no money spent, time is spent. These time represent lost economic opportunity.

However, it does not follows that there is no enormous economic gain for the first-mover in the free market in the absence of limitation on copying. Indeed, there are everyday examples like techdirt.com(often copied, with no attribution), Wikipedia, RedHat, and more that continues to defy your assertions everyday.

The idea that people who have spent enormous amount of capitals and time will be gauranteed to lose out if there is no monopoly mechanism to protect their work does not simply folllow.

There are many factors to consider such as how enlightened the big guys are, how fast they can move, how big is the first-mover advantage, how improtant reputation is to consumers. Some of these aspects cannot be easily copied.

[radu_floricica]

What you say makes sense, but I still think shares a big fallacy with the book. To convince me you should not concentrate on examples of cases where less copyright would be better - you and me both agree they exist. What I want to hear is how a world with no copyright would be better in the areas where copyright is considered especially useful right now. Like the map example, or the pharmaceutical company. That would convince me it can be better overall.

As far as the arbitrary length of the copyright being wrong, I fully agree. But I do not think throwing the baby with the bathwater is a solution. If a way would be found for the market to dictate it that would really be great... but in a way it does. There is commercial lobbies that push it up, and voters who push it down. We definitely need more pushing down lately.

About programming... I make my living writing software (freelance). All my clients "rent" my software, and I constantly work on it and update it according to how their business change (and it changes surprisingly often). The model works for both of us because:

1) They do not pay upfront for a big software, which may or may not turn out to be useful. They get much better value for their money, and make me directly motivated to keep the software always useful.

2) I do work more in the beginning, for practically no pay, but for each project I get a new source of income, and overall I make more money (over several years) then if I'd just write a software and leave. Also I like working with people I know.

Now, how does this depend on copyright? If, by any chance, the source code of the software would be leaked, the fact that I own the copyright would still force my clients to keep working with me. In a no-copyright world, anybody could take the software, add a few (useful) features and get the contract instead of me. Now I know what you will say. This is better for everybody, right? It's better for the client, because there is more competition, it's better for the guy who could take over because he will get business by doing something good, and it's better for me because it will force me to keep improving my software, right?

No. In such a world, I would simply not start the whole thing. EVER. It wouldn't pay. The whole thing depends on me working my ass of in the beginning, and then getting the reward in time. Without copyright, neither me not any other freelancer would start doing the work only to lose the contract in 6 month. Income security is a very direct factor in my decision to do it.

And this is not a big evil greedy corporation. This is me working for clients who usually become friends, or at least partners. I worry for their business, because I have a stake in it. And they know it, and value it. And this wouldn't be possible without IP.

[radu_floricica]

I did skim the book, or at least a few chapters. I'm sorry to say, but I find it full of logical falacies and anecdotal evidence. There is a long chapter about pharmaceutical companies, which points out very valid evils of the domain, including marketing of dubious ethics, but when it comes to offering an alternative incentives for developing new, expensive drugs, I couldn't find anything remotely convincing.

Other often used fallacy is: "If patents would be good, this would have happened when country X changed its patent laws". Correlation does not imply causation, and you will forgive me if I do not believe such obvious biased authors chose the most unbalanced cases. Maybe in the rest of the book there is an explanation as to why America (strong copyright) uses so few innovations developed in China (weak copyright). It seems to me it's the other way around.

The book is a very good critique of the evils of the copyright system. I fully agree with most of them. My conclusion is that we need a better system, less open to abuse and with shorter terms. But we still definitely need it.

[jokermatt999]

I'm interested in what the arguments strongly for copyright may be. Would you mind pointing me towards any articles or papers of his in particular?