Rent seeking is the end game of capitalism, especially with minimal regulations
It just results in very silly situations where the library buys the terrible copies and just happen to also have information on how the DRM works and which programs can bypass it and since libraries exist to provide information, if someone asks for it, of course you tell them. Same way as there tend to be copiers that are out of sight (and camera) range. At least a couple of libraries I worked for had information by the copiers on exactly how much of a book you could copy before it was considered copyright infringement, thus informing people that they could copy the books.
It's very kayfabe-esque.
You're right that it's a fundamental values mismatch. Personally, I'm an extremist who would crash every F500 company to prevent another Library of Alexandria. Knowledge > money.
So they help people follow the law?
Lawyers and librarians fighting is always fun because each group is very detail-oriented, very pedantic, and amazing at malicious compliance.
Sure, you can imagine a society with capitalism and no regulations. But that would be a wish, not something you can bring about (or that ever occured for long).
In fact, when unregulated capitalism is left free things get even worse for the little man and the small business or upstart: they can be crushed with no regulations to protect them. People not liking this doesn't matter. The power is on the ones with the money and the connections, which would be the capitalists, not with the masses who think voting means they rule.
And if we restrict it purely to copyright laws, who said removing them only makes things better? Million creators getting paid because of copyright - authors, recording artists, session musicians, illustrators, movie crews, programmers, etc would beg to differ.
As for ordinary people's opinion not mattering, it matters because it affects what the capitalists, and more generally the people in power, can get away with. That's why capitalists like the camouflage of people confusing capitalism and free markets.
Why should capitalists love it when people think that regulations (which also include copyright, patent law, trademark law, ...) are opposed to capitalism?
"Capitalists" are just people living in the system, and some of them would seek such positions if available, and love it if they successfully occupy them. Those are the people that think it's ok to demand money from people singing "Happy Birthday to You". Why wouldn't they love it? Yes, it's not good to everybody else, but it's good for them.
To the extent that private property is an essential component of capitalism, and that intellectual property is a component of private property, your classification of copyright as a regulation rather than capitalism itself makes little sense.
That is precisely the question that is disputed in discussions of copyright. "Intellectual property" in itself is an ambiguous term: does it mean the ideas themselves, or particular expressions of them? Copyright law says the latter: ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted (or patented), only particular expressions of them can. That is because ideas are non-rivalrous: people can give them to others without losing the use of them themselves. That takes away the justification for private property rights, namely, to avoid conflicts over who gets to use the property.
Prior to computers and the Internet, one could argue that particular copies of a particular expression of an idea, such as a book, were rivalrous: I can't both give a book to you and read it myself at the same time. But with digital copies that is no longer true. So the same logic that makes ideas themselves not private property, now pushes us towards not treating copies of digital works as private property either.
The original justification for copyright law was to encourage people to create works. But that was always a questionable claim, because nobody creates works in a vacuum. From the standpoint of creation, the Internet has made clear that many more works get created when there is free sharing of digital copies. And the Internet has also enabled other ways of paying people whose creative works you like, besides having to pay for individual copies; that's what systems like Patreon are for. So that original justification for copyright law has now lost whatever validity it once had.
The best piece of evidence for who really benefits from copyright law, though, is who is pushing hardest for draconian enforcement of it. Is that content creators, i.e., actual authors and artists and musicians, etc.? No. It's the media companies, whose business model depends on being able to, not to put too fine a point on it, exploit content creators by convincing them that working through the media companies is the only way to get them a large audience--and then siphoning off most of the profits for themselves instead of paying them back to the creators.
As I said, this is precisely the point that is disputed in discussions of copyright law. You certainly can't just assume it as a fact. But the capitalists who are exploiting copyright law to their own benefit would certainly love it if everyone would just take it as given that "intellectual property" is private property. That's an example of the general pattern I have described elsewhere in this discussion, that capitalists want people to think regulations are for the people's benefit, instead of for the benefit of the capitalists. That is the capitalists' ideal state of regulatory capture.
Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit. There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward.
You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. I’d posit that is not how the system is structured nor is it how it is intended to be structured. That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is. You can’t just take out the parts you don’t like and treat them as a separate entity.
The problem is that you are assuming that "intellectual property" is property. You cannot assume that.
> Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit.
Enclosure of parts of the commons that are rivalrous--only one person can use that part at a time--was, yes. But as I have already said, "intellectual property" is non-rivalrous, so this argument does not apply to it.
> There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward
This is quite true; it's why we have a complex system of private property common law for physical property, and some kinds (such as real estate) have even more complexity in the law attached to them.
But "intellectual property" is not physical property, and you can't just assume that all of the law that has been developed for physical property is automatically applicable to "intellectual property" as well.
> You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism.
I am doing no such thing. Indeed, the feature of capitalism I have been describing, namely regulatory capture, is not for the benefit of society; it is a net loss to society. But it is a benefit to the capitalists who buy the regulations they want. That's why they buy them.
> That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is.
In the sense that regulatory capture is a common end state of capitalism (where "capitalism", as I have said elsewhere in this discussion, is not the same thing as "free markets", although capitalists would love for people to think it is), yes, it is "inherent" to capitalism. That still doesn't mean it's a net benefit to society. It isn't.
Intellectual property is property.
Whether or not it should be is a different question, but it factually is property.
Why? Is there some natural law that gives me ownership to the meaning of the words I say? That bars you from repeating that meaning in those words?
You are literally inverting the facts (actual law that exists) and subjective preferences that are not facts (“natural law”).
What natural law gives you the right to own land?
There isn't one. It's an arbitrary social construct. The argument that IP is property is built on a circle of quicksand.
In the case of land, at least, exclusivity of use can be an argument one could make (Only one person can physically use any one plot of it for any one particular purpose, and gosh, maybe it's in the social interest to have some set of rules for ajudicating disputes between two people who want to use it for different purposes, and one of many solutions to that question is private land ownership), but that's not even an argument that has any applicability in the IP space.
What's most interesting is that the IP commons can be freely plundered, at no cost, to build IP that is owned by someone. If we're going to treat IP as property, why does the creation of new IP not require a tax, levy, or dividend to be paid to the collective owners of the IP commons? All ideas are, after all, derivative.
No, works that are copyrighted in accordance with applicable law are by law the private property of the copyright owner. To the extent that is "factual", it's only that way to the extent that we all agree to respect the relevant laws.
But in any case, "intellectual property" is a broader term than that--indeed, as it is used by the capitalists (e.g., media companies) who advocate for more and more expansive and draconian regulation in this area, it is much broader. Capitalists want to claim copyright over particular words or particular symbols. They want to claim copyright over ideas. And they invented the term "intellectual property" precisely in order to try to trade on the implicit (but invalid) analogy with physical property, which is rivalrous, whereas "intellectual property" is not.
Or, if you want to get more technical, "private property" is an agreement we all make with each other to assign an owner to every rivalrous good, and to respect that owner's right to control how the good is used. We do this because a society in which this agreement is made and respected will be much wealthier than a society without it.
What western legal system is based is such a way that it doesn’t consider IP to be private property? I am not aware of any. The notion that such a narrow definition is the basis of most actual property law runs contrary to empirical evidence.
> There are edge cases--for example, multiple people can ride in a car even if it's only considered the private property of one of them--but they aren't relevant to the discussion we're having here.
But that's not just edge cases. Jointly operated objects and co-habited houses make up a huge fraction of what we commonly consider to be property. I don't think you can brush this away as an edge case.
I mean, come to think it, looking at what objects currently surround me, most of them can be used by more than one person at same time.
It is explicitly a property right. Hence the phrase “intellectual property”.
In many ways it resembles a property right, but it is missing fundamental aspects of property rights.
What copyright actually is is a limited-time monopoly right. When it expires, the creator of the work loses that "right". It exists not for the benefit of the creators of a work, but for the benefit of the public.
Copyright is a temporary restriction on the rights of others. As a society, we deem that acceptable because it's temporary and because it encourages people to make their works publicly available, thus enriching culture and society.
If it were a property right, then it would make no sense that you lose that property at the expiration of copyright.
Copyright may be owned, bought, sold, transferred or otherwise discharged in the same manner that any other form of property is. Nothing about property inherently implies such claim exists in perpetuity.
I was interpreting "property right" at a different level of abstraction than you. I was thinking it was referring to the thing that is copyrighted as being the "property", not the copyright itself.
Changing my frame of reference up a level of abstraction puts us in agreement, I think.
No, its not.
> What copyright actually is is a limited-time monopoly right.
Limited time monopoly rights are property rights. A life tenancy in real property is a property right.
(Copyright lacks what some consider essetmbtial features of ownership of the subject matter of a property right, as opposed to ownership of a property right in that subject matter, but ownership of the subject of property rights is not the only kind of property right.)
You pop off the book supply and disconnect russian piracy websites and suddenly we only know what Amazon editors, pricey Scientific journals and extended university courses, allow us to know.
The internet is excellent for technical knowledge around STEM subjects, primarily computing... but it routinely deletes valuable information from all media types. The popular http sites are a curated garden. Half of all youtube videos from 2015 onward, have been deleted.
I don't really care about paying $20/month to access all the rare and good books. Keeping it on the map is more valuable than rent-seeking.
To me it's one of the most fascinating examples of how the wiles of human nature change concepts over time.
"Capitalism" revolves around maximizing what can be owned as capital, including by divvying up what would otherwise be the commons by creating various types of imaginary properties.
One type of capital is government-created privileges obtained through regulatory capture, that keep upstart competitors from entering a market. If you're arguing for having fewer regulations, then you're actually advocating against capitalism! Contrast with focusing on "free markets", which at least keeps the emphasis on the competition mechanic rather than the suffocating dynamic of rent seeking.
The definition you're using seems to be clearly a far-left, anti-capitalism interpretation which has essentially inverted goals/motivations with side-effects/externalities compared to what a pro-capitalist, market-oriented type of person would suggest.
Basically, you're suggesting that regulatory capture is a goal of "capitalism" and while most people would say that's an anti-capitalist failure of government.
Everyone agrees regulatory capture is bad, so maybe we could all work together to fix that badness regardless of abstract differences of opinion.
Consider how copyright itself is strong demonstration of the distinction between markets and capitalism. When expressing anti-copyright opinions, one often gets labeled an anti-capitalist even though they're expressing a free market opinion - why is this?
Fundamentally, a free market does not have copyright - if I have series of bits A, and you have series of bits B, then in a free market we can trade copies of each. It's only by creating a privilege of imaginary property that party C can force themselves into our voluntary exchange, declaring that me and you cannot trade our series of bits without their permission. C's privilege of dictating that you and I cannot freely trade is a form of capital that has been created out of whole cloth with the deliberate economic purpose of creating an income stream - aka rent seeking. Arguing against the existence of this privilege is simultaneously anti-capitalist and pro-market.
The distinction between capitalism and markets becomes ever more important as more capitalist activity shifts from direct application to managing intrinsic problems of the natural world (eg facilitating investment in a machine that produces widgets), to the circular application of inventing new forms of intermediated rent streams. For example, the freedom-destroying trend of companies "selling" physical products while retaining control over them through software backdoors makes perfect sense from a capitalist perspective - the ongoing right to control the device is a form of capital that can be separated and retained to create a revenue stream. But from a pro-market pro-freedom perspective, the chipping away of individual autonomy in favor of centrally-owned control is abhorrent.
In short when having informal conversations a person referring to "capitalism" should be assumed to be talking about free market capitalism unless they indicate otherwise, Not to be assumed to be referring to corporatism, crony capitalism, mercantilism or any other types of capitalism
>One type of capital is government-created privileges obtained through regulatory capture,
Copyright was not created from regulatory capture, copyright was expanded and abused will beyond its original remit via regulatory capture
I agree that people want to think of free markets and capitalism as being intertwined and inseparable, but I'm pointing out how they end up being in conflict. And as capitalism continues to evolve, this conflict continues to grow.
> Copyright was not created from regulatory capture, copyright was expanded and abused will beyond its original remit via regulatory capture
Sure. And every time it was expanded, the amount of capital increased while market freedom decreased! Capitalism and free markets are not one and the same, but rather two different qualities that can end up being in conflict.
Ultimately if one wants to advocate for freedom, one needs to focus on advocating for it directly, rather than for an economic system that is increasingly in conflict with it. You can still think of economics in terms of capital (and I think it makes sense to). But the desires of capital need to be made deliberately subservient to freedom rather than vice-versa.
Not all capital markets are free...
You explain to me how a free market would work with out capital
Rather I've pointed out that some forms of capital are directly at odds with freedom and free markets.
Tolkien deserves much more of my money than the author of the cookbook I bought a Costco and never read, but with single purchase they get roughly the same amount of economic value from me.
(For the purposes of this example, Tolkien is still alive)
I might be ok with renting a book if more of the money went to the author. Theoretically it could work out well for everyone. A lot of cookbooks would be a great option. Rent them for a month or do for, say, $1? Cheaper access to books for a period of time, like O'Reilly's Safari for technical books.
But I don't think that's how it's going to work out if renting is the only way to get books. I think that everyone will for forced into onerous terms of the publishers get too much power.
Cookbooks if anything seem more useful to buy since they can sit in or near your kitchen and you can grab them and use them. Whereas you read a novel only every so often past the first read?
But even if you're on the rational consumer mindset and want to give the JRR estate an extra penny shaving per word you read, are you really comfortable with the level of intrusive monitoring of your habits this will entail? You want the publisher to know how many times you open their book, which passages you read most, what time of day, etc. to charge you appropriately? What if JRR wants you to pay extra to read about Tom Bombadil because you can't just watch the movie about him, isn't that fair if people are willing to pay?
Perhaps so but why?
Tolkien was educated at mainly public expense and his wherewithal and worldliness that enabled him to write his novels came from the society in which he lived.
That is, he was intimately coupled to his society without which he would not have been able to write his books. He owes society some payback for what it gave him.
Tolkien has rights that need protection but they are not exclusive morally speaking. That the law gives him full and exclusive rights is an unfortunate product of history when Victor Hugo and cronies forced the Berne Convention in the days before the reading public had any idea that it was about to be shafted.
That unfair treaty has to be made fair despite protestations from greedy publishers. If not, they will eventually lose out because every new computer technology only makes it easier to copy works. Even now it's a cinch, in 20 years it'll be so easy that if any text or video has any public exposure it'll be copied by consumers as a matter of course—copyright holders bedamed. (Think Google Glass—like tech that captures everything a human sees in high definition. If a human sees it then it will be copied automatically. Right, copyright is on the wall without major reform.)
What we are witnessing from these greedy publishing bastards are the last gasps of the old elitist copyright order. If they were smart they would realize that they need to be much more reasonable and consolatory to even survive.
So that economic resources get directed towards creating books that people actually read and enjoy enough to keep reading.
At present, writers and authors are incentivised to merely sell as many copies as possible because that's how they get paid. If they were directly incentivised to create books people enjoy reading we might have more books that are enjoyable to read.
> Tolkien was educated at mainly public expense and his wherewithal and worldliness that enabled him to write his novels came from the society in which he lived.
That can be addressed by using the tax system to pay back society from his wealth, but it's a separate discussion.
> That the law gives him full and exclusive rights is an unfortunate product of history when Victor Hugo and cronies forced the Berne Convention in the days before the reading public had any idea that it was about to be shafted.
I'd also prefer a world where books were more open because I reckon the increase in creativity from millions of people modifying stories would outweigh the loss of economic incentives for original authors.
But that's not the world we live in. To the extend that hard copyrights exist that force us to pay to read we might as well structure the payments in a way that motivates the authors to write in a way that is more beneficial to us.
Policing copyright in its current form will become such a burden that it will force change, and with coming AI advances even publisher's editors will become redundant. Technology will make publishers much less important.
Authors ought to see the writing on the wall and start planning to deal directly with their readers. As you say, that would aid in creating books that people want to read.
My personal opinion is that authors will have more to fear from AI than copyright violations. I'm not against writers being given their fair dues but I am against unfair copyright laws.
What concerns me most is that if we're not careful we'll end up reading books and viewing videos created by AI—and I don't want that nor would author/creators. I'm defending human creators here, I don't want them replaced by machines. That's why it's more important than ever that authors and readers have a more solid and direct relationship—one that's much more than just a monetary alliance.
That is, until your phone apps start scanning works automatically to detect copyrighted material before allowing you to store it on their cloud-storage
And why use a phone and locked-in apps? I suggest you read how I use my phone now, in 20 years I'll have even more control over my data: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=35243759
Also check my comment underneath in reply to a commentator.
You're obviously of the smartphone generation, I'm pre that so I think outside that box. In 20 years things will be very different and that doesn't necessarily mean that Big Tech will still rule the roost.
You're perfectly free to send him a check for the additional portion of your money you think he's entitled to.
I think in a thriving society it would be fine for consumers to enjoy a value surplus from the products and services they buy. Having every bit of value a consumer obtains from a product monetized by the producer is a great way to move wealth from the bottom of the economic ladder to the top; it's a society of scarcity and not abundance. How did the popular imagination go from bountiful societies like the one in Star Trek to ideas like "You will own nothing and you will be happy" where you pay rent for everything you use.
It's particularly galling that these ideas are spreading to information products, which would be freely copyable and available to everyone - a public treasure like no other - if not for artificial restrictions on such activities. I remember the "information wants to be free" attitude of hackers in the early 2000s. But now it's ok if we pay per instance for reading a book? Crazy stuff.
“You‘ll never guess what Mrs Jones told me about Agnes’ husband“
“Go on?”
“Well, she was sitting at the table next to him in the cafe and overheard him saying he wanted to make Agnes happy!”
“No!”
“Yes! Can you believe it?”
“The bastard!”
For example, if I told said "you will live naked in a ditch and you will be happy", the "you will be happy" part reads like a dictate about how you should feel about the "living in a ditch" situation. The obvious disconnect between telling people they will be paying monthly dues to a bunch of rent-seekers and that they will somehow feel happy about this situation even though it sounds, frankly, awful has the same effect.
I haven't noticed this at all. Where are people talking about being happy as an evil goal?
The phrase "you will own nothing and be happy" is dystopian because it's not really saying that you'll be happy. It's more like a threat: "we will monetize every aspect of your existence and you better like it".
Only if they're priced the same. They don't have to be. Tolkein could charge much more than the cookbook if he wished.
I don't see that your point is dependent on renting vs buying. It's just about pricing.