Should Intellectual Property exist?

[Joij21]

They used video games as an example, plenty of other things being sold now that you used to actually own but are basically just renting. Cars (which you need to live in 99% of the US), electronics for work, etc.

When you use things like "video games" or "ice cream" to conjure up socioeconomic outrage it makes one look like a creep preying after children like Pennywise trying to bamboozle them into becoming child soldiers in your red guard unit.

Not kosher man, not kosher.

 

[Gorbles]

That's their own words, not an alt right conspiracy theory unless Steve Bannon hacked their site and planted it there.

We were talking about socialism, not the World Economic Forum. Why are you drawing a link between the two?

At least other ideological movements usually don't start out looking for trouble.

I feel like I'm engaging of your strawman of socialism compared to what socialism is. Which is what I've been trying to avoid, because it's a pointless discussion. I don't actually care what you think of socialism. I know from experience it's a dead end to go down.

What I want to focus on is why you think other ideologies are someone immune to the siren call of violence, when your fave capitalism literally relies on it to enforce the status quo. For example:

And it's violent how? Other than the elements which are a natural risk, the enterprise isn't human vs. human violent like in a civil war or revolution.

It's violent because it's change. I'm ignoring your "under the sea" scenario because it's as fictional as the game I was talking about.

In the real world, if you attempted in any way to impose your ideal ideology upon others, even if you did it non-violently, it would still result in violence. If not by you, then inflicted upon you. And once inflicted upon you, you'd need to deal with the impact of that, how it changes your views, how it changes the opinions of people who previously agreed with you. Socialism has already had to deal with that. It's currently dealing with that.

It's why tut-tutting at violence gets you nowhere. History is littered with examples. By all means seek to avoid it, but it'll happen all the same. You'll still need a plan for it.

 

[danjuno]

When you use things like "video games" or "ice cream" to conjure up socioeconomic outrage it makes one look like a creep preying after children like Pennywise trying to bamboozle them into becoming child soldiers in your red guard unit.

Not kosher man, not kosher.

Didn't address my point. There are a variety of items in our capitalist society now which you used to be able to own entirely once you bought them, that are now only effectively rented from the manufacturer. The freedom to own your own property that capitalism touts is being undermined by capitalism itself.

And yeah, violence is a part of any system, so so insisting its unique or uniquely prominent in any one system is not borne out by history.

 

[Crezth]

And the irony is, the people who think intellectual property is theft would have no objection to that scenario, even though it involves the original author putting in hundreds or thousands of hours of uncompensated labor and a rent-seeker who did nothing stealing the work and profiting from it.

But what have they actually stolen? The physical books, sold as copies - or the right to sell those words exclusively on the marketplace? You see, if it's the books that's one thing, but the right to sell only seems like a god-given or even appropriate right because you imagine one bookseller hawking their book that they wrote personally on the street corner, exercising their precious and innocuous right to "free enterprise." In reality there's no real reason there should be an industrial marketplace for that kind of thing and no good reason except class warfare and bourgeois greed why artists should have to sell anything. Why should anyone be able to sell books, absorb capacity out of the supply chain that could be directed towards feeding the hungry and rebuilding the shattered nations of the world, and get irresponsibly rich and powerful off "their ideas?" This kind of meritocracy produces vacuous tyrants like J.K. Rowling. Instead, what, I have to solemnly respect the "right" of some jackass who thinks he's too good to flip burgers, directing a total of 2000 paper mill workers in Guangzhou and 15,000 lumber plantation workers in Cambodia to spam bookshelves and shipping lanes with his latest edition copies of "How I Screwed Myself Silly One Night?" Cry me a f***in river.

 

[Joij21]

In the real world, if you attempted in any way to impose your ideal ideology upon others, even if you did it non-violently, it would still result in violence.

Look my colony would be totally voluntary, you join of your own free accord. I'm not violently imposing my ideology on anyone.

If not by you, then inflicted upon you.

How? I'd be so far away from anyone who disagrees they could never find me.

Also my colony would have like minded volunteers, so I doubt they'd enact violence upon me for we would all think fairly alike.

 

[Crezth]

Also my colony would have like minded volunteers, so I doubt they'd enact violence upon me for we would all think fairly alike.

What about spies and agents with foreign sympathies who seek to sell you out to interested parties?

 

[Joij21]

or the right to sell those words exclusively on the marketplace?

Because they deserve the right to not have competition in profiting over something THEY MADE.

Why would anyone want a Freddy freeloader (who didn't work hard or stress or sacrifice anything) selling your thing and competing against you taking away your due dopamine reward that YOU SHOULD be rewarded with for laboring so hard and so tirelessly producing that book?

 

[Joij21]

What about spies and agents with foreign sympathies who seek to sell you out to interested parties?

Common man! They'd have to live with my tribe for the rest of their lives, and we ain't going back!

Plus it's not that radical of an ideology where spies would be necessary.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That once the creator dies the copywrite dies Given that most recipes have been around for more than a century They no longer qualify. I suspect my wife and I have cook that are older than many of the posters here.

Your post is a bit unclear. Are you saying you've cooked recipes that are older than many of the posters here, or that you have a cook who is older than many of the posters here? In the latter case, given that the average age of the OT regulars is constantly increasing (some of us are over 60, even over 70), isn't it time she retired?

In the former case... yes? During my years in the Society for Creative Anachronism (1986-1998), our Shire put on 2-3 formal feasts/year, plus a number of less forum potlucks. Some of the recipes we used went back centuries. The turkey in chocolate sauce was a hit, btw. The Aztecs used to serve that.

Except duration has nothing to do with recipe being in the public domain.

Recipes are not copyrighted because, no matter how new it is, you cannot copyright facts, nor can you copyright factual instructions (eg, the actual recipe).

Same reason that while a newspaper or journalist can cooyright their specific text describing a news stories, they cannot copyright any of the facts described therein. Crediting the journalist who broke the story is good practice and common courtesy (and covering your butt in case they made a mistake), not a copyright or IP requirement.

Yet recipe books have a copyright. I can't just run out and publish my own version of the Company's Coming recipe books; Jean Pare's estate would probably go after me.

The internet we have now is unlike what those folks were thinking about in the early 90s. As a side note, the driving force behind spending money through the internet using CCs was the porn industry. They needed an easy way to get reliably paid for delivering their wares by computer that avoided plain brown boxes delivered by the US mail.

And now it's Amazon products that get delivered in plain brown boxes/envelopes (plain white envelopes in some cases).

So, that's a no then.

If you were 20,000 leagues under the sea, or on Alpha Centauri, that is.

It's easy to think your ideas are the natural way of things; that people just need a little nudge to "see the light".

That's not how stuff works. Progress (of any kind) is hard and painful because it often comes at cost to others; mostly others who are invested in the status quo. Inertia is a strong force.

Objecting to socialism just because you think it requires violence is to object to any change in society above a certain level of impact.

Hm. Has nobody in this conversation ever played SMAC or the "start on Alpha Centauri" version of Civ II: Test of Time? I've never made it through an entire game of SMAC, but the novels based on the game are incredibly violent.

The "start on Alpha Centauri" version of ToT, on the other hand, is relatively peaceful. You're the only faction there for thousands of years, with nothing to do but explore, find goody huts, fight the occasional barbarian, and build your cities (and Wonders). You can't communicate with Earth yet, and have to wait until the late stage of the game. Then things get unpeaceful very fast.

hooo boy how the hell did i miss this thread

short answer, longer answer later perhaps when i'm not making pizza:

within a capitalist system and a system of investment, where investment drives innovation, IP is very important to procure innovation. before IP, innovation happened of course, but the nature and worth of knowledge was esoteric. meaning that the means to reproduce some method or technology or whatever was kept secret. it wasn't illegal to reconstruct some technology you saw elsewhere and if succesfully reproduce just riding it. the point of IP is to get people to do stuff because within a system of capital they're guaranteed income for a while if their innovation is succesful. this basic idea is pretty good.

there are some huge caveats however. first off, IP has been warped into a frankenstein monster of abuses. it has gone so far it no longer reflects innovation and human activity, but is a tool for abuse, whether it be copyright trolls of stuff like disney. secondly, IP doesn't, and has never, reflected human practice of creativity. in the arts, this matters a lot. back in the day, the gatekeeping for income when doing artistic practice was to be able to do it. but with the printing press and grammophone has completely changed that fact. back in the day, people didn't give a single poop about you reproducing "their" piece. today, after art is increasingly storable, this is not the fact of the matter anymore. the resulting situation is complicated, but i'll note that it does not in any way reflect how humans have made stuff for a hundred thousand years, and it's usually bad policy to do stuff against human nature. and i don't mean human nature in the sense of the fallacy of appealing to nature, i mean that the current legal framework does the same to creatives as it would have been doing banning kissing. technology of course changes behavior and has to be taken into account, but when there's a question of artificiality that doesn't serve the general populace, it's time to abandon that crap.

of course, it'd been better if IP was more akin to its first iteration, say getting a guarantee for your creation for like 25 years (no not a goddamn lifetime, stop bootlicking disney) and then it goes public.

that said, the appeals that IP drives innovation is... well, it's kind of true. but it's only true in the sense that people are only able to innovate and create expensive projects when there's investment needed that guarantees profit. the idea that writers and musicians would just stop their practice if they didn't own their stuff is asinine. they can't help but create. it's why they chose poverty in life by virtue of going into the arts.

Art forgery was a thing in ancient times as well as now. Who actually owned the rights to the artistic works produced in Greece and Rome, for instance? For that matter, who "owns the rights" to the statue of David? It's not like the original artist is around anymore to assert any rights.

 

[Crezth]

Common man! They'd have to live with my tribe for the rest of their lives, and we ain't going back!

Plus it's not that radical of an ideology where spies would be necessary.

Radical nothing, I'm a capitalist and I want your stuff and I'm going to take it through subterfuge if I have to!

Because they deserve the right to not have competition in profiting over something THEY MADE.

Why would anyone want a Freddy freeloader (who didn't work hard or stress or sacrifice anything) selling your thing and competing against you taking away your due dopamine reward that YOU SHOULD be rewarded with for laboring so hard and so tirelessly producing that book?

THEY MADE! Why should we sell it in bookstores? Maybe in limited quotas and everyone gets a turn at getting published. That honestly seems more fair to me and would probably generate better stuff than the grocery store fantasy and romance tripe that you often get anyway.

 

[GenMarshall]

There are a variety of items in our capitalist society now which you used to be able to own entirely once you bought them

I don't know, it's a pain in the ass to replace a battery in an iPhone since I have to take it to a repair guy that has the tools and the battery for said iPhone. I'd be nice that I can just replace the battery at my desk without worrying about damaging the intricate parts and circuitry.

The freedom to own your own property that capitalism touts is being undermined by capitalism itself.

I have mixed feelings about this. I own my computer and my ownership of it is not being undermined by capitalism. Though one could argue I'm still under the wilms of Microsoft due to it's OS (and most games I play cannot run under non-Windows OSes), yet the computer is still mines and I can add in more RAM and upgrade my video card and hard drive with standardized parts without worrying about obtaining proprietary hardware. So this really comes down to a YMMV for me

They used video games as an example, plenty of other things being sold now that you used to actually own but are basically just renting. Cars (which you need to live in 99% of the US), electronics for work, etc.

Debatable. When I think of rent, I think of paying in monthly installments or in the case of video games (and I'm really aging myself) going to Blockbuster Video and renting out a video game cartage for a fee for a limited amount of days. When I buy a game on Steam, I'm just buying the game itself (rather the license to install and run it) in one instance. The only thing that comes close to "renting" for me is World of Warcraft where you have to pay for a monthly subscription for access to the servers and it's pretty much the standard for most MMOs on the market.

I don't see cars on the line of being rented (unless you're actually renting it from Hertz or Enterprise). When I buy a car, I also have to take out a loan to cover the cost that I am not able to front the money in order to make the purchase (Especially when doing a trade in when the value of the old car has depreciated in value). The bank/credit union is fully within their power to repo my car if I fail to make any payments. The bank/credit union technically holds ownership (even if it's under my registration in the DMV) of the car until all the car payments have been paid off. For me, the analogous to renting would be subscription services that you pay a fee in monthly installments such as a subcription to WoW, your cellular phone plan, (Though one could argue utilities can fall under this, though most just call it "The Water Bill", "The Cable Bill", or the "Electric Bill").

 

[Evie]

Yet recipe books have a copyright. I can't just run out and publish my own version of the Company's Coming recipe books; Jean Pare's estate would probably go after me.

As I've previously said: you can copyright the presentation (that is, the creative work you did on HOW to convey the recipe to the readers).

You cannot copyright the actual recipe. The copyright would prevent you from uploading the entire book online to distribute for free, but not from retyping the instructions from the recipe and putting them up on your website.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

e were talking about socialism, not the World Economic Forum. Why are you drawing a link between the two?

I'm not.

I'm responding to the assertion that nobody wants us to eat bugs or live in a pod.

The whole "I will not eat ze bugs" meme originated on the left, but has evolved into an anti-establishment rallying cry across the political spectrum.

 

[Joij21]

THEY MADE! Why should we sell it in bookstores? Maybe in limited quotas and everyone gets a turn at getting published. That honestly seems more fair to me and would probably generate better stuff than the grocery store fantasy and romance tripe that you often get anyway.

Because some people prefer monetary compensation over recognition based compensation. And I few, honest to God, would be content if you payed them directly in a keg of beer!

Radical nothing, I'm a capitalist and I want your stuff and I'm going to take it through subterfuge if I have to!

That's not on the level of bloody disgusting as Chinese people eating one another during the Cultural Revolution.
The enforcement of capitalism via death by cop is peanuts compared to that.

Remember the other thread! It's about counting beans!

 

[Joij21]

The whole "I will not eat ze bugs" meme originated on the left

I mean it started on four chan, so technically the right. Eventually some YouTube lefties like ShoeOnHead (but other lefties think she's fascist) adopted it to make fun of the still capitalist at heart welfare state and what it's future may entail, but right wingers see the welfare state as literal socialism soooo it kinda was also used originally to criticize what they believe leftist agendas would bring about.

 

[GenMarshall]

I mean it started on <Site that shall not be named>

...I'm going to be in the angry room for a good five hours.

(I would use an AVGN reaction, buuuut......language)

 

[Joij21]

In fact most of not all the memes that gain traction throughout the internet have originated within (and therefore were once of a right wing slant) four chan first before spreading in sequential order to Reddit/Tumblr, Imgur, Pinterest/Instagram/Tiktok/Snapchat, YouTube, then finally dies on Facebook/Twitter.

If you get your memes from Facebook or Twitter or are still using Philosoraptor memes or Trollface memes, it means your old, a loser, and no longer with the times. Your also likely a parent with kids, possibly a 30 year old boomer, and the memes you are now ingesting are now so stale, watered down, and tame that they are considered uncool and loserish by all the teens and cool kids.

 

[Crezth]

Because some people prefer monetary compensation over recognition based compensation. And I few, honest to God, would be content if you payed them directly in a keg of beer!

But why persist in this charade that compensation for an author or for that matter a production company should actually be proportional to how many "copies" a book sells? Whom does it really benefit to produce so many books for sale? Since we know authors are barely scraping by as it is, it seems to me we could overall improve their lot by eliminating the book market completely and offering everyone a fixed, fair income. Then, authors can produce according to their own artistic prerogatives, and nobody will be motivated by the ghoulish need to sell as many copies as possible.

I mean we have to pay authors because they need money to live. But this is not about art, it's about profits. It's not about innovation or improvement of the craft per se, but about the innovation of new capitalist production methods and cost-saving measures for distributing media products.

Charles Dickens surely could not have written so many books unless he were paid to do so. But the one book he produced on his own time - A Tale of Two Cities - so far and away surpasses anything else he wrote, one wonders why he had to spend his time writing Great Expectations.

That's not on the level of bloody disgusting as Chinese people eating one another during the Cultural Revolution.
The enforcement of capitalism via death by cop is peanuts compared to that.

It's just cleaner. Capitalism hurts people that middle class individuals have convinced themselves deserve to be hurt, because they're failures. It's psychotic.

 

[Joij21]

we could overall improve their lot by eliminating the book market completely and offering everyone a fixed, fair income.

Because then even the lazy people who don't sacrifice or do hard work would benefit the same as well. People want compensational rewards proportional to the amount sacrifice and hard work that was put into the product.

 

[Crezth]

Because then even the lazy people who don't sacrifice or do hard work would benefit the same as well.

I mean, they already do just by owning stuff. That's not putting in anything, it's just holding something. Lazy people benefit all the time for doing nothing. The world - you know what it is, Joji? - it's unfair.