[extropy-chat] John C Wright comments on IP

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

I am forwarding an exchange I had with John C Wright, regarding the IP laws
in the Golden Oecumene:

> Dear Mr Wright,
>
> Recently my zeal in reading sci-fi suffered a setback - after finishing
"The
> Golden Transcendence" I realized it will be very hard to find something to
> match your books in terms of wit, erudition, and intellectual depth. Your
> trilogy was a great treat.
>
> Now, there is one aspect of the Oecumene which puzzles me: the
intellectual
> property rules - are they statutory or purely contractual? If statutory,
why
> are they (apparently) time-unlimited, which might result in inefficiencies
> (and you don't say how inefficiencies are avoided, or whether they are
> postulated not to exist), and if they are contractual, how do they become
> universally enforced? I could imagine the following argument in favor of
IP
> held in perpetuity - since the IP owner receives the full market value of
> his invention, there is a strong stimulus to provide new inventions - both
> to earn and to avoid paying for older IP. But then, if the inventor of the
> wheel was still alive, we would be paying him royalties on every car,
> including toy trucks. On the other hand, contractual IP would assure
return
> commensurate with effort spent on research while avoiding perpetual
> royalties (with the threat of independent discoverers keeping owners from
> indefinite rent-seeking), but you specifically mention the Parliament as
the
> venue where the scope of IP is decided in the Golden Oecumene.
>
> Would you like to comment on this issue?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rafal Smigrodzki

====================================

Dear Mr. Smigrodski,

You are too kind. If it gives you any comfort, there are writers wittier and
more erudite than I: JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis spring to mind in terms of
erudition, Jack Vance in terms of wit, Gene Wolfe in terms of overall
genius.
Poul Anderson's HARVEST OF STARS has all three qualities.

Regarding your question, it is one I find interesting, so I hope you will
please forgive me if I wax too prolix:

As a writer, I write as the spirit moves me, so that I am often as surprised
as
the reader by the tale as it is told. Therefore I have no more authority
than
any other reader in answering questions about the Golden Oecumene: I only
know
what the tale says.

Regarding intellectual property, the tale says, for example, that the face
of
Gannis is under copyright: it seems no one else may wear his appearance or
image. The tale also says that Orpheus maintains a monopoly on the
immortality
that his machines invented, the noetic technique which ushered in the age of
the Seventh Mentality. This implies that the patent on that technology has
endured for more than the eleven thousand years of the Seventh Era.

Orpheus is just like the inventor of the wheel who gets a royalty for each
truck and toy truck. Now, since the wheel was a very great benefit indeed,
it
might not be such a burden, for a wealthy society, at least, to continue to
pay
him when they use that benefit. Modern radio stations pay a singer each time
his song is played, mere pennies to the advertisers eager to play those
songs
(and the ads supporting them) to the public. The cost to the public is
unnoticeable.

Two opposing policies obtain: a patent held in perpetuity would stifle
innovation, but having no patents at all would not reward the inventor or
his
investors for their investment in time and treasure, if any newcomer could
immediate copy his technique.  I doubt that even a utopia could avoid the
conflict between the two opposing policies involved: some arbitrary point
must
be selected for the cut-off time.

Now again, not even your humble author knows to what degree these policy
considerations would apply in the Golden Oecumene. Is it possible that the
intelligent machines are so intelligent that inventing new techniques is so
easy for them, that there is no need to have the patent periods expire. It
is
possible that, among immortals, the time period during which an invention is
protected by patent would seem very long to us but not seem long to them. If
Orpheus discovery of immortality were protected from duplication for
fourteen
thousand years, the period would not yet have run.

The tale says that the Foederal Oecumenical Commonwealth (to give the Golden
Oecumene its true name) does not have a uniform set of laws covering all
schools, societies, and sects within it, even as the federal United States
has
state law that differs from one jurisdiction to another. The Neptunians, for
example, may have very different policies regarding copyright: no doubt they
approve of piracy. We must assume inventors seek venues most favorable to
them
(which is one reason why the Neptunians might be poorer than, for example,
the
society occupying the moons of Jupiter).

Inevitably, even in a very wise and kind society, provision would have to be
made for the resolution of conflicts. The government of the Golden Oecumene,
according to the story, is so minimal, that certain persons are not even
aware
it exists. Such a minimalist Parliament would control only so much of
intellectual property law as was not covered by independent contracts,
preferring to leave as much as possible in private hands. The Curia or
lesser
courts of law would be required to interpret contracts that were ambiguous,
or
had been breached by one party, and the Parliament would have to establish
any
law (not covered by common law) the courts required for guidance.

Myself, I do not see how it is logically possible to maintain intellectual
property claims on a purely voluntary and contractual basis: customers and
employees of Orpheus might well sign non-competition agreements in order to
avail themselves of the benefits of his immortality machines. But the
independent researcher who discovers the same technique as Orpheus has no
contractual relationship with him. There is no economic incentive for him to
forego the gains made by selling the same technique; Orpheus would not dare
pay
him for his non-competition, lest all future independent researchers be
encouraged to hold the coffers of Orpheus hostage.

This is not to say (by the way) that a society whose intellectual property
was
entirely contractual could not exist. This says only that there is a price
to
be paid for structuring the laws in that way: it may discourage rather than
encourage competition. No lesser thinker than Jefferson himself, for
example,
thought the price of public patent protection was too high, and that the
federal government should not grant patents or other temporary monopolies. I
respectfully disagree with him, but I do not this his position is
unreasonable.

However, just between you and me, I strongly suspect most business affairs
in
the Golden Age are contractual, since anyone advised by a super-intelligent
machine would try to conduct his affairs so as to avoid the waste and
anxiety
of hiring a lawyer and going to court.

It is supposed to be a Golden Age after all, the society mankind will enjoy
if
ever man becomes sane and mature: no doubt they have laws and institutions
similar to ours, which they keep as a last resort, should all else fail, the
way a wise man packs a first-aid kit before he goes camping. But our society
is
like a man who is in constant ill health, constantly in the hospital
emergency
room. To us, the medicine we need to prevent the body politic from
dissolving
into anarchy is something we must endure every hour of every day. A healthy
society, such as only might exist in a future whose moral standard is higher
than our own, such distempers would be rare. Men might be wise enough to be
glad to avoid even the appearance of pirating another man's ideas, rather
than
trying to edge as close to the minimum limit as the law allows. Since they
life
forever, and will never escape each other's censure, never forget a wrong,
it
would behoove them to settle all difference privately, and before they
become
inflamed.


Yours, John C. Wright

==============================================================

> Dear Mr Wright,
>
> Thank you for the answer to my enquiry. I find it fascinating to try to
look
> at the current state of affairs in this area of the law (although I am not
a
> lawyer myself), and to imagine how future technical developments (such as
> e.g. advanced methods for lie detection) could allow new social structures
> to evolve, both the desirable and the detestable ones. Just as Vernor
Vinge
> imagined how a technical development of bobbling could change warfare, the
> ways of traveling and even architecture ("build a castle, bobble yourself
> for a thousand years, and voila! - you have beautifully aged ruins to play
> in"), changes in IP laws with noetic technologies could be perhaps an
> interesting subject for another thinking person's s-f book (or even a
> trilogy :-).
>
> Would you permit me to forward our exchange to the Extropian mailing list
> http://www.extropy.org/emaillists.htm? This is a place where
transhumanists
> such as Anders Sandberg, Robin Hanson, Eliezer Yudkowsky, s-f authors like
> Damien Broderick and Charlie Stross, and others, argue about the shape of
> the future.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Rafal Smigrodzki

==========================================================

Dear Mr. Smigrodski, you are most welcome to share my letter, spelling
errors
and all, with anyone who might care to read it, though (in all modesty) I
doubt
my ideas about intellectual property are new. In fact, one interesting
outcome
of my own speculations about the far future is how much would have to remain
the same in order for civilization to advance. I do not see how it is
possible,
even theoretically, for a civilization to prosper without laws and law
enforcement, currency, property rights, and unequal distributions of
property.
If all members of society were sufficiently uniform to have the same
threshold
of violence, the same disinterest in property, the same disutility of labor,
the same skills and abilities, the society would not be sufficiently diverse
to
meet all challenges nature might pose, or curiosity might seek to
investigate.

If the "singularity" imagined by Verner Vinge ever does take place, I
suspect
that at least some of the society and her activities would be understandable
to
the modern man, in the same way that at least some of what a modern man does
would be understandable to a prehistoric farmer. The prehistoric farmer
might
be baffled by Wall Street finance, but he would grasp that the modern farmer
was reaping and sowing, especially if the modern farmer were Amish, or from
some undeveloped third world country. Likewise, any post-singularity people
who
looked and lived much like modern men might be comprehensible to us, even if
the majority of the society were incomprehensible.

Again, thank you for writing, yours, John C. Wright