[ExI] New IP thread

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Damien Sullivan
<phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 03:56:25AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
>> I can only advise to try to approach the problem of IP not from a
>> first-person perspective but to start with a comparative analysis of
>> efficiency of various hypothetical laws, given a range of plausible
>
> Efficiency at what?

### Achievement of goals. See definition of efficiency.

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>
> IP laws encourage the creation of patentable and copyrightable items, so
> are efficient at that.  But they introduce inefficiencies --
> increasingly large inefficiencies -- in the use of ideas, including
> derivation from old ideas.

### No, properly used IP does not inhibit derivation from old ideas.
IP laws require disclosure of what is claimed, thus actually enabling
derivation where otherwise ideas would be kept secret, or would not be
generated in the first place.

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>
>> P.S. An interesting thought occurred to me - compare a society where
>> all thoughts of every individual are open to control by other
>> individuals (unless specifically protected from external control), vs.
>> a society where all individual thoughts are protected from other
>> individuals (unless specifically excluded from protection). Draw
>> parallels with operating systems that allow any program to execute any
>> operations on the code of another program, unless specifically
>> proscribed, vs. systems that generally prevent programs from modifying
>> each other, unless specifically allowed. Which operating system is
>> more robust? This is a good starting point to thinking about the deep
>> underpinnings of IP law.
>
> No, this is comparing apples and rocks.  IP has nothing to do with the
> protection of "all individual thoughts", especially not in a way
> relevant to computer security.  A world without IP is a world where
> public ideas can be copied freely, not a world where people can control
> the thoughts in my brain.  We're takling about publication, not
> telepathy and mind control.

### The starting point in thinking about novel ideas should not be
currently existing IP law. Looking at the law should be the end point
of a discussion that starts with deeper notions. And yes, these
include analysis of stability of minds and computer programs under
various security/IP regimes.

Once you conclude that in the interest of stability thoughts have to
be generally protected, you have to take this as the default position
in any decisions about manipulation of thoughts. Should somebody claim
that unathorized copying of thoughts is in some specific situation the
proper course of action, the burden of proof is on him. If you say
that reading your thoughts against your will (which is already to some
extent possible with fMRI) is wrong, you can't say that reading
somebody's book against his will is OK - unless you can adduce some
specific arguments.

Can you?

Rafal