Stranger: abskebabs: L.Brillouin, Science and Information theory (AcademicPress Inc, New York, 1956). The above is an excellent book on the subject, needless to say I must caution that I think Stranger is talking hogwash at this point. This is a very old book. Much progress has been made in 80's and 90's, particularly in computer science and complexity science.
abskebabs: L.Brillouin, Science and Information theory (AcademicPress Inc, New York, 1956). The above is an excellent book on the subject, needless to say I must caution that I think Stranger is talking hogwash at this point.
L.Brillouin, Science and Information theory (AcademicPress Inc, New York, 1956).
The above is an excellent book on the subject, needless to say I must caution that I think Stranger is talking hogwash at this point.
This is a very old book. Much progress has been made in 80's and 90's, particularly in computer science and complexity science.
Yes, applications and the wide reaching realisation of the relevance of Information Theory has broadened, but I don't think it's fair to say the core of it has changed(most of which can be found in Claude Shannon's original paper viewable for free online) . That's why the above is a good introduction in my opinion since it actually makes a good effort to define the scope of the subject, and does a less eclectic job of this than the wikipedia link.
Also, most of Information theory still concerns data compression, transmission and cryptography. These are relevant and represent problems where information is "scarce", yet this has nothing to do with replicating information that has been transmitted or received already, which is I guess what you are trying to draw a parallel with.
Needless to say there are not many good introductory books on the subject( I made a presentation on information theory last year).
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
Stranger: AJ: Good, so I can freely create and sell non-pixel-precise reproductions of paintings, photographs of them, etc. Only if you can prove that you did so without using the media, for then it is a derivative work and the original information producer owns all the rights.
AJ: Good, so I can freely create and sell non-pixel-precise reproductions of paintings, photographs of them, etc.
Good, so I can freely create and sell non-pixel-precise reproductions of paintings, photographs of them, etc.
Only if you can prove that you did so without using the media, for then it is a derivative work and the original information producer owns all the rights.
That's what you're trying to prove.
Why anarchy fails
Stranger:One cannot claim a refund from a barbershop because the scissors have not been worn down.
the labour applied to the cutting of hair is 'consumed' as in, both used 'utilised' and 'used up' (consumed!). the barber had been misled on the offer of a dollar to expend his labour. his labour is rivalrous. that labour has gone. perhaps it constitutes what has been lost? (the physical manipulation of bone and muscle, the expending of calories etc. etc. lost lost)
information on the contrary, is 'consumed' as in, used 'utilised' but not 'used up' (consumed!). it remains. the cd is a cd.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
nirgrahamUK: the labour applied to the cutting of hair is 'consumed' as in, both used 'utilised' and 'used up' (consumed!). the barber had been misled on the offer of a dollar to expend his labour. his labour is rivalrous. that labour has gone. perhaps it constitutes what has been lost? (the physical manipulation of bone and muscle, the expending of calories etc. etc. lost lost)
The labor of the information producer is also consumed to produce information.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Stranger:Even very short stories will be corrupted and some information lost when recited from memory. For an identical copy to be made requires the original media.
on the one hand:
World Records: Pi decimals recited from memory to 20,013 places.
on the other hand:
we have beautiful poems by wonderful authors/poets such as Richard Brautigan:
Stranger:The labor of the information producer is also consumed to produce information.
no, thats the barber claiming for his breakfast and his ride to work...........rather than the production of the unpaid for haircut
nirgrahamUK: World Records: Pi decimals recited from memory to 20,013 places.
Conservatively, 20,000 characters is about a 4,000 word story. Even short stories aren't that short.
nirgrahamUK: Stranger:The labor of the information producer is also consumed to produce information. no, thats the barber claiming for his breakfast and his ride to work...........rather than the production of the unpaid for haircut
These are production costs that are imputed to the cost of the haircut. You still cannot get them refunded.
Stranger:Conservatively, 20,000 characters is about a 4,000 word story. Even short stories aren't that short.
well, you can drop characters and the stories are still 'uncompressible' and can lead to the same knowledge.
Kim PeekKim Peek is a savant who was the model for the character Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman) in the film Rain Man. Kim Peek has memorized more than 7,600 books, knows the zip codes of every location in America, and the highways leading to any city or town in America. He is able to name the day of the week for any date, but does not otherwise have extraordinary calculating ability, unlike the Raymond Babbitt character in the film Rain Man. He and other savants are described in a Scientific American article on savant syndrome, and on the author's web site.
properly speaking a specific performance like the cutting of hair would not be enforcable. hence the practice of barbers would be to be paid before endeavouring to cut hair.
good point stranger.
Though I disagree with much of your post, it is very well put together and your arguments are clear. I'll only respond to two "fallacies" specifically, though.
Stranger: Fallacy 13: We might miraculously be able to independently produce identical information, therefore counterfeiters are presumed innocent This is an argument from miracle, and obviously does not enter a rational discourse on the legality of intellectual property, as a counterfeiter would have to provide evidence of a miracle in order to escape an accusation of counterfeiting unique information, just as a thief who uses the excuse of a miraculous possession of a car identical to the one coincidentally robbed from a property owner would have to prove the miracle to get away.
This is an argument from miracle, and obviously does not enter a rational discourse on the legality of intellectual property, as a counterfeiter would have to provide evidence of a miracle in order to escape an accusation of counterfeiting unique information, just as a thief who uses the excuse of a miraculous possession of a car identical to the one coincidentally robbed from a property owner would have to prove the miracle to get away.
This blatantly disregards the very libertarian principal of innocent until proven guilty, as in this scenario, the accused must prove his innocence. The owner of the stolen car must prove that the car is his.
Stranger: Fallacy 3: Information is more efficiently produced in common This is one argument that intellectual communists advance that may not be fallacious as it explicitly states their intention. Unfortunately it is gravely mistaken. It is usually expressed by a special class of information producers, computer geeks adept of the "open source" software movement. Open source software is a collection of software platforms licensed under agreements that require those who utilize it to share their changes (in this sense, also benefitting from market-produced intellectual property rights that limit some forms of use).
This is one argument that intellectual communists advance that may not be fallacious as it explicitly states their intention. Unfortunately it is gravely mistaken. It is usually expressed by a special class of information producers, computer geeks adept of the "open source" software movement. Open source software is a collection of software platforms licensed under agreements that require those who utilize it to share their changes (in this sense, also benefitting from market-produced intellectual property rights that limit some forms of use).
This demonstrates complete unfamiliarity with open source software. You are describing some, most likely only one, the GPL, open source licenses, but certainly not all. Below, you reference an open source license (BSD) which does not "require those who utilize it to share their changes", an obvious contradiction. One one hand you say, "Open source software is a collection of software platforms licensed under agreements that require those who utilize it to share their changes," and on the other, claiming an open source license has a clause "explicitly allowing for the privatisation [of code]."
Stranger:Its weakness is that the only producers who create this software are those who produce software for themselves. It is the same as an autarkic economic production process, only the low cost of copying information makes it possible for every autarkic producer to leverage the efforts of previous such autarkic producer. What it means, in essence, is that all open source software is produced to suit the needs of the producers, not the consumers. Those who do not have the skill of software production do not enjoy the benefits of this software. It is an explicit rejection of the division of labor and capitalism.
This, in essence, is a claim that improvements in capital goods do not affect consumer goods. If a software producer writes a piece of software, for himself, that allows him to produce consumer software more easily/efficiently/etc., that certainly is a benefit to consumers, in much the same way that Ford's assembly lines improved the quality of automobiles. It further assumes that those who purchase capital goods are not consumers of those capital goods.
Stranger:There does not exist mass-market open source software products which have overtaken their superior counterpart produced by capitalist software industries in market share.
This is is worded rather poorly. It assumes that for every open source product, there exists only one closed source competitor. This is clearly false. Next, it assumes that even if an open source product has surpassed a closed source product in market share, that the closed source product was not "superior". The open source Mozilla Firefox browser has a much larger market share than Opera browser, which is a closed source "counterpart produced by capitalist software industries". Google's open source Android operating system dominates Windows Mobile in market share. Ubuntu Linux has a much larger market share than the closed source Solaris.
If, however, you mean the dominant market share, Apache springs to mind. There is no closed source software that even approaches its market share. In fact, in terms of market share, it surpasses all of its counterparts combined, and by a very large margin. However, it's debatable that there even is a "superior counterpart". That is branching into capital goods, though, and as far as capital goods go, open source products dominate. 440+ of the 500 most powerful computers in the world run open source operating systems, including all of the top ten. In the world of distributed high performance computing, used for research and development as well as in engineering production, open source operating systems again dominate the market share, and by a huge margin.
Stranger:In fact, when Apple decided to rebuild their Operating System software on an open-source foundation, it had to reject the most popular platform Linux in favor of the less commonplace BSD due to the BSD license explicitly allowing for the privatisation of the investment Apple made in the mass-market viability of its platform. For this reason, the Apple OS is a testament to the limits of the open-source software model, not to its triumph.
No one forced Apple to use open source software as a base, nor was did Apple have to reject a Linux core. They chose to release their new operating system with closed source code, and that choice led to a rejection of a platform based on Gnu software (due to copyright, by the way). Obviously they found something beneficial in open source software, however. They dumped 15+ years of MacOS's code in favor of a complete rewrite using BSD code. Was this because the the open source BSD code was superior to MacOS, which was "produced by capitalist software industries"? Those making the decisions at Apple seemed to think so.
Windows uses BSD code, too, by the way. If you dig around in a Windows directory tree, you'll find a copy of the BSD license.
Stranger:Some intellectual communists recognize the non-viability of the open-source business model, but claim that the negative aspects can be mitigated by employing alternative business models, such as consumer support. This ignores the fact that capitalist producers have already made the choice not to employ such models despite being free to do so, which must mean that they recognize them as not being in the interests of their consumers and their own.
Microsoft, Oracle, Mathworks, Ansys and Siemens all produce closed source software. In some cases, the software is extremely complex, either by the sheer magnitude of variety of tasks the software can perform, or by the complexity of the tasks the software was written to solve. They all sell support. Microsoft releases patches regularly, at least partly based on defects reported by customers seeking support.
Stranger:In the case of consumer support, the relationship between consumer and producer remains fundamentally altered - the software producer is no longer rewarded for producing reliable, easy-to-use software, but for guiding the consumer through the complications of the software. It is therefore in the industry's interest to make complicated software, which turns out to be the case for all open source software platforms.
This is just silly. I deal with vendor support on a daily basis. 99% of the support sold by open source vendors, or by closed source vendors for that matter, is break-fix in nature. "Your software does not work as expected in these particular conditions or on this particular hardware platform," or something similar. In the case of many open source vendors, customers often pay for additional features to be added.
Hans Reiser sold (and may still sell, but I think he's busy in prison at the moment) support for the open source file system he wrote. There is nothing complex in the file system's use. Rather, he offered to include additional features for a fee.
faber est suae quisque fortunae
filc:
That is freakin hilarious.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Stranger:Although the moderators somehow tolerate insults coming from the illiterates of this forum, I have been notified that I cannot respond in kind, and so do not expect any further replies from me.
I apologize Stranger.
To be honest though, and quiet frankly, I'm surprised you responded to me at all. In all of the posts directed at me very little was said.
nirgrahamUK:Are you saying images can never be known since they are always information? that a poem cannot be known since it is information?
Regarding the short story concept and the capacities of human's to memorize large volumes of text or proprietary information see:
On another note, I still fail to see how the brain is not just another type of physical media. The argument's presented seem to hold arbitrary distinctions between the two. There are some limitations in capacities of brains vs other types of physical media and vice versa. All competing media types have their own limitations of varying degrees. For example there is a time when Flash is preferred to RAM, or RAM to HDD, or HDD to audio waves, or audio waves to written text, and finally written text to value's held in the brain. This could go on ofcoarse in any order needed. Information is only as scarce as there is limited capacity in storage media of the whole media network.
In other words, strictly speaking from a physics point of view, information is only as scarce as is the media it is housed on. That capacity grows exponentially every day with new media types and existing media types supporting larger capacities.
Read this article and feel free to guess how many yottabyte's exists globally in disk space. This doesn't reflect the amount of information stored in other formats like paper text ect...
http://www.itpro.co.uk/107203/global-disk-storage-market-revenues-up-137m
My problem with intellectual property is that for it to be recognised, the concept of ownership would have to be disconnected from objective reality. IMO Ownership needs to define what at a physical level it constitutes. IP doesnt do that, it only constitutes how something needs to be interpreted to fall under it. That makes ownership from subjective interpretation of objective reality to subjective interpretation of subjective reality. The definition of what will be interpreted will change from objective to subjective, a distinctive definition of the object of ownership will be lost.
Stranger: Fallacy 2: Information is not scarce Ideas can be communicated orally following their formulation in the mind, but useful information can only be produced while working with media, can only be inscribed and communicated through media, and can only be enjoyed and consumed through a media. Often they must be recorded from the physical world using sophisticated instruments to transform physical patterns from one aspect to another, recordable one. This physicality makes information essentially indistinguishable from media. Information can only exist if media takes a specific physical shape. For example, if one wants a recording of actors riding along a mountain range, one must send physical actors to this mountain range and record their physical presence with cameras writing on film or on digital memory, a process that requires a substantial capital investment. The uniqueness of such an event is self-evident, and even if another producer of information were to hire the same actors to ride along the same mountain range and film them with the same equipment, the resulting stream of information would still be completely different in physical structure. This makes information a good that is inevitably bound to a physical structure, which are scarce, therefore a tangible good. Any existence of an identical copy of this information stream is physically connected to this original recording through acts of communication with the producer's property, and it is impossible for it to be a result of an independent act of creation. In fact, one can determine whether or not an intellectual property is legitimate based on the nature of the information; when the information is unique and will never re-occur in the lifetime of the universe, then it is scarce and comes only from one original source. If the information is not unique and can re-occur again and again, then it is not scarce and can be considered super-abundant, as it would be in the Garden of Eden. For super-abundant information, no conflict can possibly arise, as no labor is ever spent in its production. For information that is unique and specific, the scarcity of this information will grant the one who possesses it a productive advantage, and many others will attempt to obtain this information. Because it is unique, the only way to obtain it is by either contracting with the original producer, or by violating this producer's physical property. This is why there is a market for information in the first place, and this is why counterfeiters seek to obtain this information in order to produce copies. Were the information not scarce, there would be no need at all to engage in copying! (In comparison with patents for ideas, one never sees internet pirates redistributing patented ideas, as these have no scarcity and no value.)
Ideas can be communicated orally following their formulation in the mind, but useful information can only be produced while working with media, can only be inscribed and communicated through media, and can only be enjoyed and consumed through a media. Often they must be recorded from the physical world using sophisticated instruments to transform physical patterns from one aspect to another, recordable one. This physicality makes information essentially indistinguishable from media. Information can only exist if media takes a specific physical shape. For example, if one wants a recording of actors riding along a mountain range, one must send physical actors to this mountain range and record their physical presence with cameras writing on film or on digital memory, a process that requires a substantial capital investment. The uniqueness of such an event is self-evident, and even if another producer of information were to hire the same actors to ride along the same mountain range and film them with the same equipment, the resulting stream of information would still be completely different in physical structure. This makes information a good that is inevitably bound to a physical structure, which are scarce, therefore a tangible good. Any existence of an identical copy of this information stream is physically connected to this original recording through acts of communication with the producer's property, and it is impossible for it to be a result of an independent act of creation.
In fact, one can determine whether or not an intellectual property is legitimate based on the nature of the information; when the information is unique and will never re-occur in the lifetime of the universe, then it is scarce and comes only from one original source. If the information is not unique and can re-occur again and again, then it is not scarce and can be considered super-abundant, as it would be in the Garden of Eden. For super-abundant information, no conflict can possibly arise, as no labor is ever spent in its production. For information that is unique and specific, the scarcity of this information will grant the one who possesses it a productive advantage, and many others will attempt to obtain this information. Because it is unique, the only way to obtain it is by either contracting with the original producer, or by violating this producer's physical property. This is why there is a market for information in the first place, and this is why counterfeiters seek to obtain this information in order to produce copies. Were the information not scarce, there would be no need at all to engage in copying! (In comparison with patents for ideas, one never sees internet pirates redistributing patented ideas, as these have no scarcity and no value.)
I do not follow why that passage explains any phenomenon besides that the medium itself often is not free. I do not understand why it implies that, if I buy a medium of some idea, I should be disallowed to manipulate that medium in certain ways, in my house, on my own property, via my own tools.
I also still want to know the answer to whether, if you are reading your own writing, which you consider to be your "intellectual property", you suppose that you "own" each ray of light which reflects off it, whether or not each of those rays of light remain among your other property or not. If not, again, I do not understand why you suppose the harvest of those rays of light to be some sort of crime.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I. Ryan:I also still want to know the answer to whether, if you are reading your own writing, which you consider to be your "intellectual property", you suppose that you "own" each ray of light which reflects off it, whether or not each of those rays of light remain among your other property or not. If not, again, I do not understand why you suppose the harvest of those rays of light to be some sort of crime.
Thanks for emphasising my own confusion....My hope is that stranger will not now be able to dismiss me as a 'lone fool' in this regard
Daniel Muffinburg: Stranger: It has been a recent fashion by some libertarians to denounce the legitimacy of intellectual property rights on the free market. They believe and promote the idea that all information should be owned in common by all men, and that no man should exclusively profit from any information. This makes them, by any honest definition of the term, intellectual communists. Who on this forum has done this?
Stranger: It has been a recent fashion by some libertarians to denounce the legitimacy of intellectual property rights on the free market. They believe and promote the idea that all information should be owned in common by all men, and that no man should exclusively profit from any information. This makes them, by any honest definition of the term, intellectual communists.
It has been a recent fashion by some libertarians to denounce the legitimacy of intellectual property rights on the free market. They believe and promote the idea that all information should be owned in common by all men, and that no man should exclusively profit from any information. This makes them, by any honest definition of the term, intellectual communists.
Who on this forum has done this?
JackCuyler: This blatantly disregards the very libertarian principal of innocent until proven guilty, as in this scenario, the accused must prove his innocence. The owner of the stolen car must prove that the car is his.
This is actually rather trivial since information is a unique event in the lifetime of the universe. Any copy is necessarily rooted in the original recording.
JackCuyler: This, in essence, is a claim that improvements in capital goods do not affect consumer goods. If a software producer writes a piece of software, for himself, that allows him to produce consumer software more easily/efficiently/etc., that certainly is a benefit to consumers, in much the same way that Ford's assembly lines improved the quality of automobiles. It further assumes that those who purchase capital goods are not consumers of those capital goods.
JackCuyler: No one forced Apple to use open source software as a base, nor was did Apple have to reject a Linux core. They chose to release their new operating system with closed source code, and that choice led to a rejection of a platform based on Gnu software (due to copyright, by the way). Obviously they found something beneficial in open source software, however. They dumped 15+ years of MacOS's code in favor of a complete rewrite using BSD code. Was this because the the open source BSD code was superior to MacOS, which was "produced by capitalist software industries"? Those making the decisions at Apple seemed to think so. Windows uses BSD code, too, by the way. If you dig around in a Windows directory tree, you'll find a copy of the BSD license.
My claim is that open source works to the extent that it is limited to producer goods (goods producers produce for themselves in autarky). Of course it can make their production process more efficient, however that still does not change the fact that they have no incentive to make any consumer goods unless these can be privatized. This is why Apple went with BSD.
JackCuyler:This is just silly. I deal with vendor support on a daily basis. 99% of the support sold by open source vendors, or by closed source vendors for that matter, is break-fix in nature. "Your software does not work as expected in these particular conditions or on this particular hardware platform," or something similar. In the case of many open source vendors, customers often pay for additional features to be added.
And in a capitalist production model, features are added in advance of the customer's need because of the speculative foresight of the capitalist. Their cost is spread out over many customers, and thus much more sophisticated software platforms are available.
You have named a long list of producer goods here (browsers and cell phone OSes are producer goods). You have yet to name a video game, or medical account processing system, that is open source. The reason is that it is impossible to produce in common.
I. Ryan: I do not follow why that passage explains any phenomenon besides that the medium itself often is not free. I do not understand why it implies that, if I buy a medium of some idea, I should be disallowed to manipulate that medium in certain ways, in my house, on my own property, via my own tools.
There is no such thing as a medium of ideas. Fallacy 2.
The limits on media are not limits of the physical behavior of light, but limits on your actions. It doesn't matter through what means this action is done, if your act has been copying, it is a violation of rights.
Stranger: There is no such thing as a medium of ideas. Fallacy 2.
Oh, then, I guess you cannot read this text.
Stranger: The limits on media are not limits of the physical behavior of light, but limits on your actions. It doesn't matter through what means this action is done, if your act has been copying, it is a violation of rights.
What are you even talking about?
I. Ryan: What are you even talking about?
Human action.
Stranger: Human action.
Erroneously and dogmatically.
I. Ryan: Stranger: Human action. Erroneously and dogmatically.
Do you have an argument to contribute?
Frankly I'm a bit disappointed. I expected that people would post new fallacies in this thread, not rehash the same ones.
Stranger: Do you have an argument to contribute? Frankly I'm a bit disappointed. I expected that people would post new fallacies in this thread, not rehash the same ones.
No, honest and respectful discussion clearly does not interest you.
Stranger, I would like to commend you for your rational and eloquent attempt at defending copyright. I agree with many of your arguments.
I may try to dissect or support your arguments in a later reading, but would just like to comment for now that seeking to identify a distinguishable characteristic between knowledge and information is going to undermine your argument. It shouldn't have any bearing.
1) It's an arbitrary distinction. Why protect information but not knowledge? To avoid implications that party X can voluntarily and contractually exercise a partial ownership claim over party Y's brain or will? To avoid the discussion of what the contract is, how it can end, and how it actually lasts forever, even if it was never agreed to in the first place? In other words, is it a contract for consumers or simply a warning to possible redistributers?
2) It's immeasurable - there is no standardized unit of knowledge. Given the different mental capabilities of individuals, the amount of precise information any person can remember is highly varied among individuals. What should be protected by copyright? That which a common man cannot remember, or a savant?
3) It's ultimately obsolete. I'm not claiming to be an accurate futurist, but it seems that there will be a gradual integration of computational technologies with the human will to a point where there is no distinction between knowledge and information. We get to a quasi-slavery argument. Can an individual contractually agree to limit the activities of his brain? I say sure - this is the essential fabric of a labor contract. But what are the terms of termination? Here, the labor contract is much simpler. No more work, and no more payments. What of the futuristic mind's memory? Can someone compell another to "forget" information?
Ultimately, if the brain is the storage area for knowledge, which is an abstract representation of information, this is still a controllable property of the individual whose brain it is. He may not be able to erase the memory, but he can control his brain's use of it. IE - he cannot claim his mass reproduction and sale of such information/knowledge was "outside of his control".
Similarly, if I download a work and can make a strong claim that I sincerely did not know I was receiving copyrighted information, it is obviously within my control to not redistribute the information. After being made aware that one is violating copyright, he should have no excuse to continue that doesn't amount to a full-scale attack on copyright's validity. I even have the power to erase it from whatever mediums I have reproduced it upon, although it is likely impossible to verify that this occurs without access to beliefs inside the mind of another, or access to all his property. I believe that would be overstepping legitimate boundaries, even if copyright is indeed legitimate. A sensible position today would be to use a warrant to search certain property, likely computational devices - once such devices compose one's mind, can there be warrants for memories?
In any case, attempting to prevent unlawful consumption is a much more difficult battle, both practically and theoretically, than preventing unlawful commercial redistribution. When the argument focuses on this particular case, it does not seem unreasonable at all, even though I am generally anti-IP.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
I. Ryan:The limits on media are not limits of the physical behavior of light, but limits on your actions. It doesn't matter through what means this action is done, if your act has been copying, it is a violation of rights.
I think it's obvious what's Stranger's talking about. If I finance a car purchase, I do not have full property rights to the car if it is collateral for the loan. I cannot purposefully destroy it. He is saying the same thing with the medium anyone places a copyrighted work upon. The IP owner does not allow full property rights in the media they embed their information and sell to consumers - the media cannot be used to create copies and/or redistributions.
This point is moot, in any case. As said in Fallacy 7:
One obviously does not need a contractual relation with a property owner in order to be a violator of his property. A thief is not bound by contract to respect the property of the owner of the automobile he is driving away in. He is bound by the law to do so, and will be punished for his violation. The role of the contract in intellectual property is precisely the reverse, it grants the right to the consumer to access the property of the producer, and thus makes their limited use of the information lawful.
There is the assumption that information is already considered property, and thus violations do not depend upon entering a voluntary contract. For example, if I find a DVD on the ground, or someone gives me a DVD, I have not entered into a contract with the IP owner. Or let's say I go up to a retailer with a DVD and before I purchase it I tell the employee that I'm going to copy the movie and put it on the internet as soon as I go home, and he still sells it. Obviously I am not making any understanding with the IP owner. If anyone, it is the person who lost the dvd, gave it to me, or sold it to me even after I admitted I would not abide by the copyright condition who has violated a contract.
Clearly there are dozens of ways I can obtain media without agreeing to a copyright contract. Stranger is claiming that no contract is necessary - that I am still bound by the copyright contract, even though I have not agreed to it. I am still bound by property rights of others, even if I refuse to recognize them.
The property right being claimed is not over any physical resource - it is to an exclusive right to commercial distribution, more than anything else. Of course, the product is much more specific than one covered by a patent, but why should that matter?
meambobbo: 1) It's an arbitrary distinction. Why protect information but not knowledge? To avoid implications that party X can voluntarily and contractually exercise a partial ownership claim over party Y's brain or will? To avoid the discussion of what the contract is, how it can end, and how it actually lasts forever, even if it was never agreed to in the first place? In other words, is it a contract for consumers or simply a warning to possible redistributers?
The answer is as simple as it is obvious: scarcity. There is no scarcity of knowledge. Once something is known, it propagates across humanity like lightning.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites as an example the announcement in a journal that a proof for a theorem has been discovered and will be published in the next issue. In the meantime, many different mathematicians announce the same proof. How is this possible? Because the knowledge that the solution exists is part of the solution, and once this knowledge propagates the solution, being non-scarce, is discovered independently.
We expect math students to solve problems on their own, but we don't expect history students to find their own history. That is because history is information.
Information is specific to time and place. It records a unique event in the history of the universe. This is what makes a technique like watermarking possible. You can't unwatermark information because the process of producing information is irreversible.
meambobbo: Ultimately, if the brain is the storage area for knowledge, which is an abstract representation of information, this is still a controllable property of the individual whose brain it is. He may not be able to erase the memory, but he can control his brain's use of it. IE - he cannot claim his mass reproduction and sale of such information/knowledge was "outside of his control". Similarly, if I download a work and can make a strong claim that I sincerely did not know I was receiving copyrighted information, it is obviously within my control to not redistribute the information. After being made aware that one is violating copyright, he should have no excuse to continue that doesn't amount to a full-scale attack on copyright's validity. I even have the power to erase it from whatever mediums I have reproduced it upon, although it is likely impossible to verify that this occurs without access to beliefs inside the mind of another, or access to all his property. I believe that would be overstepping legitimate boundaries, even if copyright is indeed legitimate. A sensible position today would be to use a warrant to search certain property, likely computational devices - once such devices compose one's mind, can there be warrants for memories?
The same principle applied to money can be applied here. How do we know that someone is not counterfeiting money for his own personal use? We can't, and it doesn't even matter. What matters is that he does not redistribute his counterfeit money to other people.
People can make copies of media for their own personal use, and as long as they keep the media to themselves, it will both never be known and never impact the IP owner.
That's a pretty ridiculous logic. You said that information is scarce because it is limited by the size of the physical devices that can store it. Yet "knowledge" is limited by the same - it also requires scarce brains to exist. To say one is scarce and the other non-scarce is nonsense. Simply because certain forms of knowledge can be discovered independently or transmitted without non-human materials doesn't mean they fall under a different definition of scarcity. The "scarcity" of information is purely created by property rights in information. In other words, it is artificially invented. Information can't claim that it deserves to be treated as property because it is scarce when it is scarce because it is treated as property. Again...more nonsense.
History surely isn't purely informational. Two independent historians can easily come to the same conclusions about what events took place in the past. Moreover, surely you aren't suggesting that "history" is ownable?!??!
Stranger:You can't unwatermark information because the process of producing information is irreversible.
...I'm not sure how to respond. Yes...I...can? Especially if I know what the watermark is. I can't prevent every instance of the information from containing a watermark. So what? Am I missing the point here......?
Stranger:The same principle applied to money can be applied here.
No - you missed the entire argument. It revolves around property rights in one's person. If I find information, make a perfect copy of it into my "brain", is the redistribution of that information a legitimate use of my property? If copyright prevents me from doing so, is not copyright an ownership claim over every other person?
Let me give you a different example. Let's say you steal a tattoo machine, and use it to tattoo yourself. You get caught and are forced to return the machine, plus restitution. What about the tattoo? Should the tattoo machine's owner have the right to decide what you can now do with that tattoo? Can he compell you to remove it? Or to prevent you from showing it to others? Can he compell you to keep it forever, and continually exercise a limited amount of control over your actions?
The point I'm trying to make is that ultimately there is a conflict of self-ownership involved. If party X owns information that exists in party Y's brain, party X is exercising limited ownership over Y under copyright. I believe you are trying to avoid this problem by differentiating between knowledge and information - between media and brains - between perfect copies and personalized abstractions. It is intellectually inconsistent. Your defense of it makes your argument sound kind of ridiculous.
On one hand you say it's ok because it was voluntarily contracted. On the other you say that if it wasn't voluntarily contracted, it doesn't matter because somewhere a voluntary contract was violated. But simply because one's property is benefited from some crime or contract violation doesn't mean it is no longer his property or that the value-additions must be nullified.
If someone steals my property, I am prevented from using it. If I am the rightful owner, I can prevent others from using it. Either the rightful owner or some other party will use it to the exclusion of others. Obviously, the rightful owner has a better claim to use than others. In the case of IP, however, use is not exclusive. If I copy and watch a movie, I am not preventing anyone else from watching. If I redistribute the movie commercially, I am not preventing anyone else from commercial redistribution.
The entire case rests on the requirement to use scarce resources to create the information - that somehow this is a source of rights. It does come close to LTV. The claim that exclusive distribution is a required motive to create information is obviously false. As is the claim that it is required to earn income is false. The claim that it is necessary to recoup costs obviously is case-specific - certain copyrighted works will still fail to turn a profit, certain works can easily earn profit without copyright.
There is only a moral case that the information's creators have a better claim to income derived directly from consumption of the information than those who simply reproduce and distribute it. I would agree with this claim. I think there is also a decent utilitarian claim that allowing legal unlicensed commercial redistribution will destroy current business models, and that others are not as feasible at serving consumers, simply because they could have already been implemented but purposefully were not. Of course, allowing authors copyright of infinite length seems non-utilitarian.
I'm really not sure that I disagree with your end results, but the arguments are a mess. Actually, I'm not sure I agree that the creator should be able to monopolize distribution, only that he should be entitled to his non-creative competitors' revenues.
meambobbo:You said that information is scarce because it is limited by the size of the physical devices that can store it. Yet "knowledge" is limited by the same - it also requires scarce brains to exist.
That's not why information is scarce, it is a consequence of its scarcity. Information is scarce by its physical nature.
meambobbo:...I'm not sure how to respond. Yes...I...can? Especially if I know what the watermark is. I can't prevent every instance of the information from containing a watermark. So what? Am I missing the point here......?
You can destroy a watermark but you cannot remove it. Pirates often blur out watermarks to protect their source, but that still leaves a blur in the picture or a cropped picture.
meambobbo: If I find information, make a perfect copy of it into my "brain", is the redistribution of that information a legitimate use of my property? If copyright prevents me from doing so, is not copyright an ownership claim over every other person?
That is fallacy 13, appeal from miracle.
Stranger: Information is scarce by its physical nature.
Most discussion of property involves scarcity because it cannot be alleviated. Goods are allocated to be controlled by those with the best claim, because otherwise an inferior claim excludes a better claim from use of the good. In the case of information and current technology, this is not the case. The resources required to create the information are scarce, but that does not necessarily entitle the creators to exclusive distribution privileges.
Stranger:You can destroy a watermark but you cannot remove it. Pirates often blur out watermarks to protect their source, but that still leaves a blur in the picture or a cropped picture.
You can try to extract the watermark, invert it, and "add" it to the picture (or song, etc). There might be some data loss, but many watermarks are designed to be transparent. Cropping/blurring is a crude method.
Stranger:That is fallacy 13, appeal from miracle.
No, let me give you an example. Let's say I take a high resolution picture of a billboard ad and post it on my blog. I'm violating copyright, but I'm not claiming that the information magically fell into my hard drive. I made no contract with the copyright holder not to take photographs of what I see. No one broke a contract with the copyright holder for me to reproduce the information.
Similarly, if I have a computer brain, read a book, and remember every letter perfectly, what is the copyright contract and the terms of its termination? Using your knowledge/information distinction, this becomes relatively easy - just destroy the instances of information in the possession of the violator. But when these copies are arguably part of a person's consciousness, there are ethical considerations of not only destroying but simply accessing the information.
Preventing commercial redistribution is seemingly ethical in some cases, but this is not absolute in my mind. In some ways it can be considered a violation of free speech.
meambobbo: You said that information is scarce because it is limited by the size of the physical devices that can store it. Yet "knowledge" is limited by the same - it also requires scarce brains to exist. To say one is scarce and the other non-scarce is nonsense. Simply because certain forms of knowledge can be discovered independently or transmitted without non-human materials doesn't mean they fall under a different definition of scarcity. The "scarcity" of information is purely created by property rights in information. In other words, it is artificially invented. Information can't claim that it deserves to be treated as property because it is scarce when it is scarce because it is treated as property. Again...more nonsense.
To compliment what your saying meambobbo I mentioned above
filc: On another note, I still fail to see how the brain is not just another type of physical media. The argument's presented seem to hold arbitrary distinctions between the two. There are some limitations in capacities of brains vs other types of physical media and vice versa. All competing media types have their own limitations of varying degrees. For example there is a time when Flash is preferred to RAM, or RAM to HDD, or HDD to audio waves, or audio waves to written text, and finally written text to value's held in the brain. This could go on ofcoarse in any order needed. Information is only as scarce as there is limited capacity in storage media of the whole media network. In other words, strictly speaking from a physics point of view, information is only as scarce as is the media it is housed on. That capacity grows exponentially every day with new media types and existing media types supporting larger capacities. Read this article and feel free to guess how many yottabyte's exists globally in disk space. This doesn't reflect the amount of information stored in other formats like paper text ect... http://www.itpro.co.uk/107203/global-disk-storage-market-revenues-up-137m
Stranger:The old proverb asks whether an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters would ever produce the works of Shakespeare. According to information theory, the answer is no.
Given that there are a limited number of keys on the keyboard, the answer is yes.
Have you never seen a five act play with a very small cast? Thousands of people routinely memorize 100+ pages daily. That's not even taking into account much shorter works. Ask any teenage girl the lyrics to her favorite song or ten. She will recite them perfectly.
Shouldn't even matter - a poor reproduction can still be considered a derivative work.
Stranger:Copyrights are media rights. They are limits on the use of media. The intellectual communists do not recognize these limits.
Are you claiming that the public reading of a novel, the public singing of a song or the public performance of a play are not violations of copyright? If that's not your claim, what "media right" has been violated by these activities?
meambobbo: Shouldn't even matter - a poor reproduction can still be considered a derivative work.
It's right that it doesn't matter because the act is still copying and the original media is used, hence the act is still illegal.
The fact that it is impossible to make a copy of a media through one's brain is a consequence and explanation of its scarcity. (And no, a play is not a significant amount of information. It is less than 1/10,000th of the information on a DVD.) It is not relevant to the argument.
In a world where the brain could perfectly and costlessly reproduce information, it may be the case that information would be non-scarce. In that case the entire structure of society would be different. There would not be a black market for information. People would live entirely differently. But this is not this world.
JackCuyler: Stranger:The old proverb asks whether an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters would ever produce the works of Shakespeare. According to information theory, the answer is no. Given that there are a limited number of keys on the keyboard, the answer is yes.
There are infinite combinations of those keys, just like there are infinite combinations of strings of 0 and 1. You could try random combination for the entire lifetime of the universe and never achieve the same event.
meambobbo:No, let me give you an example. Let's say I take a high resolution picture of a billboard ad and post it on my blog. I'm violating copyright, but I'm not claiming that the information magically fell into my hard drive. I made no contract with the copyright holder not to take photographs of what I see. No one broke a contract with the copyright holder for me to reproduce the information.
A billboard ad is not copyrighted.
Stranger:A billboard ad is not copyrighted.
Then say a magazine cover, or a set of photographs inside a magazine. And I am not the buyer - I just found it somewhere.
meambobbo: Stranger:A billboard ad is not copyrighted. Then say a magazine cover, or a set of photographs inside a magazine. And I am not the buyer - I just found it somewhere.
Then it is not your property. Just leave it there.