In general, a copyright is the sole right to produce or reproduce a work or a substantial part of it, in any form. It includes the right to perform the work or any substantial part of it or, in the case of a lecture, to deliver it. If the work is unpublished, copyright includes the right to publish the work or any substantial part of it. Copyright provides protection for literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works (including computer programs) and other subject matter known as performer’s performances, sound recordings and communication signals.
Copyright is the exclusive legal right to produce, reproduce, publish or perform an original literary, artistic, dramatic or musical work. The creator is usually the copyright owner. However, an employer—for example, a film studio—may have copyright in works created by employees unless there is an agreement in place stating otherwise.
Copyright provides protection for literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works (including computer programs) and other subject-matter known as performer’s performances, sound recordings and communication signals.
Patents cover new and useful inventions (product, composition, machine, process) or any new and useful improvement to an existing invention.
Trademarks may be one or a combination of words, sounds or designs used to distinguish the goods or services of one person or organization from those of others.
Industrial designs are the visual features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament, or any combination of these features applied to a finished article.
Integrated circuit topographies are the three-dimensional configurations of electronic circuits embodied in integrated circuit products or layout designs.
Information is protected under trade secrets… so yes it is property!
Trade secrets are also not property. The whole point of a secret is to keep it a secret. If you leak it out, it’s no longer a secret.
Expecting for the entire world to pretend that your dirty little secret, which you allowed to leak, does not exist is unreasonable. Yet states make laws about it, if it is a secret of someone powerful. They make you forget the secret at gunpoint – they hurt you, simply because you know the secret.
Depending on the legal system, the legal protection of trade secrets forms part of the general concept of protection against unfair competition or is based on specific provisions or case law on the protection of confidential information.
While a final determination of whether trade secret protection is violated or not depends on the circumstances of each individual case, in general, unfair practices in respect of secret information include breach of contractbreach of confidence and industrial or commercial espionage.
A trade secret owner, however, cannot stop others from using the same technical or commercial information, if they acquired or developed such information independently by themselves through their own R&D, reverse engineering or marketing analysis, etc. Since trade secrets are not made public, unlike patents, they do not provide “defensive” protection, as being prior art. For example, if a specific process of producing Compound X has been protected by a trade secret, someone else can obtain a patent or a utility model on the same invention, if the inventor arrived at that invention independently.
I can also copy and paste texts of laws that say that freeing someone’s slave is theft. There existed such laws (and still defacto exist in some places). Just because it was a law, does not mean that there exists property in another human being.
There is no property in information, just like there is no property in human beings.
The reasons are completely different though. Information is not scarce, so it cannot be owned. A human being is scarce, so he can be owned in that regard, but his self-ownership is inalienable, due to a biological fact that a man can only control his own body and mind.
You miss the point that everything starts in the form of information in some way or another. It’s form is property whether it’s in written or in thought or whatever. You didn’t come up with it! It belongs to the originator! That’s what copyright and patents etc laws were designed for. To protect the personal property of the originator.
Edit: I don’t care if you agree with it or not that’s just a fact!
They were designed in order to remove market competition, to enforce a monopoly.
It originated in England where Richard Pynson was printing playing cards, and did not want anyone else to print them, so he petitioned King Henry (either VII or VIII, I don’t remember, it was a long time ago) to grant him a royal monopoly, or in other words, imprison anyone who would compete in the market with him.
The actual propaganda about protecting inventors came much later, it had to be justified somehow.
So the law evolved from its crude beginnings? That appears to make sense. The law at first was very specific and crude in its original form, and over time, evolved into a more appropriate tool to accomplish protecting inventor’s rights. What is the problem?
The problem is that it violates rights to actual, tangible property in order to protect “rights” to potential and non-tangible “property”. It is a reification fallacy.
Also, while an inventor benefits from it, of course, everyone else suffers from it, including other inventors. There is actually much less invention around when you hurt anyone who copies others.
No, I’m not talking about thoughts (thoughts are too poorly defined, and brains are notoriously complicated). I’m talking about something much simpler: information. I define information as a series of answers to yes-or-no questions, or a sequence of zeroes and ones (called bits, which are the unit of information), separated from the actual tangible medium which records it.
Property is an attribute civilised people assign to specific things, which are such that a dispute can arise from possessing or using them, due to the fact that different people wish to use these things for different, mutually exclusive purposes. In other words, the dispute over the possession and use of something arises from scarcity, which is a fact of nature. Hence, the institution of property rights exists to prevent or peacefully resolve such conflicts.
In order for dispute to arise, the item in question has to be scarce – that is, one person possessing and using it excludes everyone else from possessing and using it. If it were not scarce, then all people who wanted to possess or use it could do so in pursuit of their goals, without depriving anyone else of the same thing. A conflict over property would thus be impossible.
This is exactly the situation with information. There can be no dispute over mutually exclusive uses of information, because everyone can possess and use it for whatever purpose, without the physical need to deprive anyone else of the same.
Just because you don’t want me to use it, because you enjoy the monopoly, does not give you the right to deprive me of it, just like I do not have the right to deprive you of it (since we can both use it at the same time without the detriment to the other).
Intellectual property is definitely a thing. Even as supportive I am off freedom and what not, this is but not the same thing as say freedom of speech. And I’m certainly not going to imply it wasn’t a crime. I’m just saying if we get opem sources drivers out of this whole thing, I wouldn’t be upset, that’s for sure.
There’s WAY bigger crimes happening on this planet for me to be upset some multimillion dollar company is butt hurt their security isn’t up to the challenge of some hackers.
I’ve yet to hear one good argument in support of this idea. I wrote that entire article above disproving it, yet “definitely a thing” should count as a refutal?
One cannot use property rights to defend the idea of “intellectual property” because “intellectual property” is a violation of property rights to actual things.
If I own some paper and some ink (and by own I mean that I have come into possession of it through either original appropriation, voluntary exchange with the previous legitimate owner, or it was awarded to me as restitution for some wrongdoing by the previous legitimate owner), that means I am free to do with my property as I see fit. Specifically, I can spread my ink onto my paper, as this infringes nobody else’s property.
So when you say to me: “oh no, you cannot do with your property as you wish, for these specific shapes of ink are forbidden, because I own them, and you need my permission to spread ink in this manner, even your own ink, on your own paper” (even though they are just shapes, and me spreading my ink onto my paper in the form of those shapes does not prevent you from doing the same with your paper and your ink), it is you who is violating my property rights, not me yours.
@Kresimir
Thoughts are property because they are information. They are turned into tangible things that are a process, a product, an invention, music, industrial designs, etc etc… They aren’t free just because you can copy it or download it or use it.
A recipe or procedure how to make scarce, tangible things from scarce, tangible resources is information. However, it itself is neither tangible nor scarce.
If you and I have the same recipe, because one of us copied it from another, we can both use it to transform our scarce, tangible resources into other scarce, tangible things, without getting in each other’s way. I use my resources to make my product, you use your resources to make your product. The fact you have a copy of the same recipe in no way impacts my ability to use the same recipe, and vice-versa.
