Comments on: No such thing as originality

By: shikender

shikender — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 15:13:00 +0000

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By: mushindo

mushindo — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:23:01 +0000

Mozart had no-one else but himself to blame. He was well paid for his works by the standards of the day, and that could easily have been suffiicent to have had a comfortable life had he husbanded his resources prudently. But he was fantastically spendthrift and consistently spent faster than he earned.

btw, he was more of a libertine than a libertarian in my view – although some would have it that the former is a subset of the latter.

By: Peter Surda

Peter Surda — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:16:34 +0000

Wildberry,

But not all derivitives are innovations. Often they are merely a form of copying.

More smoke and mirrors.

So the question remains one of distinguishing what is a violation of someone’s rights and what is not.

And this is exactly what IP proponents fail to provide. I suspect that you will now revert back to your old trick of saying that the laws explain it. But that misses the point of the problem. The point is that according to IP proponents “innovation” is supposed to have unique economic properties. So how do the law makers determine which types of action do have unique economic properties and which not?

By: mushindo

mushindo — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:14:00 +0000

for the record, Charles Babbage did not invent the calculating machine . He adapted the concept slightly from Jacquard’s loom, a punch-card driven, automatic textile pattern weaving machine invented in the 18th century, and in wide industrial use in Babbage’s day.

By: Wildberry

Wildberry — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 06:06:50 +0000

But not all derivitives are innovations. Often they are merely a form of copying. So the question remains one of distinguishing what is a violation of someone’s rights and what is not.

By: Stephan Kinsella

Stephan Kinsella — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:46:34 +0000

The point is all innovation is derivative. It all borrows on earlier innovation. A new innovation could not exist if the innovator could not use earlier ideas. So the idea that he ought to have a monopoly on his own incremental improvement is obscene.

By: Brian Macker

Brian Macker — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:34:23 +0000

A big so what. All productive work is derivative in the same sense.

By: Brian Macker

Brian Macker — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:33:09 +0000

The point was that the premise of this article is that no one originates anything. Which has to mean that all those innovative technologies were already available to primitive cultures. It was a heavy dose of sarcasm for such a stupid idea. They do not understand the word originate.

The point of the comment wasn’t to elevate the white man. It was to show how stupid it is to claim there is no such thing as origination, only remixing.

By: Wildberry

Wildberry — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:33:15 +0000

Good point!

I guess you are right; it is important to pay attention to cause and effect, and to make distinctions between one thing and another. Otherwise, you end up with rediculous statements like this:

“We have IP because we have the State”.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:47:27 +0000

I know! We should have more war and taxes! \o/

By: Stephan Kinsella

Stephan Kinsella — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:50:28 +0000

Hey, even though we have war and taxes, life is pretty good. How can this be?

By: Wildberry

Wildberry — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:05:24 +0000

@Matthew Swaringen July 3, 2011 at 3:22 pm

Here is my question: if what you and Shay are saying is true, that there is this innovation going on all the time, and the world in which that this happening includes IP, how is this innovation an argument AGAINST IP?

IP, for all that it is criticized for, doesn’t seem to be preventing this from happening. How can this be?

By: Matthew Swaringen

Matthew Swaringen — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:22:37 +0000

This is a good point. Lots of people have ideas for things they would like to see, but aren’t interested in making the time/money into making them reality. And this is understandable, they have their own job/etc. and the opportunity cost of doing so is high. However, the people who actually invest the time/money are considered special beyond their development and production of something useful, they are practically deified in the words of some who defend IP as “creators” as though what they do is impossible for all but the rare geniuses.

It never occurs to such people that there are people freely modifying how they do work in ways that are innovative all the time. They are almost certainly not original, but many people find “tricks” to speed up their productivity which are encouraged in order to be competitive with others.

Inventors and entrepreneurs are extremely important people, but they ultimately need people to do the work of production and so we can’t all do that. Once you start giving rights that prevent the rise of competition it’s gone beyond a useful respect to making them into elites.

By: Walt D.

Walt D. — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 16:25:50 +0000

You might also like James Burke’s BBC series “Connections”. He presents good examples as to the ideas that went into various inventions.

By: Shay

Shay — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 05:38:23 +0000

Please please give us readers a simple way to report spam postings. I’ve seen several in the past day but have no way of stamping it out. (sorry, this was supposed to be in reply to the previous posting, no idea why it attached to this one)

By: Stephan Kinsella

Stephan Kinsella — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:39:44 +0000

See also Nina Paley's minute meme All Creative Work is Derivative.

By: pravin

pravin — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 12:19:18 +0000

well,not sure about the native americans,but the actual ‘indians’ did come up with the number system and zero and all that useless stuff.the whiteman had no problems assimilating it

By: Mitch Kordonowy

Mitch Kordonowy — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:35:31 +0000

I wonder if you are confusing semantics here. Define for me, Windows Hater, an idea that is absolute in originality.
I will address the situation for Thomas Edison.
There had been a mechanical sound recording machine before that.
It was called the phonautograph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph
It was invented when Thomas Alva Edison was 10 years old.
Thomas Edison invented the first device to record AND playback sound.
This made Edison “original” in this aspect, but not the aspect of recording sound.
The point that needs to be said, I guess, is that no IDEA is original in conception. How does one just randomly MAKE an idea based upon NOTHING. Why is it nothing? It is nothing because if it were made upon something else, anything else, it would not be “original” because it is derivative of the materials that made it up. Can you not see it from that view? You don’t have to except it as your own view, but can you not see this view? Or do you say, what is the point?

By: Mitch Kordonowy

Mitch Kordonowy — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:14:34 +0000

You sir have satisfied my questions more than I could have asked for!
Supply has surely over burdened demand in regard to you saying a lot music is rubbish(I agree).
Thank you very much Nate!

By: Shay

Shay — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:05:10 +0000

It’s great that most ideas aren’t original. It means I can come up with a nifty idea about how to solve a problem of mine, then realize that someone’s probably already come up with it and made a product, and figure out what I need to search for on the web to find it and not have to spend time making it myself. Quite convenient.