This is a fantastic book. Some of the more interesting and inspiring profiles include TED Talks, Nina Paley, Bloomsbury Academic, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s “Classical Music for the Masses” (see their amazing podcast, The Concert, which “has made world-class performances recorded live at the museum available to listeners across the globe”), Khan Academy, and the Public Library of Science. A common theme among many CC users is the importance of spreading ideas: as TED executive June Cohen says, “When we decided to open our library, we had one single goal: to spread ideas.”
“Sharing online was a very controversial decision. People feared it would capsize our business,
discourage people from paying for our conference, and be rejected by speakers.“The first year after releasing videos of talks for free, we raised the cost of the conference by 50
percent and sold out in one week with a 1,000 person waiting list,” Cohen says. “Not only do
speakers lobby for the talks to be posted as soon as possible, but paying conference participants are
anxious to share talks they just heard with family, friends and colleagues.”TED Talks featuring Swedish medical doctor and statistician Hans Rosling and his presentations on
developing countries show how CC licenses can popularize a subject. “Hans told me that posting his
“rst TED Talk online did more to impact his career than all of the other things he had done
previously,” Cohen says. “It opened up a whole new world for him.”
I think they missed one important one: the phenomenal growth and influence of Mises.org since adopting CC-BY (see, e.g., Adam Smith U, Mises Academy, and Educational Utopia; Jeffrey Tucker, “A Theory of Open”; Doug French, “The Intellectual Revolution Is in Process“; Jeffrey Tucker, and “up with iTunes U“; Kinsella, “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course”; Kinsella, “Fifteen Minutes that Changed Libertarian Publishing“; Gary North, “A Free Week-Long Economics Seminar”; Kinsella, “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright” and “How to Slow Economic Progress”.
See Cory Doctorow’s post below (h/t Katelyn Horn).
The Power of Open: Stories of Creative Commons success
Cory Doctorow at 6:28 AM Friday, Jun 24, 2011
Jane from Creative Commons sez,
Since last fall, we’ve been talking at length to various creators about their CC stories–the impact Creative Commons has had on their lives and in their respective fields, whether that’s in art, education, science, or industry. We are thrilled to announce that we have cultivated the most compelling of these stories and woven them together into a book called The Power of Open. The stories in The Power of Open demonstrate the breadth of CC uses across fields and the creativity of the individuals and organizations that have chosen to share their work via Creative Commons licenses and tools. The Power of Open is available for free downloadunder the CC Attribution license. It is available in several languages, with more translated versions to come. You can also order hard copies from Lulu. We hope that it inspires you to examine and embrace the practice of open licensing so that your contributions to the global intellectual commons can provide their greatest benefit to all people.”But that’s not all–The Power of Open is launching with events around the world! The official launch is June 29 at The New America Foundation in Washington D.C., featuring Global Voices Online and IntraHealth, with CC CEO Cathy Casserly representing for staff. Additionally, the first event already took place on June 16 in Tokyo, Japan, with Creative Commons Chairperson Joi Ito introducing the book to the Asia/Pacific region. For the full list of events taking place in Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Paris, head on over to the thepowerofopen.org.
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TED talks: CC By-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
gardnermuseum.org The Concert: CC By-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Khan Academy: CC By-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Not very open.
Not as open as we may prefer but the “no derivatives” is kind of fang-less because if you make say a reply video using theirs and comment on what they said it will almost certainly be judged fair use.
Mathiew,
I think the cogent point is that the examples that Kinsella uses exist within the context of copyrights. Coprights, given that they exist and are utilzied by the enterprises cited, don’t seem to be impeding the “open” expression that he implies.
If you want to argue that any expression is automatically covered by copyrights, and so they don’t really hve a choice, then why use the CC device explicity limiting use? They could have granted an open license for unlimited use.
Wildberry,
Kinsella just provided several examples of how smart marketers give things away in order to make money through presentations. These examples are the newest in a long series of examples used to buttress the idea that yes, it is possible to make money without IP.
On an unrelated note, I’ve been lurking for awhile and think that a summary of the anti-IP position is that:
-we own ourselves and our property
-we can do anything we want with ourselves and our property but rational actors should voluntarily limit themselves to the Non-Agression Principle
-Intellectual Property, if it exists, requires the use of the initiation of force to enforce, thus violating the NAP, and making IP invalid for any moral person
Any ant-IPers out there I would appreciate your feedback on my summary.
Wildberry, how would you summarize the pro-IP position from first principles?
If I catch you wearing the same clothes as me I will claw your eyes out
Who’s this, my Irish cousin? In your cups again?
There are disputes among libertarians, mostly around here your going to get An-cap version, which is taking libertarianism to it’s logical extreme.
A ‘minimal government is necessary’ type libertarian won’t necessarily have a fundamental dislike of IP if you can prove a significant advantage to that particular violation of private property rights.
‘Ourselves and our property’ is a bit redundant, but mostly accurate. We are our property. But our body is a bit special compared to most forms.
But it all seems more-or-less right. So-called ‘positive rights’, such as copyrights or patents, require centralized government to enforce them. By definition they violate private property rights.
Under libertarian, or at least an-cap, system there is no ‘right to profit from your labor’ or anything like that. It’s all based on voluntary exchange. You can create something closely resembling IP rights based on contracts and such things that is perfectly valid, but will different in some fundamental ways from IP law.
Nate,
Thanks for the follow-up.
This is one form of pro-IP argument that someone can make, though there are others that work from different principles:
* I do some labor for someone and they get value from it. If I hadn’t done the labor, they wouldn’t have gotten any value, thus they pay me to do the labor so that they get value. This allows me to support myself.
* If an idea comes to me and I use it to make useful things, I can sell them and support myself.
* If someone else makes useful things based on my idea, they get the profit. But if I hadn’t come up with the idea, they wouldn’t have been able to get any profit. Thus, I have a right to profit from my idea, and they don’t.
NAPpy:
I can’t send you to the entire school, but let me try to respond with differences of opinion.
I have never said that it is impossible to make money without IP. Much of the busines that takes place has nothing to do with IP. Even where an author, say, gives his work away, he is doing it for some rational reason; a marketing plan, advertising, alternative business models, whatever.
Many of the examples Stephan gave do in fact take some advantage of copyright laws by retaining some control, even if thorugh the Creative Commons devices.
As to the rest of yor post, nate-m has made an attempt to show you some details that come out of your list, but here is a short story of some first principles for me:
We own ourselves as individual humans.
We live in a cooperative, division of labor society.
Rights exist which are asserted and defended.
Groups of cooperating humans (society) can agree to a commonly held set of rights, which they agree will be mutually defended.
The basis for defending rights in a civilized society (i.e. peaceful) are ethical, moral, economic and legal.
IP is a specialized branch of property law which attempts to deal witht the tradeoff between private property rights and freedom of speech and association, given the unique nature of IP, which is that the means of production is attached to the economic good.
All rights are limited by the rights of others.
The NAP principle is dependent upon the assignment of rights. Defending legitimate rights is not aggression, and defending rights you don’t have is aggression, so you cannot applyt the NAP unless you first establish which rights prevail.
That is why saying that IP violates the NAP begs the question of whether IP rights exist.
Good lurking. Nice to participate, too.
Wildberry,
Thanks for the follow-up. Some questions:
“We own ourselves as individual humans.” I agree. I’m new to epistomology, but my understanding is that there are a priori concepts that can be understood, and this is one of them. Do you agree?
“We live in a cooperative, division of labor society.” I mostly agree. I’d probably word this as “In our schizophrenic, non-principled society, people somehow hold the contradicting ideas that they can both cooperate and steal from each other at the same time, and that stealing is o.k because my parents do it, my preacher said it’s ok, my school taught me that it’s not stealing if we vote on it, etc.” Agree?
“Rights exist which are asserted and defended.” This may be right but you just stepped outside my epistemology comfort zone. Where/how are these rights derived? Are they positive or negative?
“Groups of cooperating humans (society) can agree to a commonly held set of rights, which they agree will be mutually defended.” It’s my experience that agreement can be hard unless there is something concrete to base that agreement on. What are some of the common rights you would use?
“The basis for defending rights in a civilized society (i.e. peaceful) are ethical, moral, economic and legal.” I have it in my mind that it is possible now to derive a logical and empirical morality / ethics (Rothbard’s version of natural law, Hayek’s discourse ethics, Molyneux’s Universally Preferable Behavior(UPB)). Law, then, should be based on codifying this morality. Economics is a special subset of praxeology and is also derived. You’ve used the phrase “human device” several times. What do you mean by that? Do you mean that we can’t know anything, that austrian economics is just well-dressed gibberish, or are some knowledge truly founded in reality?
“IP is a specialized branch of property law which attempts to deal witht the tradeoff between private property rights and freedom of speech and association, given the unique nature of IP, which is that the means of production is attached to the economic good.” How do you define IP? How do you fit it into a general theory of property?
“All rights are limited by the rights of others.” You might answer this above, but where do rights come from? Are they negative or positive? I’d think that there are no rights (depending on definition). People can do whatever they want. Some prefer to limit their actions to things like the NAP out of rational self-interest. If one wishes to be logically consistent, whatever limits one places on action need to be consistent to all people, at all times, in all places.
“The NAP principle is dependent upon the assignment of rights. Defending legitimate rights is not aggression, and defending rights you don’t have is aggression, so you cannot applyt the NAP unless you first establish which rights prevail.” I agree. Molyneux would say that the concept of UPB would use the NAP to say that you can defend against murder, rape and theft.
“That is why saying that IP violates the NAP begs the question of whether IP rights exist.” I’ll concede the point. There probably needs to be a step defining property in any anti-ip argument. In fact, this seems like a key step.
Wildberry,
Another question. If IP rights exist, how would you enforce them?
It’s not question begging unless your fellow participant in discourse denies the legitimacy of self-ownership rights. Do you, Wildberry?
@Stephan Kinsella June 26, 2011 at 1:37 am
A direct question? I’m flattered.
Of course. And from that princple comes the right to benefit from the production from one’s privately owned means. From this, ownershp in IP is derived.
If you acknowledge the origin of this right, then you cannot sever it wtihout violating the principle of self ownership and private property, in my view. Therefore defense of property rights in IP is not violation of NAP.
To start wtih a definition of property that excludes IP, and then to say that therefore IP violates NAP, begs the question of whether the rights in IP are legitimately defensible; it merely assumes from the definition that that are not, and therefore to defend them is aggression, and therefore violates NAP.
“A direct question? I’m flattered.”
Yes, you should be.
I think you mean no–you do not deny it.
Well, this is under debate. Since we don’t agree on this, arguments one way or the other need to be advanced–appealing as necessary to uncontroversial, shared beliefs.
But the point is that when I assert that people do own scarce things, it is not question-begging since we both agree to this part.
@Stephan Kinsella June 26, 2011 at 11:38 am
Yes, I mean I do not deny the legitimacy of self-ownership rights.
I agree.
As I said, we can only agree if we agree on the meaning and application of the concept “scarcity” which we apparently don’t.
So if you want to avoid begging the question, you cannot appeal to a belief that is not held in common. Without that agreement, to say that we agree that people own “scarce” things is meaningless. Therefore, I cannot say we agree.
My evidence for this is that you pin your exclusion of IP from property rights based on a scarcity argument. I include IP as property based on a scarcity argument. Therefore we must disagree on the meaning and application of the concept, “scarcity”.
If we can establish a common belief, then we will agree that ideas are excluded, but IP is not, which is consistent with the operation of IP laws, coincidentally.
Wildberry, interesting that you consider IP scarce. I’m sure you’ve elaborated on it elsewhere, but can you summarize your position that it’s scarce? As far as I can see, all existing ideas are non-scarce, since they are infinitely reproducible for nearly zero cost. Thus, you must be talking about all ideas which haven’t been had yet. But I aren’t those non-existent, not even scarce? It seems like ideas-not-yet-had are more like ideas buried few and far between in a huge public library of otherwise useless books, where it takes a good amount of effort to come across a new one. That is, it’s costly to find them, but once found, it is like a well with infinite reserves and that an unlimited number of people can tap, hardly a scarce thing.
@Shay June 26, 2011 at 6:24 pm
As I have been arguing with Kinsella here:
http://blog.mises.org/17398/intellectual-property-rights-as-negative-servitudes/comment-page-1/#comment-789709
you can only make the case that IP is a non-scarce resource if you equivicate the meanint of ideas and IP. There is a crucial distinction.
I have invited a more formal discussion, but Kinsella apparently isn’t interested. Stay tuned.
@ Shay June 26, 2011 at 6:24 pm
While I have a minute, let me try to give you a more interesting answer, based on what you say here:
First, there is nothing so scarce as something that doesn’t exist yet, since there are zero of them.
Second, the next scarcest thing is something that is original and unique. There is exactly one of those.
Third, and idea, in and of itself isn’t really much of anything; what is an “inspiration” for example? If you wiki “idea” you will see what a complex subject it becomes if you think about it.
So no, I am not referring to ideas being scarce because they haven’t occurred to anyone yet and so the first person to “have it” has captured something scarce.
But your description of the “huge public idea library” and searching through the stacks to find a “good” one is a pretty good analogy to the commons of free ideas.
In essence, I am saying that this analysis of ideas is not sufficient to define the scarcity of “original works”, which are the subject matter of copyrights. In fact, as you may already know, ideas are specifically exluded from copyrights, along with facts recipes, formulas, etc. These things are part of and remain in the “library” for others to use and discover, along with works and inventions whose limited terms have expired.
I believe property is a human device, so I do not hold that natural scarcity is the only way to look at property rights. We sometimes create or secure scarcity or property directly, and in that case we have to look to the issue of legitimacy and justification.
But in any case, I believe that IP is a scarce good, while ideas are not, so they cannot be considered the same thing. To do so is an equivocation which leads to a false conclusions about the nature of property and the legimacy of IP.
I have not elaborated on how or why an “original work” is scarce in a formal way, and am asking Kinsella to apply his property theories to the production of an original work of authorship, and I would respond with a rebuttal. That is beyond what I can offer you here and now.
Regards,
“you can only make the case that IP is a non-scarce resource if you equivicate the meanint of ideas and IP. There is a crucial distinction.”
A distinction you have *never* presented. That’s why they are equivocated: because you have yet to pin down the difference.
You have never *defined* the difference. A definition is not a presentation of examples but an elaboration on what criteria makes one thing and an example and another thing not an example.
“First, there is nothing so scarce as something that doesn’t exist yet, since there are zero of them.
“Second, the next scarcest thing is something that is original and unique. There is exactly one of those.
“Third, and idea, in and of itself isn’t really much of anything; what is an “inspiration” for example? If you wiki “idea” you will see what a complex subject it becomes if you think about it.”
Ultimately, from a Platonic point of view, this is why IP fails. Ideas exist independently from the physical world. Thus, two different people can converge on a single idea independently of each other. In this sense, ideas aren’t scarce: more than one person can have it at the same time, independently of each other, without knowing about each others’ existence.
While I’d like to think my PhD dissertation is “original”, there is always a possibility that someone, somewhere, who has never heard of me, has either proved, or will prove, the same result. It’s also possible that decades from now, two engineers will independently use that result to develop a new engine, or a more stable way to build a house–because physical laws limit our ideas as much as mathematical ones do.
@sweatervest June 29, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Because I have not recreated the positive law on the subject for you here, you insist that a distinction does not exist. Yet it clearly does exist, as the existence of copyright law and their exclusion of ideas, clearly demonstrates.
If you cannot instinctively tell the difference between the idea that “the sun rises” and the novel, “The Sun Also Rises”, then I don’t know how to explain to you in a way that makes it unnecessary for you to know something you currently do not know.
@Alpheus July 1, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Really? How do you know that?
Of course. Ideas are in one view, representations of images and experience, specifically human experience we create in our minds. I would expect common human experiences to cause humans to formulate similar, even identical ideas. Who disagrees?
Of course. I have never claimed otherwise. What I claim is that the concept of “idea” is not sufficient to describe “an original work of authorship”, for example.
“Because I have not recreated the positive law on the subject for you here, you insist that a distinction does not exist.”
That is a bunch of smoke and mirrors. If the positive law actually identified the distinction then you would simply present it and shut me up for good. You’re implying that it is my responsibility to argue your argument for you. There’s not much more to say about it.
You insist a distinction does exist while simultaneously excusing yourself from the burden of proof of your own position. It’s pretty silly to keep saying something exists and being totally unable or unwilling to point to it.
I’m aware that copyright law stipulates that a sequence of notes becomes a “creative work”, namely a melody, once it is 8 notes or more (if I remember correctly from college). That you think the mere statement of such actually establishes that there is a fundamental distinction between 7 notes and 8 notes and that the dividing line could not have been placed anywhere else is, well, confusing to say the least.
“Yet it clearly does exist, as the existence of copyright law and their exclusion of ideas, clearly demonstrates.”
That is a ridiculous line of reasoning. According to your logic, the existence of a book on public goods proves that there is a real (i.e. non-arbitrary) distinction between public and private goods. Someone merely needs to arbitrarily stipulate a distinction and, according to you, that automatically means that such a distinction holds water.
I am going to claim there is a non-arbitrary distinction between “big things” and “small things”. I stipulate that the line dividing big things and small things is that big things have at least one spatial dimension that is greater than one meter. If you claim that my distinction between “big things” and “small things” is entirely arbitrary and not based on any real, objective distinction then you are clearly wrong because I just spoke of the distinction.
“If you cannot instinctively tell the difference between the idea that “the sun rises” and the novel, “The Sun Also Rises”, then I don’t know how to explain to you in a way that makes it unnecessary for you to know something you currently do not know.”
I don’t know how you think this connects to the current discussion, but you seem to be suggesting that if I don’t already accept your argument then I’m not in a position to understand the problem at all. Suffice to say that is not an argument but tantamount to giving up the attempt to argue your position.
“Really? How do you know that?”
How do you know they don’t?
“What I claim is that the concept of “idea” is not sufficient to describe “an original work of authorship”, for example”
And yet you are strangely silent on what *is* sufficient and then continue on with your position as though you have solved this problem at its base.
For the sake of argument, I can assume that there does exist a distinction between ideas and original works. Even so, your original reason from bringing that distinction up, that IP is only non-scarce without that distinction, is plainly wrong.
Even “creative works” are non-scarce because when I enjoy a song or produce off a patented concept that does not exhaust the usefulness of that song or concept. Each time I listen to a song or produce off a patented concept that does not take away from its potential to be used by other people in the same way. If anything it *helps* other people to use it by spreading the song/concept around and making it better known. One cannot “run out” of the usefulness of a song or a concept. They are non-scarce because it is inconceivable to exhaust their usefulness.
So, despite the fact that you are relying on a distinction that does not exist, the existence of that distinction wouldn’t help your position anyways.
Wildberry is effectively saying that, yes all the members of the set of ideas are non-scarce goods, and yet when we restrict ourselves to a subset of that set they become scarce?
No, if ideas are non-scarce, then that includes the subset, arbitrary as it may be, of “creative works”.
Creative Commons tunes at: http://jamendo.com
The problem with that is that it is eternally regressive.
PS. there’s no epub version of the book
Stephan,
Per my conversation with Wildberry, I’m revising my summary of the Anti-IP position. Would the following be accurate and logical:
1. We own ourselves and our property
2. We do anything we want with ourselves and our property but a rational actor voluntarily limits his actions to the Non-Agression Principle.
3. Violations of the NAP may be defended against using force
3. Property is the legal right to scarce, rivalrous resources
4. Stealing property violates the NAP and may be defended against using force
5. Intellectual property like books and music are not scarce or rivalrous, therefore copying does not violate the NAP, and may not be defended against using force
My approach is:
Ethics:
1: Cooperation means all involved actors perceive their interactions to be desirable.
2: By definition no actor would want another actor to confiscate the means to his actions. All such actions are violent.
3: A claim to intellectual property is always a claim to something already being used by someone who is not its current user.
4: The current user of such property has no control over this intellectual property claim and thus loses control of his means to action by no action of his own.
5: Thus the intellectual property claim is a claim to interact violently and not cooperatively. All such claims are unjustifiable.
Economics:
1: IP is a system of monopolistic grants that, by definition, can only favor *certain* producers at the expense of *other* potential producers and can never benefit producers in general.
2: Because of this IP, like any monopoly grants, does not raise the incentives to produce but lowers the incentive to produce by making it possible that ones production will be forcefully shut down.
3: The result of copyrights on creative markets is to restrict the number of successful artists by raising the cost of enjoying a single artists’ work, thus benefitting the few artists whose popularity is among the highest of any artist, at the expense of all artists whose popularity falls short of this very high threshold. As a result, the creative market caters only to the most generic and widely supported tastes (called “pop”) while leaving even slightly “artsy” tastes much less catered for if at all.
4: The result of patents on production is two-fold: first, similar to copyrights it raises the cost of producing based off one invention and thus only the most highly innovative inventions ever get produced at all, resulting in fewer successful inventors and less innovation. Second, patents raise the costs of minor improvements to existing inventions and subsidize radically different multiple developments of the same innovation that each carry excessively high R&D costs at the expense of simple incremental innovations that need little or no R&D.
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