Copyright and the means of production - A view of how much w

[sc4r]

I bring this up here because a discussion started elsewhere but was closed (not for reasons to do with this I think).

My interpretation of socialism is that it is intended to allow those who create or build to enjoy the fruits of their labour and creativity. That certainly seems to me to extend to deciding how and where those fruits will be employed and used.

So, I feel that I have a certain intellectual proprietary ownership of this piece (OK no-one is going to want to steal it, but that’s besides the point). By posting it here without imposing any restrictions on its use I’m implicitly giving up that proprietary right to control, but If I posted it on my own website with a (C mark I would be saying ‘Do not take this, you do not have permission.
The distinction between this and controlling the means of production and deciding how its output is to be distributed is a key one. The philosophical point is that I have not actually created what comes out of the means of production on my own. I have done so only because others were involved too. I profit from it disproportionately only because I have the economic bargaining power to insist that they take a less than fair share.

Means of production are in effect an entitlement to somebody else future production. That’s the whole point of it.

There is a pragmatic aspect to it of course. It’s very hard to say definitively how much value the initiator of a means of production adds to its use; and thus how much reward he/she should expect. So within socialism (which after all pragmatic) we remove the problem entirely by saying that no individual actually can own any part of it. This eliminates the possibility of this very exploitable situation being exploited. It isn’t the perfect answer because we don’t live in a universe that permits of perfect answers; but it’s the best approximation we can come up with.

Copyleft (I actually heard this term for the first time today) doesn’t seem to me to radically alter this. It is just a way of the author conveying that he is prepared to give up certain controls. And a good thing this can be too. But it isn’t Socialism. its just socialist being decent chaps as well as socialists (which most of us are).

This site is not a means of production*. It’s the creation of Malte; he allows its use by others and has given them certain rights. They are not in any way being exploited, he is not profiting from their enforced or semi-enforced contribution. As such he is fully entitled (in my view) to say how it runs. The fact that he happens to want it run on basically fairly democratic and socialist lines is an excellent thing in my view, but it demonstrates that he is a good bloke, nothing else.

Communism is rather different. Because communism assumes a very much more enlightened attitude by all individuals to all things. In essence it seeks to see the same values created by a natural sense of justice rather than by ‘rights’. But I feel we can only barely grasp at this enlightenment at the moment and should not attempt to interpret it too narrowly.

Bottom line is that I feel what I create solely by my own efforts is mine to dispose of how I wish because this enhances human dignity (which is the true bottom line of socialism and communism).

Malte ?

*Even if it were I would not condemn ownership. We don’t live under socialism and we cant therefore live by socialist rules (socialism being an attribute of societies not individuals). At best we can live in such a way that we don’t impede the path towards socialism.

[redstar2000]

Tough one.

The internet has created a new situation in the "realm of ideas" and I don't think anyone has a really coherent plan on how to deal with it in a manner fair to all.

One difference that immediately comes to mind is: was the intellectual creation a commodity to begin with? That is, was it created in order to be sold in the marketplace?

If you take someone's intellectual commodity, in the capitalist legal framework, you are obligated to pay her/him for the use of their work, even if you make no commercial use of it yourself...unless the owner grants you permission to use it for free.

What about something that was not created as a commodity? Suppose I took your post, republished it on my free website under the title "Fool of the Month"? You could be extremely pissed off...but since you can't legally show that I took anything of value from you (you're not being paid to post here, right?), I would not owe you any money that you could recover by legal action.

The purpose behind this distinction is that without it, political or any controversy would be virtually impossible. If people cannot quote from each other in order to refute what they perceive to be erroneous views, then controversy would be stultified and, at best, consist of formal academic summaries.

Consider another example: suppose I took some of your words in order to create a "generic" illustration of a particular point of view. Thus, I didn't directly attribute the words to you at all...I wasn't interested in making you look bad, I was interested in making the idea look bad.

So instead of saying "the idiot sc4r said 'blah, blah, blah...'", all that I published was: "blah, blah, blah" -- this idiotic view of things shows etc., etc., etc.

As long as we're dealing with material that was never a commodity to begin with, I think this is "fair use" both legally and in practice.

But things do get much more complicated when the original was produced "for sale" to begin with. On this site, it's ok to publish a link to a BBC News story and, I think, to even briefly summarize it...but were I to copy and paste it, I think the BBC could sue. They wouldn't, but they could.

In practical terms, it seems to me that anything on the internet will, sooner or later, be in the "public domain"...there is no practical way to "police" hundreds of millions and soon to be billions of users.

To me this suggests something of what we can anticipate in communist society...the "social construct" of property is going to get really hazy and amorphous, beginning but certainly not ending with "intellectual property".

We will, I think, evolve towards the position that: if I create something and people like it, is that not reward enough?

I think it is.

:cool:

PS: My website and anything I write on the internet is "copyleft" and, in fact, people are free to use it any way they please. I personally think the idea of "intellectual property" is metaphysical nonsense, on the same plane with astrology or angelology.

[sc4r]

Good points and from a practical stance I would not quibble with anything.

I'm not going to discuss what is and isn’t legally protected under liberal law: a) because I'm not interested especially and B) because I'm not sufficiently expert.

From the perspective of what I regard as morally mine and what I would expect socialist law to support (in principle, as you say it doesn’t follow that just because I could sue, I must, or would, or even should):

I don’t see that the issue of whether I produced it as a commodity has any real bearing in the matter. I would not expect a socialist state to do more for me than obtain recompense for any actual loss I had suffered, but I would expect the infringer to be punished in proportion to the crime (which is independent of my financial loss and only dependent on how serious and malicious the ‘theft’ was).

In other words if I state ‘this is not under any circumstances to be copied, it is mine and mine alone’ and there are reasonable grounds for considering that the piece actually is both unique and of importance to me, then I’d expect an illicit copier to be punished.

The question of ‘unique and important’ is relevant. It gets one out of the fix you mentioned about quotation and criticism. Because it means that a quoted paragraph from a book or an essay (even if taken verbatim) would not be so considered; whereas the unexpurgated text of a 2000 word article without credit certainly would be. A link to the original on the other hand is merely a direction / a reference and that’s perfectly acceptable (if you don’t want the thing read then don’t publish it). Equally it would be hard I think to contend that any significant theft had taken place if somebody actually did cut and paste an entire article from one place on the net and included full reference to the author. The only exception I could see would be a cut and paste from a pay per view site.

Essentially this boils dwn to a question of 'passing off'. If you avoid claiming something I've made easy for you to cut and paste as yours and which was never hidden then its hard to see where the injustice is.

There’s a reason for this – Good writing does not create itself. It takes time and effort and skill. If I put in the time and effort I deserve not to have somebody else take whatever benefit accrues (whether it be financial or reputation or anything else).

Note that it is the writing not the ideas that stay mine. Paraphrasing is different. If I publish ideas I must expect people to use them.

BTW (and fairly obviously) everything and anything I publish on the net unless explicitly and unmistakeably labelled ‘hands off’ (which nothing is) is of course free to all. If anyone chose to copy something substantial I published as an article or a column (i.e. as journalism, rather than conversation like this) I’d expect a credit, but if I dint get it all I’d be is disappointed.


(Edited by sc4r at 6:15 am on June 5, 2003)

[redstar2000]

How about this one?

All music published on the internet is free to all. But if you want to hear the musician in person, you pay at the door?

Would most musicians actually be better able to make a living at their art with such an arrangement? The "superstars" would suffer, of course, but all the rest?

:cool:

[Pete]

Copy rights:) Ohh how this topic worries me being a writer.

I have been probing for periodicals to get published in and they all say that they "claim first North American/Canadian serial rights, but the copyright remains with the author." So basically I keep the work as my own...but they get to profit from it in that printing. Yet I would get payed upto 40 dollars a poem that gets published. It seems a fare trade, considering I also get a yearly subscription to each of these magazines. But what about books? The company gains the copy right...which means they get to tell me where I can present the material. Lets say I want to make a contimplation later in life of works published by a number of different companies. I have to get each permission to do what I want with my work.

Now is that fair?

[sc4r]

NO it definitely isn't. This is a good example of capitalism in practise. They use their economic bargaining power to deprive you of rights to your own work.

In this case they have not even got the excuse that their equipment was neccessary to get anything created. Its exploitation of a bargaining position pure and simple.

[Iepilei]

but the overall purpose of the copyright is to accredit those who did something important with capitalistic compensation - cash, if you will.

of course in our society we're bred to create not for intuition or advancement as we have in the past, but for a primitive "dog-treat" form of reward. the concept of copyrights should, in and of themselves, be hideous to any free-thinking and free-willed individual.

[sc4r]

Quote: from Iepilei on 10:02 pm on June 6, 2003
but the overall purpose of the copyright is to accredit those who did something important with capitalistic compensation - cash, if you will.

of course in our society we're bred to create not for intuition or advancement as we have in the past, but for a primitive "dog-treat" form of reward. the concept of copyrights should, in and of themselves, be hideous to any free-thinking and free-willed individual.



I dont see reward, even material reward, as being a capitalist notion. Only if the possession of this reward enables you to dictate more favourable terms for yourself about other rewards is it capitalist. In other words it is only if you are allowed to purchase rights to other peoples future production. To exploit them.

If I create 10x what you do there is no reason I should not enjoy the fruits of that extra creation (I might be working harder, I might simply be better at it).

What is wrong is the incremental effect allowed by capitalism whereby past effort automatically gives you a disproportionately large proportion of current output; and also the implicit factor that many people will be rewarded not for creating anything but only for manipulating the system itself.

Socialism is, to me, about equitability not equality. Its about removing exploitation not about removing just rewards.


(Edited by sc4r at 8:39 am on June 7, 2003)

[Iepilei]

not saying one isn't entitled to a little extra compensation for a task well met, however what's wrong with the satisficiation one recieves by just doing the job and recieving a simple praise?

great works come to those unexpecting.