Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Erax:
I still see a problem with corporate-produced content which does not 'belong' to the people who did the real creative work, but I like your idea.

Yeah, that's another one I hadn't thought of. Perhaps we make that illegal. *Geo whips out his magic law making pen*

Corporations were not designed to produce knowledge anyway. They are designed to give the business owner some limited protection of his personal assets in case of a business failure. They are not supposed to function as virtual persons in every way, and allowing them to do so is dangerous for a lot of reasons.

So if a corporate employee produces some marketable information, ie software, the employee should retain the copyright. But some equitable arangment should be created which compensates the copropration. Since the work itself would not have been possible without the support the author received while creating the work. But the rights should be retain by the person or persons mostly responsible with the act of creation. For something like windows I guess that would be the team of writers involved in the process.

Originally posted by Erax:

Edit : Aaaron gives SE4 away for free, then makes you his partner and charges a subscription to access PBW.

Yeah, unfortunatly that's just not a realistic business model. Only a very small percentage of people who bought SE4 use PBW. Not enough to support Aaron, certainly not enough to support both of us.

[ July 16, 2003, 16:55: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[tesco samoa]

I think 5 years is a good time limit for everything ( for non commerical use )
And 20 years for commerical use of everything.

Where commerical use means some one somewhere is making money off it.

And if a project was funded by governement at all grants then it is automaticly placed in the public domain.

The public domain is a good thing and all of society benifits from it.

Companies still make money off public domain. Ever buy a book that was written before 1923 ... Its all public domain.

There is a lot of music available in the public domain as well.

Now for the concept of trademarking and patienting ideas and concepts.... I think that this should not be allowed.... Society does not benifit one bit from that.

Imagine if someone patiented the idea of a vechile that moves on tracks in the 1820's.... With todays laws...

Innovation and copyrights and patients travel down two seperate roads in opposite directions...

[geoschmo]

Tesco, I think the idea is that you can't patent the idea for a train, but you can patent a specific type of train locamotive, or at least some parts of it that are unique and your own design. You can't patent a steam engine after all. Patenting has benifits to soceity in that it encourages research and inovation, which can have some pretty substantial up front costs. But like copyright it can be taken to non-productive extremes.

I don't have a problem with you 5 year, 20 year terms. I think that is probably a bit long for software, but it would probably work for books. But I do have a question about what is commercial and what is non-commercial. If my friend buys a copy of SE4 and I burn a copy so I don't have to pay for it, is that a commercial or non commercial use?

Geoschmo

[ July 16, 2003, 18:42: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
pvk they should have people on everystreet cornor watching out for people who jay walk and ticket them.

It is as equally morally wrong. And all laws should be equally enforced

The UK is also full of surveillance video cameras, even worse than the US is getting. Big Brother is watching you, and his local governments are counting on ticket revenues from people who forget their seatbelts, or for not having a registration sticker on their license plate, or who drive a high-performance car 5 mph over a pointless speed limit where the bus routinely drives 10-15 mph over.

PvK

[Erax]

Patents were created to allow inventors to benefit from the fruit of their creative work, while allowing their knowledge to be released to the public. Scientific knowledge must be shared to benefit society as a whole, but those who provide such knowledge must be compensated for it. Otherwise they would use their knowledge for themselves only, creating a series of technology-based secret societies.

So how is this different from books or music ? Well, entertainment content has no value unless it is shared, it can't really be hoarded for one's own benefit.

As for trademarks, they embody the 'brand value' that a name holds. If you market anything at all with the name 'Star Wars' on it, you know it will attract millions of fans, some of which may actually buy the product. The brand name adds value to your product, and you must compensate Lucasfilm for it.

Now I know very little about actual trademark legislation, other than that they have no expiration date. However, I feel they should work like mining rights : if you don't exploit them over a given period of time, you lose them.

[tesco samoa]

geo you can patient the idea for a train.... There are companies that just patient ideas and only ideas. Major corp's push this all the time.

You no longer have to beat someone to producing a product people like and purchase. You just have to beat the company who builds it by only coming up with a concept and prooving it in court.... That is it.

And the copy would fall under non commerical use. Commerical use would be for another company / person to use the code and sell it for profit...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
And the copy would fall under non commerical use. Commerical use would be for another company / person to use the code and sell it for profit...

So copying a game to sell it to make money is commercial use and wrong, but copying the game for personal use to simply avoid paying the purchase price is non-commercial and is ok? That makes no sense to me.

From the perspective of the author of the work what is the difference if another company makes a million copies and sells them without compensating him, or if a million people all make one copy without compensating him. Either way that is one million copies he doesn't get paid for.

As to your other point I will plead ignorance. I have never heard of a company patenting an idea the way you are describing it. In fact to my knokwledge you have to have some sort of diagram to get a patent. How do you diagram an idea?

Geoschmo