anticopyright | Void Network

Against intellectual property by Brian Martin

voidnetwork — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:09:00 +0000

Against intellectual property
From Information Liberation,

Challenging the corruptions

of information power
by Brian Martin,

Freedom Press, London 1998.

Problems with intellectual property
Critique of standard justifications
The marketplace of ideas
The alternative
- Plagiarism
- Royalities
- Stimulating creativity
Strategies for change

There is a strong case for opposing intellectual property. Among other things, it often retards innovation and exploits Third World peoples. Most of the usual arguments for intellectual property do not hold up under scrutiny. In particular, the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas provides no justification for ownership of ideas. The alternative to intellectual property is that intellectual products not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. Strategies against intellectual property include civil disobedience, promotion of non-owned information, and fostering of a more cooperative society.

The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government’s power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale.

There are several types of intellectual property or, in other words, ownership of information, including copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, design rights and plant breeders’ rights. Copyright covers the expression of ideas such as in writing, music and pictures. Patents cover inventions, such as new substances or articles and industrial processes. Trademarks are symbols associated with a good, service or company. Trade secrets cover confidential business information. Design rights cover different ways of presenting the outward appearance of things. Plant breeders’ rights grant ownership of novel, distinct and stable plant varieties that are “invented.”

The type of property that is familiar to most people is physical objects. People own clothes, cars, houses and land. But there has always been a big problem with owning ideas. Exclusive use or control of ideas or the way they are expressed doesn’t make nearly as much sense as the ownership of physical objects.

Many physical objects can only be used by one person at a time. If one person wears a pair of shoes, no one else can wear them at the same time. (The person who wears them often owns them, but not always.) This is not true of intellectual property. Ideas can be copied over and over, but the person who had the original copy still has full use of it. Suppose you write a poem. Even if a million other people have copies and read the poem, you can still read the poem yourself. In other words, more than one person can use an idea—a poem, a mathematical formula, a tune, a letter—without reducing other people’s use of the idea. Shoes and poems are fundamentally different in this respect.

Technological developments have made it cheaper and easier to make copies of information. Printing was a great advance: it eliminated the need for hand copying of documents. Photocopying and computers have made it even easier to make copies of written documents. Photography and sound recordings have done the same for visual and audio material. The ability to protect intellectual property is being undermined by technology, Yet there is a strong push to expand the scope of ownership of information.

This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the socalled “marketplace of ideas,” which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them.

continue reading this chapter here:

http://thegringonews.net/monitor/aip.htm#2

The post Against intellectual property by Brian Martin appeared first on Void Network.

Support Infoshop!

voidnetwork — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:37:00 +0000

This is a letter we recieved from Chuck Manson for Infoshop.com and Infoshop News…We are asking all our friends to consider their participation and economical help to Infoshop as a really important move for the meintenance of the undergound global network of news, theory and information

Dear Friends,
I’m asking my friends and comrades to consider making a financial donation to the Infoshop.org project. I know that many of us are experiencing financial difficulties these days. Any size donation will help us out. I think that we all understand the importance of the independent media.
The Infoshop.org project is one of those important projects. We’ve been operating continuously since 1996 and have reached hundreds of thousands of people with our various services.
We’ve published hundred of original news stories and have pointed our readers to thousands of stories published by other independent media websites. Your contribution will help us continue our project.
Please forward this message to any friends, family or folks who you think support our work.

You can contribute to “AMP”
with a donation via PayPal (which takes all credit cards)
or by mailing a check
or well-concealed cash to our snail mail address:
AMP
PO Box 7171
Shawnee Mission, KS 66207

Online donation options:
http://www.infoshop.org/page/Donate

Paypal account:
“chuck@mutualaid.org“

Credit card donations:
http://littleblackcart.com/category/publisher/infoshop/

Thanks! Chuck Munson
for Infoshop.org and Infoshop News

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STEAL THIS FILM 2 >> A film about the efforts of capitalism to destroy freedom in internet

voidnetwork — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:47:00 +0000

“These are strange times indeed. While they continue to command so much attention in the mainstream media, the ‘battles’ between old and new modes of distribution, between the pirate and the institution of copyright, seem to many of us already lost and won. We know who the victors are. Why then say any more?
Because waves of repression continue to come: lawsuits are still levied against innocent people; arrests are still made on flimsy pretexts, in order to terrify and confuse; harsh laws are still enacted against file-sharing, taking their place in the gradual erosion of our privacy and the bolstering of the surveillance state. All of this is intended to destroy or delay inexorable changes in what it means to create and exchange our creations. If STEAL THIS FILM II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leagues of those now prepared to think ‘after intellectual property’, think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity, we have achieved our main goal.” http://stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

Steal This Film II, from producer/director J.J. King, is a sober, thought-provoking piece on technology and intellectual property that frames the current debate over copyright in historical and political terms. Not only can you download it for free in HD (over BitTorrent, natch), the League of Noble Peers ask that you screen and share copies early and often.

Steal This Film II argues that the Internet has enabled a vast expansion of the means of media production and distribution and a blurring of the lines between consumer and producer. As its narrator declares: “In fighting file-sharing, the entertainment industry is fighting the fundamental structure of the Internet.”

Drawing a direct analogy between the scarcity of information when books were copied by scribes and the explosion of ideas following the invention of the printing press, the film uses animations to illustrate how centralized “broadcast” mass media is being fundamentally subverted by decentralized networks. And anecdotes like Johannes Gutenberg’s business partner being set upon and accused of black magic after delivering the first batch of machine-printed bibles to Paris certainly puts the Viacom vs. Google case in perspective.

More polished than the first installment, the Steal This Film 1, and with broader scope, the film isn’t focused strictly on “piracy,” but rather on the evolution of information exchange and communication networks. Experts weigh in from Bangalore, London, Amsterdam, New York and San Francisco on the past, present and future of media, though other than a cameo from the MPAA’s Dan Glickman, its viewpoint couldn’t exactly be considered balanced.

While no video statements from the producer’s earlier call for submissions made it into this installment (though a planned final feature version may), there are man-on-the-street interviews with young people in London who’ve never paid for an album in their lives. And musicians who are creating music from borrowed elements with the intent that they will be copied and remixed serve to demonstrate that even in the absence of strict adherence to copyright laws, creative innovation continues apace, calling into question the argument that without copyrights, there would be no incentive to create new work.

After all, long before Hammurabi’s Code, there was art and inquiry. And that’s where the piece excels — in making clear that the web is just an extension of our anthropologically deep desire to share culture with each other, a desire that predates modern social, political and economic institutions.

We are certainly going to cough up a $ 5 dollar donation to see what’s in the “Mystery Gift Bag,” and look forward to the finished feature and other future projects from the production team.

The article is Written by Jackson West
and found it in very interesting site:
http://newteevee.com/2008/01/04/steal-this-film-ii-is-a-must-see/

for more info about The Pirate Bay Trial:

http://torrentfreak.com/police-closes-pirate-bay-investigation-071210/

The Pirate Bay found Guilty!:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/610548/pirate-bay-defendants-found-guilty-and-jailed?DCMP=KNC-1026&HBX_PK=case+pirate+bay&HBX_OU=50&gclid=CLLigsKly5oCFQ4gZwod9Rns2g

for more info about The Pirate Bay struggle:
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/150

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