[ExI] Problem with Pattents

[Bryan Bishop]

On Monday 03 March 2008, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### I am warmly supportive of open-source programming, and any
> donation of intellectual property to the public domain. However, the
> vast majority of useful products involve *toil* rather than fun which
> is why most people making them want to get paid.

The vast majority of useful products do not involve toil. Any toil can 
be automated out of the process, so it's increasingly untoiled. They 
don't want to get paid because they hate doing the work. In most cases 
it's because the monetary system happens to be what they have been 
indoctrinated into.

> The essence of property is the right of exclusion. This legal theory
> posits that all the other rights usually bundled in property rights
> are secondary to this one fundamental right. Right of exclusion means
> that you have the recourse to the legal system should somebody enter
> the property in question. You may demand restitution, and even
> retribution so as to remain in sole possession of your property.

That design is intellectually horrid. Property? Rights? What?

> If you say that IP is unethical, it means that you have no right to
> exclude others from your own mind, wouldn't you say? It is unethical
> to own ideas and thoughts, such as the invention of a new mousetrap,

No, it's impossible to own anything.

> or a new poem, therefore you have no right to deny access to such
> thoughts. Should somebody demand the source code to the web page you
> created, you must obey. You don't own your intellectual creations,
> remember?

You must obey? Who says?

> So, are you going to humbly obey and regurgitate the contents of your
> mind to all comers? Or do we need to use some "persuasion" to get our
> due?

I tend to regurgitate as much as I can, yeah.

> ### Wait, you expressed a conviction that IP limits innovation....
> based on what data? Correlation does imply a direct or indirect

Though I cannot counter with numbers or anything of the like, it's 
obvious that the more easily accessible information is, the better. See 
the transformative powers of the printing press and the internet in 
comparison to our pathetic rates of book production via the method of 
painful arthritis fab lines.

> Therefore, my statement adduces circumstantial evidence against your
> claim, so you need to give arguments of your own. It's just as if we
> were arguing if high horsepower engines help cars drive faster,  and
> you dismissed the positive correlation between the two as *mere*
> correlation, claiming that engines make cars slower.

Making things accessible is easier than otherwise, and in our digital 
age, nearly anybody can get a copy (including those who had 
the "secured access" in the 'security' model beforehand). So I don't 
see what's wrong. 

> ### Mind-scanning is going to happen, so you'd better make sure the
> law is on your side. If you think IP is unethical, what recourse do
> you have to deny others access to your thoughts?

If you allow mind scanning, then suppose also brain alteration tech. The 
solution would be to alter your brain for the duration of the scanning 
procedure. 

> > Except that I can't think bread into existence, or, more aptly, I
> > can't create a clone of a piece of bread (or a Platonic ideal of
> > bread) that exists somewhere else already by thinking it up.  And
> > with bread, the baker no longer has it if I take it.  (Can you tell
> > I don't like analogies with physical property?)  ^_^

Some would argue that you can, in fact, think bread into existence, just 
as easily as authors think their books into creation, or the programmer 
and his software.

> ### Indeed, Intellectual property does not have the "exclusivity
> property" that is inherent in most forms of tangible and some
> intangible property. This is a true difference, however  it is not
> substantive to my argument. Can you elaborate on why do you think
> that lack of exclusivity is a decisive argument against IP?

What? So you want to propose that intellectual property is a new 
classification of neuronal structures in the brain and to somehow 
guarantee a strict novelty law in the DNA hooked up to a centralized 
server so that there is absolute exclusivity? I don't see how this 
would be helpful. It would be quite distracting, honestly. 

> ### So, just to go back to basics, what is "property"? And why can't

Property seems to be fairly meaningless except in a sociocontext.

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/