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Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution says, “Congress shall have power… to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

The intent of limiting "copying" is that it protects the incentive of people to create, and through creation, progress of "science and useful arts." This video takes an overly simplified view of intellectual property. Imagine you spend a decade researching and developing a new tech product; as soon as it's to market everyone gets to copy it and, at least from a financial standpoint, you get nothing. That means most of the advancement will be left to those who already have the times and means to be scientific dilettantes, like the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Your framing is a bit one sided. One of the framers of the constitution also said this:

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. " -- Thomas Jefferson [1]

This is the core of the message that Nina Paley is trying to get across here.

My understanding is as follows: Copyright in the US was always intended as a balance. You get an exclusive right to your works for a limited time (to encourage you to publish them in the first place) , and in return the works are supposed to enter the public domain afterwards (to enrich society in general). Throughout the 20th century this "limited time" kept getting stretched and stretched to the point where people worried it'd become indefinite.

Currently the balance is a bit off-kilter imo, and could use a bit of re-tuning. But it has always been about some sort of balance.

[1] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12...

I don't disagree that the balance has shifted. But that shouldn't be conflated with saying intellectual property rights do not exist.

I also think there is a hierarchy of principles. In this case, the constitution is the fundamental law of the U.S. and trumps any (potentially out-of-context) quip by someone, even if they are one of the authors of that document.

I don't think anyone (lest of all Nina Paley) has said that "intellectual property rights do not exist". She makes a nuanced argument here.

I provided a reference so you can confirm the context for yourself. It is not a random quip, but part of a larger thought framework. It clearly explains (part of) this particular framer's intent when writing the constitution. In general, framer's intent does seem to (sometimes) be taken into account by judges.

I agree with you that the us constitution has turned out to be very well thought out.

I do happen to disagree with 20th century legislators who very much went against the intent of the constitution here, only managing to keep to the letter by a hair.

>She makes a nuanced argument here.

Are we referencing the same video? I do not believe there is a nuanced argument in a < 1 minute cartoon. It's a very sophomoric argument predicated on a misunderstanding. The reason why I put the specific law verbiage in my first reply is to underscore the fact that the law regarding intellectual property is not about her central claim in the video (having access to a good) but about providing an incentive to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."

>I provided a reference so you can confirm the context for yourself.

People seem to have the misconception that the founding fathers were a monolith. They weren't. They had varying opinions on virtually every issue in the Constitution. But what matters is what was codified into law. If law could be undermined by finding a founding father with a dissenting opinion, the Constitution would have been in tatters years ago.

I don't think Jefferson's opinion was dissenting?

After having been protected for a limited time, works fall into the public domain where they remain in perpetuity. I think he got everything he wanted!

Well, until the mid-20th century, at least.

I don’t disagree that there’s a good argument that the copyright system has been corrupted. That’s a different argument than is made in the video, which is about the indivisibility of intellectual property.

AFAICT the video is a modern take on Thomas Jefferson's arguments.

What do you mean by "the indivisibility of intellectual property." ?

Indivisibility refers to the fact that an unlimited number of people can consume intellectual property, which differentiates it from tangible property. In the video, she uses multiple copied bicycles to illustrate the point.

I think Jefferson was making a more nuanced point, namely that someone should not be given exclusive ownership of an idea in perpetuity, and specifically rails against the concept of inheritability of intellectual property. But he also carved out a caveat that “Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society” That falls right in line with what the constitution conveys. There is nothing contradictory between Jeffersons words and what ended up in the constitution as I read it.

With all that said, again, it doesn’t necessarily matter what a single founding father thought. What matters is what they codified into law as a group, and if society has modified that law.

Yawn. Stuff from the 1920s is only now entering the public domain. Argument doesn't stand when copyright is extended to such absurd lengths.

I think that the stuff with which you grew up should enter the public domain around the time you're an adult. Anything you were watching or reading while growing up is a key part of your culture, and I don't think it's reasonable for it to be kept in the hands of a few people.

For me the proper range should probably be around 20 to 30 years, but I'd be willing to entertain special restrictions in certain conditions.

Beyond that, I think that we don't do enough for the sake of preservation. I think for software to have full copyright protections it should be required to preserve a copy of the source code in the library of congress. And any library or tool licensing from the era should be restricted to the same duration as the copyright.

I would lean towards 10 years but only because leaning towards an extreme number would probably result in a reasonable number like 20/30/40 anyway. The only part of copyright that I haven't convinced myself of is whether being able to pass "ownership" of ideas down to your children is something that should be important or not.

I don't disagree with this. The process of copyright law can be corrupted, but it doesn't negate the validity of intellectual property rights. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I understand there is a whole contingent of humanity to which the constitution is holy gospel, but the thoughts of a small group of men 250 years ago on the issue is not really relevant to modern conversation on how to handle digital rights.

Do you have a non-ad hominem response to the point that was made?

If you felt that was an ad hominem, know that was not my intent.

I do think it is a very salient point to bring up that when those words were written the concept of digital ownership and copying did not exist, nor did any meaningful parallels to such.

It's ad hominem against the people who think the Constitution is good. That's even more irrelevant to the point than the other ad hominem, which is against the people who wrote it.

If the principle doesn't hold up now, say why. What you're saying is salient is absolutely not. It's just "old thing bad". If it's bad it could've been written yesterday or a thousand years ago; same if it's good. Why do you think it's bad? Or do you only think in ad hominem?

When the world changes through time, perhaps the rules of society can or even should change with them. The fact that some rules were applicable in the past is not a guarantee those same rules can be used immutable in perpetuity.

As I see it, the Constitution should be re-evaluated once in a while and adapted to the modern world. There are (again, just my opinion) a lot of rules in there that were very useful and important in the past but shouldn't be in there anymore, or even state the exact opposite of what they do now.

Again, you're not really saying why. What about this example is relevant? This just sounds a bit like a memorised response.

Fair enough. I think copyright (and by extension intellectual property) is not all that important to promote the arts, and the actual implementation in the law is (in my opinion) very flawed.

In the modern age it costs nothing to duplicate knowledge. That should be reflected in law. I'd like to see society work towards making life in society better. One of the ways to do that is to give freely to society. If we recognize intellectual property at all (I'd rather we'd not) then the time to reverting to public domain should be significantly shorter.

> I think copyright (and by extension intellectual property) is not all that important to promote the arts

The obvious counter is: if I spend 5 years writing a brilliant musical, and someone else takes the script and score and produces it worldwide, where is my incentive to make such a brilliant thing? You seem to be promoting a world where people with resources can steal the best and latest free ideas out there and commercialise them. I don't see how that would work.

> One of the ways to do that is to give freely to society.

People can give freely right now. You're talking about forcing people to not be in control of their work.

I think the distinction is a pragmatic vs. idealistic worldview. I would also like to live in a world where people create just for the sake of creating. It has a very zen-like quality to it and there are some people who approach their work that way. Artists, authors, musicians, and software engineers wouldn't need to sell their labor because they do it freely for the sake of their passion. But there are also people who look at work as a means to an end. For many, that end is protected by intellectual property rights. The law is meant to help both groups contribute to the betterment of society. As it stands now, you don't have to hide any of your work behind copyrights if you choose to be the former. The latter is still incentivized to create due to the protections of the law. The current structure (while it can be improved on) is an either/or choice.

There is a trend in societies that don't respect intellectual property rights and it tends towards less innovation.

This is a strawman. I don't think anybody was claiming the laws are immutable. The document referenced was the Constitution, which has very specific processes related to the very opposite point.

What is being brought up, and seems to be lost on many, is that the law that governs copyright has an underlying principle that is not addressed in the video in discussion. That video seems to have an erroneous view of the intent of the law. As a consequent, the position in the video isn't particularly valid.

There is very little salient difference between digital copying and physical printing of books, in the last hundred years. The cost of printing a book has been next to nothing for a long time compared to the rights to publish that book.

I (for one) don't think it's gospel. Gospel implies immutable. There are mechanisms to change it. I would suggest using those mechanisms as a more appropriate choice than just disregarding long-standing law.

I suppose it would be a problem if scientific progress only happened by the 'scientific dilettantes' who managed to gather sufficient funds ahead of time. I can't imagine how bad things would be if most scientists couldn't live from the royalties on scientific articles.

If they patent their invention, they can get paid. Scientific articles, in general, are copyrighted. But scientists don't have to publish. One of the points I was making is that intellectual property helps ensure scientific progress is democratized.

Or the government could just pay people to do the work that would benefit society, instead of private investors looking to make a profit.

Profit comes from useful things. People wanting to buy your thing is a much better signal as to what's a good thing to work on than a bureaucrat's inkling.

People often buy things even if there are better free alternatives because they don't know any better. Otherwise nobody would be using the utter garbage that is Microsoft Teams, for example.

Yes, it's not a perfect signal. It just beats a bureaucrat guessing.

Ironically of course, Teams comes free with most corporate licences. You have to pay more to use alternatives, but the IT bureaucrats have deemed it was best for you. The reason alternatives exist is they're worth paying for.

The problem is that many 'useful things' are predicated on past discoveries that weren't particularly useful at the time they were made. That's why government (an organization with a particularly large risk tolerance) is a good mechanism for paying for fundamental science. I think the dichotomous thinking of public/private is more harmful than helpful.

You're introducing that dichotomy right now. And you're forgetting the millions of advances that happen in private companies to push forward the state of the art. Look at Tesla, or SpaceX, or Hitachi, or BMW, or Microsoft, or IBM, or Xerox, or Astra Zeneca. Incredible advances happening all over, sometimes not realisable for decades, but occasionally commercialised and rolled out if it's beneficial to enough people for the cost.

It's funny you brought up SpaceX because that's one of the examples I was going to use for my previous comment. SpaceX's early work was almost exclusively funded by government contracts (which they could then use to borrow against). Musk himself said they were down to the 11th hour of bankruptcy before NASA 'saved' them. Their SpaceAct agreement also gives them the benefit of NASA's past science; they aren't starting from square-one, which is part of the point. The SpaceX business model follows that of many nascent industries: rely on the government with its extraordinary tolerance for risk until they prove themselves viable enough to get private customers that are generally more risk adverse. Aerospace is a prime example, dating back to the Wright brothers. The govt provided a lucrative military contract as a carrot that transformed the space from hobbyist to a legitimate industry.

And that's what I'm saying. I'm not introducing a dichotomy but you may not understand the point. In a hybrid model, high-risk ventures are funded by the government because there are few comparable entities that can shoulder that risk burden. Once the industry proves itself, it opens itself up to more private ventures. The government funds and sets goals, and the private sector innovates and delivers. That's not a dichotomy and most of the examples you provide that I'm familiar with support that model. I'm not denigrating private or public pathways, just acknowledging each have aspects that can compliment the other.

They do in many instances. A lot of fundamental science is funded by tax dollars. I personally think that's a good thing. But I don't think that needs to be the only avenue.

A lot of culture is supported by the government in many countries, and a lot of private investors don't even see a break even with their productions, let alone any profit.

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