On Monday 25 November 2002 17:02, Nadav Har'El wrote: > On Mon, Nov 25, 2002, Oron Peled wrote about "Re: OT: right or wrong to copy proprietary software": > > > It boils down to a very simple thing. IP is NOT estate. > > > > Bingo. That's why you should avoid using the missleading name: > > Intelectual *Property* > >... > > Of course we should find a better name... any suggestions? > > What do you say about: > > "Intelectual Restriction Rights" == IRR > > I think your distinction is false. There are many kinds of "property" > recognized by the law. You have real-estate (land, buildings, etc.), > you have chattel (also called "possessions"), and you have intellectual > property. > I believe (but I am not a lawyer either ;)) that IP is offically called > that in the appropriate laws, so you cannot just reinvent a different > name for it. >
IANAL either, but it is my faith that there is no such thing as an "intellectual property" defined in law. Rather, an exclusive right to enjoy the benefits of your own work. > Anyway, why am I saying your distinction is false? It's easy to see the > distinction between *chattel* and IP. You have total control over your > chattel, you can hide it in a safe, guard it, nobody will know you have > it, and so on. But real-estate property isn't that far from IP: > > Owning Real-estate lets you restrict what other people do with you piece > of property (land, building, etc.). But it does not get you absolute > control about this property. Planes can go above it, and gophers can burrow > below it. State officials can enter your property with the proper warrant, > or in case of emergency. The city can confiscate your land or parts of it > for certain uses. The laws of the country still apply on your property, and > you are not allowed to kill people on it at a whim, or to start a tax-free > zone on it. Tenants on your property can (under some circumstances) stay on > your property without you having the right to evict them, and sometimes > without you even being able to control the amount of rent they pay. > > So any property rights, not just IP rights, are "negative rights", meaning > they are rights that *prevent* other people from doing certain things to > you. None of the property rights are absolute, in the sense that other > rights (the right to life is most obvious, but certainly not the only one) > can come before it. In that sense, IP is indeed treated as a kind of > property. That indeed IP is treated as property does not make it a property. As I stated above, in the course of opinion (meaning any of the following points might be wrong): 1) IP rights serve one and only purpose: to prevent other people from gaining profit on your IP. Stupidity of such approarch is debatable, as well as its effectiveness of securing -your- -fair- (e.g. not obtained by abuse of IP rights) profits. 2) By logic and ethics, there exists no such thing as "intellectual property". "Intellectual property" majorly is social involvement and socially owned (no one's or everyone's) knowledge and only minorly author's own contribution. 3) Law does not define IP as "property" either way. Copyrights expire and patens are of limited lifespan. Copyrights are no more your property than the copy of Windows you think you legally own. 4) IP, while being debatably fair to the IP owners, is also encouraging abuse on those very owners' part. In fact, we have reasons to believe that, as described in 1, IP rights encourage abuse because they are not efficient enough to work in fair conditions - that due to the invalid and absurd idea of IP itself. 5) Even though it is established that IP is a lame excuse for some people to rip other people off just because they got the idea first, and that it is immoral to abuse IP rights (especially absurd patents such as two-click shopping et al), IP owners still insist on IP being treated as property, because, well, they are assholes and they dont care if they get their profit in an unethical way. So here is the picture: while IP rights itself are more harm than common good, they also encourage abuse potential in IP holders and thus create even more harm. > > Note that I'm not saying that IP *should* be a kind of property - or that > IP should exist at all - I'm just saying how it is treated in the law > systems I'm familiar with (namely Israel and the U.S.). -- "I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?" ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
