Books happen to be very convenient storage devices for information which is why we give publishers some **limited** rights to publish as a monopoly. We want new ideas to be propagated. Publishers seem to have lost sight of the limited nature of their rights to this monopoly.

Cheers,
David

Books happen to be very convenient storage devices for information which is why we give publishers some **limited** rights to publish as a monopoly. We want new ideas to be propagated. Publishers seem to have lost sight of the limited nature of their rights to this monopoly.

Cheers,
David

jefferson’s eloquence compensates well for his appalling ignorance on the matter of patents and copyrights. “no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole it it” is a very elegant way of describing what economists crudely call a non-rivalrous economic asset. it has nothing to do with IP.

IP is NOT a non-rivalrous assest. it is quite the contrary. consider if the lighted candle in jefferson’s hand provides him with competitive advantage in the market for the production of light, lighting another’s DECREASES the value of his candle.

IP – where it provides competitive market advantage – is inherently rivalrous. it cannot be freely shared without diminishing the value to its creator.

IP gives jefferson the incentive to bring his light to the world without risk that he will loose the market value of it.

Physical property and the intangible property we call copyright are different.

yes. physical property is a fixed limited resource. no one is making any more land – which is why it must be owned in perpetuity.

intangible property is, on the other hand, an ever expanding resource of limitless dimension – which is why ownership of one tiny piece should not present any problem to anyone. anyone can make more.

And rather than continue sophomoric debates about who is “stealing” what, it’s about time that policymakers — and industry leaders — took responsibility for the inefficiency that copyright is.

right on! IP rights are being raped, pillaged, and plundered like Rome before the visigoths. arguing over the definintions of rape, pillage, and plunder isn’t going to save rome.

the wonton destruction of IP must first be stopped. the only inefficiency in copyright is inefficiency in enforcement.

si roma perit vad salvum est?

This may not be a responsible move but it is a sign of the pressure placed on publishers whose livelihood depends on IP Rights as a result of google actions. I do agree that it is over the top and there are fair use arguments to consider.

Theft of personal property may be wrong but it is a sign of a wider problem.

You ask “Does someone else own the IP to the design?”.

Your use of ‘IP’ here is a contraction of ‘Intellectual Property Rights’, which itself is a corruption of ‘Transferable IP Related Privileges, such as copyright and patent’.

So, the architect may well own the IP related privilege of copyright on the design as embedded within your house, or on the design as embedded within any blueprints you possess, or the privilege of patent on any mechanisms (drawbridge, etc.).

How architectural designs are ‘protected’ will no doubt vary between jurisdictions, but in principle, your house including the intellectual work of its design is your property. So, the IP to your house is yours, but some of your rights to the IP in your house have been suspended and granted to its architect.

IP: yours.
IPR: mostly yours, but ‘right to copy’ suspended.
IP privileges: your ‘right to copy’ is now the architect’s privilege.

So what IPR remain yours? Unless you’ve contracted otherwise, you may sell/lease any of your house including its designs/blueprints without needing permission, and can relocate or demolish it if you fancy. The architect has no right of access (even if your house is unique, and the architect wants to remeasure, because they’ve lost their copy of its plans).

Obviously, you can’t make copies of the plans (or alterations except on the original plans), and probably can’t even hire another architect to reproduce plans of your house. The architect’s permission may even be required for anyone to take photos of your house. One day they may even be able to force you to erect high external curtains around your house to prevent you making the design of your house available to the public (you will no doubt happily pay for a licence to avoid this). I wouldn’t be surprised if some architects have even tried preventing someone modifying their house on the shaky basis that this might constitute ‘preparing a derivative work’ (given it might be quite tricky without producing derivative plans), or even violation of the architect’s moral right to integrity (which it wouldn’t).

If a man’s house is his castle (domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium), then I’d recommend all homeowners arm their barbicans, man their battlements, and re-assert the restoration of their property rights to their houses’ designs, i.e. the right to make copies and derivatives thereof.

As for ‘virtual property’, well that’s a looking glass into a whole new universe of legislative misadventure.

Say he cloned the hard drive of a Google employee’s laptop in a few seconds, put it back so that the employee still had full use of the laptop, uploaded the contents a fully searchable website and left a notice saying that “if you want to have a particular email/document/source file/photo etc. removed from this website please email me and I’ll take it down in a few days.”

That would have been far more intrusive than losing the physical laptop. I’m not saying that Google book search is doing exactly that but there is a balance here that both sides are struggling to reach.

Mr. Charkin and I are very far apart in our beliefs regarding the differences between real and intellectual property. But rather than confront him with the same arguments he’s heard before, allow me for a moment to adopt his point of view and propose a hypothetical situation.

I’m an amateur trombonist with a keen interest in the music of Tommy Pederson. Much of Tommy’s music was written for “Hoyt’s Garage”, an institution in the ’60s that brought studio trombonists from throughout the L.A. area to play together and challenge one another during their regular gatherings in trombonist Hoyt Bohannon’s garage. Some of Tommy’s music was self-published, some was published by third parties, and a large body remains unpublished. Original and illicit copies of many of Tommy’s works are in the possession of working trombonists today. Copies of these works are coveted by trombonists around the world.

Tommy is dead now, and so is his wife. The status of the copyrights for these works is unknown, and numerous attempts to gain permission to publish these works have failed. These are “orphaned” works — titles for which the market is so small that there is little motivation for a publisher to maintain them in its catalog. Publishers who continue to list Tommy’s works in their catalogs as permanently out of print do not respond to inquiries regarding republication rights.

If it’s fair to say that Google is “stealing” from publishers, would it not also be fair to say that these publishers have “kidnapped” the works of Tommy Pederson and are holding them against their will? Would it be appropriate for me to “kidnap” one of Mr. Charkin’s children (assuming he has any) for an hour or so to make my point? After all, he never explicitly told me *not* to kidnap his child.

If there are brownie points to be awarded in this misguided bit of theatricality, they most certainly go to Google for not having Mr. Charkin arrested and charged with petty larceny. Had they done so, perhaps Mr. Charkin would do a better job of discriminating between theft and misuse of intellectual property.

Mr. Charkin and I are very far apart in our beliefs regarding the differences between real and intellectual property. But rather than confront him with the same arguments he’s heard before, allow me for a moment to adopt his point of view and propose a hypothetical situation.

I’m an amateur trombonist with a keen interest in the music of Tommy Pederson. Much of Tommy’s music was written for “Hoyt’s Garage”, an institution in the ’60s that brought studio trombonists from throughout the L.A. area to play together and challenge one another during their regular gatherings in trombonist Hoyt Bohannon’s garage. Some of Tommy’s music was self-published, some was published by third parties, and a large body remains unpublished. Original and illicit copies of many of Tommy’s works are in the possession of working trombonists today. Copies of these works are coveted by trombonists around the world.

Tommy is dead now, and so is his wife. The status of the copyrights for these works is unknown, and numerous attempts to gain permission to publish these works have failed. These are “orphaned” works — titles for which the market is so small that there is little motivation for a publisher to maintain them in its catalog. Publishers who continue to list Tommy’s works in their catalogs as permanently out of print do not respond to inquiries regarding republication rights.

If it’s fair to say that Google is “stealing” from publishers, would it not also be fair to say that these publishers have “kidnapped” the works of Tommy Pederson and are holding them against their will? Would it be appropriate for me to “kidnap” one of Mr. Charkin’s children (assuming he has any) for an hour or so to make my point? After all, he never explicitly told me *not* to kidnap his child.

If there are brownie points to be awarded in this misguided bit of theatricality, they most certainly go to Google for not having Mr. Charkin arrested and charged with petty larceny. Had they done so, perhaps Mr. Charkin would do a better job of discriminating between theft and misuse of intellectual property.

I’ve seen many experienced individuals conflate the two. And since I’m a layman in this area, I don’t always do much better (which is a fact that may be evident in the rest of this comment).

The distinction between property and IP gets ever more tricky when the two are innately intertwined. For instance architects own their designs. So if I buy a house, does someone else own the IP to the design, and how does that limit my use of my own house? Try explaining that to the average person.

As far as experts go, I’ll just say this: virtual property.

It seems to me that a system this confusing cannot be efficient because too much time is going to be spent in court figuring out what the system is.