D&D 4E Piracy and 4e

[Makaze]

What you are arguing here is that more people would be making profits and drinking beer and we would have more variety if the recipe was a secret and patent protected.

Actually yes. So long as there is not the possibility of an industry scale monopoly then forcing competitors to develop new products does increase societal profits and variety.

Yeah so are you saying that what you are saying here proves that USSR had a problem of R&D due to lack of copyright law? Because I fail to see the connection.

Nope. They had a problem due to lack of investment. Lack of IP right enforcement leads to lack a of investment and thus the same results. Understand? And you're the one that brought up the USSR in the first place.

It does not take many millions of dollars. It does take a lot of experiments.

Those experiments? Those costs millions.

Btw do you know that Bayer fares as the worst corporation regarding ethics?

Who cares?

video games as an example of civil technology progress is laughable.

On the contrary they are a perfect example. Video games are possible due to a broad range of technological achievements and represent a market force that drives future chip and semiconductor development which spills over into nearly every facet of our lives.

You can't compare knowledge to money. Money is a closed balance system while knowledge is an open system.

New knowledge costs money. That's a fact. And I'm fairly certain for any given piece of near term knowledge someone qualified in the field can tell you how much money in terms of resources and man-hours it would take to develop. So there is a very quantifiable comparison of money to knowledge.

 

[xechnao]

Sure- in the information age, knowledge is money, insofar as it gives you the power to make money.

Patent law, for instance, means you must pay for the knowledge of how to build a product or perform a process.

You know that even in capitalism there are laws protecting against what you are advocating here? From public education to stock market to whatever. Again the right to commercial use and the right to knowledge or information should have nothing to do with each other.

Actually, designs for architectural monuments and art ARE copyrightable forms of IP.

(Check http://www.uspto.gov/main/howdoi.htm if you doubt me, under the "Get a copyright" link.)

The architectural monuments and the monumental art in museums you are talking about have nothing to do with copyrights. New designs are protected today. But this is irrelevant to museums and historical monuments you were talking about. It is also practically irrelevant because noone actually wants to build an exact copy of some other monument.

 

[Makaze]

You can not connect IP to the value of knowledge that is and must be a right to every civil human being. Democracy is based on knowledge. Aristocracy is based on arbitrary definitions and generalizations. Can you see my point?

I fail to see why any given human being has an absolute right to any knowledge. And while I agree that complete freedom of information is beneficial to democracy it is detrimental technological progress. We need a balance between the two.

Their profits should be protected. What I am arguing here is that the availability of knowledge has to be open too in civilization. Do not try to connect the one to the other, otherwise you are jumping to dangerous territory.

We're already in that territory. And given our capitalist society it's a good thing too since that connection guarantees the continued investment in and development of new knowledge.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The way our current society and economic system are now IP is a necessity. This does not by any way mean that generally human societies and economies are better off for it. You can not connect IP to the value of knowledge that is and must be a right to every civil human being. Democracy is based on knowledge. Aristocracy is based on arbitrary definitions and generalizations. Can you see my point?

It most assuredly does mean that humanity is better off.

Czar Peter was an aristocrat, yes, but his economic reforms made life better for every Russian- most directly for those who created IP and their aristocrat benefactors- but they also generally improved the daily existence of the average Russian (in a given economic strats) to be nearly on par with his European counterpart, something that could not be said of the era before Peter's reign. In addition, without those reforms, its arguable that Russia as a distinct nation wouldn't even exist today.

Laws that protect IP give the ability for anyone with the "right stuff" to become a captain of industry. They let anyone in the world listen to their favorite KISS or Maroon 5 song, or become the "next big thing."

What I am arguing here is that the availability of knowledge has to be open too in civilization. Do not try to connect the one to the other, otherwise you are jumping to dangerous territory.

Political facts, history, the rudiments of science & math- all should be available to be learned to all people, yes.

What other kinds of knowledge would you have be free that its creator wouldn't find value in selling?

 

[xechnao]

Actually yes. So long as there is not the possibility of an industry scale monopoly then forcing competitors to develop new products does increase societal profits and variety.

What does this have to do with beer? Moreover I do not understand this "forcing" you are talking about.

Those experiments? Those costs millions.

No. They cost effort and time. Today money is thought out as an equivalent of effort and time but this is not politically correct.

On the contrary they are a perfect example. Video games are possible due to a broad range of technological achievements and represent a market force that drives future chip and semiconductor development which spills over into nearly every facet of our lives.

You are making a very big leap to link video game gameplay innovation and serious hardware technological development (specific hardware architectural design is not considered a technological innovation as its application is limited to its specific target which is video games).

New knowledge costs money. That's a fact. And I'm fairly certain for any given piece of near term knowledge someone qualified in the field can tell you how much money in terms of resources and man-hours it would take to develop. So there is a very quantifiable comparison of money to knowledge.

Again production costs money: that's a fact. Knowledge does not and should not.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You know that even in capitalism there are laws protecting against what you are advocating here? From public education to stock market to whatever. Again the right to commercial use and the right to knowledge or information should have nothing to do with each other.

I'm an IP attorney, actually. Specifically, Entertainment Law (which primarily deals with Copyright, but has some Trademark issues as well). I also have a degree in Economics & Philosophy and an MBA in Sports & Entertainment Marketing, and will be attending a Tech law conference in Austin 2 weeks from now.

So, yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.

Commercial use is one facet of the right to knowledge- the right to exploit it commercially. IP laws are one factor in creating the barriers to entry in a particular market. Those barriers matter. If the barriers are too high, nobody enters the market until the price of the good is incredibly high. If the barriers are too low, then entry is so easy that there is minimal profit to reinvest in R&D.

Even the "educational purpose" loopholes cost- you can't use so much of an IP in that manner as to render the IP valuless, and to gain more knowledge, you must pay- typically to some educational institution, be it a school or a company's internal processes...which typically comes with a contract including a "non-compete" clause (which economists would call an "opportunity cost").

The architectural monuments and the monumental art in museums you are talking about have nothing to do with copyrights.

No, those in particular are definitely within the public domain now. But in their day, they were as vigorously protected as the laws of the days allowed.

It is also practically irrelevant because noone actually wants to build an exact copy of some other monument.

You'd be surprised at how much design work (architectural and otherwise) gets copied in some way, shape or form. Seldom is the work a 1:1 replica, but the law doesn't protect against perfect duplication, it protects even against partial duplication to a certain extent. Its a fact-dependent matter for the courts to consider, not a simple % formula.

 

[xechnao]

It most assuredly does mean that humanity is better off.

Czar Peter was an aristocrat, yes, but his economic reforms made life better for every Russian- most directly for those who created IP and their aristocrat benefactors- but they also generally improved the daily existence of the average Russian (in a given economic strats) to be nearly on par with his European counterpart, something that could not be said of the era before Peter's reign. In addition, without those reforms, its arguable that Russia as a distinct nation wouldn't even exist today.

Laws that protect IP give the ability for anyone with the "right stuff" to become a captain of industry. They let anyone in the world listen to their favorite KISS or Maroon 5 song, or become the "next big thing."

Well I do not agree with your generalization and I do not think that your example is correct. And I am not here to give or take history lessons so lets stop it here.

Political facts, history, the rudiments of science & math- all should be available to be learned to all people, yes.


What other kinds of knowledge would you have be free that its creator wouldn't find value in selling?

But this knowledge was not always free. It was uconceivable to question some things in the past you know. Is it better know or then?

 

[xechnao]

No, those in particular are definitely within the public domain now. But in their day, they were as vigorously protected as the laws of the days allowed.

No copyright laws. As I said they also made no sense. The idea is to try to be different from the other, not copy it.

 

[xechnao]

I'm an IP attorney, actually. Specifically, Entertainment Law (which primarily deals with Copyright, but has some Trademark issues as well). I also have a degree in Economics & Philosophy and an MBA in Sports & Entertainment Marketing, and will be attending a Tech law conference in Austin 2 weeks from now.

So, yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.

Commercial use is one facet of the right to knowledge- the right to exploit it commercially. IP laws are one factor in creating the barriers to entry in a particular market. Those barriers matter. If the barriers are too high, nobody enters the market until the price of the good is incredibly high. If the barriers are too low, then entry is so easy that there is minimal profit to reinvest in R&D.

Even the "educational purpose" loopholes cost- you can't use so much of an IP in that manner as to render the IP valuless, and to gain more knowledge, you must pay- typically to some educational institution, be it a school or a company's internal processes...which typically comes with a contract including a "non-compete" clause (which economists would call an "opportunity cost").

I have no problem if you apply your theories only to the entertainment industry. But there is a problem if you step further from that.

 

[Makaze]

What does this have to do with beer? Moreover I do not understand this "forcing" you are talking about.

I'm saying that by individual beer recipes being secret this forces others that wish to make beer to create their own recipes both increasing the variety and they total beer industry sales and the total amount of knowledge in the world. If all beer recipes ever invented were instantly public knowledge there would be no monetary drive to create new recipes and therefore while it would still happen it would happen at a far slower rate.

No. They cost effort and time. Today money is thought out as an equivalent of effort and time but this is not politically correct.

You've got a different version of the term "politically correct" than I do And I would argue that in a modern capitalist society that effort and time do indeed equal money. Additionally there are very real material costs for many modern experiments.

You are making a very big leap to link video game gameplay innovation and serious hardware technological development (specific hardware architectural design is not considered a technological innovation as its application is limited to its specific target which is video games).

Gameplay agreed. Hardware on the other hand... Any technological progression made by Nvidia for example is a direct result of videogames and some these advancements have been used in many other industries.

Again production costs money: that's a fact. Knowledge does not and should not.

And if production of knowledge costs money then knowledge costs money. I notice that you say should a lot. You can argue all you want the way things "should" be. That's your opinion. But the way things actually are our current society is that knowledge costs money to create and without reimbursement in excess of its production costs the creation of knowledge slows.