Should Intellectual Property exist?

[Joij21]

I mean, I think Amazon has been a huge catastrophe for the world, so I really just think you're proving my point here. The wasteful supply networks that allow huge piles of garbage to be dumped in the first world are not worth the books you can pay $0.99 to "own" on a device that won't last ten years anyway (and fritters away even more precious rare earths.)

Yes but people were complaining of how the old system of publishers was corrupt, and stingy, and you needed to be hooked up with the right connections for it to even be seen by a publisher, and yada yada yada.

At least Amazon solved that problem just as a consequence now you get to swim through a sea of garbage since after all that's just a natural consequence of what will happen if you allow everyone to easily publish books since most people are utterly crap at writing books.

Under socialism, without any entrepreneurship, you'd go to a library and pick one of thousands of books, many of which have only been printed a few times, because the authors wanted to and waited in line like everyone else.

But see that's just a return to the old publisher method, but instead of capitalist publishers they're socialist publishers.

So people would then complain again about how there's limited space in the libraries and how you need to know a local party official and do something special to her/him to get your work in a library. Even claiming there's too much censorship like back in the old capitalist publisher days!

To me it's either a traditional publisher system (capitalist or socialist your choice) which will inevitably have bias, favoritism, and stinginess, plus possible censorship. Or some kind of digital distribution system where anything goes, but will inevitably have poor quality control but lacks the favoritism, and stinginess.

 

[Gorbles]

The only difference is you couldn't walk into a room of people and be like "WHO ELSE LOVES STAR WARS" and listen to fifty baying pigs go "ME ME ME I LOVE THE ACTION FIGURES AND 32 OZ PROMOTIONAL PLASTIC SODA CUPS PARTICULARLY"

I SEE YOU'VE BOUGHT A FRIDGE. HERE ARE TEN MORE FRIDGES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN.

The content algorithms hard at work, or hardly working!

 

[Farm Boy]

Which I guess would be relevant if I were saying that things were categorically better in those days or something, but instead I'm merely responding to ignorant claims about "human nature".

People take what there is to take. They kill when they want it, if they can kill and take it. No, not everyone, and no, not all the time. But it's not like they needed some theory of property things that didn't exist yet to understand "my mate, my food" and enforce that.

If anything, the theories of property seem to have arisen to decrease violence through agreement and social consensus.

 

[Angst]

Which I guess would be relevant if I were saying that things were categorically better in those days or something, but instead I'm merely responding to ignorant claims about "human nature".

and importantly here, cracked skulls in this case really have no connection to the idea of intellectual property. it has a connection to property, of course (usually people crack skulls for the sake of property), but not intellectual property. the latter is a quite new conception on our evolutionary/cultural ladder and people should be able to distinguish between the two. but alas, we're so enfranchised in disney age that people conceptualize the two as the same, and retrofit the modern skull-cracking (legal action) over stolen imagery to an age where specifically our idea of owning ideas wasn't a thing.

remember all (not you lex), theft is really only a thing if you consider something property. ideas just weren't. doesn't mean they weren't valued or safekept. the nature of their value and safekeeping specifically had to do with the fact that you couldn't really own them, as such a number of efforts were in order. evie mentioned the guilds system.

 

[Plains-Cow]

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

The person "stealing" wouldn't be able to do it either because they wouldn't have much of an economic incentive since everyone could do it and people will generally support the creator over the "thief."

Also, saying that the worker deserves "the right to not have any competition in profiting over something they made" is a very strange take that sounds like you're arguing for monopolies.

 

[Plains-Cow]

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.

What's the effective difference? Splitting hairs at this point. If I rewrote the entire book verbatim, is that OK?

 

[Angst]

also, everyone should understand that the rise of IP was not because of moral qualms of individual rights or whatever, but because society at large saw opportunity for investment and growth. it was meant to be for the sake of the common good, the individual wasn't really as important as someone innovating somewhere. the guarantee of IP was to make sure people had a window to profit on innvoations, in order to get people to innovate, and the public domain was a huge part of that, since the ideas were always intended to be shared in society. it was a mechanism to get people to innovate so society could harvest the gains. the individual getting paid for a bit was just a motivator. and that the sharing of ideas came later was a compromise as to the point of IP.

 

[Evie]

What's the effective difference? Splitting hairs at this point. If I rewrote the entire book verbatim, is that OK?

The difference is that you can freely distribute the recipes (the ingredient lists and plain language cooking instructions), but not the prose they wrote to present those recipe (ie, anything that's not the ingredient list or plain instructions).

So, whether you can copy the book verbatim depends on whether it's just plain technical (just the strict recipe) or contain accompanying prose to describe what the recipe taste like, look like, etc. You can copy the technical part, not the prose part.

If you cannot see the difference between "you can freely distribute the recipe" and "you cannot redistribute the accomoanying prose", you may wish to schedule an appointment with an eye doctor.

 

[Hygro]

I SEE YOU'VE BOUGHT A FRIDGE. HERE ARE TEN MORE FRIDGES YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN.

The content algorithms hard at work, or hardly working!

Facebook, however, did briefly finally figure out to sell me things I wanted. Only took them 25 years of being online.

 

[Lexicus]

People take what there is to take. They kill when they want it, if they can kill and take it. No, not everyone, and no, not all the time. But it's not like they needed some theory of property things that didn't exist yet to understand "my mate, my food" and enforce that.

All available ethnographic evidence indicates that this simply isn't true: it is close to the opposite of the truth and frankly it is a bit of an offensive portrayal of people who live in nonstate hunter-gatherer communities as dumb brutes.

Instead what we see in the evidence is a very high degree of "economic" sophistication among these peoples, where almost every cultural grouping had a different way of organizing the distribution of goods, but what all of these systems have in common is that the material goods are moved around primarily to reify and reinforce the relationships existing among people.

In most cases, a person using violence to prevent other, hungry members of the community from getting access to "my" food would simply be lynched and perhaps the body disposed of through a ritual intended to exorcise demons (what else could make someone behave in such a selfish and shortsighted manner?) We have plenty of direct evidence of food sharing, often couched in some kind of ritual, but the imperatives of group survival in the paleolithic and earlier would not permit individuals to hoard food while other community members went hungry.

In reality you are simply papering over your (apparently, near-total) ignorance of the relevant evidence with projection. You are projecting aspects of our own time backward in a (conscious?) attempt to portray the social and political order you favor as natural and eternal, a game conservatives have been playing for thousands of years now.

 

[Joij21]

also, everyone should understand that the rise of IP was not because of moral qualms of individual rights or whatever, but because society at large saw opportunity for investment and growth. it was meant to be for the sake of the common good, the individual wasn't really as important as someone innovating somewhere. the guarantee of IP was to make sure people had a window to profit on innvoations, in order to get people to innovate, and the public domain was a huge part of that, since the ideas were always intended to be shared in society. it was a mechanism to get people to innovate so society could harvest the gains. the individual getting paid for a bit was just a motivator. and that the sharing of ideas came later was a compromise as to the point of IP.

That's the whole point it's a motivator, move to a more socialist method and the motivator to innovate is eliminated.

 

[Angst]

People take what there is to take. They kill when they want it, if they can kill and take it. No, not everyone, and no, not all the time. But it's not like they needed some theory of property things that didn't exist yet to understand "my mate, my food" and enforce that.

If anything, the theories of property seem to have arisen to decrease violence through agreement and social consensus.

are we discussing intellectual property or property here?

because for stone age people, the former didn't exist.

 

[Farm Boy]

All available ethnographic evidence indicates that this simply isn't true: it is close to the opposite of the truth and frankly it is a bit of an offensive portrayal of people who live in nonstate hunter-gatherer communities as dumb brutes.

Instead what we see in the evidence is a very high degree of "economic" sophistication among these peoples, where almost every cultural grouping had a different way of organizing the distribution of goods, but what all of these systems have in common is that the material goods are moved around primarily to reify and reinforce the relationships existing among people.

In most cases, a person using violence to prevent other, hungry members of the community from getting access to "my" food would simply be lynched and perhaps the body disposed of through a ritual intended to exorcise demons (what else could make someone behave in such a selfish and shortsighted manner?) We have plenty of direct evidence of food sharing, often couched in some kind of ritual, but the imperatives of group survival in the paleolithic and earlier would not permit individuals to hoard food while other community members went hungry.

In reality you are simply papering over your (apparently, near-total) ignorance of the relevant evidence with projection. You are projecting aspects of our own time backward in a (conscious?) attempt to portray the social and political order you favor as natural and eternal, a game conservatives have been playing for thousands of years now.

Yeah, no. Zero credit.

 

[Yeekim]

What was, I ask again, the consequence of the Hollywood blacklists, exactly? This is what was originally being discussed. The whole "censorship of art" that is apparently unique to Soviet and other autocratic regimes.

I feel obliged to point out that boycott of certain entertainers by private studios does not compare to state pre-approving all cinematography and printed works.
Not that them being pre-approved was a guarantee that an author would still not face repercussions afterwards, of course.

This is meme material. #wehavecensorshipathome

 

[Gorbles]

I feel obliged to point out that boycott of certain entertainers by private studios does not compare to state pre-approving all cinematography and printed works.

It compares. It's isn't the same. But given that you've dug that far back into the thread, perhaps you can also dig up the original claim being made?

Otherwise, we have memes for that kind of selective targeting, too

 

[Yeekim]

In most cases, a person using violence to prevent other, hungry members of the community from getting access to "my" food would simply be lynched and perhaps the body disposed of through a ritual intended to exorcise demons (what else could make someone behave in such a selfish and shortsighted manner?)

On the other hand, if someone was widely seen as not putting in his fair share of effort for obtaining said food, he would likely meet similar fate as well.

 

[Yeekim]

It compares. It's isn't the same. But given that you've dug that far back into the thread, perhaps you can also dig up the original claim being made?

Otherwise, we have memes for that kind of selective targeting, too

It was something I wanted to respond to yesterday, but did not get around to.
Not sure what you refer to as "original claim"? If it is about filmmakers being ostracized from society, it also is not quite the same as being executed (see Meyerhold, Mikhoels et al)... or imprisoned or exiled to some Kazakh steppe or Siberian taiga.

If it about USSR being "artistically bankrupt"... well, that's bollocks. On one hand, art has a way of surviving most horrible repressions. On other, art was also a matter of prestige for Soviets, hence lot of effort and money was poured into it.

 

[Gorbles]

Not sure what you refer to as "original claim"? If it is about filmmakers being ostracized from society, it also is not quite the same as being executed (see Meyerhold, Mikhoels et al)... or imprisoned or exiled to some Kazakh steppe or Siberian taiga.

And?

"it's not the same as something somewhere else" is not "it didn't happen". The claim was "it didn't happen".

We have memes for that too, they generally involve a bunch of footballers lifting and moving some goalposts.

 

[Igaryd]

Yes, I'm aware of the patronage system. It's in use nowadays with the "Patreon" aspect of YouTube, whether it's reaction videos, livestream music concerts, or Shadiversity incorporating sponsorship products into his videos in an entertaining and dramatic way so as not to disrupt the flow of what he's talking about.

What I'm actually asking is (hypothetically): Once Michaelangelo was done with the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who owned that work? Michaelangelo or the Catholic Church? Could he have then gone on to paint someone else's ceiling with the same or related imagery and get paid for that as well, without objections from the church?



Yeah, art doesn't just spring into existence. It takes time. Even the quickest stuff I make takes about an hour from start to finish, unless it's very small.

I remember one jerk at a craft fair demanding, 'You want $2 for THAT?" (for one of my parrot fridge magnets, that uses 11 different colors in it). I told him how much time it had taken to make the thing, and pointed out that what I was asking really wasn't much in comparison to the then-current minimum wage. So yeah, I'd like to be compensated for materials used and at least some of the time spent. He went off in a huff, hoping to find something nice for a quarter or somesuch. Well, maybe at the tables that were selling second-hand garage sale stuff. When I sell my needlepoint, none of it is second-hand, and it's hand-made.

Do you still own the refrigerator magnet after you sell it? Ditto the ceiling of the sistine chapel it belongs to the Roman catholic church who paid for it.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, no. Zero credit.

Yeah, it's funny how when I criticize hierarchy your response is "but what about subject matter experts?!?!?" but then if the subject matter experts contradict what you think you know, your response is fingers in the ears and hum loudly.

On the other hand, if someone was widely seen as not putting in his fair share of effort for obtaining said food, he would likely meet similar fate as well.

Indeed, there is evidence for this sort of thing as well. I stress again that I am not trying to portray hunter-gatherer communities as utopian or even as preferable to modern society.

On other, art was also a matter of prestige for Soviets, hence lot of effort and money was poured into it.

While I wouldn't say the CIA poured "a lot" of money into the arts, the CIA absolutely used front organizations to secretly promote the arts in an effort to demonstrate the superiority of US values over them darn commies. As I noted before the US also had public funding of the arts for less nefarious purposes as part of the New Deal, so I think this idea that we can't support artistic endeavor except through IP & private markets is just wrong. Political authoritarianism in the Soviet Union does not mean that public funding of the arts is somehow evil.