[ox-en] positive intellectual rights
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 18:52:19 -0400 (EDT)
Phillippe Aigrain has an excellent article on 'positive intellectual
rights' (well, maybe it's old news, but I hadn't seen it before):
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/aigrain.pdf
Basically he's saying that rather than just defending old rights against
new IP laws, we should be proposing positive alternatives. He has a list
of 8 positive rights, all of which sound absolutely spot-on to me.
I think this argument is very relevant to Oekonux, for a number of
reasons:
1. Oekonux argues that physical production will become less important than
software-like production. In any system, what production is based on is
always what the majority of law ends up being about (and you can already
see it coming in the endless license-related arguments around software)
What 'IP' laws would be needed in a gpl-society? I think Phillipe
Aigrain's list is an excellent start.
2. Free software ends up fighting from a permanently defensive position
against new laws (from the DMCA through longert and longer acronyms...).
It's hard to be successful, even at being defensive, when defensive is all
you are. It would be much easier if the defense was based round an idea
of an alternative - maybe not possible for now, but something to work
towards.
3. The idea of 'positive rights' goes beyond software; it's general, and
ties together other related issues, from patents on medicine to why
TRIPS is wrong.
Anyway, here's his list (though the article has much more than this, and
would be worth reading even without it)
Positive rights:
1. To create new intellectual entities, including by making use of
existing ones. ['intellectual entities' are defined earlier]
2. To make one's creation public
3. To be acknowledged as creator of all or part of an intellectual entity
4. To obtain economical or non-economical reward for one's creation, in
proportion to the interest other have had for it
5. To access any intellectual entity that has been made public
6. To quote extracts of an intellectual entity whatever it's media, for
the purpose of information, analysis, criticism, teaching, research, or
the creation of other intellectual entities
7. To redress mistakes, libellous statements, false information, erroneous
attributions
8. To give reference, link to, or create inventories of intellectual
entities produced by others as soon as they become public.
Graham
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