Intellectual Property

[Genosse Kotze]

was just listening to Bob Avakian talk about, amongst other things, the fallacy of looking at ideas as a form of private property. In the liberal/pluralist sense there exists "the market of ideas"; and when you're talking about capitalism and private property, the use of the word 'market' makes it easy for us to see what is inherently wrong with looking at ideas as commodities in a market. When you look at it like this, all of the competition of markets actually serves as a huge morass to intellectual freedom--if, at the time, the "market of ideas" wouldn't be receptive to whatever it is you came up with, you withhold it until the situation is more favorable.

This was my brief, ineloquent way of recapitulating Avakian's argument against the "market of ideas", which I'm essentially in agreement with--the "market of ideas" is the shitty result of ideas being treated as private property. However, my understanding of what makes private property so heinous in the first place is how it is produced. In the Marxist sense, what defines and makes capital (synonymous with private property, if my understanding is correct) so perverse is in how it is produced--by class antagonisms and exploitation, and in no way benefits the actual producer. The horrendous defining characteristic of private property occurs in the production process, but when you're talking about ideas, this alienating, exploitative, defining production process seems to be absent, so you can't treat ideas as private property at all...which was basically the jist of Avakian's argument in the first place...so what was my point exactly?? Shit!!!! I don't have one! Well, since I've blown all this time writing this uselessness, I might as well post it.

[Utopia]

The entire idea is wrong from the beginning. Ideas as a form of private property infers that the ideas belong solely to the individual. Most men, throughout history, rarely have ideas which they themselves created, and nearly all of these ideas have been thought of before, by different men. Claiming ownership to something so immaterial can't be possible in any society that isn't completely dependent on private property.


-Utopia

[ichneumon]

Infosocialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infosocialism)

[finishtherevolution]

I'm of the opinion that the thought processes that would occur in the culture of a just economic sys tem would be inherently different from those produced in an enviorment of alienation where everything is exploited for profit. Thoughts would be more of an honest expression and reflect the community and would be less likely to be characterised as 'property'.

[bolshevik butcher]

Intelectual property is a joke, and yet increasingly it's what our western economy is being built on, money based on money, investments etc and money based on ideas, basically intelectual property. It is a farce, I think the internet is a great example of an idea that hasn't been subjected to intelectual property, look at what a success it has been.

[DIzzIE]

Heh, IP, don't get me started (though I'll be writing a lil' antikopyright spiel sooner rather than later for this year's Montreal Anarchist Book Fair).

Essentially, what we are seeing with IP is perhaps best exemplified by the enclosure movement analogy, except that this form of mental enclosure is made all the more nefarious by the fact that it's entirely illusory. It is the logical extension of capitalist profiteering into commodification of the ethereal, of our very thoughts and ideas themselves, a symptom of capitalist psychosis that attempts to herd you into the alienating binary of either domineering producer or submissive consumer.

And what's more, is all these copyleft things like the GNU licenses are just as bad; they share all the absurd notions that knowledge can be owned and commodified, but with a patronising twist that ol' mastah gonna let us po' dumdums actually use zir content....the blind idiot assertion that pretends that we actually need zir permission in the first place!

Here's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wssfl22Hhp4) a fun video ;).
[img]http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n74/arraggia/fc.gif' alt='' width='585' height='440' class='attach' /> (http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n74/arraggia/fc.gif)

[Pilar]

If a post-Revolutionary society removed the profit motive from an IP transactions, the only thing left the creator would have is the pride attached to the creation.

So many of these conversations above deal with non-fiction. But fiction would require a different approach.

For example, if one creates Sherlock Holmes, and others copied it, and made stories about it that added on the the Doyle ones, you can easily distinguish between those written by Doyle, as he name would be on them (well, he's dead, of course), versus those made up by me.

Someone like Rowling, writing Harry Potter, has a vision of how the seven stories will end. She deserves no money profit, but does deserve to control her character within HER name, even under socialism. Others could make Harry Potter stories, but should not be allowed to call themselves Rowling (or Doyle, for Sherlock Holmes). Society owes that much to the creator.

Here is one example where the cappies have it right: If you make a film about Hamlet, you MUST credit Ol' Bill-boy, I think dead now 400 years, with his achievement.

But that doesn't mean you get cash. :)

[Idola Mentis]

Information is a means of production. There's an infosocialist manifest floating around out there, but I can only find the swedish version...