From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Aug 15 2004 - 20:11:00 BST
Hey Glenn, David M., MSH, Jaap, and all,
> Rick's too thorough preface to his topic-question has
> somewhat spoilt this month's discussion! And now he's
> chastising us for not contributing :)
R
Eek. Is that what's happening? Well, if it's my fault, I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to chastise (well, maybe just little bit. It's just that, well, I
already know what _I_ think, it's your opinions I want to hear :-). Anyway,
most of that stuff I put down in the topic-suggestion preface was just the
standard thinking on IP laws. The kind of thing you'd hear in any basic
book or class on the topic. Certainly nothing groundbreaking. I was hoping
maybe the MoQ would help us find some insights above and beyond what's
already available. If there's nothing left to say after the preface, maybe
the answer is that MoQ has nothing additional to offer.
What about the question you asked about Ant and Glove profiting off of
Pirsig's ideas? That's arguably an IP related issue and I don't think what
I wrote suggests a resolution to that question.
G
> From the perspective of the MOQ, the system is said to
> be immoral in the short term, when the dissemination
> of the idea is hampered by the disincentive to pay
> licensing fees in the interest of concentrating
> wealth. Here DQ (the freedom the idea deserves) and an
> intellectual pattern (the idea itself), are
> prostituted by a social pattern (wealth).
R
This is one of the things I'm unsure of. It seems to suggest that the idea
is created out some noble purpose which is then subjugated to exploitation
in the marketplace. But if the scheme of IP rights inspires someone to
create a new or better idea, that they would not have otherwise created if
they didn't think they could profit off of it, is that really
"prostitution"? This maybe a part of the "necessary evil" question you
allude to below. What if the license holder is collecting fees to recoup
his investment rather than to profit, would that be different? I would be
very interested to hear your thoughts on that question.
G
> On this basis I think the MOQ would argue that patent
> and copywrite laws and the notion of 'intellectual
> property' are a form of evil and should be abolished.
> Whether this is a necessary evil or not is another
> issue and since such complications and moral
> complexities are not generally explored in Pirsig's
> writing, I will settle with this as the answer the MOQ
> would give.
R
And yet, Pirsig doesn't give LILA away for free (in fact, I surmise that he
has become quite wealthy repeatedly selling the movie rights to ZMM and then
letting them revert to himself). Of course, that doesn't mean you're not
right about what the MoQ would conclude (Phaedrus's conclusion that it's
immoral to eat meat when other foods are available doesn't stop him from
chowing down on a juicy steak just one chapter later). Personally, I think
there's a lot more of interest in that "necessary evil" issue than we've
explored.
DM
I guess IP is like national pride.
It can be a good thing, or if taken too
far it turns into a bad thing. Most
forms have this dual potential. You have to
weigh up what is going on in terms of both
SQ and DQ to get a balanced look at the
positive and negatives involved.
R
I agree with this. And I think this last sentence is pretty much what
Pirsig meant by his "football field" analogy of the MoQ ("The image in my
mind as I wrote it was of a large football field that gave meaning to the
game by telling you who was on the 20-yard line but did not decide which
team would win. That was the point of the two opposing arguments over the
death penalty described in Lila. That was the point of the equilibrium
between static and Dynamic Quality. Both are moral arguments. Both can claim
the MOQ for support."). Laying it out on the field, IP laws seem to be a
social pattern which creates direct social benefits for authors and
inventors, and indirect intellectual benefits for all of society. It's
supposed to be a little engine that drives innovation by handing out social
rewards. But it's my own contention that current IP laws may give too much
protection to authors and inventors; that we may have gone beyond the point
of an incentive for people to search for ideas and created something that
arguably oppresses DQs influence at the intellectual level because certain
individuals and companies have a virtual legal-stranglehold over certain
ideas and inventions. Okay, your ball.
JAAP
Ow, I'm sorry - I was actually writing open-source software this month.
Kind of a "philosophy of the deed" ;)
R
No apologies necessary. Real stuff always comes first. Hope it came out
well.
J
I think that things like copyrights and patents are about politics and
money, and thus can be found at the social level.
R
I agree that they are at the social level and that they are probably
inseparable from the worlds of politics and money. The US Constitution
requires Congress to create a system that secures to authors the exclusive
rights to their inventions for "a limited time". Over the years, the scheme
of protection has changed in innumerable ways. But chief among them has
been the fact that the length of the protection has been made continuously
longer and longer. This is a result of the power of wealthy copyright
holders lobbying to get their rights extended (the most recent extension was
known as the "Sonny Bono" amendment--- since as a Congressman, it was his
pet issue. He, obviously, has a huge personal interest in increasing the
length of IP protection because of his stake in the "Sonny and Cher"
catalogue).
J
As for copyrights, hackers tend to dislike them for good reasons, so they
obviously belong to/are part of SQ.
R
But is there something to be said for the idea that without the hundreds (if
not thousands) of innovations in computer technology that were made over the
course of decades by people who responding to the incentive of IP
protection, the hackers probably wouldn't have anything to hack? [I really
don't know, which is why i phrased it as a question. I read one book about
some important figures in the rise of the computer industry, but I don't
really know the history well enough to judge whether that's right. Horse?
Anything to add here?]
M
I agree completely [with Jaap]. I notice that many in this thread are
pushing the argument that it's necessary to protect "intellectual property"
because we'll lose the input of all the "great thinkers" if we don't allow
them to profit from the dissemination of their ideas or products.
This is of course nonsense.
R
I respectfully suggest that you are oversimplifying the issue. Nobody has
suggested that we will lose the input of all great thinkers if we don't
allow them to profit from their ideas. For example, in his first post in
this thread, David M. wrote, "The fact that some ideas cost companies a
great deal of cost in terms of research and development, so that they would
not do the research if not protected by copyright.Some individual inventors
of ideas sacrifice many years in low pay to work on their pet project,
taking the cost now to get the benefit later -dependent on copyright." And
he's right. Nobody doubts that innovation would continue without IP
protection, the issue is about how much it would slow down. Many inventions
and artistic endeavors cost a fortune to create and IP protection is often
necessary to merely even recoup the investment spent in creating the thing,
much less to profit off of it. This is why record companies and movie
companies hate bootlegs and file swappers and pharmaceutical companies fight
generic counterfeiters. Why spend millions making a excellent film or
developing a cure for a disease if the day you release it to the public,
your competitors can simply swoop in and start selling it themselves without
the burden of having an investment to get back? You'd get a business world
where everyone just sat around waiting for someone to come up with a great
idea or invention, and then when it happened, just steals it and runs the
creative genius into bankruptcy. How would that be good for the
intellectual level's dynamic growth?
MSH
The only "great thinkers" you'll lose
are those wo are more interested in making money than in original
thought and creativity, which goes a long way to separating the
"great" from the "thinkers" as part of their self-description, IMO.
R
But I don't see "making money" and "original thought and creativity" as
being mutually exclusive. There is nothing I can think of that is
inherently more moral in being a "starving artist" than being a "well paid
artist". Artists and inventors should be evaluated on the basis of the
quality of their arts and inventions and not on the size of their wallets.
take care
rick
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