>"Property" is a concept defined in law. So is "Intellectual Property". >While >it is true that they are very different in character, they are equally >valid >concepts. In fact, as far as US law goes, the ONLY right enumerated in the >Constitution prior to the Bill of Rights was in Section 8:
Whose laws? The United States? Great Britain? Australia? Russia? Japan? I am not really interested in discussing the specifics of legal definitions of certain terms such as "Property," "Intellectual Property," and "Copyright" in a single country because these legal definitions are not universal - they vary from country to country - and are therefore not useful for a discussion about the intrinsic nature of property (which I was trying to discuss). You are aware that George Orwell's works (e.g., Animal Farm) are in the Public Domain in Australia (copyright is lifetime of the author plus 50 years and is now expired) but not in the US (copyright is lifetime of the author plus 70 years). This is a simple example of copyright/IP laws being inconsistent (I could give others), and therefore any specific set of laws is worthless when trying to tackle a theoretical discussion on the intrinsic nature of things. >"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and >useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the >exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...." > >Call it a misnomer if you like, but it doesn't invalidate the concept. Nowhere here does it say an Idea is Property. This is the attempt by the Constitution to provide the very thing I claimed society needed to provide... an incentive for people to go through the effort of transferring ideas into a communicable medium. The Constitution itself explicitly refers to this need... "To PROMOTE the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (my emphasis)... in other words, to make sure this happens, it will do what? "[Secure] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..." What you have here is legal text that is attempting to do the very thing I said society wanted to do... find a happy medium between zero (sharing ideas with all freely) and infinity (to maximally incent the transfer of ideas into a communicable medium). My point is that Intellectual Property is not Property. It is "an artificially created set of Rights to a certain expression of an idea." The key there is "artificially created" - laws create these rights by fiat because they do not exist naturally. The name is a misnomer because Property is something which by nature passes the exclusivity of possession test. Intellectual Property only passes the exclusivity of possession test due to artificial and arbitrary legal restrictions and is not, in the truest sense of the word, Property. A more proper term (which is also used) is "the Rights to a Work" but even this is not as correct as "the Arbitrarily Created, Limited-Term Rights to a Work that must pass into the public domain at the expiry of this Limited Term." >>Thus, copyright is the attempt society makes to bridge the gap between its >>goal of enriching all with your idea and your goal of being amply rewarded >>for the effort you went through to write it down. Society would like to >>have a copyright length of zero so that the idea is maximally available. > >If that discourages the creation of ideas, zero would be a really bad >target. Society should want some undefiniable sweet spot that encourages >the >creation of the most shared ideas. Every so often, we need to tweak our >efforts to hit the sweet spot. Zero *is* the optimal target for society at large because it means that ideas and information are free and hence all members of society can be benefitted easily. Therefore, society "wants" zero. Lifetime is the optimal target for the individual, who wants to maximize the benefits for his work. Society recognizes that its goal of zero disincents the individual to share, and so it must try to strike a happy medium. IOW, "limited term" is a compromise to the mutual benefit of society and the individual. It is NOT the optimal term for either the individual or society, and therefore there *IS* no sweet spot. >"Every so often, we need to tweak our efforts to hit that sweet spot." This quote truly scares the me. Look at the real world. What is the only direction that "tweak" ever moves the target? It always moves towards infinity. In other words, it moves towards the individual and away from society. When was the last time you saw copyright terms shortened? Never? So what you're telling me is that society must continue to sacrifice mutual benefit of all to the desires of one. This makes the one the natural enemy of the society, for he is now no longer pursuing the goal of mutual benefit. It boils down to this in real life. Society wants zero. Corporations (who purchase copyrights from individuals) want infinity. There is no sweet spot that will satisfy society (all ideas are immediately freely available) and corporations (no idea is EVER freely available) because their goals are diametrically opposed. If anything is ever made freely available, corporations are unhappy. If nothing is ever made freely available, society is unhappy. The two sets (nothing and anything) cover all possible scenarios, therefore, these are diametrically opposed goals. --The Sigil P.S. - Please read through all 6 of my posts before replying. Thanks. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
