Re: [ox-en] positive intellectual rights
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 22:01:33 +0200
Hi Graham and all!
Last week (11 days ago) Graham Seaman wrote:
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
I speed-read it. It's indeed an interesting paper. Also interesting
seems the background of the author:
Philippe Aigrain is Head of Sector "Software Technologies" in the
unit "Technologies and Engineering for Software, Systems and
Services" of the European Commission Information Society
Technologies R&D Programme, in which he is in charge of actions in
support to free / open source software and related innovation.
That's an example for someone who is "infected" by the idea of Free
Software bringing the idea to bodies which are far from being
"natural" allies of the Free Software movement.
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)
Good point!
What 'IP' laws would be needed in a gpl-society? I think Phillipe
Aigrain's list is an excellent start.
Definitely - as long as we are still talking of what we know as rights
today.
2. Free software ends up fighting from a permanently defensive position
against new laws (from the DMCA through longert and longer acronyms...).
After all RMS once started out with a vision far beyond software.
However, that's the past it seems :-( (taking aside Oekonux of course
:-) ).
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.
Very important point! If you are in the situation feeling the need to
defend yourself you kind of lost the battle already. Personally I
think the most important point is to provide a positive vision being
not too far from reality. In Oekonux we're trying to explore how this
vision might look like.
I think we need a (mental) standpoint saying something like: "This is
readily available, it works and the results are better. Why not using
these priniciples more and more?".
Translated into the music sector for instance this would mean to point
to the fact, that the main aim of the music industry is to prevent the
development of music. Instead they provide us with million dollar
campaigns hammering the latest hot air into our heads. It's a scandal
and IMHO there is no reason why the development we see in Free
Software taking place is possible in music as well. And they're
earning money with this practice? So what? Other businesses declined
also.
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.
Yes.
Anyway, here's his list
There is another list I find worth reproducing here.
But before we define property rights and other restrictions, it is
better to fully explore mentally what can develop on the basis of
positive rights.
To outline this potential, one will have to differentiate between
different types of intellectual entities. Here are some of the
essential parameters that influence which positive rights or
property-based scheme can be deployed:
C1. The size of the initial investment necessary to create an
intellectual entity before it can first be used or accessed.
C2. Whether the entity is created once, and then accessed without
modifications, or in the contrary incrementally created and
revised through sequences of usage and (re)-creation. A
particular case of entities which are created once (possibly
through a complex process) and then accessed without or with
little modifications are those referring to a live process (such
as music performance) or resulting in a real-time consumption
process (such as viewing a movie in a theater). One should note
that the intellectual rights framework influences the nature of
entities: if it sets freedoms of re-use, it is more likely that
intellectual entities that are iteratively re-created will
flower, while if it restricts rights to modify, one will see
mostly created-once-and-for-all entities.
C3. Whether the creation is individual or collective.
C4. Whether the creation is or not the embodiment of knowledge about
the physical world, or about society.
C5. The relation between the entity and action on the physical world
ranging from intellectual designs of physical devices (machines,
for instance) at one extremity to intellectual entities whose
only link with physical processes arises when they are mapped
into physically perceptible signals.
C6. Whether the usage of the entity is of such a nature that one
needs to allow long lasting appropriation to make possible for
this usage to develop in a sustainable manner.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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