I think the debate of whether Intellectual Property
fits the commonly understood meaning of the word
property has been hashed out here many times in the
past.
My take is that the common understanding of property
and property law is wrong. All property rights (real,
personal, and intellectual) are simply negative
rights. You have the right to exclude others from
tresspassing, stealing, copying, or practicing. You do
not have the right to occupation, possesion,
duplication, or practice.
To test this, try to drill an oil well in your
subdivision, try to argue that the cops can't take
that bag of coke because it is your bag, or try to
sell a patented article that is also covered by
patents owned by others. You can say that these are
exceptions, but that is a complicated way to describe
a system that is better understood without exceptions.
(Somewhat akin to talking about cold transfer in
thermodynamics instead of heat transfer. It will get
you there, but it will be a longer trip and few will
follow.)
This is not direct to Mr. Coleman, more towards the
discussion topic in general.
keith
- Herb Coleman <hcoleman[_at_]austincc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> >Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:12:45 -0500
> >Message-ID: <redirect-1670822[_at_]cni.org>
> >From: Bradley J Brown <bjbrown[_at_]knowledgelaw.com>
> >Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: Australia/US/FTA copyright
> provisions: FreeTrade
> > at a Price
> >
> >....
> >
> >There is no empirical evidence that any term of
> copyright has value to
> >the community,...
> >
> >Copyright is the only form of property that I can
> think of that is taken
> >away from its creator after a certain period of
> time. If I were to
> >create a violin on the order of Stradivarius, I
> could pass it down to
> >many future generations of my family. I have a
> very limited ability to
> >do that with copyright. Why should there be any
> limit to the length of
> >the term of copyright? If I create a work of art
> in the form of a
> >sculpture or a painting, it has the potential of
> being mine and my
> >families forever. If I create a work of art in the
> form of a poem or a
> >song, I only own it for a little while. Where is
> the logic in that?
> >
> The problem here is try to compare intellectual
> "property" to real
> property. With real property If I could duplicate
> your violin out of my
> own materials then there would be no "theft".
> However, with
> intellectual property it is the expression that is
> valuable. Thus
> making an exact copy of the original constitutes
> "theft". This idea is
> of course counter intuitive because we usually think
> of theft as
> depriving the owner of the use of his/her property
> and copying of
> intellectual property does not necessarily do this.
> The other reason
> for limited copyright is to promote innovation and
> development is the
> arts and sciences (I know this is being argued in
> anther thread). If no
> one could ever make derivative works from your
> creativity then
> development would be stifled.
>
> Finally, we need to realize that this whole
> intellectual "property"
> thing is a figment of our agreed upon imagination.
> To say that someone
> "owns and idea that has been expressed is ludicrous.
> In reality as soon
> I perceive of the idea I can reproduce it with out
> having a real effect
> on the original. Likewise we all know of people who
> have downloaded
> music, picture or text from the internet. The
> original creators of this
> work still have their originals and the other copies
> do not diminish
> their property at all. If anything the unauthorized
> copies help to
> spread their art work and increases the likelihood
> of their making more
> sales rather than decreases it. However that is not
> currently the law.
>
>
> But that's just my opinion...or is it?
>
> --
>
> Herb Coleman
> Instructional Technology Manager
> Adjunct Psychology Professor
> Austin Community College
> hcoleman[_at_]austincc.edu
> 512-223-3076
> *********************************************
> * Every action has a connected and directed *
> * pre-action. *
> *********************************************
> -Herb Coleman after seeing "Bowling for Columbine"
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Nov 19 2003 - 01:02:42 GMT