Moral Basis for copyright and similar laws

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johnwis said:
In that case, I wouldn’t be the one who put in the work to make the television show, so I do not see why I should profit off of it.
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Because it’s your idea.

Really, one owns nothing to the degree that one owns one’s ideas.

You must not work in any remotely creative field, if you can even pretend that your first reaction wouldn’t be unmitigated bloodlust.

If someone made a show out of one of my books, and didn’t pay me (and give me creative control, but that’s another story), I only hope I could hold off a psychotic (and homicidal) break long enough to call a lawyer.
 
johnwis said:
If I buy a book, do I own that physical object?
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Yes. What you don’t own is the right to copy it. (You can buy the right to copy it, or you can request permission to copy it for a one-time situation, and of course there are also fair-use laws - you can freely quote portions of it, as long as you give the credit where it’s due.)
 
Okay. So, there we have it. Nobody should ever do anything creative. We should all just take waged jobs doing safe, predictable work. Nobody should write books, paint paintings, sculpt scultures, or write music. We should just steal from that which already exists, and never do anything new.
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Creative jobs can be done as contract employees. If someone wants something new, they can hire someone to make it.

If a creative person wants something new, and they make it without anyone hiring them, then the labor they are doing is for themselves because there isn’t another employer. If they are their own employer while doing the work, then coming up with a way to provide remuneration for this work done is the responsibility of the creative person who employed himself.
 
Does an intellectual work exist separate from its physical copies? If so, where is it? If not, How can you own what is unpossessable?
 
PaulinVA said:
As someone who HAS been working in the computer science industry for a couple of decades, I can only shake my head. You can try any business model you want - but, then, so can I.

If a mechanic fixes my car, I pay him the bill. No one else can ever use the “fixes” to my car. That transaction lives in a moment of time.

If I create a software program (I being me or my company), it has a life that is determined by the market. People might buy it for months, for years, or, sadly, for only a few days. I charged what I thought was a good price point. However, as you know, I have only granted them a license to use the software. I have not licensed them to distribute my software, for which I would have charged them more and they would have to pay me a royalty of some sort.

Why do I only license software (you can put music, musical performance, or whatever here)? Because I have no idea what the earning potential is of this work. I don’t know what it’s worth, so I don’t know how much to charge for an outright sale of the work. I only let you use it. It looks the same to you as you use it, but it protects me and my business.

I use the revenue stream from this product to pay the people who developed it, the secretaries, the parking lot attendant. Those are the people benefiting from the protection of my intellectual property. This is our livelihood. Why would we give it away?

If someone down the road wants to use my product in their product, then they have to license it for that use, and pay me. It would not be fair to my employees to give their work product away.

A commissioned work is a little different. For a set price, I create a work for someone. They own the copyright. They can decide what to do with the work. If they want to sell it for more than I was commission for, that is fine. I got my price for the work. If they want to give it away, fine. If they want to start a business with it, fine as well.

You need to remember that in the copyright world you are only granted a use license.

I am under no obligation to set a price point for my work that allows anyone to buy it. That price point would be – FREE – and that is not my business model.
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Real world example.

We contracted with “Company A” for some engineering work to design “Product X” based upon our specifications. (We were shy a couple of mechanical engineers at the time, so had to contract it rather than do it in-house at the time)

The work was done, we received our drawings and prototype “Product X” and “Company A,” with which we contracted, received their somewhat healthy paycheck (a little over 1/4 million dollars…for about 640 engineering hours plus prototyping and testing). We shook hands and parted friends. (They did the work on our paycheck and part of the deal was that we owned the IP when it was all said and done)

We contracted with another company to do our manufacturing for us. They rolled off a small run of “Product X” and then went on to do other contracts.

We were then working with “Company B” as a teaming partner to do a large-scale IT integration project. We were trying to sell “Product X” as part of this project. “Company B” wasn’t interested in buying our “Product X,” though (they still wanted us to work with them, just not to provide “Product X”)

We find out during part of the architecting process the reason why “Company B” didn’t want to buy “Product X” from us. They found out that “Company A” was also selling “Product X”…but for cheaper than what we offered it.

(We convinced “Company A” to take the product off of the market, but that’s a different story)

Bottom line is that “Company A” stole our IP and then tried to sell the physical artifacts from that IP as if it was their own IP. How could we acuse them of doing this? Because the original idea for “Product X” was our idea. We risked 1/2 million dollars in R&D money (the 1/4 million paid to “Company A” for engineering services plus money for our own engineers) to bring that idea into a concrete product.

You may ask, well, the engineers got paid for their time, so the product should be in the public domain, right?

Well, my company wouldn’t have put up the money to allow the R&D for the product if they didn’t have a reasonable expectation to see some return from the R&D investment. That is not a good way to keep a company profitable.

You say: profits…baaahh…humbug.

I say, tell that to the 401(k) investors, the IRA investors, the union pension fund investors, and all the other people who risked their money on me…believing that I would turn a profit. If I don’t turn a profit, then they get no return on their investment. If enough people have that attitude, the stock market goes down and we’re in a recession.

And what about the employees of that company? If there’s no money coming in to pay their paychecks, how can we pay them? (If we don’t get return on risk, then guess what: people get laid off)

So who’s the better Catholic? The one who tries to turn a profit, keeping people employed and providing return on investment…or the one who doesn’t care about that stuff, but ends up getting people laid off and causing investors to lose their shirts? Who is REALLY considering the Universal Destination of Goods? Who is REALLY supporting the common good?
 
johnwis said:
Creative jobs can be done as contract employees. If someone wants something new, they can hire someone to make it.

If a creative person wants something new, and they make it without anyone hiring them, then the labor they are doing is for themselves because there isn’t another employer. If they are their own employer while doing the work, then coming up with a way to provide remuneration for this work done is the responsibility of the creative person who employed himself.
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Arguably true, but if anyone takes it, and, say, distributes copies of my book for free (I’m planning to web-publish), then…I’m afraid I’m going to have to sue him back to the Pre-Cambrian, if I can’t get him thrown in jail and make him pay me.

Never mess with authors, we spend a lot of time alone coming up with nasty things for imaginary people to live through.
 
johnwis said:
Does an intellectual work exist separate from its physical copies? If so, where is it? If not, How can you own what is unpossessable?
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The physical work (book, medium, line of code) is the artifact representing the abstraction of the idea.
 
The physical work (book, medium, line of code) is the artifact representing the abstraction of the idea.
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But where is the abstraction of the idea?
 
johnwis said:
Creative jobs can be done as contract employees. If someone wants something new, they can hire someone to make it.

If a creative person wants something new, and they make it without anyone hiring them, then the labor they are doing is for themselves because there isn’t another employer. If they are their own employer while doing the work, then coming up with a way to provide remuneration for this work done is the responsibility of the creative person who employed himself.
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Yes, and this is where copyright law comes into it. So that he can sell his work without fear that the person he sold it to is going to hijack it, make copies of it, and sell the copies under his own name.
 
First of all, I’m trying to figure out underlying principles that support or undercut copyright law, not what is and is not legal under copyright law. As I said in my first post, I am not trying to legitimize violating copyright law.
We were then working with “Company B” as a teaming partner to do a large-scale IT integration project. We were trying to sell “Product X” as part of this project. “Company B” wasn’t interested in buying our “Product X,” though (they still wanted us to work with them, just not to provide “Product X”)
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You could have waited to develop Product X until the project with Company B, and had them pay for its development because they are the actual users.
Because the original idea for “Product X” was our idea.
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Even if we assume we’re operating under current copyright law in the United States, ideas aren’t covered, only expressions of those ideas. Ideas are protected speech under the first amendment.
 
johnwis said:
If a creative person wants something new, and they make it without anyone hiring them, then the labor they are doing is for themselves because there isn’t another employer.
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Reminds me of 20th century American composer Charles Ives. Because he invented a new type life insurance, he made piles and piles of money and never had to work. Therefore, he composed just whatever strange sort of music that struck him as fun at the time. Some very odd stuff and quite a few gems.

But - It’s not like that for 99.9% of the population.

In the real world, the creator makes the creation, and then goes from publisher to publisher hoping it will be accepted.

Have you considered going to work in China? It seems like many of their ideas on intellectual property line up with yours. You can buy Windows Vista, Photoshop, or whatever you want really cheap on an average street corner.
 
It’s in the head of the person whose idea it is. In order to make it available, it has to be made concrete. (Object Oriented Programming 101).
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If it’s in the head of the person then it is already physically manifested in the composition of his brain.
 
In the real world, the creator makes the creation, and then goes from publisher to publisher hoping it will be accepted.
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The fact that things are done this way now is not sufficient to demonstrate that this way is the best.
 
Have you considered going to work in China? It seems like many of their ideas on intellectual property line up with yours.
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Actually, my ideas are just as close to those of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
 
But not yet visible to the customers. This is the important part.
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The important part is that it has no existence independent of its physical copies. And therefore, aside from physical copies, it can’t be owned because there is no it to own.
 
I think that copyright law protects ideas. My idea is always my idea. If I write it in a book, it is still my idea. If I sing it in a song, it’s still my idea. The physical manifestation of my idea should be protected (the book or CD), as should the idea itself.

Our ideas need to be protected. Why? So that people who make a living with ideas or their intellect can get just recompense for their idea or intellectual work. They are the ones, also, to determine what is fair recompense.

But talking about copyright law and individuals is just one instance of the use of copyright law. Any discussion of intellectual property rights has to look at business and the rewards of innovation and investment in research. Great things are done by companies that invest in research. Taking the just recompense from them stifles creativity and none of us benefit, then.
 
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