Copyright Infringement, Intellectual Property and Pirating

In almost all cases, yes.

I find it a very dangerous path to take. Amending the constitution can take away certain things, such as the 1st and 2nd amendment just as fast as they were given to us.

 

Well, I see your point, although it is not easy to amend the Constitution.

 

Easier than you'd think.
Imagine if Bush would have been a bit smarter/more evil, right after 9/11 something tells me the masses would have voted in damn near any amendment if the government sold it properly.

Some amendments of the past were also sold on one platform and are being used today on another.

 

I try to prevent any warez links, discussion and any warez owners from my site.
It's the best I can do and we will still see our scripts on free sites

 

I agree with that. We might not be identical in our views, but they are basically the same. You don't like amending, but there are amendments you would do away with. And likewise, I feel the same.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far off topic, because I'm anxious for supper to explain how an idea can either be owned by it's creator after death in perpetuity, or how the right to an idea can end specifically on a particular government mandated day, and still be considered a "natural right" (ie. not artificially created).

 

Uh, yeah, right. Let's not divert the conversation or anything - especially if it is getting to the heart of the matter.

At any rate, I don't want to get too far off topic, either.

Will anyone tell me how any so-called "strict constitutionalist" could say, to hell with intellectual property, patents, the subject of this entire thread, when the U.S. Constitution literally states:

Silence in the face of the obvious proves only that the truth is irrelevant.

 

My only suggestion is to start changing your business model and find a way to build service into your offering, so that your goods are bundled with another human component or custom and unique to every sale.

 

As northpoint brought up

The constitution directly grants powers for this situation. Even if it did not, I however would still consider stealing someones idea being a thief.

Without the idea marketing is worthless. If we relied on the ability of marketing to control everything, only big companies would prevail as they would eat up every invention from every small business, sole proprietor, artist, musician, loony wack job scientist and mark it as there own, with their huge marketing experience, deep pockets and already built infrastructure.

 

I don't agree with everything in the Constitution, and I don't think Ron Paul or most other people do either. That said, this is one of those things I do not agree with. Like the 16th Amendment.

How can you steal an idea? That's my entire point. If two people who have never met, come up with the same idea in isolation, how is that possible? There is no scarcity involved with ideas. You and I can both figure out the answer to a problem, arriving at the same answer, without sharing information. Which of us owns the solution?

I'm against theft. I'm not arguing for theft. That said, I cannot understand how ideas can be property. Property must be scarce. We don't own the air do we? It's not scarce relative to our demand. We don't own water do we? When it rains, and the water evaporates off of your yard, do you worry that you are being robbed? Of course not. Relative to our demand, water is nearly infinite. We pay for the service of cleaning and delivering our water, and this is the argument I would make for the digital age. That selling software is not the future. Selling the installation, the maintenance and support is.

This doesn't account for how markets work.

You could make the inverse argument, that without marketing, production etc an idea is worthless. The notion that big business would eat everything up simply does not occur in the wild. It does occur under patent protection through government fiat.

Imagine that I write a book, but have neither the resources or savvy to get it to market effectively. Penguin Publishers decides to print, sell and market my book. It becomes an overnight success, but they do not pay me for it.

A couple things might happen.

(1) Penguin or another publisher might commission me to write another book. In fact, another publisher might ask me to endorse and hand sign every copy of the book they produce, so they can present an "official" value added alternative to the Penguin production.

(2) My newfound celebrity might open up a myriad of employment opportunities for me, from article writing, to propaganda, to movie scripts etc.

To approach this from my perspective, you'll have to question what was 200 years ago, and what is today. There is no scarcity of writers, of opinions, of blogs or musicians like there was then. One can self-educate instead of paying for an exclusive education, that required a capital investment to begin such a career.

The world is changing, and the notion of ideas being property is one of those things that needs re-examination. Because from my own experience, a patent is worthless to a startup, who likely does not have the capital to mount patent enforcement should a big company come along and take the idea. But a big company can buy up and enforce ideas that never make it to market, which creates artificial scarcity and makes it nearly impossible for individuals to compete with the IBMs who file for hundreds of patents each year, in a race to "think of something first".

 

As I knew.

THIS IS ARTICLE 1, U.S. CONSTITUTION. It isn't a post-Civil war "creation" and it isn't a 20th century "creation," but Article 1, the very heart of the Constitution. I have heard nothing but strident speech for months about how "living constitutionalists" seeking to "interpret the hell" out of a document that should be taken literally are flawed; yet when what couldn't be a plainer piece of text, from the first Article of the U.S. Constitution is transparently obvious, it's "to hell with this - I like ripping off the work of others, so the Constitution be damned."

Unless, of course, a piece of legislation came up that said "IP doesn't exist, and therefore it's cool to feed off another's work at will." Then I guess it would be all systems go, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 be damned.

All kinds of attempts to casuistry, to include the most laughably ridiculous to date, "thievery is cool, because...because...it will get the ripped-off creator some really nifty publicity for the next time....!...," and "well, times change....never just interpret the Constitution based on 'today,' unless you...uh...do just that because I really, really feel like taking the work of others is cool." Months of how everyone else is "anti-constitution," and now this. None of this passes the b.s. meter, at least not to me.

Excellent post, and thank you for making it, Grim.

 

I'll give it a try but that wont really work in my situation.

 

what ever happened to the movie industry suing the owner of digital point?

 

Fair enough, however I myself hold the original dear to me, even if I 'might not agree' I see it as the law, the way our forefathers intended, if I like it or not.

He/She who gets the patent first owns the idea. Just like he/she who buys the collector car first owns that car. The patent in effect is the physical ownership of the idea.

Both people wanted the car, one however actually purchased the car.

Air and water is a natural resource, an idea is the intellectual equivalent of physical labor in my eyes.

I'll admit markets is not my strong suit

If it was not for patent protection I firmly believe big business would eat up the small time inventors. Would it be the normal big corporations you're accustomed to? More than likely not, it however would create a gray market, sleazy group of companies who does nothing more than steal ideas of others.

Currently China for instance is a perfect example of a nation that does not care about our patents and is busy making huge profits ripping off patented goods from US companies and others around the world.

To say ripping off patented ideas does not happen is simply false.
If allowed to be a legally viable business model in the US the amount of ideas being ripped off would swell. Predatory business practices would win over the entrepreneur time and time again.

Yes ideas could be 'worthless' if it wasn't for the fact that companies specialize in helping people with no know how to market their inventions and ideas.

(3) You like so many one hit wonders vanish into the sunset, never to be heard from again. Your one success is stolen and with it your heart to even try to write another book.

Just because there are more writers does not = there being more quality writers, more quality opinions. IMO more so than ever the top of the game need some protection so all these other writers do not simply steal the other writers hard work.

An individual more than likely is not going to be competing with an IBM in the first place. Even if IBM buys a patent someone else also thought of, the other person would not have been able to compete had IBM not had the patent.

However the small time entrepreneur with some protection on his/her idea may have enough time to get investors to help them pay for marketing his/her idea.

 

Good post GRIM. I don't agree with all of it, but you have reasoned your position well.

@ all. I'm spent from discussing this topic. Conventional thinking is, despite the irrationality of how we handle (sic) intellectual property, people are still adamant it is property. I understand that if you invest the time and energy into solving a problem, there is a tendency to believe the solution is yours. And I believe it is. Until you share it, sell it, market it etc. The only place you can control your own thoughts, ideas, plans etc, is within yourself. Moral or not (and that's a whole 'nother sidebar), it is not possible to control the exchange of knowledge, without criminalizing communication.

We're in an unsettled time. A lot of things are in flux, anyone who does business internationally knows this.

 

It's hard for me to imagine a healthy capitalist system without IP protection. IP protection gives incentives for people to create. Without IP protection there would be no incentive, especially since any idea or product a little guy like me has could immediately be taken for free by a bigger software company and distributed, putting the little guy out business. There are a lot of little guys who would suffer and so we all would suffer.

 

Good lord.

Yep, there is a tendency to think something I've worked on for 10 years without remuneration is, uh, mine. And a tendency to believe that if it makes it to the bookshelves, it isn't quite kosher to buy a copy, put another name and nifty new jacket color to it, and sell it as yours. Just a tendency, of course, nothing substantive to the belief.

There is also a tendency to think:

Guerilla will cloak it how he will.

Those who believe it's OK to do this with any person's original idea, music, book, film, script, whatever, you may also wish to cloak it in such honeyed words.

Stripped of such casuistry, it is theft. Think for yourself and earn the reward, in money, prestige, whatever floats your boat. But don't steal from another and pretend it is anything less.

 

Exactly. And let's not forget IP doesn't cover just patents, it covers copyrights and trademarks too. It's not just an idea that people can steal. Without copyright protection why would I bother spending months or years working on software when a bigger guy could just take it and put me out of business?

 

Why wouldn't you release it into the market by finding a distributor/manufacturer/marketer and coming up with a contract? They would evaluate the risk of bringing something into the marketplace that could be cloned or copied.

I mean, that is essentially what happens now when record companies sign music acts. They don't say, "well, we'd sign you but the first album we sell will be distributed for free, forever, so it's pointless".

Record companies market video, they market performances, they market branding, they market fancy CDs, and in store signings and all other manners of things. That people download the music for free, only means (even if I believed it was true) that one income stream was compromised, but I tend to believe that the more people who listen to an album, the more likely they are to tell friends, or buy concert tickets etc.

I'm not saying that means stealing is justified. But that there is more than one way to skin a cat (make money). And releasing your music for free can open up a lot of other opportunities.

That's why I think the future will have niche markets for paid music and free music. But the paid music can't just be songs on a CD or other form of media. There will have to be something more involved to justify the costs of listening to Artist X for $XX vs. Artist Y for $0. The quality of independent music is rapidly catching up to studio production values.

But I understand. I'm playing the heretic and devil's advocate again. My ability to reason the unconventional is still very poor. Or my audience is thick, but I don't believe that (about most of you anyway )

 

the tshirt lmao

are things not over priced any way??? $15 million dollars for doing one movie one actor???

And then joe public gets to read what these same people are paying for these shoes and this bag blah blah blah celebrityism

Joe public scraps by oon a shitty wage slave existence

clears £300 a week if lucky and is going to go and pay £12 for one cd OR are they going to go and download it for free????????

hmmmmmmmmm still thinking

95% of the world wealth is owned by 5% of the population

thats 5% for the rest of us to scramble over

You think we arent getting screwed

now the lil guy has a means to get that film album off these over paid Celebrities and major corporations

that charge how much for 1 album how much is a blank disc when u buy 10 million a year ???????

$1 $2 $0.01

THE WORLD IS FUCKED UP ACCEPT IT AND MOVE ON

 

I don't know - gang kids coming from crappy homes, making nothing at McDonald's. Helluva lot easier to just bust a cap for serious dough.

Hmmm. Still thinking.

YOU DON'T LIKE THE ACTORS MAKING THEIR SALARY, DON'T GO TO THEIR FILMS. THEIR SALARIES ARE BASED ON RECEIPTS.

MOST ARTISTS DON'T MAKE EVEN A MIDDLING INCOME. Quit believing you are somehow only ripping off artist-royalty. You are ripping off anyone involved in the project, from the one-liner walkon to a guy trying to sustain his family by writing material.

What the hell happened to individual effort and reward from it? I don't make six figures, so, screw it, STEAL?

Less lazy non-sloths, tend to not like lazy sloths from stealing and profiting from their damn work.