I’ve been reading through a book I came across in my city library called The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. The author is from NYU, and his name is Siva Vaidhyanathan.
In a section titled “Intellectual Property is Neither,” Siva states:
Intellectual property is distinct from “real” property because it is not naturally scarce. If someone steals my car, I am left with no car. Yet if someone photocopies my book, I still have a book. The fundamental purpose of intellectual property law is to create artificial scarcity.
Siva has dealt with this issue before, most notably with his book Copyrights and Copywrongs. He has a blog and he often writes for OpenDemocracy.net. I find his views interesting, even if he is not as ideologically consistent, at times, as I would expect.He holds the standard anti-IP view that States grant monopolies to creators, inventors, etc. via IP law, and therefore reduce competition. He appears to grant credence to the founders’ version of copyright protection (which he refers to as “humane regulation”) and the intentions therein, and that is, to benefit publishers – not creators – for a certain span of time, and thereafter confer these benefits to the public by way of copyright expiration. Interestingly, he mounts an argument that the founders envisioned that copyrighted works should live on in the public domain, after the monopoly price, or “tax,” was paid on those works. The founders, he says, thought this limited tax period was sufficient, and the monoploy protection period just long enough in order to perpetuate incentive for further developmental works. He calls the reconstruction of the original copyright idea and its resulting information oligarchy a “Hobbesian black market of culture and information.”
I sense myriad trouble spots in the book, including his apparent affinity for democracy while being an anarchist, and also, his focus on the definition of real property early on, while stating elsewhere that the “humane regulation” of traditional copyright is unobjectionable. In addition, he supports the RIAA and its wicked suppression of property rights:
I actually applaud the music industry for filing civil lawsuits against copyright infringers. And I do this because I think copyright should be worked out in the civil courts. I think that when you sue somebody, you’re at least giving that defendant a chance to due process, a chance to defend herself. And that’s healthier than trying to make all of the regulatory decisions within the technology itself.
His argument seems to forget that there is another side, one where the Feds and myriad special interest groups have a huge interest in maintaining the status quo on IP, and using the power of the courts and federal agencies to do just that.
Lastly, he churns out some wonderfully provocative comments on the anti-tradition types that steadfastly opine “all technology changes everywhere improve on the last batch,” and refers to notions such as Virginia Postrel’s “dynamism” as “technofundamentalism.” There is definitely some tasty meat within the pages of this book. All in all, this books seems worth plowing through further. I am anxious to read his chapter on the peer-to-peer revolution and the RIAA. Here’s a fascinating FAQ on his book that I highly recommend.
{ 13 comments }
I think you mean “affinity”, not “infinity” in the sixth paragraph.
That said, it’s nice to see that people are catching on with regards to copyright, patents, and other coercive monopolies.
This one’s still on the “back burner” of my mind, but let me throw out a couple of ideas for thought.
While I certainly understand the scarcity point, which would seem to be a point against copyright, we’re still left with the question: what should the producer of an “intellectual work” (instead of the term “intellectual property”) be paid? What value do people place on intellectual works?
Again, I’m struck by the “service” concept. What people really want are not ideas in themselves, but ideas applied in specific ways that they need or desire–software that helps a business solve a problem, fiction that people are entertained by, music that people like to listen or dance to, nonfiction that educates and informs.
In other words, it’s not the algorithm that matters to the end user of a program, but the program the programmer writes using that algorithm. It’s not the plot that matters to the novel reader or movie watcher, but the complete novel or movie that uses the plot.
So the key question seems to be what is the writer or composer or programmer actually being paid to do, and who’s paying him to do it? If we can answer these questions, then we might be in a better position to understand the value of an intellectual work.
“what should the producer of an ‘intellectual work’ (instead of the term ‘intellectual property’) be paid?”
What should the producer of any good or service be paid? Exactly what a buyer is willing to pay, which in turn depends on the buyer’s preferences, resources for trade, and the availability of alternatives.
“What people really want are not ideas in themselves, but ideas applied in specific ways that they need or desire…”
You just answered your own question. People will pay for an item or service produced using creative and intellectual know-how. People will rarely pay for the know-how itself, since knowledge can be copied virtually without cost.
You think a person is “entitled” to some money for an idea he just had? That idea is worth exactly whatever he can make with it. If someone else can make something better with his idea, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
The free market doesn’t work by entitling producers to some predetermined profit. It works by buyers and sellers engaging in voluntary exchanges. Copyright and patents are simply ways for people to avoid the whole “making something people will buy” stage, engaging in bullying and extortion for profit instead.
It’s worth noting that there are free market alternatives to copyrights, patents, and abusive trademarks.
1. Rich benefactors *will* pay for the creation of art and the advancement of science, even if there is no additional economic incentive to do so. This has occurred throughout history.
2. Without government involvement, book publishers, movie studios, drug laboratories, and other information-based companies could form contractual copyright agreements. Major book publishers, for example, would probably be eager to join a trade association that prohibited duplicate publications within a certain time frame. Even retail chains could be expected to participate in such a contract in return for lower prices and better access to publishers’ catalogs.
We don’t know all the innovative ways that creative industries might find to survive and thrive in a free market. But we can easily reason that the current system (which is coercive and therefore immoral) hampers creativity and produces an artificial barrier to market entry.
I can’t really see why copyrights should be considered anymore “coercive” than other property rights. As none other than Murray Rothbard pointed out, copyrights reflects a contractual agreement between the buyers and the sellers.
“We have seen in chapter 2 that the acid test by which we judge whether or not a certain practice or law is or not consonant with the free market is this: Is the outlawed practice implicit or explicit theft? If it is, then the free market would outlaw it; if not, then its outlawry is itself government interference in the free market. Let us consider copyright.A man writes a book or composes music. When he publishes the book or the sheet ofmusic, he imprints on the first page the word “copyright.” This indicates that any man who agrees to purchase this product also agrees as part of the exchange not to recopy or reproduce this work for sale. In other words, the author does not sell his property outright to the buyer; he sells it on condition that the buyer not reproduce it for sale.Since the buyer does not buy the property outright, but only on this condition, any infringement of the contract by him or a subsequent buyer is implicit theft and would betreated accordingly on the free market. The copyright is therefore a logical device of property right on the free market.”
As for the issue of scarcity, it is not really clear why it follows that lack of scarcity nullifies property rights. Accordingly this could be used to open up the use of any property which is currently not used by the owners. Anyone could be entitled to enter the house of someone who is on vacation, anyone could be entitled to drive around in Sivas car when he’s not using it, anyone could seize a closed-down plant, anyone could embezzle money from someone as long as he returns it when the original owner wants to spend them etc.
Rothbard was, unfortunately, wrong on this issue. Even if one were to accept the idea of “implicit contracts” (the fact that I write the word “copyright” here doesn’t really mean you agreed to anything), it would simply open the following possibility: I buy a book, implicitly accepting that *I* am not allowed to copy it (let’s ignore the “for sale” part, which leaves a loophole right there); I give it to a friend; *he* never accepted that contract, so he’s free to duplicate it as he sees fit.
In any case, the whole idea looks weird to me: I’m not allowed to do whatever I want with my phisical property, my own time, my own equipment, and so on. Intellectual “property” is a way of infringing my real property rights. (Patents are even worse… I think pretty much everyone agrees with that.)
Finally, the “if they don’t have protection, nobody will create new books / music / whatever” is obviously wrong. If it were true, we wouldn’t have had ONE work of art, or book. And if they didn’t require protection when they were in an infant state, they definitely don’t need it now when they’re multi-billion dollars industries.
I have to agree with Mr. Popescu. Copyrighted items (and ideas, etc.) are actually not “sold” in the usual sense of word: you don’t get all the property rights to the item.
There are other examples of such contracts, but it seems to me that these resolve clearer in the end – “borrowing” or “renting” is a transfer of certain property rights, that will return to their former owner at some later, pre-defined point. “Leasing” is similar, but at some point the full rights will belong to the buyer.
Copyright has no such pre-set date or condition. It is unclear, when the property rights become clearly defined; or to be exact: when the item’s holder becomes its owner.
So if I die, and my precious books become lost, and some lucky person finds them, they can’t become his or her property, because of the copyright attached to it, and a contract the finder never signed. Whether the word “Copyright” is still legible doesn’t matter.
Copyrights (and other IP) are a “Public Good” problem.
I can keep an idea secret, but then if I die, the idea dies with me, or you can have a guild that shares ideas (with a contract stating death to anyone who reveals info to a nonmember). Patents were designed to allow ideas to be put in the public domain after a time where money could be recouped. What we have is totally out of hand and maybe obsolete, but few argue from the original intent to how it might work today.
Were things to disappear into a DRM black hole (you could not play any media without your fingerprint or retinal scan and associated bank account deduction – which you would have to agree to by contract), it would be worse.
Even physical property laws have easements so things like roads can be built and people can actually get to the property they own.
The original intent of IP laws is to create artifical property lines so that works and inventions would not be public goods at the moment of their creation (so as not to be profitable to create or develop). The specific intent is to have far more in the public domain at a specific later time.
The argument is not that no works will be created without IP, but that the number and quality will be much smaller BECAUSE they would be a public good. Even Linux has the GPL under copyright.
Would you “buy” property that did not have any enforcement powers to keep tresspassers off? I can imagine such a system, but the value of such property and number of parcels sold would be small. Or if you could not write in deed restrictions to prevent trash-burning plants from being built next to a residence? I can create examples which turn real property into “public goods”. Or think identity theft – if I steal your identity and give you a bad “name”, (think trademark) it isn’t physical property, but is something of value.
The works and ideas have value, but this cannot be recovered in a public goods regime. So only independently wealthy people can create or sponsor such. This might be an alternative.
The corruption comes from patenting things (software, algorithms, business methods) which were never intended, and extending copyright into infinity so nothing ever enters the public domain.
I don’t know if it can be made to work in the 21st century, or with the current level of corruption.
But I think the right questions to ask are how to optimize a classic public goods problem, by trying to determine the optimum scope and term of the IP protection.
“Rothbard was, unfortunately, wrong on this issue. Even if one were to accept the idea of “implicit contracts” (the fact that I write the word “copyright” here doesn’t really mean you agreed to anything), it would simply open the following possibility: I buy a book, implicitly accepting that *I* am not allowed to copy it (let’s ignore the “for sale” part, which leaves a loophole right there); I give it to a friend; *he* never accepted that contract, so he’s free to duplicate it as he sees fit.”
For you to be able to allow a friend to do it, he or she must also accept the terms under which you have been given the book. If a Muslim or some other teetotaller lets you use his house under the condition that there won’t be any drinking [of alcohol] there, you can’t invite a friend who wants to drink a six-pack of beer there.
“I’m not allowed to do whatever I want with my phisical property, my own time, my own equipment, and so on. Intellectual “property” is a way of infringing my real property rights.”
The point it that it really isn’t your physical property. As Rothbard pointed out,when you buy a copyrighted book you do not buy it outright, you only buy the right to use it for purposes other than copying it.
“Finally, the “if they don’t have protection, nobody will create new books / music / whatever” is obviously wrong. If it were true, we wouldn’t have had ONE work of art, or book. And if they didn’t require protection when they were in an infant state, they definitely don’t need it now when they’re multi-billion dollars industries.”
Uhhm, exactly what “infant state” are you refering too?
If you really argue that copyrights won’t increase the production of books, music etc., then what you’re really saying is that incentives don’t matter and that people will never make extra efforts for money. That is to put it mildly, a very unrealistic assumption.
“As Rothbard pointed out,when you buy a copyrighted book you do not buy it outright, you only buy the right to use it for purposes other than copying it.”
That is incorrect. When I buy a book, I buy a book. I buy a physical object, and if I want to read it, burn it, use it to prop my couch up, or photocopy it, it’s no one else’s business.
I suppose you may voluntary relinquish your own property rights, Mr. Karlsson, to the items you purchase in return for warm, fuzzy feelings of corporate servility. I don’t, and I never will.
“For you to be able to allow a friend to [borrow a book], he or she must also accept the terms under which you have been given the book.”
The only term under which I lend books is that they be returned intact. A friend I lend a book to is under no other obligation. How could he possibly be under other obligations if I haven’t negotiated those obligations with him, or communicated them to him?
A world without involuntary copyright clearly offends you, which explains why you’re coming up with such strange excuses, but I don’t understand why.
Very good, Paul. I’d still like to make two comments:
–For you to be able to allow a friend to do it, he or she must also accept the terms under which you have been given the book.
So what you are saying is that by buying a book with copyright, not only I “implicitly” agree not to duplicate / distribute any part of it in any form (think whistling a tune, or showing a book on TV or a video link, to realize the absurdity of the implications), but I also agree not to lend it to anyone else if they don’t also agree to these conditions? (What happens if a friend comes to my house and copies a music CD? He didn’t agree to anything, and I wasn’t there to stop him unless he does.)
I wouldn’t necessarily object to this, on two conditions of my own: 1) that ALL these conditions I agree to are explicitly written in a contract that I have to sign when buying the book, and 2) that the actual enforcement of these contracts is purely private (we’ve started with copyrights in an anarchy, right?). Why? Because I would bet good money that nobody would actually do it – the costs would be too high. The bookstores would balk at the idea of requiring their customers to sign this for every single book; Amazon would balk at this idea too.
A free market would do away with copyrights; the only reason they exist is that they are “free” for the publishers – because everyone gets to bear their cost.
The second comment would be here:
–If you really argue that copyrights won’t increase the production of books, music etc., then what you’re really saying is that incentives don’t matter and that people will never make extra efforts for money.
No, what I am arguing is that without copyrights, the *efficiency* of publishing would increase. There would be fewer books, music, and so on; but we would lose the least valuable ones (if I understand Austrian economics at all). Nobody that I know of, who is anti-copyright, says that musicians and book authors should (or would) not be paid.
I’ll have another go.
How does one come to own scarce resources? I think we would all agree that resources (or every usable material or real ‘thing’ pre-exists ownership). No one created water or soil or trees or air or petroleum or rubber or cows or chickens or sand etc etc etc. It is the application of a refined intellect and the expending of physical labor which turns resources into property – property for which force can be used to protect it. So isn’t it labor that enables the taking of possession?
In the example of a car. How did person A come in possession of the car? They likely paid money for it. So? People go on about fiat money etc which is State scrip so is fairly valueless. But it does stand as a placeholder for the labor they expended.
How does the car manufacturer come to ‘own’ the resources that went into the car? Likely they bought all the components made to spec from subcontractors, and paid for it with fiat money. How did the subcontractors come to own anything?
At the root isn’t any claim to ownership even real property an intellectual exercise? A person ‘owns’ a chunk of land, what evidences it? A scrap of paper in a Register of Deeds’ office? Or is the fact that they cleared it of trees and stumps, and removed noxious plants, and smoothed it by removing rocks and stones. Built a fence and declares that anyone who comes across it without proper declaration or apparent harmful intent, is going to get a bullet between the eyes. So basically it is individuals who will use force to protect their labor, unleashed by a combination of intellectual decisions spurring physical behaviors. I can’t see much of difference between one kind of labor and another, between physical property and intellectual property (I find it bit amusing when people marginalize a book as ‘an idea’ equivalent to something like “I want an ice cream cone”).
It is labor that should be honored as the root of ownership, either of the product, or under contract for money on a gold standard. If anyone can tell me how resources at large come into private possession without some sort of metaphysical gyration, and why that gyration can’t be extended to complex works created from the human mind, I would be obliged. Apparently such works have value or there wouldn’t be a demand for it, differentiating by definition from all the other dreck ‘ideas’ out there (no one is going to pay you a cent for your desire for an ice cream cone and no one is going to pony up major cash for opinions expressed here).
Also, if physical ownership and scarce resources is the only logic, then I assume that proponents of doing away with intellectual property rights won’t mind a bit if I come over and smash their computer with a baseball bat ten times. I don’t plan on taking it, mind you, they will be left with every last piece. But maybe there is something more valuable intrinsic in it now? Isn’t it actually the intellectual involvement now embedded in the physical resource were the true value lies? Isn’t the value really the intangible value added by human intellect? So why do we simply say that a thousand page book is no less? Isn’t the value actually in the composition and not the physical form? If the answer is no, I will gladly supply my e-mail address so we can exchange information and I’ll gladly stop on by with my bat and introduce myself to certain electronic equipment.
Am I enamored of the huge State and all it’s tentacles? Hardly. But I am not entitled to claim other peoples labor simply by wanting it and not wanting to pay the price asked simply because I can take it. But such laws basically are there to protect creators from giants. If someone writes a book, spends years researching it, spends months writing it, only to have the text taken by the largest printer who can do the largest run for the lowest price, who has gained? Who has lost? Who, other than the independently wealthy could ever create under such circumstances? It is the creation of value through labor that should be of interest, and if there is to any State at all, it should honor intellectual labor as well as combined intellectual/physical labor.
I’m thinking of publishing a book of the comments here. Great ideas and arguments! Especially the ones who don’t care if you are compensated for your intellectual work. Thanks! If you don’t object and don’t care about a financial return, I’ll consider pumping out 20,000 copies or so and see how much I can make off your ideas.
BTW, if any of you can spend the next couple years thinking up a few more, please send them over!
Nice share, but please double check your RSS, it doesn’t work for me.
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