OT: The Intellectual Property Farce

[Danny Mingledorff]

Unfortunately, until an artist can demonstrate their commercial worthiness,
they aren't in position of power in the negotiation process, which is how
they get stuck, more often than not, in initial contracts which aren't much
benefit to them, but profitable to the record companies, if they produce a
hit. Oc dourse, the argument from the recording industry is the gamble that
they are taken and investing in an unproven artist, etc.

Just some of the joys of capitalism...

[snip]

using a song in a tv commercial is usually done by paying royalties - no
ownership is transferred they have paid for the right to use the song. in
the eyes of the record companies anyone else who wants to listen to the song
must also pay.

copyright law basically sucks. although it does offer a measure of
protection to the original artists the big companies are exploiting the crap
out of it.

Copyright law isn't so bad. Its the contracts that the record companies
insist on that screw over the artists. What do you suppose would happen
if the artists asked for the same terms for their work that the record
companies turn around and request from advertisers? In other words, if
the artists maintained control of their copyrights, only granting
exclusive license to the record companies to market their product for
some fixed period of time. Say, for 1 or 5 years?

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Phil Da Lick! say:

and to cap it all off the recording company passes the costs of producing
the music video onto the artists themselves, thus guaranteeing themselves a
sizeable chunk of the revenue from the first tour at least.


using a song in a tv commercial is usually done by paying royalties - no
ownership is transferred they have paid for the right to use the song.

I don't fricken care. That's not the point.

in
the eyes of the record companies anyone else who wants to listen to the song
must also pay.

So?

[...]

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

Unfortunately, until an artist can demonstrate their commercial worthiness,
they aren't in position of power in the negotiation process, which is how
they get stuck, more often than not, in initial contracts which aren't much
benefit to them, but profitable to the record companies, if they produce a
hit. Oc dourse, the argument from the recording industry is the gamble that
they are taken and investing in an unproven artist, etc.

Which is why services like KaZaa or iTunes have an advantage. Take a
startup garage band, for example. They make their money from
performances and attract fans by posting their music for free for a
limited time. Once they get a commercial following, they withdraw their
music from the free services (or maybe leave earlier work up) and sign a
contract with iTunes for a cut of the $0.99 per download.

Once they achieve a substantial level of commercial success, they have
that as the leverage
to go to a recording label for a limited term record deal. The label has
a good idea of the market risk and should be able to offer the artists a
better deal. At the end of the limited term, if the company isn't
promoting the artist to their satisfaction, they can take their business
elsewhere.

With this market model, the recording industry is no longer in control
of artists exposure. They can no longer create an artificial talent
scarcity by backing only selected performers.
But that turns their business into a commodity. Their skills at
promotion and distribution might still command some sort of premium. But
that would knock most of the marginal companies out of business.
Particularly those who achieve success only by locking up the rights to
material that people want to listen to regardless of their presence as a
middleman.

This is why I think the recording industry would fight against anything
that challenges their existing market model. In fact, I wouldn't be
surprised if there is contract language between themselves and outfits
like iTunes discouraging them from doing business through other channels
with artists.

 

[Giuliano Colla]

Sugapablo: Buys organic produce, cloth diapers, and uses Linux!

Throw the mask, you've been discovered:

http://www.funet.fi/pub/culture/russian/images/linux.jpg

FWIW, I too buy organic products and use Linux. But I don't buy cloth diapers.
I'm grown up enough not to need the anymore, and not old enough to need them
again....

 

[Martha H Adams]

It seems to me, the intellectual property problem has two central
roots where change is needed. The first is, that the people who
create it can get paid for their work. Enough to make a living at it.
The second is, that whatever solution is proposed wants to be simple
and direct enough that a company or industry cannot hire a horde of
lawyers who peer between the lines and generate exceptional
interpretations to legally abuse the law.

Crippling all privately owned computers with hardware accessories to
ensure the owners don't engage in illegal copying and in crimethink,
seems to me a very bad direction.

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

Cheers -- Martha Adams

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

It seems to me, the intellectual property problem has two central
roots where change is needed. The first is, that the people who
create it can get paid for their work. Enough to make a living at it.
The second is, that whatever solution is proposed wants to be simple
and direct enough that a company or industry cannot hire a horde of
lawyers who peer between the lines and generate exceptional
interpretations to legally abuse the law.

That's easy. We need antitrust law with some teeth in it.

Contracts which oblige an IP creator (performer, programmer, etc.) to
sign over their rights in perpetuity should be unenforceable.

For example: A record company should be able to buy distribution rights
from an artist for a limited term or a fixed number of units sold (CDs,
records, etc.), and for a defined distribution channel. If the company
doesn't perform on its obligation to adequately market a product, the
performer should be able to take it to another company or market it
through a competing channel (internet sales vs. CDs for example).

Crippling all privately owned computers with hardware accessories to
ensure the owners don't engage in illegal copying and in crimethink,
seems to me a very bad direction.

Yes, but there's a hidden agenda behind this approach. The failure of
Napster (in its previous form) and the RIAA lawsuits against copyright
violators are excellent evidence that prior restraint isn't needed to
protect IP. In fact, the RIAA (and the MPAA) should be thankful that
this content sharing is moving from back alley shops to file sharing on
line. Automated enforcement is easy and much cheaper to implement than
hiring detectives to fly around the world to locate and shut down pirate
CD/DVD plants. The day will come when a web crawler will detect the
presence of shared files and automatically file the requisite civil
lawsuit to shut it down. Meanwhile, broadband distribution will attract
IP pirates away from producing physical media and make them easier to
find.

There was an interview with an MPAA official on TV recently. He stated
that most of the motion picture piracy was fed by insiders or someone
sneaking a camcorder into a theater. And most of the pirate product was
sold on physical media. There is no encryption system that can block
this kind of black market. There is no way to prevent bit by bit DVD
copies from being stamped out.

Since most of the black market can be served with low quality product,
all of the proposed digital broadcast security features won't make a
difference. High quality product would be welcomed by the black market
consumer. But I'm guessing that the number of people who want to save a
couple of bucks by buying it but who demand top of the line playback
quality before they do is tiny.

The entire profit structure of the recording and motion picture
industries is based upon creating artificial scarcity by controlling
distribution channels. DRM systems will allow the metering of IP use at
its point of delivery. It will create opportunities to generate repeated
revenue from the same materiel. Imagine having to pay a monthly fee to
continue to watch your DVDs or listen to your CDs. Or, if that little
known movie turns out to be a hit, your fee per view might just go up.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the industry will allow an economically
significant level of piracy to continue in order to establish the need
for DRM infrastructure with our lawmakers.

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

No prior restraint (no DRM) but catch the violators.

Think about what happens when somebody steals thousands (or millions) of
dollars in IP vs the guy who hot wires my $500 beater car. The police
will chase and in some cases kill the car thief (not to mention a few
innocent bystanders). But everybody whines about the injustice of
slapping a measly civil fine on a software pirate.

 

[Giuliano Colla]

It seems to me, the intellectual property problem has two central
roots where change is needed. The first is, that the people who
create it can get paid for their work. Enough to make a living at it.
The second is, that whatever solution is proposed wants to be simple
and direct enough that a company or industry cannot hire a horde of
lawyers who peer between the lines and generate exceptional
interpretations to legally abuse the law.

Crippling all privately owned computers with hardware accessories to
ensure the owners don't engage in illegal copying and in crimethink,
seems to me a very bad direction.

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

Cheers -- Martha Adams

You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's a way
lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.

If I own a loaf of bread, or a pint of beer (just to use Adam Smith's examples),
I may choose to eat it or drink it, or to sell it for money. And if I sell my
loaf of bread I don't have it anymore.

If I write a book, a poem, a song I do it because I want to communicate, to
share. If I give you a copy of my song it is because I want someone to listen to
it, but I still have my song.

The supply of intellectual work is unlimited. I may sing my song to a small
group of friends or to an audience of million of people (better not, I'm not too
good at singing, but this is just an example), and my song is still there.
Therefore the law of demand and supply doesn't apply. Intellectual work is not
property, and is not a good for trade.

Moreover, restraints on the usage of intellectual work, strongly reduce the
progress, and the advantages that people may get from it.
If I write a song, and give exclusive rights to a single singer, you'll never
get the opportunity to hear it from another, better singer.
If I write a program, with some good innovative ideas, and I keep it proprietary
and secret, all the progress which this could produce in other programs is
inhibited.

I believe that the copyright concept, as it was when first introduced, was a
reasonable compromise, between the need to make intellectual work freely
available to everybody, and the need to provide a reasonable reward to the author.

Anything beyond that, is simply the result of greediness, and a shortsighted
search of unduly multiplied profits, not on behalf of the originators of
intellectual work, but on behalf of intermediaries which call "property"
something they don't "own", and try to transform your legitimate right of doing
whatever you please with a copy of an intellectual work you've purchased, into
"illegal copying".

A simple solution? Let's make intellectual work rights not transferable (as they
are in truth). Let's pay for the services we receive, and that's all.

There's a lot of Linux distributions. They take free software, and they sell a
service. Those good at that make some money from it (not huge money, but why
should we care for that? It's never been the purpose of the laws to create ways
to make huge money), those which aren't that good have problems.

What do you think?

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's a way
lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.

I'm going to disagree, just to be consistent with a different previous
(current?) thread. You have correctly defined the source of the value of
intellectual property, but not the whole character of it. It takes lawyers,
or some other sophist, to 'distort reality' into allowing intellectual
property (which we can assume doesn't exist or it wouldn't require
intellectual identification) to be dealt with as it must be: commercial
capital representing the exclusive rights of an author.

If I own a loaf of bread, or a pint of beer (just to use Adam Smith's examples),
I may choose to eat it or drink it, or to sell it for money. And if I sell my
loaf of bread I don't have it anymore.

It should not be forgotten that Adam Smith, as well as the authors of the US
Constitution (which so neatly encapsulates the premise of copyright to protect
[or create] intellectual property) all lived before the time when any
recordings were ever possible. But we shouldn't forget that they well knew
intellectual property wasn't a loaf of bread or a pint of beer or a house or a
toaster or any other physical thing. I'm quite sure that Jefferson would have
thought that giving performers the right of authorship for a recording of
their performances would be an appropriate application of the idea of
copyright, and would be unsurprised to find that this made that right the
commodity they often traded away for commercial profit.

If I write a book, a poem, a song I do it because I want to communicate, to
share. If I give you a copy of my song it is because I want someone to listen to
it, but I still have my song.

But if you give away a recording of your performance of your song, do you want
them to reproduce it for other people? Given the very direct nature of the
performer-audience relationship inherent in the media and now almost
completely provided by the technology, it would seem that a lot of very
individual negotiations must be appropriate. But each method becomes a
potential channel that can be controlled, leading to just the kind of
profiteering that the record industry is engaging in now.

The supply of intellectual work is unlimited.

Potentially. The supply of each individual piece of intellectual property is
also unlimited. I think it is vitally important that we acknowledge both,
and also that they may be distinct and unrelated. Rhetorical confusion
between the market of any IP of a type and a piece of IP, categorically
unique, can lead to stupidity.

I may sing my song to a small
group of friends or to an audience of million of people (better not, I'm not too
good at singing, but this is just an example), and my song is still there.

That's the real irony of it, though. It isn't. Your song was there; it will
always have been there. But it will never be anywhere else. You could
perform your song other times, too, but each would be only that performance.
It is never still there once it's done. Its existence is provided only by its
transience. It is a performance.

Recording made of that performance are usually the issue. I think its worth
noting that in most cases, only one recording of a performance, only one
performance of a work, are ever made publicly available. I think a revision
of the entertainment industry can be deemed correct if that changes. "Canned"
music sucks; performances are what music is.

Therefore the law of demand and supply doesn't apply. Intellectual work is not
property, and is not a good for trade.

Ownership of intellectual work is a property, in that rights can be traded
commercially, and are good for trade. Unless they aren't. There are many
ways that copyright can be better for trade. But to say it isn't good for
trade is to consider only the abuses and not the far-more-prevalent uses.
They are invisible, when you exclude your consideration to the 'new issues'
that make headlines. It should be noted that any headline reporting an abuse
of copyright is itself an example of use of copyright, and replicated a
thousand times for each new report.

Moreover, restraints on the usage of intellectual work, strongly reduce the
progress, and the advantages that people may get from it.

At the same time they provide the only method of advantage or production. It
would be ironic, if it weren't inherent and inevitable. Such is the nature of
intellectual property. In order to encourage new creation, you provide the
ability of the author to limit use of their creation.

If I write a song, and give exclusive rights to a single singer, you'll never
get the opportunity to hear it from another, better singer.

Thus, you'll notice that such contracts have never been used to any notable
degree.

If I write a program, with some good innovative ideas, and I keep it proprietary
and secret, all the progress which this could produce in other programs is
inhibited.

Yeah, so? Can't they just do better on their own to compete, instead of
basing their work on yours?

I believe that the copyright concept, as it was when first introduced, was a
reasonable compromise, between the need to make intellectual work freely
available to everybody, and the need to provide a reasonable reward to the author.

That is, I think, slightly off. There is no need to make intellectual work
freely available to everybody that is not automatically met by the nature of
both physics and intellectual work. The balance that is necessary is between
providing reward to the author and providing incentive to others to compete
with the author. Making *new* work, not existing work, available to everyone
is the goal of protecting the exclusive rights of an author.

Anything beyond that, is simply the result of greediness, and a shortsighted
search of unduly multiplied profits, not on behalf of the originators of
intellectual work, but on behalf of intermediaries which call "property"
something they don't "own", and try to transform your legitimate right of doing
whatever you please with a copy of an intellectual work you've purchased, into
"illegal copying".

Alas, there are some for which no profit is unduly multiplied. Profiteering
on ownership rather than profiting from it is difficult to pin down.

A simple solution? Let's make intellectual work rights not transferable (as they
are in truth). Let's pay for the services we receive, and that's all.

The exclusive right of an author to his work cannot be inalienable. It is
only in transferring all or some of them that they have value. You're saying
each author must be their own distributor.

There's a lot of Linux distributions.

Linux is, I'm afraid, a unique example. Not because it is Linux, but because
it is GNU/Linux.

They take free software, and they sell a
service. Those good at that make some money from it (not huge money, but why
should we care for that? It's never been the purpose of the laws to create ways
to make huge money), those which aren't that good have problems.

What do you think?

I think you're on the right track, of course.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Martha H Adams say:

It seems to me, the intellectual property problem has two central
roots where change is needed. The first is, that the people who
create it can get paid for their work. Enough to make a living at it.
The second is, that whatever solution is proposed wants to be simple
and direct enough that a company or industry cannot hire a horde of
lawyers who peer between the lines and generate exceptional
interpretations to legally abuse the law.

Crippling all privately owned computers with hardware accessories to
ensure the owners don't engage in illegal copying and in crimethink,
seems to me a very bad direction.

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

AFAIK, everyone is. The problem is that people have different ideas of what
socially good intellectual property management is. The neo-con
uber-capitalists honestly (if religiously) believe that the free market is the
only socially good management of any and all property. The ability to extend
"control rights" over intellectual property is just another expression of the
unstated belief that monopolization is a tolerable business model. As so
often put by naive apologists, it is not illegal to *have* a monopoly on
intellectual property, it is just illegal to "abuse" that monopoly. Since
intellectual property's value is ONLY derived from this 'artificial monopoly'
caused by the 'exclusive rights' of the author/inventor, it is a complex yet
important illustration of how anti-trust law is meant to prevent abuses of the
free market without controlling the market itself.

But frankly there aren't enough people left who actually think [all the way
through] about socially good property management. This is perfectly
understandable, since any concept of 'social good' requires a fixed and
apparently arbitrary philosophical premise from which to identify the terms.

This basic issue entirely explains the current political climate in the United
States, at least. The post-modernist position, that since terms cannot be
defined absolutely, they should not be defined at all (leaving the putatively
free market as de facto proof of 'social goodness'), is that of the neo-con
Republicans. The anti-post-modernist position, that refusing to define the
terms does not relieve us of the responsibility for what occurs, is left to
the Democrats. I certainly don't agree with the philosophical premises of all
Democrats, but I am forced to concur with their willingness to take
responsibility. Ironically, the most powerful people in society are the
Republicans who claim the problem with society is that *other* people refuse
to take responsibility for their own lives, while implicitly ignoring the fact
that they, as the more powerful people in society, are willfully ignoring
their own responsibilities. "I have no responsibility to society but to
become rich." There actually are a WHOLE lot of people, Martha, who believe
that this is not only how social good is attained, but believe that this is
the only way that social good is attained. And believe it or not, they have a
point. But that doesn't make them right.

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Paul Hovnanian P.E. say:

That's easy. We need antitrust law with some teeth in it.

Here here. Which is to say we need antitrust enforcement that is effective.
It is a problem not of statute but of precedent.

Contracts which oblige an IP creator (performer, programmer, etc.) to
sign over their rights in perpetuity should be unenforceable.

That would be a bit too much of an over-haul and far too contrary to
reasonable values. Work-for-hire is something that cannot be outlawed. But
the fruits of it should not be allowed to be used anti-competitively.

For example: A record company should be able to buy distribution rights
from an artist for a limited term or a fixed number of units sold (CDs,
records, etc.), and for a defined distribution channel.

By all rights, record companies shouldn't even exist anymore. When was the
last time you bought a record? "CD companies" is a term which connotes a
company that makes marginal profits simply replicating the work of artists, as
it should. The importance of producers (as in "produced by" credit) has risen
in music as in all other communications industries, tracking the potential
independence of such "artists of artists" from massive companies who control
recording, mixing, replication, and packaging. Whichever businesses end up
providing delivery of recorded musical performances to the public for a
marginal profit may or may not be "record companies", but their business model
is going to have to change. You can't argue with physics.

If the company
doesn't perform on its obligation to adequately market a product, the
performer should be able to take it to another company or market it
through a competing channel (internet sales vs. CDs for example).

AFAIK, they are, regardless of contractual clauses indicating the opposite.
The problem is convincing a judge that 'adequately marketed' is a wide enough
gap to provide liability. Nevertheless, you are proposing to restrict the
artists from negotiating these rights at the same time you suggest the record
companies should be restricted in this manner.

Yes, but there's a hidden agenda behind this approach. The failure of
Napster (in its previous form) and the RIAA lawsuits against copyright
violators are excellent evidence that prior restraint isn't needed to
protect IP.

I think the DMCA itself is more direct evidence. To paraphrase, it states,
"prior restraint is allowed to protect IP".

[...]

But I'm guessing that the number of people who want to save a
couple of bucks by buying it but who demand top of the line playback
quality before they do is tiny.

I would suggest that those number of people who want to obtain a definitively
high quality reproduction are the only legal market. The RIAA lied about the
statistics; CD sales have declined only 15% over the period they claim 35%,
and the downward trend started years before even Napster was available. When
I see something of sufficient quality that I want to own it, I will buy it.
Usually that price must be very low, but sometimes it can be appreciable. I
paid almost $150 for a 'boxed set' of Pink Floyd CDs. And just last week I
bought the last two Santana albums and Nora Jones at Best Buy for under $15
each. I also got Hendrix and Clapton from the Scorcese Blues series, which I
only bought because they were under $12. I would happily "pirate" music
on-line, if it weren't so horribly inconvenient. Mostly I just play the
radio. Right now I'm on an NPR kick.

The entire profit structure of the recording and motion picture
industries is based upon creating artificial scarcity by controlling
distribution channels.

Indeed. The 'exclusive rights' (equated with "monopoly power" by just about
everyone) provided authors and inventors is what makes entertainment
recordings valuable. Since IP is supposedly 'enacted by law' rather than
naturally occurring, one could say it is artificial. But if there is no
scarcity at all (if you can listen to any music or watch any movie you want
without paying for it) then the artists cannot make money performing.
Hobbyist entertainment might be entertaining, but usually only to a very small
group, mostly the friends and relatives of the performers.

DRM systems will allow the metering of IP use at
its point of delivery. It will create opportunities to generate repeated
revenue from the same materiel.

And if, in so doing, it causes the price of common use of the materials to the
consumer are reduced, it is a good thing. I agree it sounds ludicrous to
think that it would, requiring intentional ignorance of the behavior of
producers (as in "manufacturers/owners") in the real world. But it is still
the goal, and any radical recreation of IP that prevents it would be
counter-productive for both consumers and producers (meaning all, including
original artists).

Imagine having to pay a monthly fee to
continue to watch your DVDs or listen to your CDs.

Imagine if that fee were fourteen cents per month, and you had access to
terabytes of programs.

Or, if that little
known movie turns out to be a hit, your fee per view might just go up.

I was thinking about just this issue yesterday, when I walked into the 'media
store'. As my thoughts always do in that circumstance, faced with the
displays and rows of recorded performances, most of them as devoid of actual
performance as possible to allow it to accommodate the lowest common
denominator of commercial viability (and yet heartened by the conviction that
those that transcend the accommodation rather than embrace it are always the
most commercially successful) I considered copyright law. Specifically, that
there are 'bargain bin' reproductions and 'new hit' reproductions and the
price differences are, appropriately, noticeable. Again, any revamp of the
entertainment copyright industry must allow for differential rewards.
Achieving the lowest common denominator might not seem worth rewarding, but it
is the only guidance we have as to what is entertaining, and thus qualifies as
artistry in the art of entertaining.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the industry will allow an economically
significant level of piracy to continue in order to establish the need
for DRM infrastructure with our lawmakers.

I wouldn't be too surprised if everyone eventually admitted that an
economically insignificant level of piracy is needed in order to make the
industry survive. The real issue is that establishing the damage of piracy
has not been objectively determined. Record and film companies ernestly
contend that a pirated copy of their consumer-release property indicates the
loss of a retail sale, and courts are, alas, unable to counter the logic of
the argument. But it is pure bullshit. The real issue of intellectual
property is and always has been that "piracy" is simply distribution, which
would be legal with any other commodity if it could be, but cannot. As Thomas
Jefferson himself famously pointed out, this is a 'theft' without a
deprivation. Intellectual property of all types, be it copyright, patent,
trademark, or trade secrets, has a property of "evaporation", a behavior which
both deprives it of value over time and explains its power to begin with.

When piracy is a commercial enterprise, it is clearly and appropriately
illegal. One is justified in dismissing any argument to the contrary with
the summary objection "a performer deserves to be paid for his work". We
assume in that claim, of course, that producers (reproducers/owners) have
royalty arrangement with performers. I would agree with just about any
reconstruction which more often ensures it occurs, since it often doesn't to
embarrassing degrees in today's world. And the counter-examples, movie stars
who get points, are excesses in the opposite direction. Do the supporting
actors and stand-ins merely get less points? No, they get no points at all.

But you see? Commercial piracy isn't where the problem is, and non-commercial
piracy is just physics. It is now possible to have dutiful reproductions of
these performances conveniently delivered. In a way that for whatever reasons
cannot be equivalently provided commercially. So I say the only way this
could all end up is that commercial access to recorded performances has just
become outrageously cheaper, so cheap in fact that it is no longer possible to
commercially compete on that basis. Though the exclusive rights to the author
remain perfectly intact, if not heightened by the reduction in the amount of
capital necessary to perform, their value has suffered a correction in the
value to those who 'own the rights' to those performances. Perfect
reproductions are now free. Only limiting access to them provides value.

That smacks of monopolization. That's not earning a profit by finding and
printing as many copies of the best performances you can. That's earning a
profit by being the only one able to do so, and refusing to, so that those few
prints you make (all of them at negligible if not zero cost) can be priced not
just considerably but outrageously more than competitive alternatives. How
big is the gap between the discount bin and the current hits?

Piracy is just the competitive alternative to monopolization of the current
hits. It is the only legal alternative, since current hits, like classics and
all IP, are inherently unique, and never appreciably interchangeable with
competitive alternatives. Copyright infringement isn't criminal until you
make too many copies. And suing twelve year old girls is never cool.

No prior restraint (no DRM) but catch the violators.

Indeed. Not to mention redefining 'violators' so that we can appreciate the
change in the business model that technology should have caused in the
industry but hasn't because of the smoke-screen of copyright law. And the
same thing has happened in the software industry, using trade secret law
disguised as copyright law.

Think about what happens when somebody steals thousands (or millions) of
dollars in IP vs the guy who hot wires my $500 beater car.

I don't know what guy you'd be talking about, there are so many ways of being
said to "steal" IP when theft isn't possible to begin with, as I've pointed
out.

The police
will chase and in some cases kill the car thief (not to mention a few
innocent bystanders). But everybody whines about the injustice of
slapping a measly civil fine on a software pirate.

When all the pirate did was share files that were already available on the
Internet? I say if the 'record industry' wants to sue people, they need to
prove that they are the ones that put the files on the file-sharing network to
begin with. Just suing everyone who participates, who never pirated anything
to their knowledge, unfortunately works, from the perspective of the
plaintiffs, as long as everyone settles. That suggests intimidation more than
protection of property rights.

A "measly civil fine" is just legal extortion, in my opinion. When you can
buy songs online for nine cents instead of ninety nine cents, piracy will
disappear, and there will be a lot more music. So who would make less money?
And why do they think they deserve more?

 

[John Doe]

You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property".
It's a way lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the
reality. Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's
meaningless.

If I own a loaf of bread, or a pint of beer (just to use Adam Smith's
examples), I may choose to eat it or drink it, or to sell it for
money. And if I sell my loaf of bread I don't have it anymore.

If I write a program which which makes using my computer much easier, that
program has value to me whether I share it or not.

If I write a book, a poem, a song I do it because I want to
communicate, to share. If I give you a copy of my song it is because I
want someone to listen to it, but I still have my song.

I sort of agree with that, the entertainment part of your argument to this
point.

The supply of intellectual work is unlimited. I may sing my song to a
small group of friends or to an audience of million of people (better
not, I'm not too good at singing, but this is just an example), and my
song is still there. Therefore the law of demand and supply doesn't
apply. Intellectual work is not property, and is not a good for trade.

Again, I think that applies to entertainment but not work things.

Moreover, restraints on the usage of intellectual work, strongly
reduce the progress, and the advantages that people may get from it.
If I write a song, and give exclusive rights to a single singer,
you'll never get the opportunity to hear it from another, better
singer. If I write a program, with some good innovative ideas, and I
keep it proprietary and secret, all the progress which this could
produce in other programs is inhibited.

We reward people for coming up with innovative programs because we want
them to keep it up. We encourage our society to innovate by reward for
doing so. And that law is one reason why our United States is chock full of
innovation.

Currently, Microsoft is unfairly being protected by our courts but there
are lots of good examples of enforcement.

I think maybe source code should be open but copyright law should be
enforced. Which brings me to another point. If Microsoft were forced to
open Windows, all of the programmers in other countries which do not
respect clear/simple copyright law would copy and modify Windows source
code without restraint. Intellectual Property in the New World Order is a
fascinating problem IMO.

I believe that the copyright concept, as it was when first introduced,
was a reasonable compromise, between the need to make intellectual
work freely available to everybody, and the need to provide a
reasonable reward to the author.

Heheh. See my comments above.

I usually agree with you and respect your ability to clearly understand
these issues.

<snip>

 

[Giuliano Colla]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:
[snip]

You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's a way
lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.

I'm going to disagree, just to be consistent with a different previous
(current?) thread. You have correctly defined the source of the value of
intellectual property, but not the whole character of it. It takes lawyers,
or some other sophist, to 'distort reality' into allowing intellectual
property (which we can assume doesn't exist or it wouldn't require
intellectual identification) to be dealt with as it must be: commercial
capital representing the exclusive rights of an author.

My first doubt. The exclusive rights of an author can be object of trade?
Just to make an example, I have a son. My rights (and duties) as a father cannot
be easily traded. Only some aspects of them, dealing with physical objects can be.
Our discussion would be pointless if we didn't have laws and authorities to
enforce them. Without them there would be no protection whatsoever to
intellectual work, and to any kind of property. But laws take care of what is
supposed to be "in behalf of public interest".
So we have to items:

1) which part of the rights of an author can actually be considered object of
trade? If we try to define them better, we may discover that we're forced to
deal with physical objects, and not with abstract "rights".

2) which part of what can be object of trade should be covered by laws in behalf
of public interest?

[snip]

But if you give away a recording of your performance of your song, do you want
them to reproduce it for other people?

You see, the catch is somewhere here.

I cannot give away my being the author: that's something which cannot be traded.

I can give away a physical copy of my work, and may dictate some rules on how it
can be used. But how can I grant "exclusive rights"? When I have another copy
with me, and I'm still the author? In any civilized country you cannot sell
yourself as a slave. Nobody feels that as a limitation of his rights, on the
contrary it is felt as a progress in civilization.

I have the feeling that if the matter is brought back where it belongs, i.e. a
fair usage of a copy of intellectual work, and we stop babbling about a general
"intellectual property", then a lot of things become much more clear.

[snip]

 

[Giuliano Colla]

[snip]

If I own a loaf of bread, or a pint of beer (just to use Adam Smith's
examples), I may choose to eat it or drink it, or to sell it for
money. And if I sell my loaf of bread I don't have it anymore.

If I write a program which which makes using my computer much easier, that
program has value to me whether I share it or not.

I've composed a lullaby for my son when he was a few months old. It has value to
me, maybe to him. But if I believed to have composed a masterwork, I'd try to
make it known more widely. The same holds true for a program I write for my
personale usage. If I think it to be good enough, I like to make it known more
widely. The IP issue comes out only at this point.

I sort of agree with that, the entertainment part of your argument to this
point.




Again, I think that applies to entertainment but not work things.

Both in entertainment and in work things, what you actually trade are physical
copies of your work. Without a physical copy there's no intellectual work to
speak of.

If we start considering things by this point of view everything becomes much
clearer and simpler.

If you write a wonderful program while working for a company, you've been using
the company facilities to generate a physical copy. You can't make a copy
without stealing company's property. So when you leave you can't take a copy
with you. But you're taking with you the capability of doing it, the knowledge
of the line of reasoning which brought you to make the correct choices. The
really "intellectual" part of your work is something you can't give away, you
can't trade.
If while at work for that company you simply "thought" of a wonderful program,
but you didn't write a line of code on a company keyboard, you will take this
wonderful program concept with you, and nobody can object. You see,
"intellectual property" is very hard to grab, without physical copies.

We reward people for coming up with innovative programs because we want
them to keep it up. We encourage our society to innovate by reward for
doing so. And that law is one reason why our United States is chock full of
innovation.

Currently, Microsoft is unfairly being protected by our courts but there
are lots of good examples of enforcement.

I think maybe source code should be open but copyright law should be
enforced. Which brings me to another point. If Microsoft were forced to
open Windows, all of the programmers in other countries which do not
respect clear/simple copyright law would copy and modify Windows source
code without restraint. Intellectual Property in the New World Order is a
fascinating problem IMO.

If Microsoft is unable to compete with third world programmers who are aware
only of what is already in the market, by providing innovative ideas, better
concepts, backed by sound organization, marketing resources, and an awful lot of
money to invest in R&D, then I'm afraid that Microsoft isn't worth that much!

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:
[snip]

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

Cheers -- Martha Adams


You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's a way
lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.

I'm going to disagree, just to be consistent with a different previous
(current?) thread. You have correctly defined the source of the value of
intellectual property, but not the whole character of it. It takes lawyers,
or some other sophist, to 'distort reality' into allowing intellectual
property (which we can assume doesn't exist or it wouldn't require
intellectual identification) to be dealt with as it must be: commercial
capital representing the exclusive rights of an author.

My first doubt. The exclusive rights of an author can be object of trade?

Indeed. Same thing with material property; you can not only use it yourself,
you can sell licenses to use it to others.

Just to make an example, I have a son. My rights (and duties) as a father cannot
be easily traded.

As was recently mentioned in a related thread, the term for this kind of right
is "inalienable". They cannot be legally traded, however easy it may be.

Only some aspects of them, dealing with physical objects can be.

You're trying to make a distinction that isn't used to explain a problem that
doesn't exist. Trading property rights happens all the time.

Our discussion would be pointless if we didn't have laws and authorities to
enforce them. Without them there would be no protection whatsoever to
intellectual work, and to any kind of property. But laws take care of what is
supposed to be "in behalf of public interest".
So we have to items:

1) which part of the rights of an author can actually be considered object of
trade?

Whichever parts are specified in the contract/license. Only the author has
the exclusive right to make copies until he sells that right (limited
according to his pleasure and the market) to someone else.

If we try to define them better, we may discover that we're forced to
deal with physical objects, and not with abstract "rights".

Unfortunately, we are dealing with intellectual property, not physical
objects, so 'abstract' is the only way to go.

2) which part of what can be object of trade should be covered by laws in behalf
of public interest?

The part that is too irrevocably entangled with human dignity. Rights to
intellectual property don't really qualify.

[snip]

But if you give away a recording of your performance of your song, do you want
them to reproduce it for other people?

You see, the catch is somewhere here.

I cannot give away my being the author: that's something which cannot be traded.

Sure it can. Work-for-hire is not at all rare.

I can give away a physical copy of my work, and may dictate some rules on how it
can be used.

In a way, that isn't a 'may', that is a 'must'. Copyright law applies, even
if they aren't rules that you personally dictated. You can void them if you
really want, but that is very much the same as giving away your being the
author.

But how can I grant "exclusive rights"?

Any right (to copy your work) you grant is by default exclusive: only the
rights you list in the contract are traded.

When I have another copy
with me, and I'm still the author?

The difference between an original copy and the intellectual property itself
is abstract. But it does no good to be purposefully naive about it.

In any civilized country you cannot sell
yourself as a slave.

In any civilized country (defining civilized tautologically, of course, as
only countries that don't allow slavery) you cannot sell anyone else as a
slave, either. According to the Berne Convention, you cannot fail to
copyright a work, either; you can only fail to register your copyright. You
own the copyright to a work immediately upon creating the work by first fixing
it into a physical form.

Nobody feels that as a limitation of his rights, on the
contrary it is felt as a progress in civilization.

This isn't entirely true. There are some people who believe they should have
the right to decide if they can sell themselves into slavery. The
philosophical question must be addressed independently of the political
question or there can be no discussion, IMHO.

I have the feeling that if the matter is brought back where it belongs, i.e. a
fair usage of a copy of intellectual work, and we stop babbling about a general
"intellectual property", then a lot of things become much more clear.

If you give away a recording of your song, do you want them to reproduce it
for others? Babbling about fair use makes it far less clear, not more so.

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

[snip]

If I own a loaf of bread, or a pint of beer (just to use Adam Smith's
examples), I may choose to eat it or drink it, or to sell it for
money. And if I sell my loaf of bread I don't have it anymore.

If I write a program which which makes using my computer much easier, that
program has value to me whether I share it or not.

I've composed a lullaby for my son when he was a few months old. It has value to
me, maybe to him. But if I believed to have composed a masterwork, I'd try to
make it known more widely. The same holds true for a program I write for my
personale usage. If I think it to be good enough, I like to make it known more
widely. The IP issue comes out only at this point.

If you want to limit your audience to your son, that's fine, but it's still
IP. If it was worth $5, you'd be an idiot not to take it if you could. Good
software is software written for other people to use; not personal hobbyist
hacks.

Both in entertainment and in work things, what you actually trade are physical
copies of your work. Without a physical copy there's no intellectual work to
speak of.

Nevertheless, the intellectual property is only the intellectual property, not
a physical copy of the intellectual property.

If we start considering things by this point of view everything becomes much
clearer and simpler.

You keep saying that, but I haven't found it to be true. ;-)

If you write a wonderful program while working for a company, you've been using
the company facilities to generate a physical copy. You can't make a copy
without stealing company's property.

For most people that isn't why it is the company's property; it is that if
they pay you to write programs, they own the programs your write as
work-for-hire, regardless of who owns the "facilities".

So when you leave you can't take a copy
with you. But you're taking with you the capability of doing it, the knowledge
of the line of reasoning which brought you to make the correct choices.

Not always. Most high-end programmers trade the rights to use that knowledge
to improve their employment situation.

The
really "intellectual" part of your work is something you can't give away, you
can't trade.

That isn't the intellectual part of the property, I don't think. You aren't
describing the intellectual property at all, but the talent or skills of
creating intellectual property. The intellectual part of intellectual
property is the fact that it isn't the physical copy of the work, but some
imaginary (abstract) "the work itself".

If while at work for that company you simply "thought" of a wonderful program,
but you didn't write a line of code on a company keyboard, you will take this
wonderful program concept with you, and nobody can object.

That isn't necessarily true. They can certainly object, the question is
whether the judge will agree with their objection.

You see,
"intellectual property" is very hard to grab, without physical copies.

Impossible, in fact. That isn't a coincidence.

[...]

If Microsoft is unable to compete with third world programmers who are aware
only of what is already in the market, by providing innovative ideas, better
concepts, backed by sound organization, marketing resources, and an awful lot of
money to invest in R&D, then I'm afraid that Microsoft isn't worth that much!

They don't need any of that. It isn't their copyright that keeps MS on top,
it is their trade secrets.

If you want thing to be clear, you're going to have to stop confusing things.
;-)

[...]

 

[Giuliano Colla]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

[snip]

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

Cheers -- Martha Adams


You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's a way
lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.


I'm going to disagree, just to be consistent with a different previous
(current?) thread. You have correctly defined the source of the value of
intellectual property, but not the whole character of it. It takes lawyers,
or some other sophist, to 'distort reality' into allowing intellectual
property (which we can assume doesn't exist or it wouldn't require
intellectual identification) to be dealt with as it must be: commercial
capital representing the exclusive rights of an author.

My first doubt. The exclusive rights of an author can be object of trade?

Indeed. Same thing with material property; you can not only use it yourself,
you can sell licenses to use it to others.

Just to make an example, I have a son. My rights (and duties) as a father cannot
be easily traded.

As was recently mentioned in a related thread, the term for this kind of right
is "inalienable". They cannot be legally traded, however easy it may be.

Only some aspects of them, dealing with physical objects can be.

You're trying to make a distinction that isn't used to explain a problem that
doesn't exist. Trading property rights happens all the time.

[snip]

You see, Max, there's nothing wrong in what you say. But I'm still convinced
that the IP issue isn't handled properly, and my everyday experience continues
to confirm it. I'll try to explain with some examples.

My company supplies an US company some equipments to interface with their
equipments. We've been forced to horrible kludges, wich degrade performance and
increase the cost, in order not to modify a single bit of software or a pin in a
connector of the US equipment. As they don't need to keep backward
compatibility, I was wondering why they stubbornly refused even a minimal
change. Forced by my pressure, they've admitted that the original deisgners have
left, and they don't dare to touch anything. The company believes to detain the
IP of the project, but actually they only own a piece of equipment and a
program. If everything has been well documented, as it should, the time a new
designer will take to become fully aquainted with all the details compares with
the time required for the original design. If documentation is not so good (as
frequently happens) it may be cheaper to throw away the old design, and restart
from scratch. This is hard to explain to top management, because of the IP mith,
and therefore they accept lower performance and higher costs.

My company manufactures an equipment to produce neatly bound books, out of laser
printer output. It's the last step of the "print on demand" line. That's great
for enrollment papers and other financial documents produced by insurance and
fund companies. Well, a large American insurance company has purchased a couple
of machines, but they have left out the most important feature, which guarantees
output books 100% error free, because their IT department appears to be unable
to add a barcode to the printed image. The solution we've worked out, in order
to attain some degree of security, significantly degrades the performance
besides giving poorer security.
Either their IT are completely incapable, which is quite hard to believe, or
also in that case, they own a program but they don't know how to change it.

I've been speaking of software, because this NG is devoted to software issues,
but just think of a publisher which has bought the rights for a book. After the
hard cover edition, they want to make the paperback one, and because of the
different size, they need to cut a few thousand words in order to fit in the
standard book size. If that's done by the author, as usual, the result will be
almost the same as the original book, if it's done by someone else, you'll
usually find striking discrepancies.

Those are just a few examples, by I believe they illustrate my point.
Intellectual property rights are inalienable not because of a whim of a
legislator, but simply because intellectual property can't be transferred. All
you can trade is the commercial exploitation of Intellectual Work, of a specific
item. Once that is made clear, some aspect of current miths about IP will melt
like snow in the sun.

 

[Wesley VogelX]

When does the Reader's Digest version come out?

Wes

In

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

T. Max Devlin wrote:

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:


[snip]

So is there anyone out there who is actually thinking about socially
good intellectual property management?

Cheers -- Martha Adams


You open in a few words a huge problem!

I may contribute with my two pennies of musing on the subject.

The first point for me is to stop calling it "intellectual property". It's
a way lawyers have been using in the attempt to distort the reality.
Intellectual work has value only if it's shared. If not it's meaningless.


I'm going to disagree, just to be consistent with a different previous
(current?) thread. You have correctly defined the source of the value of
intellectual property, but not the whole character of it. It takes lawyers,
or some other sophist, to 'distort reality' into allowing intellectual
property (which we can assume doesn't exist or it wouldn't require
intellectual identification) to be dealt with as it must be: commercial
capital representing the exclusive rights of an author.

My first doubt. The exclusive rights of an author can be object of trade?

Indeed. Same thing with material property; you can not only use it yourself,
you can sell licenses to use it to others.

Just to make an example, I have a son. My rights (and duties) as a father
cannot be easily traded.

As was recently mentioned in a related thread, the term for this kind of
right is "inalienable". They cannot be legally traded, however easy it may
be.

Only some aspects of them, dealing with physical objects can be.

You're trying to make a distinction that isn't used to explain a problem that
doesn't exist. Trading property rights happens all the time.

[snip]

You see, Max, there's nothing wrong in what you say. But I'm still convinced
that the IP issue isn't handled properly, and my everyday experience continues
to confirm it. I'll try to explain with some examples.

My company supplies an US company some equipments to interface with their
equipments. We've been forced to horrible kludges, wich degrade performance
and increase the cost, in order not to modify a single bit of software or a
pin in a connector of the US equipment. As they don't need to keep backward
compatibility, I was wondering why they stubbornly refused even a minimal
change. Forced by my pressure, they've admitted that the original deisgners
have left, and they don't dare to touch anything. The company believes to
detain the IP of the project, but actually they only own a piece of equipment
and a program. If everything has been well documented, as it should, the time
a new designer will take to become fully aquainted with all the details
compares with the time required for the original design. If documentation is
not so good (as frequently happens) it may be cheaper to throw away the old
design, and restart from scratch. This is hard to explain to top management,
because of the IP mith, and therefore they accept lower performance and
higher costs.

My company manufactures an equipment to produce neatly bound books, out of
laser printer output. It's the last step of the "print on demand" line.
That's great for enrollment papers and other financial documents produced by
insurance and fund companies. Well, a large American insurance company has
purchased a couple of machines, but they have left out the most important
feature, which guarantees output books 100% error free, because their IT
department appears to be unable to add a barcode to the printed image. The
solution we've worked out, in order to attain some degree of security,
significantly degrades the performance besides giving poorer security.
Either their IT are completely incapable, which is quite hard to believe, or
also in that case, they own a program but they don't know how to change it.

I've been speaking of software, because this NG is devoted to software issues,
but just think of a publisher which has bought the rights for a book. After
the hard cover edition, they want to make the paperback one, and because of
the different size, they need to cut a few thousand words in order to fit in
the standard book size. If that's done by the author, as usual, the result
will be almost the same as the original book, if it's done by someone else,
you'll usually find striking discrepancies.

Those are just a few examples, by I believe they illustrate my point.
Intellectual property rights are inalienable not because of a whim of a
legislator, but simply because intellectual property can't be transferred. All
you can trade is the commercial exploitation of Intellectual Work, of a
specific item. Once that is made clear, some aspect of current miths about IP
will melt like snow in the sun.

 

[T. Max Devlin]

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say:

In alt.destroy.microsoft, I heard Giuliano Colla say: [...]

Just to make an example, I have a son. My rights (and duties) as a father cannot
be easily traded.

As was recently mentioned in a related thread, the term for this kind of right
is "inalienable". They cannot be legally traded, however easy it may be.

Only some aspects of them, dealing with physical objects can be.

You're trying to make a distinction that isn't used to explain a problem that
doesn't exist. Trading property rights happens all the time.

You see, Max, there's nothing wrong in what you say.

I appreciate your saying that, Giuliano. There is nothing wrong in what you
say, either, though I disagree with it. Thank you.

But I'm still convinced
that the IP issue isn't handled properly, and my everyday experience continues
to confirm it. I'll try to explain with some examples.

My company supplies an US company some equipments to interface with their
equipments. We've been forced to horrible kludges, wich degrade performance and
increase the cost, in order not to modify a single bit of software or a pin in a
connector of the US equipment. As they don't need to keep backward
compatibility, I was wondering why they stubbornly refused even a minimal
change. Forced by my pressure, they've admitted that the original deisgners have
left, and they don't dare to touch anything. The company believes to detain the
IP of the project, but actually they only own a piece of equipment and a
program.

I believe you mean "retain", and the corporate emphasis on conforming with
existing systems (and thereby supposedly minimizing cost) has nothing to do
with IP.

If everything has been well documented, as it should, the time a new
designer will take to become fully aquainted with all the details compares with
the time required for the original design.

Actually, I don't believe this has anything to do with 'original design' other
than the desire not to have to re-design the entire system because of some
dubious claim by someone that it would be a good idea.

If documentation is not so good (as
frequently happens) it may be cheaper to throw away the old design, and restart
from scratch. This is hard to explain to top management, because of the IP mith,
and therefore they accept lower performance and higher costs.

It is the fact of commerce, not the "IP myth", that would cause a company to
reject redesigning the system. If you can convince someone that spending a
lot of money will make them more money "in the long run", then what you have
is a business plan. Good luck.

My company manufactures an equipment to produce neatly bound books, out of laser
printer output. It's the last step of the "print on demand" line.

It also entirely relies on IP not being a myth, but a reality.

That's great
for enrollment papers and other financial documents produced by insurance and
fund companies. Well, a large American insurance company has purchased a couple
of machines, but they have left out the most important feature, which guarantees
output books 100% error free, because their IT department appears to be unable
to add a barcode to the printed image.

I can't see how that is possible. I think perhaps you are dealing with what
is reported to you, rather than what is.

The solution we've worked out, in order
to attain some degree of security, significantly degrades the performance
besides giving poorer security.
Either their IT are completely incapable, which is quite hard to believe, or
also in that case, they own a program but they don't know how to change it.

I don't see why it would be hard to believe that an IT department is any more
completely incapable than any other department. Unlike most people around
here, I don't attribute any great wisdom to IT people. Hell, I don't
attribute any wisdom to IT people. Nor anyone else, without a good reason.

I've been speaking of software, because this NG is devoted to software issues,
but just think of a publisher which has bought the rights for a book.

Should I think of them but not the author, or the printer, or the distributor,
or the reader?

After the
hard cover edition, they want to make the paperback one, and because of the
different size, they need to cut a few thousand words in order to fit in the
standard book size. If that's done by the author, as usual, the result will be
almost the same as the original book, if it's done by someone else, you'll
usually find striking discrepancies.

I don't get it. I understand your premise, but not how it illustrates your
point.

Those are just a few examples, by I believe they illustrate my point.
Intellectual property rights are inalienable not because of a whim of a
legislator, but simply because intellectual property can't be transferred.

Intellectual property rights CAN be transferred, just like any other rights
can.

All
you can trade is the commercial exploitation of Intellectual Work, of a specific
item. Once that is made clear, some aspect of current miths about IP will melt
like snow in the sun.

I don't understand what "aspects", nor what "current myth", you are referring
to. Did the author trade the rights to edit his work to the tune of several
thousand words deleted or didn't he? This seems to me a legal argument, not a
philosophical one.

The reason intellectual property is called intellectual property, in my
opinion, is because the "Intellectual Work" and the "exploitation" of the
Intellectual Work are one and the same thing. The reason exclusive rights are
reserved for the author is so that they can trade them. If they can't, then
owning intellectual property would be a pyrrhic kind of victory.