[HN Gopher] Cory Doctorow: IP (2020)
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Cory Doctorow: IP (2020)
Author : akkartik
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-01-30 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (locusmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (locusmag.com)
| visarga wrote:
| The author makes a point about interoperability, and I wholly
| agree. But it must be balanced with diversity, we don't care just
| about being interoperable, we want a thousand flowers to bloom.
| jbotz wrote:
| Cory nails it. Or at least part of it.
|
| I've long had a nagging feeling that there was a deep connection
| between the current state of our "post truth" society and the
| continuously widening scope of "IP" (digital monopoly)
| protections. Cory disentangles some of those connections and
| shows some of the ways IP has become a tool for restricting
| freedoms. But there's more: I think that those same mechanics are
| narrowing the overton window and putting all thinking that's
| outside on the same level... and we end up in a world where the
| ordinary person can't distinguish between the credibility of un-
| approved ideas.
| breck wrote:
| Truth is bad business.
|
| Truth lasts for years, centuries even.
|
| You need to bury truth, so you can keep selling people a stream
| of "novel" information. Truth doesn't get you monopoly profits,
| only novelty. Rearrange the truth every couple decades into
| crappier versions and profit.
|
| Incentives matter.
|
| #ImaginaryProperty is the worst. #IntellectualFreedom YOLO!!!
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| "IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the
| conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers."
|
| Doctorow never uses this word, but the dynamic he describes --
| where tech companies, rather than try to keep customers by
| offering good products, prefer to keep customers by making it
| impossible for them to leave -- is fundamentally abusive.
|
| The entire essay is a detailed explanation of the ways that tech
| companies exploit and abuse their customers and society as a
| whole, but he never uses those words.
|
| I'm in agreement -- they are abusive; they are exploitive; they
| are preying upon society and need to be regulated -- but it's odd
| that he doesn't use the words.
| onethought wrote:
| So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing, do
| you find books abusive as well?
|
| I don't quite buy the leap that "software companies being
| exploitative" is at all related to "protecting IP through the
| use of copyright". Cory does not link the two successfully in
| my mind.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > Books do the same thing
|
| Huh? If I have a book, I can lend it to a friend, sell it on
| eBay, or even put it in a library where thousands of people
| can read it for free. If I "own" a book on a Kindle, I can do
| none of those things -- and if our corporate overlords decide
| they don't want me to read that book anymore, then they can
| remotely remove it from my device, even if I paid for it [0].
| The abuse is that DRM is being weaponized to criminalize fair
| use and other consumer rights that copyright law otherwise
| would not give corporations authority over -- and because of
| DMCA 1201, it is illegal to work around DRM even for fair-use
| purposes.
|
| In fact, DRM does next to _nothing_ to prevent piracy, as
| evidenced by the thriving piracy "industry" today. Every DRM
| system can eventually be bypassed, somehow -- there has to be
| _some_ way to decrypt the content, otherwise I wouldn 't be
| able to watch it. It's akin to putting up a "no stealing"
| sign outside my house -- sure, it means that thieves are
| technically trespassing now -- but they were already breaking
| the law to begin with and no flimsy little sign is going to
| stop them. It could be argued that DRM only makes piracy
| _more_ enticing, because consumers can use pirated content in
| completely normal, fair-use ways that are blocked by DRM.
|
| As Doctorow explains in the article, DRM was never about
| protecting copyright, it's about protecting monopolies. DRM
| means I can only watch a movie with an approved web browser
| on an approved operating system on an approved computer using
| an approved cable to connect to an approved monitor, and that
| I can only repair a tractor at an approved tractor
| dealership.
|
| [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/
| 18am...
| onethought wrote:
| In your book example... I don't think you can (legally)
| redistribute your book. It's just publishers don't really
| care if you do, because cost of enforcement is too high.
| That's why they like kindles.
|
| Software used to be like this too, back when it was
| distributed as a physical thing (disks).
|
| DRM was about protecting copyright, your book/kindle
| example was a perfect illustrator of that. But I agree, it
| has been weaponised and misused.
| namibj wrote:
| You can't distribute copies of the book (outside of
| limited exceptions). First Sale doctrine says you can
| pretty much do whatever you want with the physical item.
| onethought wrote:
| Huh, I wasn't familiar with that (again another US nuance
| to Copyright). This isn't globally accepted.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| It is globally accepted. There are many community
| libraries throughout the world that consist on a small
| shelf on a sidewalk where people leave books for others
| and take the ones they are interested in.
|
| https://littlefreelibrary.org/
| onethought wrote:
| No it isn't. As law. It might be accepted as practice.
|
| They are different.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Examples of where it is not?
| dmurray wrote:
| And plenty of used bookstores, who do the same thing
| commercially and generally don't even get nasty letters
| from publishers.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > So he is referring to copyright. Books do the same thing,
| do you find books abusive as well?
|
| If by "books" you mean "copyright on books, as enforced
| against people rather than corporations[0]", then yes, yes
| 'they' are.
|
| 0: Nitpick: legal action against a corporation for printing
| something by request from a particular customer is legal
| action against that customer, the same as if you'd prosecuted
| 15'000$ that you stole from their car for being drug money.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| If you read the essay in full, you'd see that he
| distinguishes between copyright laws meant to encourage
| authorship and what is currently meant under the "IP
| umbrella," which is more about protecting monopoly power.
| onethought wrote:
| Yes, he does conflate a bunch of behaviour into IP. But
| that's just his conflation.
|
| Monopolistic practices exist with or without IP laws, terms
| of service, etc.
|
| Take a look at some other industries: energy companies have
| protected fossil fuel exploitation and stifled research and
| adoption of nuclear and green alternatives.
|
| Finance industry have maintained monopoly and avoided
| regulation despite there being obvious harm to their
| practice.
|
| These behaviours are related to capitalism... not
| intellectual property.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| It really seems you haven't read the essay. He does not
| conflate them; he distinguishes between them, at length.
| I encourage you to read it.
| bscphil wrote:
| If you're willing to connect the dots in this way, where
| anything that gives you legal authority to control the conduct
| of others (competitors, critics, customers) in specific ways is
| "abusive", then you should realize that this sort of argument
| is very easily extended, because that's exactly what _all_
| property does.
|
| Intellectual property is the right to say how others are
| allowed to use an abstract thing that belongs to you. Ordinary
| property is the right to say how others are allowed to use a
| physical thing that belongs to you. It's effectively the same
| concept, just extended.
|
| Of course, it doesn't immediately follow from _either_ physical
| property or intellectual property that it will be abused in the
| way Doctorow describes (by "keeping customers by making it
| impossible for them to leave"), but it certainly could be. For
| example, suppose a relatively small number of individuals or
| companies owned most of the land, and most of the industrial
| machinery, and all the investment capital - then everyone else
| would have to go work for them, and produce whatever the
| property owners wanted to produce, instead of what they wanted
| to make for themselves. Someone might describe such a dynamic
| as fundamentally abusive in exactly the same way that
| intellectual property is.
| breck wrote:
| If you believe that #ImaginaryProperty makes any sense at all
| I've got some "Dry Water" to sell you.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > Of course, it doesn't immediately follow from either
| physical property or intellectual property that it will be
| abused in the way Doctorow describes (by "keeping customers
| by making it impossible for them to leave"), but it certainly
| could be. For example, suppose a relatively small number of
| individuals or companies owned most of the land, and most of
| the industrial machinery, and all the investment capital -
| then everyone else would have to go work for them, and
| produce whatever the property owners wanted to produce,
| instead of what they wanted to make for themselves. Someone
| might describe such a dynamic as fundamentally abusive in
| exactly the same way that intellectual property is.
|
| I completely agree it can be extended in that way and it has
| been done so in the past; There are even countries that have
| political parties that generally agree with such a statement
| and work towards (albeit imperfectly) to limit or abolish
| such monopolies of capital.
|
| (The US on the other hand left their anti-trust laws to rust
| on the side and let monopolistic entities gain power such as
| Amazon and Facebook; here is a report on how Amazon has been
| using sale and review data to launch AmazonBasics products
| undercutting other brands:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-competition-shopify-
| wayf... on the "Amazon's Version" section)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It 's effectively the same concept, just extended._
|
| No, it isn't, because ordinary physical property can't be
| copied the way digital "property" can be. And the whole
| scheme of property rights with regard to ordinary physical
| property only makes sense _because_ ordinary physical
| property can 't be copied. If I steal your car, you are
| deprived of the car; that's why it's a crime for me to do it.
| But if I make a digital copy of some computer file you have,
| I'm not depriving you of it; you still have your copy and can
| still use it exactly as you did before. So why should it be a
| crime for me to make the copy?
|
| The corporations that are pushing "intellectual property"
| rights over digital "property" would _like_ it to be a crime,
| of course, but that doesn 't mean we, the people, should
| agree.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| No. The ability to abuse comes specifically from power
| imbalances, and that's what we need to take into account when
| designing policy. This is something that can't be explicitly
| enumerated in all cases, but that doesn't mean it can't be
| addressed. We do have anti-trust law for a reason (even if it
| hasn't been enforced).
| zepto wrote:
| What power imbalances are you thinking of in the case of
| tech companies?
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Maybe he counts on the reader to connect the dots?
| ylkdhruei wrote:
| am I only one who find it diffucult to get what IP referred?
|
| it is not about internet protocol it is intellectual property !
| wuh
| akkartik wrote:
| _" Forty years ago, we had cake and asked for icing on top of it.
| Today, all we have left is the icing, and we've forgotten that
| the cake was ever there. If code isn't licensed as "free," you'd
| best leave it alone."_
| naringas wrote:
| what worries me is that our mind (at the very least mine and all
| like it) are ultimately intellectual constructions. thus
| intellectual property leads the way to mind property.
|
| how can it be that if I know something, this knowledge is not
| mine?
| onethought wrote:
| Copyright is concerned with the (specific) expression of
| ideas... by definition if it is in your mind it's unexpressed.
| So copyright cannot apply.
|
| I don't quite follow what you're worried about...
| naringas wrote:
| My point is not about copyright but about "Intellectual
| Property"
| onethought wrote:
| But ALL IP laws are concerned with expression.
|
| Even patents which protect an idea, cannot be enforced
| unless there is a concrete expression of that idea.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Th point of knowledge is being able to make use of it -
| express it.
|
| If knowlege cannot be legally expressed, it's useless and not
| really yours.
| nfoz wrote:
| Agreed. For example, a device which augments my memory by
| allowing me to replay and record my own experiences, would
| invariably violate copyright. Which is offensive to me.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| What you're talking about isn't a problem until and unless
| whole-brain emulation becomes a thing. You cannot assert
| copyright over a human brain because you cannot copy a human
| brain; and insamuch that brain is capable of copying other
| works, that's already covered by standard copyright law. It
| would be a good plot for a 2000s-retro-futuristic cyberpunk
| book (P2Ppunk?) but I suspect the Supreme Court would rule that
| the 14th Amendment overrides copyright interest in human brains
| were that to become a problem.
|
| (If you wanted a 2010s-retro-futuristic cyberpunk sequel book
| you'd have some far-right militia group arguing for bringing
| back slavery to protect author's rights or something. Call it
| Twitterpunk.)
| naringas wrote:
| I disagree, what you describe is the extreme version of what
| I am worried about.
|
| I'm not worried that about an external entity owning my
| entire mind. I'm worried about a society in which
| institutions and corporations have ownership over some parts
| of what I know.
|
| And this is already happening, so many engineers and
| academics have signed NDAs, essentially giving up ownership
| (the ability to determine how to use) of certain information
| they have learned, in some cases even their own original
| ideas.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| You might enjoy "Replicas," -- https://youtu.be/ze_ANsckvS0
| -- a 2018 sci-fi thriller starring Keanu Reeves, which
| centers on whole-brain emulation. No spoiler review here!
| bencollier49 wrote:
| I disagree with this - if I've memorised a tune, I'm not
| allowed to replay it without paying a fee. But the line
| between biological and physical memory seems arbitrary to me,
| and this will become increasingly so.
|
| We can already read basic images from a brain using AI to
| reconstruct the image[1]. If that device shows an image which
| is copyrighted, who is liable, the person with the scanner,
| or the brain that was scanned?
|
| How about if I create a device which helps people who are
| physically disabled - or locked in - to communicate by
| projecting sounds from their brains - but not at will? If the
| person thinks about a tune ("Happy Birthday"), have they
| "performed" it?
|
| What happens if they think something which is considered
| enough to have you banned from popular platforms? What about
| if the technology is forced to remove their services because
| the thoughts you're creating are unacceptable?
|
| These things don't seem at all unlikely within the next 10-20
| years.
|
| 1. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-
| algorit...
| onethought wrote:
| It's also worth pointing out that different countries have
| nuanced interpretations and applications of Copyright Law. The US
| is only one. For instance "Fair Use" is a US inspired thing that
| other countries don't have. Rather than having a "defence" (when
| prosecuted) some countries actually give permission to copy
| things (as a right, not a defence)
| [deleted]
| sircastor wrote:
| Yes, but we aggressively export the unbalanced rights all over
| the world via trade agreements.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Software copyright was an absolute mistake that fundamentally
| misunderstood the delicate balances between copyright owners, the
| market for creative works, and the public at large. I have no
| faith in Congress to fix it.
| II2II wrote:
| Keep in mind that copyright also enables free software. Without
| it, there would be no incentive to share source code since
| there would be no mechanism to stipulate that modified versions
| must be shared. That would significantly diminish the role of
| collaboration and significantly increase the role of
| opportunism. It is also worth noting that copyright increases
| the financial incentive to progress the state of the art.
|
| The real problem with the current IP regime is its use to
| impose restrictions that go beyond reproduction.
| sounds wrote:
| Copyleft is generally regarded as a clever "fix" because of
| the brokenness of software copyright. Cory Doctorow even
| addresses this at the beginning of this article. He mentions
| that the GPL came out around the same time software copyright
| was first implemented. He distinguishes between copyleft (the
| "icing") and interoperability (the "cake") to point out how
| the new software copyrights took away interoperability. By
| the end of the article, he suggests we have no more cake and
| the icing may vanish soon.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| I get an unpleasant feeling that Free Software was never really
| popular. It was somewhat popular early on, because it formalised
| the way things were done at the time. This is why it received
| relatively little friction. So it wasn't really _accepted_. It
| was _ignored_.
| lazulicurio wrote:
| A very good article. A section that really spoke to me:
|
| > Prior to the rise of the "intellectual property" as an umbrella
| term, the different legal regimes it refers to were customarily
| referred to by their individual names. When you were talking
| about patents, you said "patents," and when you were talking
| about copyrights, you said "copyrights." Bunching together
| copyrights and trademarks and patents and other rules wasn't
| particularly useful, since these are all very different legal
| regimes. On those rare instances in which all of these laws were
| grouped together, the usual term for them was "creator's
| monopolies" or "author's monopolies."
|
| > The anti-IP argument leans into the differences between the
| underlying rationale for each of these rules:
|
| > * US copyrights exist to "promote the useful arts and sciences"
| (as set out in the US Constitution); that is, to provide an
| incentive to the creation of new works of art: copyright should
| offer enough protection to create these incentives, but no more.
| Copyright does not extend to "ideas" and only protects
| "expressions of ideas";
|
| > * Patents exist as incentive for inventors to reveal the
| workings of their inventions; to receive a patent, you must
| provide the patent office with a functional description of your
| invention, which is then published. Even though others may not
| copy your invention during the patent period, they can study your
| patent filings and use them to figure out how to do the same
| thing in different ways, or how to make an interoperable add-on
| to your invention;
|
| > * Trademarks exist as consumer protection: trademarks empower
| manufacturers to punish rivals who misleadingly market competing
| products or services that are like to cause confusion among their
| customers. It's not about giving Coca-Cola the exclusive right to
| use the work "Coke" - it's about deputizing Coca-Cola to punish
| crooks who trick Coke drinkers into buying knockoffs. Coke's
| trademark rights don't cover non-deceptive, non-confusing uses of
| its marks, even if these users harm Coca-Cola, because these do
| not harm Coke drinkers.
|
| > Seen in this light, "intellectual property" is an incoherent
| category: when you assert that your work has "intellectual
| property" protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to
| protect your customers from deception; or that the government
| will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your
| machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more)
| incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the
| understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game?
|
| > When you look at how "IP" is used by firms, a very precise -
| albeit colloquial - meaning emerges:
|
| > "IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the
| conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers."
| breck wrote:
| Down with #ImaginaryProperty. Up with #IntellectualFreedom.
|
| YOLO!
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