[MD] Fencing the Air

[Case]

> > [Case]
> > Capitalists invented the term intellectual property rights. They claim
> > we can fence in ideas. That we can charge people to think our ideas.
> > We are now granting patents on life forms. There is something wrong
> > with these concepts. This is essentially allowing a social level
> > entity to claim a thought or a whole species; all those present and
> > all their descendants.

[Platt]
(Citing the copyright notice from Lila) I guess Pirsig wouldn't agree with
you. Even Anthony McWatt is charging eight English pounds for a copy of his
PhD paper -- "charging people to think (his) ideas."  So your theory of a
social level entity "claiming thought" is on shaky ground at best. The right
to own the creative product of one's intellect is basic to individual
freedom. It is an essential part of the right to life. 

[Case]
You are correctly describing the current state of affairs. But my point is
that there is something wrong with this that gets to the heart of something
very basic about the MoQ. This may be a bit twisty I but I trust you to help
me straighten it out.

Let's begin with Lila. The copyright notice you reference it printed in the
book on paper with a cover and art work. It is a tangible thing. It is
produced and printed under entirely capitalistic principles. If lots of
people buy it then the supply becomes scarce and more are printed. If only a
few are printed at first and later there is a great demand the value of the
first printing as a scarce collectable item can increase. This is all supply
and demand.

Enforcement of ownership in this case is self regulating. The printer prints
the books and boxes them up, ships them to book stores. Customers buy them.
There is a chain of ownership and all along that chain the rightful owner
has custody of the product. Property rights to each book are clearly defined
and ownership is governed by clearly state principles. Enforcement of those
principles falls under rules that cover all such tangible products. But the
real barrier to violating the copyright law in the 1700's was the difficulty
of reproducing the book. One would either have to copy it over by hand or
own a press and set type to reproduce it in quantity.

Lessig covers this in some detail in "Free Culture." In fact our copyright
laws started in England over just this sort of dispute among printers and
authors. But it was an argument among those who possessed the technology to
reproduce the product.

What Anthony is charging for is a pattern of ones and zeros in PDF format. I
know I bought one. If I decided to violate Anthony's copyright and post his
"paper" on my website, the cost of reproduction and distribution is $0.
There is nothing tangible or inherent in the product itself. In the lengthy
and likely to be skipped over quote I have included in full at the end of
this post Jefferson compare the ownership of an idea to the lighting of a
candle from another's flame.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without
darkening me."

In the case of Lila the book must be passed from hand to hand. In the case
of Anthony's paper if I distribute my copy freely to anyone who asks I have
not deprived Anthony of anything but "potential" sales. I have decreased
this potential by reducing demand, by eliminating scarcity. If Pirisg wanted
to enforce his copyright he could appeal to the legal authorities to locate
those stealing his book and have his property returned or the means of
producing illegal copies seized and stopped.

Anthony on the other hand would have no way of knowing how many copies had
been made. He would have no means of seizing or destroying them to recover
the condition of scarcity and demand. Like a wild fire his idea would spread
and grow until all demand was quenched.

Applying a capitalistic model to Anthony's paper is forcing a square peg
into a round hole.

This is a process I have watched fairly closely over the past 25 years. It
has been something of a hobby. When computer software was first developed
the scarcity of supply was not much of a factor since it required a bit of
expertise to make copies and to use them. The market was relatively small.
As the market grew it became obvious that users could make and share copies
on floppy disks easily and they did.

Software companies realizing this theft represented and economic loss and
began to implement technological solutions. Essentially they attempted to
enforce scarcity by making the software impossible to copy. Over time every
single thing they did turned out to be easily circumventable.

It was a spiral of increasingly draconian technologies and devious means to
get around them. I still have in my software collection Apple II disks that
proudly announce the names and handles of the hackers who unlocked them. I
have copies of Nibbler, Copy ii Plus, Disk Doctor and a host of other
program that were available to make copies.

By the late '80s this war had escalated to the point that Lotus 123 gave up.
They had gone to such great lengths to make their software difficult to copy
that paying customers were unable to use it lawfully.

There is no means to enforce the free trading of goods that have no cost of
reproduction and distribution. It requires the force of law, cops at your
door with guns and for what economic purpose? To enforce scarcity? What kind
of economic system is designed discourage the production and distribution of
goods and services but to prevent it?

I have much more to say on this but I have rambled on too long already. Once
again let me close where I began:

"The defense of capitalism on moral and pragmatic grounds is starting to
fray at the edges."


-----------------------------------------------------------

"It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to
inventors... It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of
an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and
stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called
an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it
to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because
every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me,
receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely
spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like
fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then
cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive
right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue
ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according
to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from
anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right,
but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson,
1813. ME 13:333