Intellectual Property

[Anarchist Freedom]

Lately with the emergance of Paying for MP3's intellectual property has come into play.

Does a thing such as intellectual property exist?

Or is intellectual "property" Meant to be free and used and explored by everyone???

[NovelGentry]

Lately with the emergance of Paying for MP3's intellectual property has come into play.

Does a thing such as intellectual property exist?

Or is intellectual "property" Meant to be free and used and explored by everyone???

Intellectual property does not exist, no more than the idea of private property. That is to say it exists for the rich within our society because they have the money ot protect it and the money to outline it. What I mean by outline is when you look at all this big software companies who pay lawyers just to fill out and check patents all day.

Ideas are very abstract thing -- not to mention with the advent of digital technology, ideas have been shown to be mere representation in extremely simple form, 1's and 0's. As such, every idea that can ever come into existence is easily represented by things already known and understood by humans, and as such the whole of history's ideas, and the whole of it's future ideas should be fair game.

You could theoretically make EVERY possible song by creating every possible combination of 1's and 0's (within reason). For example, say your average 4 minute song is a 4MB mp3. That mp3 on your computer is just a long string of ones and zeros -- replicate that long string, and you have that song. Pick another random string and you have noise... pick another random one, and maybe you got part of a song with some noise. Generate eveyr possible combinations of 1's and 0's that creates a 4MB file, and you have every image, song, movie, text, etc... that can be represented in that compressed amount of space.

Looking at Intellectual Property this objectively is devastating to the idea of copyright -- but it must be done.

[Brennus]

Things such as information and music should be free. It is not stealing if I copy a song from the internet and listen to it. I benefit myself without stealing from another. If a thing harms nothing, it should go unpunished. What about the musicians, perhaps? Supposedly because songs are available on the internet the musicians have lost money. They get paid by the recording company and that is whom makes profits from albums. The musicians should perform live if they want more money. And because no one "creates" mp3 copies except those who download them, it should not be paid for.

Likewise, patents only harm the general welfare by constricting who can make what. If a man invents something and creates a patent, he gets profits from this invention whether or not he actually manufactures it. This pays someone for doing nothing than filling out a form. It is a ridiculous idea that he should earn all the fruits of this invention because he designed a concept.

[redstar2000]

I suspect future generations will look back on the current preoccupation with "intellectual property rights" in the same way we look back on medieval controversies concerning the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Absurd squabbles over things that don't exist.

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