Comments on: Is Intellectual Property a Right or a Privilege?

By: Doug Stewart (France resident)

Doug Stewart (France resident) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

From my perspective, there are three separate aspects:
- Do individuals have a right to IP
- Do corporations have a right to IP
- Is it in societies interest to provide IP (e.g. thereby generating innovation)

In terms of the last question, I think it depends a lot on the society. 3rd world countries that need to use a lot of existing ideas while climbing the development ladder (e.g. China) would benefit most from denying IP, as they would pay much more than they gain. Also, they are more focused at this stage of their development on reproducing and improving ideas rather than creating. This was very much the approach Japan took after WW2.

On the other hand, the USA which has a huge investment in its patented ideas benefits from IP as a major potential source of protecting and levering this investment.

Whether the world itself benefits as a whole….I just don’t have time to write pages on that and I suppose it has been covered to death anyways.

Reference the rights of individuals and corporations, I see two aspects. One is the native rights (e.g. does an artist have the right of ownership of his creativity). Separate from this is the question of whether, having been granted IP by the legal system, this corresponds to now having a right. For example, if an artist didn’t have a native right, but if the legal system supports IP, surely as a democratic socity this makes it a right?

This post doesn’t really answer anything. However, I just wanted to point out that there are a number of different aspects to the question, each deserving their own answer.

By: Docunext

Docunext — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Spam Karma, Referral Karma, and Intellectual Property

In my humble opinion, both! You should always have the right to claim intellectual property, but it should also come with responsibility. Beyond the law, that’s the reality of the situation. Intellectual property is inherently difficult to protec…

By: Docunext » Blog Archive » Spam Karma, Referral Karma, and Intellectual Property

Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 +0000

[...] Is Intellectual Property a Right or a Privilege? [...]

By: j-ster

j-ster — Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. Thank you for that. I havent really thought about IP that much, but every time i come up against it, i get irritated. Jefferson’s quote captures my sentiments exactly, but your argument persuades me that there is more to it than than… privilege is a good compromise.

Quote: “In fact, practically every aspects of the law pertaining to work interactions between individuals, is based on the very notion that it is revokable and needs only conforming to society’s convenience with the well-being of all as a goal: when a license to operate a business is granted to me by the authorities, the fact that it then becomes my only source of income does not make it any more protected from society’s higher interest.”

Good point, and a pertinent one in Oz at the moment, as the Prime Minister publicly agrees to a vague idea of combatting global warming, but only insofar as it does not harm the business interests that create the problem.

By: urchin

urchin — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Thorny issue if there is one. A few brain-dump-style, disorganized remarks: do you really believe that IP encourages innovation? From what I can see in the world of open source software, it’s quite the opposite: if I had to pay everytime I use a quicksort, or a certain data structure, or a compression algorithm, I sure wouldn’t try to develop anything. Just look at what happened when the owner of the patent on LZW tried to enforce it. Over all, the really inacceptable thing is the IP holder’s lobbying in order to try to establish a correspondance between a physical and an intellectual property; take DMCA or DADVSI for instance; the provisions that forbid to crack or circumvent a protection measure are downright ludicrous. It’s not lockpicking, and there are a host of valid reasons for doing so (research, recovering data after losing license files, interoperability…). As you noted, you’re not depriving anybody of their property. Furthermore, lockpicking (and the supply of lockpicking tools) is entirely legal as long as it’s your lock you’re tampering with. Why should DRM’d content be any different?

Yea, maybe I’m trolling, but with the topics you’re covering these days, it’s deserved