[ EEPI-Discuss ] Re: Speaking of Celebrity, Social Contracts and Naivity.

[David Tomlinson <d.tomlinson@tiscali.co.uk>]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=radical

rad-i-cal
    1. Arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a 
radical solution to the problem.
    2. Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme: radical 
opinions on education.
    3. Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in 
current practices, conditions, or institutions: radical political views.
    4. Linguistics. Of or being a root: a radical form.
    5. Botany. Arising from the root or its crown: radical leaves.
    6. Slang. Excellent; wonderful.


Dan Krimm wrote:
 >
 > I mean, the maximalist bent is certainly dangerous to civil 
liberties, but
 > opposing maximalism does not necessarily entail embracing strict 
minimalism
 > either.
 >
 >
No, I am not a "market fundementalist" (See PS of Dan's Post).
But even in a social market the default assumption is competition.
You have noticed in live in the UK, and therefore I pay a poll tax for 
the BBC (you might have heard of them :). I support the BBC but this 
does not mean that I approve of a tax for popular music.

The whole point of the China post was that there is a model where 
without Government support, the performers get paid for performing at 
physical venues where access can be controlled, from a bar to a stadium. 
Even in a social market the default is competition, unless their are 
social reasons for overriding competition. If you want volutery or 
compulsory licencing, you need a economic model that proves it necessary 
and justifies it.
 >
 >
 >>Unlike Larry Lessig, I don't think that Property is a suitable model for
 >>Interlectual Property, and I don't like compulsory licencing, but the
 >>main issue is the thought police.
 >
 >
I listed free culture in the additonal reading links. Prof Lessig 
started from a position of the limitations of physical property (see his 
earlier books), where as I have always argued that property is not the 
correct model for interlectual property. I welcome any movement away 
from a property model. The same with compulsory licencing, I would much 
prefer that to the DRM model proposed by the IP maximalists. >  My point 
is not that we should abolish
 > copyright or go back to the eighteenth century.  That would be a total
 > mistake, disastrous for the most important creative enterprises 
within our
 > culture today.
 >
 > In short, Lessig agrees with you on this point about thought police, 
and so
 > do I.  He is profoundly disturbed by the potential of thought police, and
 > wants to push back against that.  Me too.
 >
While there are stioll some differences between my position and Prof 
Lessig, I have much in common with Larry Lessig and you, Dan.

 > But, it can be done without destroying the potential for creators to get
 > compensated directly for the value of their creations, and not for 
adjunct
 > values such as celebrity, investment resources, or patronage.
 >
 > This is where the balance comes in, and why I think of Lessig (and 
myself)
 > as centrists -- "copyright optimalists" as it were.
 >
 >
And I start from the presumption of a free market in music, not a tax to 
support it.

 >
 > I'm just beginning a great book by Peter Drahos called "Information
 > Feudalism" which makes your point about the origins of copyright not 
being
 > the ideal of the social contract I've mentioned before.  However, it also
 > mentions that the "fairy tale" of the social contract has been used
 > rhetorically to justify copyright (and IP a a whole, especially including
 > patents) for decades upon decades, as a replacement for legal monopolies
 > after the advent of anti-trust law.  Without that excuse, they never 
could
 > have gotten the increases in reach of copyright put into law.  They still
 > use that excuse today.
 >
Google came up with an article (this is new to me).
http://eprints.anu.edu.au/archive/00000759/00/Information_Feudalism.pdf

You might like this.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html


 > What I suggest is that, now that we have technology that can really 
do it,
 > we simply hold them to their rhetoric after all.  They have no
 > justification for refusing, given how they've relied on this rhetoric
 > through the decades.  Merely point out that we can come so much closer to
 > that ideal today, and therefore we are morally bound to do so, by 
their own
 > rhetoric.
 >
My point exactly, but with a free market approach not a non-existant 
social contract.

 > Dan
 >
 > PS -- You've said several times you don't like compulsory licensing, but
 > what about *voluntary* blanket/collective licensing?  Got a problem with
 > that?  If so, why?
 >
 > I just think the opposition to collective licensing is sort of doctrinal
 > and knee-jerk.  The reasons usually presented for opposition often 
crumble
 > under detailed scrutiny, just like the justifications for "market
 > fundamentalism" represent an orthodoxy that fails to endure nuanced
 > examination.

Here is a more recent article by Prof Lessig. The people own culture.
Where he argues that a free culture should be the default and gives the 
history of the expantion of copyright.

http://technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/feature_people.asp

"Now, economists and others of a capitalist bent (see "The Creators Own 
Ideas," p. 56) will argue that it's not at all obvious that expanded 
regulation would be bad. They'll tell you that in many cases, giving 
property holders the power to control (or "discriminate") in uses of 
their property actually increases the total wealth of society. So we 
shouldn't necessarily condemn the tightening of control that DRM will 
produce in cyberspace, at least if it increases social wealth.

I don't want to quibble with economists (although I do answer Richard 
Epstein's objections to this essay: see "Rebuttal" on page 63)."

The answer is the in this article, remember pro bono publico (the public 
good), and if we wanted to maximalise profits we would encourage 
monopolies. (Please read the whole article as it is the economic 
justification for the end of copyright and patents).

Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding
MARK A. LEMLEY
Stanford Law School

http://ssrn.com/abstract=582602

Free Culture and Free Software should be the default assumptions like a 
free market, we only modify it if socaily necessary, and when it is we 
won't need interlectual property to define a social licence, it will be 
the default, and you won't be able to privatise the public domain. 
Therefore with a law software needs to be supplied as source code, the 
free culture will have a BSD and GNU GPL licence as default.

I differ in detail with Dan and Prof Lessig, I differ fundimentally with 
the proponents of DRM.

Prof Leesig on naivity.
http://technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/feature_people.asp?p=8

"Truly Free Markets
When most people trip upon these free movements, their initial reaction 
is that both are implausibly utopian. They read "free" to be a rejection 
of basic economic principles.

But the economy of free software is still an economy. It produces 
wealth; it inspires growth; it spreads services broadly within a 
society. It functions differently than the economy of proprietary 
software--different scarcities are traded--but it is still an economy. 
And literally billions of dollars have been invested to make it flourish.

The same is true of free culture. Many read "free culture" to mean that 
artists don't get paid. But here, too, the difference is not that one 
approach (proprietary culture) builds an economy while the other (free 
culture) does not. In the way that I've use the term, free culture 
describes the economy that governed creative industries for at least the 
first 186 years of the American republic. More importantly, proprietary 
culture has never yet governed any creative economy, anywhere. No 
society has ever imposed the level of control that the proprietary 
culture of digital technologies and DRM would enable."

DRM is the untested model and facilitates extensive control of the 
market and customers.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67556,00.html?tw=wn_7culthead






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