[774] in libertarians
Intellectual property rights
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Raymie Stata)
Mon Feb 27 13:49:07 1995
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
From: Raymie Stata <raymie@larch.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 13:42:13 EST
Since there seems to be interest in this topic, I'm reposting a
previous posting of mine in hopes of getting more feedback.
I'd like to add two thoughts to my discussion of patents (which I'm
against). Much is made over patents being somehow "fairness" to
inventors who work to produce good ideas. Along these lines, it's
also said that inventors need the incentive of making it big in
business in order to invent. I'd like to question these claims.
First, regarding making it big in business, consider much of
mathematics invented during the 17- and 1800's. As I understand it,
much abstract work in mathematics (eg, work on polynomials and
imaginary numbers), by mathematicians such as Euler, was done in
pursuite of making the computation of mathematical tables faster and
more accurate. As I understand it, this was a pressing, practical,
real-world-oriented problem, but these inventors didn't seem to need
the incentive of controlling their ideas in the business world.
Second, regarding fairness, it seems to me that the possibility of
other people employing your own ideas more effectively than you do is
an integral part of doing business, and I don't understand why the
inventor has been signled out for this special kind of fairness in
this regard. In a business venture, the person with a new marketing
idea or a new distribution idea is as important and sometimes _more_
important than the person with a technological idea. Why should the
inventor get protection for ideas where these other people do not?
Where's the fairness in that?
Raymie
------- Forwarded Message
To: objectivism@mit.edu, libertarians@mit.edu
From: Raymie Stata <raymie@larch.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: Intellectual property rights
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 93 09:53:44 EST
Sender: raymie@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu
I posted this to another list and throught I would pass it along.
Raymie
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To: objectivism@vix.com
From: Raymie Stata <raymie@larch.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: More on Patents and Copyrights
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 93 12:07:22 EST
The topic of intellectual property rights interests me greatly. In
this post I present my opinions on various aspects on the topic. I
wish I had time to argue my positions in more depth, but I don't.
In short, I'm in favor of trade-secret, trademark, copyright
protections but against patents.
*** Trade secrets
Trade-secret protection amounts to the "contractual" form of
protection that has been discussed on this list. It can be justified
on the basis of contract rights.
*** Property rights
I see trademarks, copyrights, and patents as protection based on
property rights. What deserves property-right protection? The
essential characteristics is that property contributes to human
survival and that it requires effort to acquire, use, and/or maintain.
My basic thesis is that existents (tangible or not) with these
characteristics deserve property-right protection unless there are
overriding considerations.
*** Trademarks
Trademarks protect reputations (as do slander and libel laws). A
reputation is a product that is earned through effort and is important
to human survival (in a social context); thus, reputations deserve
protection.
*** Patents
I'm against patents because I don't think that knowledge (ideas)
should be property. Discoveries (and "inventions") _do_ have the
essential characteristics of property, viz., they are products of human
effort and are important to human survival. However, the fact that
discoveries are _knowledge_ overrides this consideration because one
cannot have the right to force other people to act against their own
knowledge. One cannot "own" the contents of another's mind.
I don't think there's a valid distinction to be drawn between
"discoveries" and "inventions," between "theoretical knowledge" and
"practical ideas;" at least, I don't think there's a distinction that
forms a basis for defining a sphere of property. True, inventions
usually do not cover declarative knowledge ("X is true") but rather
imperative knowledge ("to effect Z, do X") and normative knowledge ("X
is better than Y for doing Z"). Still, I don't think one should be
forced to act against any kind of knowledge, no matter what kind.
(In theory, patent protection is supposed to encourage technological
development and protect the efforts of the individual inventor. If I
had the time, I'd like to do research on this. In practice, patents
seem to encourage legal wrangling rather than technological
development and seem to be used more by large companies to protect
themselves from the effects of their technological stagnation rather
than by individual inventors (the most famous case of this being FM
radio).)
*** Copyrights
I accept copyrights as protecting an _expression_ of an idea, _not_
the idea itself. Thus, for example, I accept that CPU designs deserve
copyright protection, but not the idea for pipelined architectures. I
accept that Atlas Shrugged deserves copyright protection, but not the
idea that industrial society will ground to a halt if the producers of
the world go on "strike." I accept that the Mac Operating System
software should be protected, but not the idea for windows and icons.
Like ideas themselves, expressions of ideas have the essential
characteristics of property: they are products of human effort
important to human survival. However, unlike protection for ideas,
protection for expressions of ideas does not force people to act
against their knowledge of reality. Thus, I think expressions of
ideas deserve protection.
*** Time-limits on copyrights
I don't really have an opinion on this; or rather, I see both sides of
this argument. On the one hand, it seems rather arbitrary to place a
time-limit on copyrights. On the other hand, I think Rand has a point
when she says that, unlike other forms of property, copyrights require
no effort on the part of the owner to maintain. (Recall that effort
to acquire or maintain was one of my characteristics of property.)
I think there is a larger point to be made here. While property
rights are natural in that they are deserved rather than granted,
there are optional elements when it comes to the details of defining
property rights. For example, for real-property, ownership of the
trees in the property is vested in the owner of the property, but not
ownership of the "minerals" in the property. I'm not against
this---there are good reasons for it. But neither would I be against
a system that vested ownership of the minerals with the owner of the
property.
With in the broad principles defining property rights, there are
legitimate options when it comes to defining the details. I think
that the current system of time-limits on literary copyrights is a
legitimate option within the principles defining property rights.
*** Protection for software
I'm strongly against patents for software, in particular protections
for algorithms. Unfortunately, in this realm, the courts could easily
make some decisions that could cause _serious_ problems for the
software industry. I'm also against any kind of property-right
protection (patent or copyright) for general ideas for interfaces, eg,
protection for the idea of spreadsheet programs, for windows and
icons, for relational algebra.
I am in favor for copyright protection for particular elements of
user-interfaces. These protections should be defined for very
specific elements of the interface, eg, for individual images (icons).
I don't like the concept of "look-and-feel" protection because it is
very vague and is being used to protected ideas rather than
expressions of ideas.
I am in favor of copyright protection for computer languages, ie, the
syntax and particular mix of keywords and procedure names that define
a particular language. Protection for computer languages is likely to
be especially controversial. Indeed, I personally would hope that
most language designers would put their designs in the public domain
and, for their own protection, that most language-users would only use
languages that are in the public domain. Still, language designs have
the indicia of property, they are not themselves knowledge (they are
expressions of knowledge), and I see no other reasons to deny them
property-right protection.
- - Raymie Stata
raymie@larch.lcs.mit.edu
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