“Writers Can Prosper Without Intellectual Property”
by Gennady Stolyarov II
Link: http://mises.org/daily/4008
Excerpt:
Questions:
Do you think productivity in writing, inventions, et cetera fall or rise if we dissolved intellectual properties?
Is it just arbitrary that a thought (even if put down on paper) is sole property to any one person?
I’m not sure what turns on this debate outside the rights to preproduce, i.e. a copyrighted book cannot be reproduced without consent, normally for a fee, etc.
Why this is important is because the percentage of intellectual property the author of which benefits from such copyrighting is, I think, pretty small. Generally authors are paid some small royalty on book sales, but the people who hold the copyright (and really profit) are the publishers. It’s similar in the academic journal world – article authors almost never hold the copyright to their material, the journal does. I certainly think it’s true in journalism, my guess is that most journalist or writers make a wage or are paid a flat sum for work and do not benefit from the copyright.
The point is that most of the people turning out substantial intellectual property are not the ones benefiting (directly) from the copyright, the publishers of such material are. Of course, you might suggest that if those publishers didn’t benefit from the copyright the authors couldn’t benefit at all, but this isn’t true in all cases either in current fact or in theory. The point just is that given how little direct financial benefit there is from most intellectual property, it’s hard to imagine that being able to maintain intellectual property rights (which they can’t do most of the time anyway) is an incentive for the creators of such property.
So long as proper credit is attributed to authors I think a lack of “intellectual property” isn’t a big deal.
Also, I imagine the situation isn’t as clear cut with things like patents and more technology-oriented intellectual property, but here too I would guess a case could be made. To be honest though, it would be interesting to see what the intellectual development and property rights history was for some of the most influential and profitable inventions of the last century. For example, I know that the transistor was “invented” by some physicists at Bell labs. I wonder if those physicists ever held intellectual property on it, or if Bell labs did (or anyone at all).
I wonder if Bardeen and Brattain sat around thinking about how they could invent something to make them rich.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
I’m not sure what turns on this debate outside the rights to preproduce, i.e. a copyrighted book cannot be reproduced without consent, normally for a fee, etc.
Why this is important is because the percentage of intellectual property the author of which benefits from such copyrighting is, I think, pretty small. Generally authors are paid some small royalty on book sales, but the people who hold the copyright (and really profit) are the publishers. It’s similar in the academic journal world – article authors almost never hold the copyright to their material, the journal does. I certainly think it’s true in journalism, my guess is that most journalist or writers make a wage or are paid a flat sum for work and do not benefit from the copyright.
The point is that most of the people turning out substantial intellectual property are not the ones benefiting (directly) from the copyright, the publishers of such material are. Of course, you might suggest that if those publishers didn’t benefit from the copyright the authors couldn’t benefit at all, but this isn’t true in all cases either in current fact or in theory. The point just is that given how little direct financial benefit there is from most intellectual property, it’s hard to imagine that being able to maintain intellectual property rights (which they can’t do most of the time anyway) is an incentive for the creators of such property.
So long as proper credit is attributed to authors I think a lack of “intellectual property” isn’t a big deal. [/quote]
You make a decent point about copyright, as there will always be people willing to be creative and expressive regardless of whether they get paid or not. However, would the infrastructure exist that publicizes and disseminates creations without copyright? I think not.
I know it is easy to hate on the evil record company or the evil publishing company, who steals the writer’s or musician’s work and exploits it, but in the end I think a lot of creators would prefer to stick to their craft, ie creativity, and let a specialized company/management work on the marketing/distribution aspect, which would be nearly nonexistent without copyright.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Also, I imagine the situation isn’t as clear cut with things like patents and more technology-oriented intellectual property, but here too I would guess a case could be made. To be honest though, it would be interesting to see what the intellectual development and property rights history was for some of the most influential and profitable inventions of the last century. For example, I know that the transistor was “invented” by some physicists at Bell labs. I wonder if those physicists ever held intellectual property on it, or if Bell labs did (or anyone at all).
I wonder if Bardeen and Brattain sat around thinking about how they could invent something to make them rich. [/quote]
One of the best parts of the patent system is that it doesn’t require one to patent inventions if one would rather give it to the public. Accordingly, inventor’s like Benjamin Franklin are free to work on science and give it to the public domain because they do not want to profit from it.
However, without patents certain technologies would grind to a halt. The most compelling, yet most demonized, case for patents is the pharmaceutical industry. The average drug takes around 15 years to develop, at a cost of 1 billion dollars, and only 2 out of approved 5 drugs break even on cost. However, these drugs can be easily reverse engineered (I’ve seen reports of less than a week, but can’t be sure about that number). Would many companies in the world take 15 years and spend a billion dollars for something that can be taken within a month? I doubt it.
Of course, other fields lead to much more ambiguous results, such as software and business method patents. Personally I don’t necessarily think the public benefit is greater for awarding these patents, as the benefit of public disclosure is minimal and the cost of innovation is relatively low, but again I doubt that our software capabilities would be as far along as they are now without these patents. And again, if benevolent programs want to create better programs and give them to the public domain, the patent system does not prevent that.
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Also, I imagine the situation isn’t as clear cut with things like patents and more technology-oriented intellectual property, but here too I would guess a case could be made. To be honest though, it would be interesting to see what the intellectual development and property rights history was for some of the most influential and profitable inventions of the last century. For example, I know that the transistor was “invented” by some physicists at Bell labs. I wonder if those physicists ever held intellectual property on it, or if Bell labs did (or anyone at all).
I wonder if Bardeen and Brattain sat around thinking about how they could invent something to make them rich. [/quote]
One of the best parts of the patent system is that it doesn’t require one to patent inventions if one would rather give it to the public. Accordingly, inventor’s like Benjamin Franklin are free to work on science and give it to the public domain because they do not want to profit from it.
However, without patents certain technologies would grind to a halt. The most compelling, yet most demonized, case for patents is the pharmaceutical industry. The average drug takes around 15 years to develop, at a cost of 1 billion dollars, and only 2 out of approved 5 drugs break even on cost. However, these drugs can be easily reverse engineered (I’ve seen reports of less than a week, but can’t be sure about that number). Would many companies in the world take 15 years and spend a billion dollars for something that can be taken within a month? I doubt it.
Of course, other fields lead to much more ambiguous results, such as software and business method patents. Personally I don’t necessarily think the public benefit is greater for awarding these patents, as the benefit of public disclosure is minimal and the cost of innovation is relatively low, but again I doubt that our software capabilities would be as far along as they are now without these patents. And again, if benevolent programs want to create better programs and give them to the public domain, the patent system does not prevent that.[/quote]
I’m not sure if you read the article, but here is another question.
Do you think that fifteen years would be shorten and process more effective (and cheaper) if they knew that within a month someone could possibly reverse engineer their product? And people have been shown to buy majority of brand-names (first supplier) until a generic is produced, so would it be possible that even though someone recreated the drug a month later that they would get there year or so of the primary source and still cover cost (if cheaper) and possible that they would drop the price along with figuring out how to make the drug more effective to make; making it also cheaper to make then before while still keeping to cover costs?
Even though this is not the topic at hand, but what if the governmental bureaucracy of the FDA was dissembled do you think the inventions would come faster as the problems arose?
Third, stuff like viagra which supposedly was made for hikers to have more blood flow as it’s primary reason and ED as it’s secondary (after figuring out the side effects, I bet that was awkward climbing with a boner) do you think that a fifteen year patent would have given them time to cover there costs if they just stayed as an outdoorsman product?
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
I’m not sure if you read the article, but here is another question.
Do you think that fifteen years would be shorten and process more effective (and cheaper) if they knew that within a month someone could possibly reverse engineer their product? And people have been shown to buy majority of brand-names (first supplier) until a generic is produced, so would it be possible that even though someone recreated the drug a month later that they would get there year or so of the primary source and still cover cost (if cheaper) and possible that they would drop the price along with figuring out how to make the drug more effective to make; making it also cheaper to make then before while still keeping to cover costs?
Even though this is not the topic at hand, but what if the governmental bureaucracy of the FDA was dissembled do you think the inventions would come faster as the problems arose?
Third, stuff like viagra which supposedly was made for hikers to have more blood flow as it’s primary reason and ED as it’s secondary (after figuring out the side effects, I bet that was awkward climbing with a boner) do you think that a fifteen year patent would have given them time to cover there costs if they just stayed as an outdoorsman product?[/quote]
Oops, sorry I just read the blurb you cut/pasted, but now I have read the article. An interesting read but not sure if I buy into it, especially in today’s market.
If we are going to stick with the topic of pharamaceuticals, then you are absolutely right, the FDA is at the heart of the topic at hand. 90% of drugs fail during clinical trials, and absorb 80-90% of drug devvelopment (spanning I believe around 10 years). Despite the technological advancement in the process of drug development, drugs are actually costing more to produce and fewer are put out every year, for two main reasons: 1) the easiest drugs have already been found and 2) FDA regulations are increasingly stringent.
Given the above, no, I do not think under current regulations the 15 year development timeline could be reduced. Drug companies must file their patent application before the clinical trials even start (patent protection is 20 years from the date of filing, although there are a special rules in pharma to extend), so their exclusivity clock is already ticking, and it is in their best interest to get to market ASAP.
Your Viagra example is also very telling of drug process. Drug companies know the statistics I mentioned in the previous post, and expect the majority of to flop or just hopefully break even. However, it is that small chance of a blockbuster drug that keeps them coming to the plate. So they would have gone to market as an outdoorsman drug, and hoped to break even, but every now and again, fortune smiles upon them and they get a huge success, which allows for the huge R&D as well as inevitable failures that the drug game entails.
In my opinion, this is not the best work I’ve seen on the Mises Institute site.
If the contention is that writers can “thrive” without the benefit of copyright protection, then the whole thing can devolve into ridiculous subjectivity. How do you define thrive? Yes, I believe the author presented viable alternatives to making a living as a writer other than the traditional copyright, publishing options, advances and residuals. All of them are available to writers right now.
Anyone is free to persue them to any degree they wish. “We” all provide content (of varying quality) for this website every day. We are not compensated monetarily for our contributions, but I am sure that T Nation or Biotest benefit to some degree from our production, or they would not provide the medium and cover its cost. We derive some value in doing so, or we would not participate.
The next question becomes, even if they could thrive without intellectual protections, should they then be forced to loose such intellectual protection? Does an artist have the right to protection and compensation for a period of time? I can think of no other honest answer than yes. The creator of intellectual property should have some degree of control over its use and distribution. They are also free to give it away.
The one thing that kept coming to me as I read the article, was that the authors methods seemed to promote quantity over quality. That is one unfortunate side of the internet. Any jackass can publish anything they want to. Throw enough crap against the wall and sooner or later something is bound to stick.
With protection of intellectual property, the creator has a say in the presentation and dissemination of his creation. Maybe equally important, the publisher, or original purchaser of the creation has a say in “quality control.” Publishers and editors can help insure that the product is of good quality. The can also make the decision in how to promote.
If they had no other advantage than “first to market,” how much effort is going to be expended in making the product the best it can possible be, if someone can immediately copy your work, and because of not having the time, man hours and other expense, almost immediately undercut and out compete you in the same market.
I believe Stokedporcupine8 made a lot of good points. However, just because a significant portion of artist are not substantially benefiting from their work, I would venture to guess that has more to to with the market in which they chose to participate and the audience they want to serve. If I chose to create a product that only a handful of people have an interest in, then I have decided that money is not my prime motivator. Other intrinsic rewards are driving my actions.
Are you serious? Would the internet suddenly stop existing without intellectual property?
There is no such thing as intellectual property. You cannot copyright an idea (or at least one should not be able to).
Think about this argument on its face. What would have happened had someone claimed a copyright on some sort of knowledge like physics had that right existed, for example?
Intellectual property creates barriers to the expansion of technology. There are some who claim that people who derive their income on creativity would not exist but a larger argument can be made that it isn’t the content that people can own but rather the media on which it is printed (created), for example. Content will always strive to be free because people always share ideas. No one can claim an original owner of an idea and least wise none could prove to be either.
As for the internet argument: the internet only exists because people are free to use the technologies to improve it where they see best. This cannot happen with closed source technologies. Even Microsoft has to open its .NET platform for free so that developers will create content for users even though they will always strive to keep the OS itself closed source.
Intellectual property is bad for civilization.
[quote]JEATON wrote:
I believe Stokedporcupine8 made a lot of good points. However, just because a significant portion of artist are not substantially benefiting from their work, I would venture to guess that has more to to with the market in which they chose to participate and the audience they want to serve. If I chose to create a product that only a handful of people have an interest in, then I have decided that money is not my prime motivator. Other intrinsic rewards are driving my actions. [/quote]
You slightly misunderstood my main point. The question at hand, I thought, was what effect it would have on the creation of intellectual property if there were no copyrights for it.
The point wasn’t that most creators of intellectual property – fiction books, academic material, news pieces, etc. – don’t substantially benefit from their work, most of the better ones surely make a good living off what they do. The point was that they don’t receive this benefit directly from the copyright, they receive this benefit because they are paid some salary or piecework for their property by someone – a publisher, university, newspaper, etc. – who then holds the copyright and benefits from it.
Thus if the question is about how much of an incentive copyright makes for the creators of intellectual property, I’d say little for most of them. Of course some super stars who can demand high royalties for their products profit, but those are a small percentage. The real question becomes whether these creators can only make a living in a publishing system that depends on copyright, or to what extend the publishing system we have now really depends on it.
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
However, without patents certain technologies would grind to a halt. The most compelling, yet most demonized, case for patents is the pharmaceutical industry. The average drug takes around 15 years to develop, at a cost of 1 billion dollars, and only 2 out of approved 5 drugs break even on cost. However, these drugs can be easily reverse engineered (I’ve seen reports of less than a week, but can’t be sure about that number). Would many companies in the world take 15 years and spend a billion dollars for something that can be taken within a month? I doubt it.
[/quote]
I think this is a nice example to balance out my mention of the transistor.
[quote]
Of course, other fields lead to much more ambiguous results, such as software and business method patents. Personally I don’t necessarily think the public benefit is greater for awarding these patents, as the benefit of public disclosure is minimal and the cost of innovation is relatively low, but again I doubt that our software capabilities would be as far along as they are now without these patents. And again, if benevolent programs want to create better programs and give them to the public domain, the patent system does not prevent that.[/quote]
I have to disagree with you here though. I think it’s very clear that the domination of the software market and all the associated copyrights has lead to less than optimal software.
[quote]JEATON wrote:
With protection of intellectual property, the creator has a say in the presentation and dissemination of his creation. Maybe equally important, the publisher, or original purchaser of the creation has a say in “quality control.” Publishers and editors can help insure that the product is of good quality. The can also make the decision in how to promote.
[/quote]
While I think this is an extremely important point, I’m not sure that copyright is a necessary condition for quality control.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Are you serious? Would the internet suddenly stop existing without intellectual property?[/quote]
Not the internet, I mean a recording industry that sees a young talent, surrounds him/her with other talent, producing, and marketing to get that person to the top. The internet surely has revolutionized the music industy, as smaller groups truly can make an impact by doing their own footwork and generating their own publicity via the internet. If musicians really want to get by without copyright, more power to them, nothing is forcing them to use it.
Also, great point above by Jeaton about “quality”, I was thinking the same thing. Would Herbert have spent nearly a decade writing Dune if all he got, or all his publisher got, was first run? Doubtful. Instead, we would get the subsequent shitbombs that the came out as the series progressed.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
We have to make sure that we get our terminology right, as copyright and patents are two different things. Patents are for the idea itself, whereas copyright is the embodiment of the software itself. I do believe in copyright for software so that someone can’t just directly copy it and make it their own.
Patents for software, on the other hand, do seem more dubious, in that 1) the public benefits of disclosure seem relatively low, and 2) the R&D requirements for software also seem relatively low in order to give a 20 year right of exclusion for this industry that is growing at an extremely fast rate.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no such thing as intellectual property. You cannot copyright an idea (or at least one should not be able to).
Think about this argument on its face. What would have happened had someone claimed a copyright on some sort of knowledge like physics had that right existed, for example?
Intellectual property creates barriers to the expansion of technology. There are some who claim that people who derive their income on creativity would not exist but a larger argument can be made that it isn’t the content that people can own but rather the media on which it is printed (created), for example. Content will always strive to be free because people always share ideas. No one can claim an original owner of an idea and least wise none could prove to be either.
As for the internet argument: the internet only exists because people are free to use the technologies to improve it where they see best. This cannot happen with closed source technologies. Even Microsoft has to open its .NET platform for free so that developers will create content for users even though they will always strive to keep the OS itself closed source.
Intellectual property is bad for civilization.[/quote]
I know I won’t convince you substantively about intellectual property, but I think we at least need a baseline understanding of the intellectual property fields before we can dismiss them.
Copyright: copyright is protection of an expression that is fixed in a medium (think book, computer code, painting, etc). Hence, you cannot copyright the law of gravity. You also cannot copyright ideas, but only one expression of ideas. You can copyright your particular physics textbook or treatise, you cannot copyright the underlying ideas.
Patent: patents are for inventions, which are applications of ideas. You cannot patent an law of nature or an abstract idea. The main purposes of patent law is 1) to provide public disclosure of inventions and 2) foster an environment where people are willing to invest in R&D. For these benefits we give the inventors a limited period of exclusivity.
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no such thing as intellectual property. You cannot copyright an idea (or at least one should not be able to).
Think about this argument on its face. What would have happened had someone claimed a copyright on some sort of knowledge like physics had that right existed, for example?
Intellectual property creates barriers to the expansion of technology. There are some who claim that people who derive their income on creativity would not exist but a larger argument can be made that it isn’t the content that people can own but rather the media on which it is printed (created), for example. Content will always strive to be free because people always share ideas. No one can claim an original owner of an idea and least wise none could prove to be either.
As for the internet argument: the internet only exists because people are free to use the technologies to improve it where they see best. This cannot happen with closed source technologies. Even Microsoft has to open its .NET platform for free so that developers will create content for users even though they will always strive to keep the OS itself closed source.
Intellectual property is bad for civilization.[/quote]
I know I won’t convince you substantively about intellectual property, but I think we at least need a baseline understanding of the intellectual property fields before we can dismiss them.
Copyright: copyright is protection of an expression that is fixed in a medium (think book, computer code, painting, etc). Hence, you cannot copyright the law of gravity. You also cannot copyright ideas, but only one expression of ideas. You can copyright your particular physics textbook or treatise, you cannot copyright the underlying ideas.
Patent: patents are for inventions, which are applications of ideas. You cannot patent an law of nature or an abstract idea. The main purposes of patent law is 1) to provide public disclosure of inventions and 2) foster an environment where people are willing to invest in R&D. For these benefits we give the inventors a limited period of exclusivity.[/quote]
R&D becomes cheaper where there is competition of ideas though the profits themselves become diminished. People who understand the value of collaborative research understand this.
Intellectual property destroys collaboration. What’s worse is that the idea of intellectual property completely bastardizes the entire notion of what property is.
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no such thing as intellectual property. You cannot copyright an idea (or at least one should not be able to).
Think about this argument on its face. What would have happened had someone claimed a copyright on some sort of knowledge like physics had that right existed, for example?
Intellectual property creates barriers to the expansion of technology. There are some who claim that people who derive their income on creativity would not exist but a larger argument can be made that it isn’t the content that people can own but rather the media on which it is printed (created), for example. Content will always strive to be free because people always share ideas. No one can claim an original owner of an idea and least wise none could prove to be either.
As for the internet argument: the internet only exists because people are free to use the technologies to improve it where they see best. This cannot happen with closed source technologies. Even Microsoft has to open its .NET platform for free so that developers will create content for users even though they will always strive to keep the OS itself closed source.
Intellectual property is bad for civilization.[/quote]
I know I won’t convince you substantively about intellectual property, but I think we at least need a baseline understanding of the intellectual property fields before we can dismiss them.
Copyright: copyright is protection of an expression that is fixed in a medium (think book, computer code, painting, etc). Hence, you cannot copyright the law of gravity. You also cannot copyright ideas, but only one expression of ideas. You can copyright your particular physics textbook or treatise, you cannot copyright the underlying ideas.
Patent: patents are for inventions, which are applications of ideas. You cannot patent an law of nature or an abstract idea. The main purposes of patent law is 1) to provide public disclosure of inventions and 2) foster an environment where people are willing to invest in R&D. For these benefits we give the inventors a limited period of exclusivity.[/quote]
I was just getting back to addressing this, put you covered it well.
Copyright protects your unique expression of an idea.
Patent protects an new and unique application of an idea.
[quote]JEATON wrote:
[quote]TBT4ver wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
There is no such thing as intellectual property. You cannot copyright an idea (or at least one should not be able to).
Think about this argument on its face. What would have happened had someone claimed a copyright on some sort of knowledge like physics had that right existed, for example?
Intellectual property creates barriers to the expansion of technology. There are some who claim that people who derive their income on creativity would not exist but a larger argument can be made that it isn’t the content that people can own but rather the media on which it is printed (created), for example. Content will always strive to be free because people always share ideas. No one can claim an original owner of an idea and least wise none could prove to be either.
As for the internet argument: the internet only exists because people are free to use the technologies to improve it where they see best. This cannot happen with closed source technologies. Even Microsoft has to open its .NET platform for free so that developers will create content for users even though they will always strive to keep the OS itself closed source.
Intellectual property is bad for civilization.[/quote]
I know I won’t convince you substantively about intellectual property, but I think we at least need a baseline understanding of the intellectual property fields before we can dismiss them.
Copyright: copyright is protection of an expression that is fixed in a medium (think book, computer code, painting, etc). Hence, you cannot copyright the law of gravity. You also cannot copyright ideas, but only one expression of ideas. You can copyright your particular physics textbook or treatise, you cannot copyright the underlying ideas.
Patent: patents are for inventions, which are applications of ideas. You cannot patent an law of nature or an abstract idea. The main purposes of patent law is 1) to provide public disclosure of inventions and 2) foster an environment where people are willing to invest in R&D. For these benefits we give the inventors a limited period of exclusivity.[/quote]
I was just getting back to addressing this, put you covered it well.
Copyright protects your unique expression of an idea.
Patent protects an new and unique application of an idea.
[/quote]
There are no unique ideas.
Maybe, but their are unique expressions of ideas. The reason books like “Atlas Shrugged” are still lightning rods of controversy are that they are indeed unique expressions of an idea.
And although he did not live in an applicable time, who else could have expressed ideas with the breath and scope of Shakespeare?