An introduction to Free Culture

[aneeshm]

A little article I've written, to serve as an introduction to the concept of Free Culture, aimed towards a college student in any discipline (but mainly the technical ones), assuming no prior exposure to the economics concepts presented.

Link

Any criticism would be appreciated. Preferably constructive.

[Whoha]

Very long winded. Food and intellectual property are two different concepts, so the early part I would be opposed to wiping out all farmers and making everyone dependent on me. also as far as patent law is concerned:

Stop reckless rush to overhaul patent system
By Kevin L. Kearns
July 18, 2007
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Reform of the nation's patent system, the 218-year-old wellspring of American innovation and material progress, has become a rush project in Congress. Leading the way is the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a bill that could cripple American innovation. Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, is trying to hustle his bill through committee, apparently to please several powerful information technology firms - even though testimony at the bill's one hearing revealed serious flaws in the legislation.

For years, foreign firms have been trying to slow America's innovation engine under the guise of "harmonization" with foreign law. They would be happy to see this bill sail through Congress. A key question, though, is why the best patent system in the world needs to be "harmonized" down to the levels of the parochial, unfair European and Japanese systems, or a Chinese system that specializes in intellectual property theft.

At the recent Senate hearing, not a single manufacturing firm was invited to testify - even though technological innovation and industrial advancement are closely intertwined. Indeed, U.S. manufacturers undertake 60 percent to 70 percent of the nation's research and development and hold 60 percent of its patents.


Lawyers, bankers and leading high-tech firms such as Microsoft and Intel dominated the hearing on patent reform. However, smaller enterprises are the true drivers of innovation. About one-third of all patent applications are made by independent inventors, small manufacturers, universities and nonprofit research groups. Their efforts are crucial for leading-edge scientific advances, and their views should be heard.

Many large IT companies fear having their market positions disrupted by new ideas. They want current law rewritten to make challenges to patents easier, and they want to curb "abusive litigation" by patent holders protecting their rights If Congress creates a new, open-ended post-patent review procedure to challenge the validity of a patent throughout its life, the benefits to patent-holders become very uncertain. Incentives to seek patents would be weakened, venture capitalists would face higher risks when backing new ideas, and business models that depend on patents would be discarded. .

The new bill also grants unprecedented rule-making authority to an overburdened Patent Office working to reduce a massive application backlog. What is needed instead is full funding of the Patent Office so that it can employ and retain talented staff to do its main job of granting patents expeditiously.

The Senate bill's assault on intellectual property rights has inspired a wide-ranging alliance of opposition from high-tech firms, independent inventors, university research centers, venture capitalists and manufacturers. Opponents include the high-tech Innovation Alliance, the Big Ten university presidents, the National Venture Capital Association and the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform.

This broad opposition indicates the need for a fuller debate. Mr. Leahy's desire to rush the bill through the Senate does a grave disservice to our patent system. The future of American innovation hangs in the balance.



Kevin L. Kearns is president of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. His e-mail is kearns@usbusiness.org.

The above is only in the google cache unless you have a paying subscription to baltimoresun.com.

Bottom line, we have a system that is tested, and proven with regards to innovation, changing it to make it easier to steal from inventors has little merit. And that your attempt to help the little guy, while noble, could wind up boning the little guy even more.

[aneeshm]

The objection is specifically to software patents, which are screwed up, and which the current system simply isn't designed to handle. Other stuff we have no problem with.

[VetLegion]

You caught me off guard (I just woke up ) so I read it.

Constructive comments:

1. It is really too long.

2. You go off on too many tangents.

3. You overstretch the analogies. The tragedy of the commons isn't really relevant to copyright as far as I can see.

4. You did not finish the last "thought experiment" - how does the broken window fallacy explain how people are going to make money in world without copyright?

5. This is wrong:

The central idea which organised all these resources of information – and the industries that grew around them – was that it would be scarce. Now, however, it is no longer so, and so the assumptions of classical economics no longer hold when in comes to trying to understand how information moves on the network (given sufficient bandwidth – which we already have). It also means that the industries and all other information infrastructure based on the old economic assumptions are suddenly misfits in the new world, because the one thing that made them valuable – the scarcity of the information which they were providing – now does not exist.

Granting monopolies on use of information was never based on the idea of information being scarce, it was always based on the idea that producers of valuable information were scarce. And of course, the idea that it is beneficial to the wider society to grant them monopolies and thus encourage them.

I agree with you that intellectual property rights aren't fundamental rights, nor even very logical rights. They are thus not something that shoud not be examined. On the contrary, they should be inspected and analyzed and modified as needed. And kept only if we conclude that they indeed are beneficial to the society.

I've previously examined the topic a bit, trying to see how such monopolies (primarily patents) affected economic growth.

Today the most productive countries have the strictest IP laws, but were those laws instrumental in those countries becoming the richest? I didn't go too deep, but I didn't find any definitive answer to the question. The IP protection systems have evolved alongside Western capitalism, so it is hard to examine the effect of one on the other.

The failure of Soviet exports is interesting though. Take their lack of success in the sphere of microelectronics. The Soviet system, in which the incentive system for innovators did exist but was very different than in the West, failed to produce Apple, Xerox, Micorsoft or anything like that. If Bill Gates had to grind all day away coding pathfinding algorithms for ballistic missiles in State Bureau of Minor Steel Products, we todays perhaps wouldn't have Windows.

I don't like too many such examples as they are only anecdotal evidence (if even that). But you do need a good incentive system (I think) for technological progress.

Today's system in which countries like China have very loose IP laws is also interesting. Let's see if countries outside West who aren't subject to restrictive regulation (it is not completely avoidable because IP laws are parto of the WTO, but many countries agree on paper and don't uphold them) become centers of innovation. I'm not holding my breath.