Intellectual property in the blockchain

[spooderman]

I, and many others here are hopefully opposed to the vile concept that is "intellectual property."

I would very much like to hasten its demise by making use of a massive, necessarily publicly used, consistent set of data: the blockchain.

I would like to store pieces of IP in the chain, thus making everyone who downloads it have to understand that technology is always political. Bitcoin is anti-censorship, let's demonstrate that fact.

There will be no way to use bitcoin (unless using lightweight clients) whilst accepting the unbelievably flawed logic spawned by the copyright cartel, something along the lines of "artists deserve to be paid for their work!" (which I agree with but not as an attempt at justifying censorship).

[oblivi]

I, and many others here are hopefully opposed to the vile concept that is "intellectual property."

I would very much like to hasten its demise by making use of a massive, necessarily publicly used, consistent set of data: the blockchain.

I would like to store pieces of IP in the chain, thus making everyone who downloads it have to understand that technology is always political. Bitcoin is anti-censorship, let's demonstrate that fact.

There will be no way to use bitcoin (unless using lightweight clients) whilst accepting the unbelievably flawed logic spawned by the copyright cartel, something along the lines of "artists deserve to be paid for their work!" (which I agree with but not as an attempt at justifying censorship).

Maidsafe will finally put solution to all of this. The original uploaders will get paid directly for their work without no bullshit while cloning of that material will be impossible. Look it up.

[spooderman]

wow, maidsafe looks incredible at first glance. Gonna be tied up checking this out over the next few hours.

I've always been contemplating how to "internet" more intelligently.

edit: and I suppose the payment for the content creators will come about as a result of them acquiring more of the juice this network runs on. Is this the long awaited proof of publishing?

[oblivi]

wow, maidsafe looks incredible at first glance. Gonna be tied up checking this out over the next few hours.

I've always been contemplating how to "internet" more intelligently.

edit: and I suppose the payment for the content creators will come about as a result of them acquiring more of the juice this network runs on. Is this the long awaited proof of publishing?

Yeah something along the lines, you'll get paid in safecoins then you can convert them to any other currency. Im not too technically sound on it but it sounds so fucking good. Head to the official forums for more.
The price right now seems a bit bubbled and we may have opportunity to get tons of it way cheaper, im not buying for now.

[BADecker]

Maidsafe is a good idea. It may be more difficult to implement that was previously thought. The evidence for this is the time that it is taking to get the thing moving. But, we have another problem with Internet.

Was it the week before last that the cell towers in Northeastern Arizona went down? Who knows the truth of it, but the cell phone companies claim that it was sabotage. It seems that somebody in a remote part of Arizona, a place where the optical fiber cable is buried, actually used a backhoe to dig up the cable, and then a hacksaw to cut the cable itself.

Who knows if it was for real sabotage, or if it was simply a test, to see how people would react. But the point is, something like Maidsafe might push government spy groups like the NSA into doing actual sabotage like this simply to maintain some kind of control over a much freer people.

People ARE becoming freer. People are throwing off the shackles of others who want to keep them chained in slavery. Maidsafe IS a step in the right direction. But it isn't something that will be the answer to all our Internet woes, even if it works out perfectly, in the way it is designed to.

[BADecker]

I, and many others here are hopefully opposed to the vile concept that is "intellectual property."

I would very much like to hasten its demise by making use of a massive, necessarily publicly used, consistent set of data: the blockchain.

I would like to store pieces of IP in the chain, thus making everyone who downloads it have to understand that technology is always political. Bitcoin is anti-censorship, let's demonstrate that fact.

There will be no way to use bitcoin (unless using lightweight clients) whilst accepting the unbelievably flawed logic spawned by the copyright cartel, something along the lines of "artists deserve to be paid for their work!" (which I agree with but not as an attempt at justifying censorship).

What is wrong with intellectual property? Are you in favor of stealing the ideas of other people? Shouldn't people get some kind of reward for the labors of their thinking?

As things stand right now, if someone has a good idea, an idea that he put together with a lot of time and thought, it doesn't do him any good except if he gets it out to people who pay for it. If he isn't going to get paid for it, why should he waste the time in developing it? If he isn't encouraged to develop it, the world loses out on his intellectual property. This means that the world remains in ignorance.

If you want to do away with the idea of intellectual property, do you want to do away with the idea of any private property at all? Does this mean that you want to socialize the world so that everyone gets to use anything that anyone else uses, even if he thinks that he owns it? If something like this happened, there would be REAL anarchy, even if it were totally peaceful. Things would get all mixed up.

In order to keep some order and organization in life, if there were no private property, government would have to take over everything. If government took over everything, government people greed would siphon off some of the stuff for themselves... more than they were supposed to get by their organizing of things. We would wind up with a Stalin-style communist country/world.

Keep private property. Even keep intellectual private property. Private property is the thing that makes America and the world strong. Especially private intellectual property keeps us free.

[CIYAM]

Seriously "ideas are worth very little".

Anyone can say "I thought up the idea of faster than light travel" (but didn't actually manage to even design it or even if they did it didn't actually work). So now are they supposed to get all the "royalties" in the future because "they announced they thought of it"?

Copyright is *dead* and patents should be buried as well. They are not at all suitable to the 21st century.

[spooderman]

BADecker the information age allows us to reduce things to their philosophical endpoints.

Once upon a time it was possible to make a distinction between the type of "information sharing" that was me telling you how to make a curry, and the complex kind which was me giving you a few billion ones and zeros that were in fact, in a protected order that had been copyrighted.

The internet has removed any meaningful difference between the two. Everything is just information.

Do you want to pay royalties to someone in India every time you make or eat a curry? Do you want to not be allowed to modify it in anyway?

No one talks of giving royalties to the estate of the first homo sapiens to work out how to make a fire.

Intellectual property is absurd and CIYAM is right, it has no place in this century.

To answer your initial question, I don't believe it is possible to steal other people's ideas as this is not consistent with what theft is commonly recognized as. Our species has the general method of assuming physical objects to be ownable, and concepts to be more useful when shared. This is because limiting the use of a concept is the true theft: you are preventing the standing on shoulders of giants. How useful is English going to be to you if people are forbidden from using the words it contains due to protection of the people that invented them? We communicate in concepts, in abstracts. No one can own these things if we are to be able to communicate without censorship.

The solution is so simple, and it's quite consistent with Rand (love her or hate her - or be generally indifferent):

We all understand that if someone makes a brilliant piece of art that in order to continue making art, they should not have to waste their time earning money in some other way.

Hence, if you like a film, album, book, photograph etc, you donate bitcoins to their address and they keep making art. Simple. If you don't, you don't get to experience any more of the joy they brought you. (Current system? Pay $7.99 to apple, 66% of which goes to some middle men, and whatever is left, goes to the artist. After which they will never receive a penny from you for this work. Bitcoin means you can send your favorite, yet semi-retired musician money 3 years after listening to his album because you REALLY want him to make a new one. You could send him hundreds of dollars because his music did more for you than 99% of all the other crap you'd heard that year).

This does away with all the predatory middle men who create nothing (very little), and often screw the creators out of the money reaped.

This is a better and more simple world.

Bitcoin enables this.

Disclosure: I make my living from writing songs, I am totally against the idea that I own anything I create. (Apart from physical objects).

[CIYAM]

Disclosure: I make my living from writing songs, I am totally against the idea that I own anything I create. (Apart from physical objects).

I'll just pretend I didn't read anything about Ayn Rand and salute you for behaving like a true artist (my major at university was music with the focus being on 20th century music composition).

I used to make a lot of money from software development/consulting but then decided to go open source years ago. It hasn't made me much at all (almost nothing really) but actually I am a lot more satisfied with what I do now.

[spooderman]

Ayn Rand is right about SOME things

I am happy to rely on the selfishness of someone who loved some music I made, and REALLY wants more, and instead of just wishing it, or doing something absurd like buy multiple copies of my CD (people actually do this) they can just send me money, directly - with a MESSAGE. Wow, what a world.

[CIYAM]

Ayn Rand is right about SOME things

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[BADecker]

BADecker the information age allows us to reduce things to their philosophical endpoints.

Once upon a time it was possible to make a distinction between the type of "information sharing" that was me telling you how to make a curry, and the complex kind which was me giving you a few billion ones and zeros that were in fact, in a protected order that had been copyrighted.

The internet has removed any meaningful difference between the two. Everything is just information.

Do you want to pay royalties to someone in India every time you make or eat a curry? Do you want to not be allowed to modify it in anyway?

No one talks of giving royalties to the estate of the first homo sapiens to work out how to make a fire.

Intellectual property is absurd and CIYAM is right, it has no place in this century.

To answer your initial question, I don't believe it is possible to steal other people's ideas as this is not consistent with what theft is commonly recognized as. Our species has the general method of assuming physical objects to be ownable, and concepts to be more useful when shared. This is because limiting the use of a concept is the true theft: you are preventing the standing on shoulders of giants. How useful is English going to be to you if people are forbidden from using the words it contains due to protection of the people that invented them? We communicate in concepts, in abstracts. No one can own these things if we are to be able to communicate without censorship.

The solution is so simple, and it's quite consistent with Rand (love her or hate her - or be generally indifferent):

We all understand that if someone makes a brilliant piece of art that in order to continue making art, they should not have to waste their time earning money in some other way.

Hence, if you like a film, album, book, photograph etc, you donate bitcoins to their address and they keep making art. Simple. If you don't, you don't get to experience any more of the joy they brought you. (Current system? Pay $7.99 to apple, 66% of which goes to some middle men, and whatever is left, goes to the artist. After which they will never receive a penny from you for this work. Bitcoin means you can send your favorite, yet semi-retired musician money 3 years after listening to his album because you REALLY want him to make a new one. You could send him hundreds of dollars because his music did more for you than 99% of all the other crap you'd heard that year).

This does away with all the predatory middle men who create nothing (very little), and often screw the creators out of the money reaped.

This is a better and more simple world.

Bitcoin enables this.

Disclosure: I make my living from writing songs, I am totally against the idea that I own anything I create. (Apart from physical objects).

Part of the answer is this. The idea of patents and copyrights are both ideas about intellectual property at times. Look at the following scenario.

In Arizona, on I17, say, 60 miles north of Phoenix, is a beautiful canyon overlook. At the correct time of day the sunlight is reflected off the opposite wall of the canyon in a beautiful display. The buildings down in the valley, below, look like tiny bugs. One almost can't see the people down there at all.

Now, suppose that two professional photographers set up their cameras at the same place on the overlook, to photograph the exact same spot on the canyon opposite wall. Let's say that the camera tripods were actually "interlocked," so to speak, so that the cameras were as close to the exact same spot as they could possibly get. And let's say that the cameras were exactly of the same make and model. And the film in them was exactly the same kind of film, as well. And the cameras were focused on exactly the same spot on the canyon opposite wall.

Then, the photographers stepped up to their respective cameras at exactly the same time, and with a united motion, both hit the buttons on their cameras at the exact same instant. The shutters opened exactly at the same time, and remained open for exactly the same length of time. The resulting pictures were so exactly the same that no difference whatsoever could be detected between them.

Who gets the copyright? They both do. And if they both register with the patent office immediately, they both get the same copyright confirmation. Their "intellectual" property belongs to both. But what does that have to do with the common man? Nothing.

Virtually all intellectual property is allowed to be shared among friends and relatives, and even small gatherings, totally legally. The intellectual property is only restricted regard the public publishing of it. A small gathering that shares copyrighted intellectual property may be judged to be a public publishing by the courts, depending on the circumstances.

Now, let's say that one of our above photographers decides to withhold his photograph from the public altogether. Is there anything wrong with this? Let's say that he goes the extra mile, and doesn't even share it with friends or relatives. Nothing wrong with this at all. Does this in any way hinder the other photographer from sharing his photograph? Not at all.

The point is, if you don't like the idea that someone else can do with his intellectual property as he wishes, then you are a potential thief, if not one for real.

If an owner of intellectual property uses what is generally believed to be secure methods for keeping his property secure while selling the rights and licensing it, and some hacker comes along and breaks the security of the supposedly secure process, isn't this stealing. If someone wants to hoard his intellectual property, and someone else forcefully takes it from him, this is stealing. It is wrong. And the wrongness might be in the people who sold him on the idea that the supposedly secure process was secure at all.

If you want the intellectual property of someone else who owns it and doesn't want to give it to you, go develop it yourself. The ability to steal doesn't make stealing right.

If this were the end of it, this would be enough. But this isn't the end of it. Why not? Because private property is what the free world is built on. If there isn't any private property, be it intellectual or real, there isn't any freedom.

[spooderman]

Interesting. My understanding is that I own the work I produce until I consider it finished it, at which point it gets released, and then it becomes public information. You mention that copyright only prevents people from republishing it themselves. I do think there should be an exception here to what I've said. Corporate entities, advertisers etc should still be required to pay royalties. This is practical to enforce however, stopping people from bitorrenting is not.

What is practical and moral in this age should serve as a pretty effective guide for what our behaviour should be. It is not practical to stop people trading basic knowledge before, so no one would call me a thief for signalling before I turn despite someone presumably have coming up with this as a concept.

Intellectual property being shared amongst family and friends is impossible to stop, so this is just acceptance of what is unpreventable. And, it is only different to sharing with strangers over a p2p network in a very trivial manner.

It is very much the case that copyrighted artistic works used to be produced on an expensive medium such as vinyl or CDs. Someone had to make these, quality control them and distribute them.

Now the internet takes care of all that for us. We all distribute the cost of having an internet amongst us.

The point is, if you don't like the idea that someone else can do with his intellectual property as he wishes, then you are a potential thief, if not one for real.

I don't mind what he does with his intellectual property, but it is not really his business what I do with it! It hurts when you teach someone how to make the perfect curry that you developed for 3 years only for them to put loads of ketchup in it when they make it. But maturity teaches you that there's nothing you can really do about this, and you should just get over it.

Also, artists do not need to be fucking millionaires. You make a tune everyone likes? A poem? Does that warrant millions?

IP is dying regardless of your stance on the validity of it. I shed no tears for it.

Preventing the transfer of some information on a network that treats all information as equal is how you ruin one of the greatest accomplishments our species has made. Do I even need to explain why this is such a bad idea? It is similar to the wonderful proposals people have that attempt to ruin bitcoin's fungiblilty.

[CIYAM]

Funnily enough I was taught by the senior lecturers in my music degree that the "true artists" did not care for money and by going against the popular grain often ended up living very difficult lives.

It is now called the "music industry" for a good reason - there aren't any "artists" left - just manufacturers and corporations.

[spooderman]

There are plenty, but you haven't heard of them

[CIYAM]

There are plenty, but you haven't heard of them

Exactly my point (as they aren't being promoted by big corporations earning money from their creations).

Artists and corporations working together simply makes "no sense" as the former are about "challenging ideas" and the latter are about "cashing in on trends".

[BADecker]

There are plenty, but you haven't heard of them

Exactly my point (as they aren't being promoted by big corporations earning money from their creations).

Artists and corporations working together simply makes "no sense" as the former are about "challenging ideas" and the latter are about "cashing in on trends".

But both are about creating ideas, and even the artist needs cash just to live.

[CIYAM]

But both are about creating ideas, and even the artist needs cash just to live.

Corporations don't care about creating ideas (they care about the "bottom line") and artists can always do other things (such as teach students) in order to live (as they have done traditionally for hundreds of years).

Why people want to try and keep on saying that "art should be commercial" is actually beyond me.

[spooderman]

Art should resonate with a large number of people. If should touch on something that highlights what it means to be a human.

When finding this stuff, we should want more of it, and bitcoin means we can directly contribute to their financial resources.

[CIYAM]

Art should resonate with a large number of people.

That is not art but "craft" (and craft is just a trade like any other).

Most music is written to "appeal" rather than to "challenge" (so it is mostly craft rather than art).

When you look at the art of someone like Picasso it was considered by most to be an abomination (at the time it was created).

Most truly "great artists" were not even recognised as such until after they died (so clearly money had nothing to do with it).