On Intellectual Property

This post started off as a response to a thread on the Mint forums. It grew rather long and detailed that I decided to make it a blog post instead. It kinda turned into an open letter to "IP" owners.

The term "intellectual property" is meaningless in law. It's a catchall term used by rights holders to defame and extort while both sounding legit to regular Joes, and avoiding any legal comeback of a false accusation. There are patents, copyrights and trademarks. If a spokesperson for a company accuses another of violating it's patents there is a specific legal allegation there.

What better way to glue yourself into the future than ensuring there are no ideas that aren't owned by at least one major corporation? You no longer have to worry about the concept of producing compelling product and selling it, you can sit back and extort money from those who do. When groups like the MPEG-LA own EVERY possible way of watching and recording any audio or video on any device they will continue to extort money worldwide without actually "innovating" anything. Startups in every sector are faced with a huge barrier to entry, when the existing corps own the ideas to some very basic concepts.

The concept of owning an idea is wrong. Increasingly it's companies in the West who try to conflate the idea of the number of ideas they own as a measuring stick on how well they're "innovating" when they are unconnected. If I own the idea of operating a smartphone with the voice, why should I lift a finger in actually developing it? I simply wait until someone else does, starts to make money, then send the lawyers in with my extortion demands. To believe "number of patents = strength of innovation" it means the only way to innovate is through buying patents. FOSS is a living breathing example of that not being true.

In FOSS regular people come up with new concepts and innovations all the time without any patents. Look at Gnome Shell, KDE4 and Unity for a range of innovation in ways to interact with a computer. The best ideas will be implemented elsewhere, and inspire further innovation.

The original idea behind all of these legal protections is to promote creation of new works. It has been so warped now that it's a joke. Copyrights guarantee that writers can continue to write more books, it does not guarantee a millionaires lifestyle, it does not guarantee that people should pay for the stuff writers create. If people don't like the books at the price they're sold, they are not legally obliged to buy them.

Patents are designed to give a limited time of exclusivity on the market for an invention, to give the inventors a chance to recoup their costs and profit from it before others are allowed to join the market and compete for customers. When people can patent ideas rather than implementations of ideas, the system is broken. When people can patent stuff they didn't even think of, the system is broken. When people can patent stuff already on the market created by someone else, then use those patents to extort money from the original inventors who have actually put the work in, the system is broken.

Look at the smartphone market in the US to see how badly the patent laws are abused. Every company whining to the FTC to block the competition from US stores on accusations of patent violation. If they all got their way US consumers wouldn't be able to buy a smartphone anywhere, not be legally allowed to import one from anywhere. All of these corporations who proudly state that they love the capitalist system, which means they have to compete for custom, the most compelling products win the customers, all seek to be the only product the customer can choose from, making them the defacto winner by excluding the competition.

When trademarks are used to protect generic words, where anyone who uses the term "face" "book" "app store" in a website, product, service, company etc get C&D demands from lawyers from Facebook and Apple respectively, the trademark system is broken. Those are just two examples. Every large corporation does the same thing. The point of trademarks is to avoid customer confusion. When two products or services are clearly obvious as not being mistaken for the other, there is no justification for the claim of a trademark violation.

The common thread in all of this twisting of the original intent, is the corporations who squat over everyone, screwing every end of the chain in the name of profit. Every patent increases the price of the product or service to produce or supply, which is passed onto the customer. It's often enough to turn a good business idea into a non-starter because the existing companies demand insanely high fees to operate.

All of the worst offenders of "IP abuse" are not only deceiving on levels politicians can only dream of, but they're also a who's who of tax avoidable. They always using their own studies to prove how badly they're being abused by those nasty people on the internet, theft is everywhere, that jobs are being lost, tax is being missed if not clamped down on. They always use their own debunked studies, with debunked figures, to lobby behind the scenes to ensure their agenda is taken as fact, and laws, treaties etc are drawn up behind closed doors like ACTA and PROTECTIP where the level of secrecy is like a terrorism summit, where the people who have to live with it, and pay for it......US.....are excluded at every turn from even reading it, let alone being a participating voice at the table. They knowingly lie to everyone to get their way.

When you flood the discussion forums with astrotufing and front groups to hide your hand and try to lead public opinion by pretending to be random concerned members of the public, you're terms are not acceptable to the public, otherwise you wouldn't need to put all those resources into being deceptive and trying to cover your tracks. This extends to journalism and analysts too, who are paid to spread bullshit in a way that sounds legit, to help add to the impression that everyone supports their position.

While this is the balance, it's no surprise that "IP" is widely seen as a joke the world over with users. If I try to rip a CD into the computer to listen to there and DRM prevents me, I'll download it illegally. If I try to buy a DVD that's only on sale in the US, I'll download it illegally. If I try to make a backup of something and DRM prevents me, I'll download it illegally. A large part of why people go to illegal sources is that the legal alternative is either not open to them or is so crippled or overpriced that the illegal version is the better product.

When you put something on "sale" when it's actually a license to use that product with lots of restrictions, call it a license. It should be illegal to deceive consumers. Any time you reserve any rights over what I can or can't do with the product I've bought, it's not a sale. There are obvious things like "sell copies" which is fair enough, as it's not the original product, what I mean is being allowed to rip it for convenience, being able to put those tunes onto my computer, or cloud storage for my convenience, or even selling or giving it away.

When you put region coding in a DVD that prevents me from playing it in any DVD player, something I download from the internet doesn't have those restrictions. When I'm prevented from buying a US version of a DVD because it won't play on my player, an illegal copy is better value for me.

When you put DRM in a game, where I have to be online all the time or the game stops playing, even for single player games, I'm better off with an illegal version of the game where that's patched out. When you insist on jumping through lots of hoops just to play something I bought, I'm better off with the illegal version.

When you tell me I am forbidden from buying your legal product with legal tender from my country, I will get it illegally. When you tell me I can't sell my own property when I no longer have a use for it, I ignore you and sell it anyway, not only that, but I seek in future to get the same product without having rewarded you with my custom, which means, yes you got it....I'll get it illegally.

When you tell me as a fan of a show or movie that I have to wait months before it arrives in my country, while my fellow fans in the US have all seen it in their cinemas, TV networks etc I'll get it illegally.

When you have the cheek to charge MORE than the cost of both paperback and hardbacks for an ebook, which is a tiny digital file reproduced on demand, I'll get it illegally. When you infest an ebook with DRM to limit the number of reads, or prohibit backing up of that file, or prohibiting the transfer of that file to someone else like I'd do with a traditional paper book, I'll get it illegally.

When you slam me legally for expressing my love of a band, show, actor etc by using "IP" violation C&D letters, I stop giving your artists free publicity that I had been doing. I also stop giving you custom for those artists. I don't stop being a fan, I'll just get them illegally, and cut you out of the loop. Customers are fans as well as consumers. The demand doesn't go away.

A large part of why people turn to illegal versions is that they are better than the legal alternative. The internet has changed everything, specially in terms of how we access and consume content, that horse has well and truly bolted. Give them a compelling legal way to purchase and many will. Stop demonizing and extorting the fans. Give people ways to access the content they love at prices and terms they like and they will pay. Remember you're competing with free.

When you continually talk about "theft" when you don't actually lose anything, you show you just don't get the internet, or your customers. If I copy a file from your computer it does not remove it from your computer, it duplicates it, you've lost nothing. Nothing has been stolen, it has been copied. When you argue that every illegal copy is a lost sale it assumes that everyone who copied it illegally would have bought it if they couldn't get it illegally. This is just wrong, some would have, if they could (see above), while many wouldn't have. When you talk of making "copying" illegal, you speak of ignorance, to open a file like a music track it has to be copied from the storage medium (CD) to RAM to play. When you visit a website, it makes a copy of that page in RAM to display on your screen. When you talk of innovation, you assume everything is created in isolation when this is almost ALWAYS not the case. Everything is inspired by other things that come before it. Patents are based on that EURIKA moment, where something is conceptualized with no base point.

An idea itself is nothing, I have plenty of project ideas myself. Some I may carry out, while others I won't. If others have the same or similar ideas and carry them out to make a success, good luck to them, I have no claim over their work. Ideas are almost always about taking existing things and mixing them in such a way to bring about something new or different. To assume that I'm the only person who's possibly thought of that is the height of arrogance. The key is in implementing those ideas. Nobody should be allowed to own an idea.

While corporations continue to abuse copyrights, trademarks and patents to screw all ends of the chain, and glue themselves into the future without having to do anything except employ more lawyers, I have very little respect for those laws.