Intellectual property just doesn't work anymore

in #blog6 years ago (edited)

Hey everyone; @lemony-cricket here, and intellectual property is possibly one of the hardest pre-Information-age concepts to kill. But it's dying, as we speak... and that's a good thing.



Adapted from image by Bo Peterson. CC-BY-SA 3.0


The title is a lie.


What do you mean "Anymore?" Intellectual property never worked. It was never a thing, at all. It was a silly idea that gained traction by accident due to a lack of technological advancement at the time.

"Copyright" as we know it first arrived in the form of the English Parliament's Licensing of the Press Act 1662, which came about when people decided something needed to be done about "unlicensed copies" of books made possible by the printing press. For the first time in history, it had become possible to separate two concepts which had never been separated before: data and media. Writing had existed in several forms for thousands of years, and yet up until that point nobody had really thought about the concept of owning information. It wasn't necessary; owning the medium was enough, because copying the data to a new medium was a difficult problem. In order to copy a book, for example, you'd have to sit down and write out the whole thing. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done by years and years of authors owning what was often the sole copy of their books, which meant that they had effective ownership of the content as well. Of course, they collectively decided they liked things that way, thank-you-very-much. So, in the typical reactionary fashion in which governments of the world operate, this new legal concept of "copyright" was legislated into existence: that no author, having written a book and released it into the world, shall suffer the pain of having its work copied without its consent.

Bloody horrible idea, that one.


It was the wrong way to handle the problem. Instead of allowing a business model to change; to adapt to new technological advances, the government chose to prop up an artificial concept by rule of law. If this sounds familiar, well, that's because governments do this all the time. They didn't stop, either. Provided below, for the reader's enjoyment, is a particularly disgraceful educational video from the early 90s:



Don't do it; we know you can, but please don't. Pretty please? You see, back then, software companies (who had obviously grown comfortable with copyright law's expansion into software) were experiencing one of the first general failures of the intellectual property concept. The prolific spread of writable media as well as the explosive adoption of home computers should have meant the end of copyright forever. Unfortunately, that's not exactly how it worked out.

Instead, they propped it up again.


Software producers invented new ways to attempt to enforce their copyright. Some included a quiz that could only be answered by examining the game's packaging or manual. If you couldn't look up the correct information, it meant you didn't have the manual for the game, so you obviously didn't buy it. Don't lose the manual, I guess.

Other approaches became common too. Everyone old enough to remember pre-Steam gaming remembers the old "licence key" approach to digital restrictions management (DRM). The disc came with a key, generated by a "proprietary" algorithm, which the game could check to see if it was legitimate. Of course, software pirates were always one step ahead; it was never long before these keys were leaked or a key generator utility was released.

In 1998, the United States infamously brought us the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which is the most widely-known law to criminalise the "breaking of digital locks." While it is true that there are some (very narrow) exceptions, they are temporary and at the whim of the Librarian of Congress. That's probably the most ridiculously bureaucratic thing I've ever heard. Plus it never worked anyway. Nothing changed. Scene crackers still patched games and wrote keygens. Enforcement of the DMCA and similar laws worldwide has been, largely, a colossal failure.

We can do better than this.


The sense of pride and ownership that an artist, writer, coder, or musician feels as it looks upon a completed work will probably never go away, and for good reason. It is one thing to say something is your work and that people should not use it without your permission. It is even fine to encourage a community to boycott, downvote, or otherwise discourage unauthorised use of your work. It's a completely different thing, however, to expect the state to act as an enforcer on your behalf. That is already gone for the little guys and has been for some time; pretty soon it will be gone for the big guys too.

Intellectual property law does not work, because governments are slowly but surely losing the power to control the dissemination of information. It will only continue to get worse for those stuck in their ways, as information technology grows more and more decentralised. Artists, musicians, writers, and content producers in general should not, and can not, continue to rely upon a centralised government entity to protect them from copyright infringement.

Instead of propping up outdated business models which fall apart under information-theoretic attack, we should focus on creating new business models that actually work without relying on the ownership of data, like Steem and Patreon. On both of these platforms, creators are paid for their content as they produce it, and as they acquire a following they gather more and more consistent support.

A brighter future is ahead.


In the long term, society will come together to support a continuous stream of content from their favourite creators. They won't pay for "rights" to the finished content; they'll actually be paying the artist to work. Once content creators start to be paid a fair rate for their effort, they may start to loosen their grip on the insistence that they legally own exclusive use of their content.

Change is coming whether we like it or not. Government is rapidly losing the battle against the freedom of information, as it should be. Information will only flow more freely tomorrow than it will today. It doesn't do us any good to keep trying to prop up a concept so unnatural, so information-theoretically unsound, as intellectual property. Instead, we should focus on creating new, sustainable models for rewarding our society's content creators... and I think Steem is a really great start. 🍋


Posted from my blog with SteemPress.

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I understand the feeling of wanting to get paid for your work. I know for damn sure when I've been feeling shit I've bitched a bit about some of the earnings I got on a few chapters of my story...but I did enjoy writing it...and I don't actually mind people reading it. I actually would like more people to read it. I wish there was a way for a ton of people to read it, and give me a little crypto if they liked it.

This bullshit with the copyright laws is just stupid though. They're essentially taking money from taxpayers to throw people in jail because they copied a file that they thought people would enjoy, many of which couldn't actually afford to buy a lot of the content they do enjoy. The irony is that statistically the people that pirate the most also buy the most. If they're gonna take our money to deal with the people copying shit, why not just pay the artists directly?

I have always been fond of a technique I call the "vigilante purchase." Evading the middleman to contribute directly to the artist's pocket, then "pirating" the work. It's not always possible, especially with big mainstream artists where all revenue is channeled through their record label or production company or what-have-you, but you can usually find some way to do it with the smaller folks... and they're the ones I typically care about supporting anyway.

I have some sympathy for artists who attempt to sell their work directly, and I have no problem supporting them. However, I have zero respect for companies who seek to profit from gatekeeping as their sole "contribution" to society. If I can help it, they get not a penny from me.

I have no respect for the majority of the shitty companies out there in the artist space...the record companies making a fuckton off artists that dream of making it big and end up warping their art to fit what they say people want for example...but there could be some that are alright and are just doing a job. Tons of writers out there get paid up front for books that the publishing companies basically bet on, playing the long game, and they pay the bills for actually publishing them and pushing them to book stores and setting up signings and such. Hypothetically there might be some in the record industry that do the same...but these days, almost everyone's a crook.

Yes, it's increasingly like stemming a tide to keep a piece of software from being copied.

But Steem suffers from the freerider problem. Yes, you can let the crowd decide who gets paid how much via upvoting. But who will pay for the tokens to give them value? The answer would be advertisers and promoters of goods and services who will actually benefit from visibility bought on the platform. This is, incidentally, why I'm not so eager to have bidbots to be done away with. If we want STEEM to have monetary value, there will ultimately have to be a reason for buying it other than pure speculation.

Oh wow, @markkujantunen. This is a good perspective, and we could have a rather in-depth conversation about this one, as I am actually a pretty vocal opponent of bidbots-- although I understand perfectly why they exist and cannot be stopped, I believe we should be attempting as a community to shame them out of use and, eventually, existence.

You are absolutely right that the demand for STEEM must come from somewhere. I want to do a post on this topic soon so I am not going to go into a lot of depth here, but here is my theory in a nutshell: STEEM POWER is valuable in and of itself as a sort of status symbol. Just as there are those who are willing to give others attention in exchange for money, there are those willing to buy attention from others, and Steem allows this through the purchase and vesting of stake.

I think our theories are similar, but they are different in that I do not think the buyers must necessarily be advertisers, or that they have to be necessarily self-promoting. Instead, I believe people will be driven to buy and power up STEEM, and give upvotes organically, to earn the admiration of their peers.

I believe this is a change that we must bring about together, as a community. It's our platform... and there's never a better time than when prices are low like this. The people who are just using Steem for a quick money grab are running for the exits. Now is the time to build the Steem we always wanted while they're gone.

Oh wow, @markkujantunen. This is a good perspective, and we could have a rather in-depth conversation about this one, as I am actually a pretty vocal opponent of bidbots-- although I understand perfectly why they exist and cannot be stopped, I believe we should be attempting as a community to shame them out of use and, eventually, existence.

If they cannot be stopped what's the use of trying to attempt to shame the out of use? Why would we want futile shaming tactics to be a big thing on this platform?

You are absolutely right that the demand for STEEM must come from somewhere. I want to do a post on this topic soon so I am not going to go into a lot of depth here, but here is my theory in a nutshell: STEEM POWER is valuable in and of itself as a sort of status symbol. Just as there are those who are willing to give others attention in exchange for money, there are those willing to buy attention from others, and Steem allows this through the purchase and vesting of stake.

That's a very important point I never thought of before: Steem Power as a status symbol. Obviously it is and valuable as such! Maybe even all the "Sirs" and "Dears" and the rest of the abject groveling have some value. I find it cringeworthy but there may be some among us whose egos all that feeds thus propping up the price of STEEM! lol

I think our theories are similar, but they are different in that I do not think the buyers must necessarily be advertisers, or that they have to be necessarily self-promoting. Instead, I believe people will be driven to buy and power up STEEM, and give upvotes organically, to earn the admiration of their peers.

While this is surely the case for some, I don't think it's ultimately enough to keep the value very high. Another extremely important source of money are and will increasingly (I hope) be pay-to-play apps such as SteemMonsters that has a fiat-STEEM gateways built into it.

I believe this is a change that we must bring about together, as a community. It's our platform... and there's never a better time than when prices are low like this. The people who are just using Steem for a quick money grab are running for the exits. Now is the time to build the Steem we always wanted while they're gone.

Yep.

If they cannot be stopped what's the use of trying to attempt to shame the out of use? Why would we want futile shaming tactics to be a big thing on this platform?

I hold a very strong conviction that "code is law." If it can't be put into code, it's not a very effective law, at least not as far as the blockchain is concerned. This is what I mean by "cannot be stopped."

This is different from the subject of social norms, though. I do not agree that shaming tactics are futile. We are capable of working together to create social incentives to do good, not evil. We don't necessarily have to code this into logical consensus if we can reach a social one.

I will never disparage my fellow Steemian for holding a different point of view, so perhaps "shame" is the wrong word or concept. I definitely feel a calling to create social pressure to minimise bidbot use, though. I do not believe it is good for the platform, and I believe that prolonged abuse has the potential to divide the userbase among two or more contentious forks, which I think would be an unfortunate outcome.

While this is surely the case for some, I don't think it's ultimately enough to keep the value very high.

I think that if my "organic attention economy" scenario were given a chance to flourish, you may be surprised by the amount of lonely people with a lot of money, seeking the acceptance and validation of their peers. Of course, it is possible that I'm being ridiculously optimistic about this... but hey, I think I will be writing that post sooner now rather than later :)

I hold a very strong conviction that "code is law." If it can't be put into code, it's not a very effective law, at least not as far as the blockchain is concerned. This is what I mean by "cannot be stopped."

This is different from the subject of social norms, though. I do not agree that shaming tactics are futile. We are capable of working together to create social incentives to do good, not evil. We don't necessarily have to code this into logical consensus if we can reach a social one.

There's already quite a bit of shaming towards bidbot use. But it doesn't seem to be working. A great many Steemians are anonymous. I very rarely upvote anything upvoted by bidbots except if such a post is an important announcement of a new service or app adding a lot value to Steem.

In my opinion, the problem is overstated in the sense that I view blogging on Steemit or producing content using the main reward pool (the only one currently existing) as something belonging to the infancy of the platform. The vision that the creators of Steem had and what Steemit, Inc is currently working towards is for Steem to be a token factory and the backbone of thousands of separate projects each with their own reward pools. Some of those projects and their tokens may rocket to the moon if they become big mainstream hits. Steem Power will be used to pay for bandwidth and STEEM will be used as the main trading pair with the tokens. I wouldn't worry so much about what crap gets published in Trending now. The use of bidbots is mainly a reaction of the large SP holders to linear rewards cutting down on their return on investment. It all boils down to the profitability of owning Steem Power. Keeping the whales from dumping is in the best interests of all Steemians.

I will never disparage my fellow Steemian for holding a different point of view, so perhaps "shame" is the wrong word or concept. I definitely feel a calling to create social pressure to minimise bidbot use, though. I do not believe it is good for the platform, and I believe that prolonged abuse has the potential to divide the userbase among two or more contentious forks, which I think would be an unfortunate outcome.

I wish Steemians had the patience to see beyond this temporary issue. STEEM inflation will gradually diminish and earning Steem will become increasingly difficult. I believe the focus will shift towards investing in SMT powered projects using the Steem blockchain.

"While this is surely the case for some, I don't think it's ultimately enough to keep the value very high."

I think that if my "organic attention economy" scenario were given a chance to flourish, you may be surprised by the amount of lonely people with a lot of money, seeking the acceptance and validation of their peers. Of course, it is possible that I'm being ridiculously optimistic about this... but hey, I think I will be writing that post sooner now rather than later :)

Why are so few whales playing god instead of investing projects and earning passive income? There only seem to be very few whales that I'm aware of who love to throw their weight around with all and sundry watching in shock and awe.

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