Subject: IP in the Info Age - Summary - Rev. 1

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 19:06:22 +0300 (IDT)

Hi all,

I am posting here the first draft of a summary of a treatise I'm planning
to write, by the name of "Intellectual Property in the Information Age".
It was supposed to be part of "The Eternal Jew", but I decided that it
very much stands on its own. Even the summart itself is work in progress,
but it can give some insights on what I wish to convey in the article.

I am posting it here, because I believe discussions on Intellectual
Property and Digital (or otherwise) content are not off-topic here.

Comments, Suggestions and Flames are more than welcome.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------

Intellectual Property in the Information Age - Summary:

H1: What is the information age?

- Similar to the Stone Age, Iron Age, etc.
- Information becomes very accessible, reproducible, etc.
- Does _not_ necessarily implies that information is a viable
commercial commodity.

H1: Trends as of 2002

- This section would a mostly unbiased report of the current state of afairs.
Opinions should be avoided as much as possible.

H2: Duplicating information and trasnferring it from one place to another
is very fast and is becoming even more so.

    H3: Cataloging and retrieval of knowledge becoming more robust -
    Google, Full-Text search engines, mailing lists and discussion groups,
    IRC channels, Peer-to-peer,  etc.

H2: The Free Content/Open Content movement
    - If content can be freely distributable, freely modified
    and freely used, it should be such.
    - Some history: BSD, Stallman and the FSF, Linux, the coining
    of the term "Open Source".
        - Free (content, software, art) vs. Open (content, source, art)
        and why I both terms

H2: Laws Passed in regard to knowledge and IP

H3: Cyber-censorship.

    - Laws against putting or linking to pornography, drug information,
    etc.

H3: The DMCA

    - Reference Dave Touretzky's gallery of DMCA abuses.
    http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DMCA/Gallery/index.html

H3: The UCITA

H3: The SSSCA ^W CBDTPA

H3: The Software Patents Issue.

H2: Intellectual Property Wars

H3: Copyright Wars

    - Church of Scientlogy Witch-Hunts
    - Slashdot feature about Laws texts which are copyrighted.
    - Refer to the DMCA abuses again.

H3: Patent Wars

    Practically a routine AFAI'm aware. There are some notable examples
    from the computing world, in many of which the prosecuter[*] is trying
    to protect a down-right trivial patent or one which has prior art.

[*] - Is it the correct term for "Tv'ia" AFA civil law is concerned.

H3: Trademark Wars

(examples are taken from the Computer world in which I am most knowledgable)

    - Windows (vs. Sun/Mac, Lindows, etc.)
    - AIM vs. GAIM
    - KIllustrator -> Kontour

H1: My triple role in regard to Intellectual Content

H2: Content Producer
    - The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it. (original work and copyrighted)
    - The One with the Fountainhead (It's derived work so I make no claim
    for it, but I wrote it).
    - Freecell Solver (PD, so I make no claim regarding its ownership, but
    I coded it)
    - Various other hacks, whether programmatical, technical, philosophical
    , literary or otherwise.
    - E-mails (for what they are worth)

H2: Content Consumer
    - Books (technical and literary)
    - CDs, MOD Files.
    - Movies
    - Television
    - Software (open-source and otherwise)
    - Internet Content

H2: Content "Thief"
    - images distributed on-line on the internet
    - mp3's I download.

H1: The Essence of Content

H2: Some Understandings

H3: Creating Content is Generally very Moral

    - Explain a bit

    - Exceptions are:
H4: Illegal Content
    - one that contains disinformation.
    - one that infirnges the intellectual property of someone.
        - This is more of a rule that was done to protect the creation of
        original content and is not inherently "illegal".

H4: Immoral Content

    - Content that is technically legal, but otherwise conveys an immoral
    message.
    - I will not discuss what exactly it is here, because what defines
    such content as such varies from individual to individual.
    - Defining it is out of the scope of this document and generally
      irrelevant to this discussion.
    - Such content may be freely published, despite its immoral or
    supposedly immoral nature. One can only volunatarily ostracize
    (or organize an ostracization of) a person who wrote it, if he
    wishes to undermine him or her in any way.

H2: The License or Terms under which an Intellectual Work is Distributed is
    Ammoral

    - What? What about "bad" or "good" licenses?
    - A license is the philosophy behind the work.
    - One should be thankful for its creator for creating it in the first
      place. Whatever, he chooses to allow others to do with it, is a
      secondary issue.
    - Everyone is free to to give his work a license that he desires.
    - Nevertheless, the terms under which a work is distributed should be
      chosen with care (by its originator), as it is one of the most
      important factors for the success of the project.
        - Refer to what Linus Torvalds said that the most important decision
        he made with the Linux kernel was the choice of the license.
        - Refer to examples: Qt, Mozilla.

H3: The Guilt-less Freedom to Code

    - Some people are trying to induce guilt in people for creating
      proprietary software.
    - Some people actually feel guilty for doing so.
    - They should not, whether they are free software "purists" (see below)
    or not, because creating content is always moral, especially if done
    for a living.
    - Generally, guilt manipulation is a technique used by mystics. A person
    should strive to be as guilt-less as possible.[1]
        - Just don't feel guilty for feeling guilty. ;-)

    [Note]: does this section belongs somewhere below?

    [1] - The relevant chapter from "Feeling Good" by David A. Burns

TB added somewhere:
    - Freecell Solver under the SSSCA's terms.
        - Here is a layout which I have copyrighted.
    - Suggestion to Mr. Eisner/Sen. Hollings/any of the SSSCA proponents:
        - Learn how to program
        - Program a full-scale application doing something vert innovative
        - SSSCA-ify it.
        - Let everybody know how you feel.
    - Open-Source "Purism" as a purely strategical tendency.
        - Ethics and Morality are essentially strategies (!).

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"