I was driving home today and NPR was talking about some copyright stuff, this time in regards to ebooks and the loss of first sale. Of courese there’s the book publishing flunkie on droning on w/ a detailed analogy about locking one’s house and physical property, which just made my fingers curl with disgust and anger. Given their obvious different natures, how can applying the same rules to physical objects and ideas/information make sense? (Corollary: given that physical property rights derive from their nature, shouldn’t intellectual property rights be the same?) [it would also be fallacious to correlate physical and intellectual property rights because they stem from completely separate philsophical and legal/constitutional bases]
Of course, the basic problem with owning ideas comes down to the fact that it’s the complete antithesis of freedom. Copyright is about the right of copy (as in printing), but in its increasingly extended form (with almost every expression being covered), it’s only a matter of time before thought becomes infringement). I don’t know about you, but that disturbs me.
Speaking of which, the NYTimes article which talks about the brief failed experiment of public domain pisses me off too. While the quality of the Times has gone downhill, you would still expect some basic fact checking. The first patent law was enacted in 1623, the Statute of Anne didn’t come into existance until 1710. Consider that before that, in all of human history, everything was public domain.
Often times, I like to think of these little thought experiments. Imagine the inventor of the wheel, or of stone cutting implements getting and enforcing a patent. Or perhaps the English language being under the modern notion of ‘copyright’. Where would we be today? We won’t have to wait long to find out I suspect. Our society seems perfectly fine with the unlimited expansion, in both breadth and length, of ‘intellectual property’.