From: Eivind Eklund Date: 2007-03-23T22:06:57+09:00 Subject: Re: free pdf ebook On 3/23/07, Austin Ziegler wrote: > I note your scare quotes. They're a bit of a silly thing to put in > because the United States and other jurisdictions *have* defined > intellectual property. They have defined copyright, trademarks, patents, and some places a variant kind of design protection. "Intellectual property" is a mismash made over these very different granted limited monopolies. > We can disagree with the implementations as > they stand, and I think that most modern computer scientists disagree > with the current implementations. HOWEVER, I think that "theft" is > still an appropriate word as relates to illicit e-books. You are > depriving an author of a sale to which they would otherwise be > entitled and are therefore denying them income to which they are > entitled. HOWEVER; I still think "theft" is an appropriate word as relates to nonsense postings. You are depriving a reader of his time and mental resources which they would otherwise e entitled and are therefore denying them the opportunity to make income which they would otherwise have. No, didn't think we felt that shoe fit, either. The point is that the copying does NOT deprive the author of anything. In fact, copying MAY lead to higher direct income. There are six cases here: (1) Do not download and do not buy (2) Do not download and do buy (3) Download and buy, would buy without download (4) Download and buy, would not buy without download (5) Download and do not buy, would buy without downloaded (6) Download and do not buy, would not buy without download Classifying all cases from (3) to (6) as "theft" tend to result in muddled thinking, including the assumption that there's always lost revenue. This is not true. Loss of revenue hinges on (5) being greater than (4). The rest of the cases is a red herring; they make no difference to revenue, and just create more value in society by making the work available to more people (or available in a new form.) Both the statistical and the anecdotal evidence I have seen indicate that (4) is in fact larger than (5) for aggregate copying/purchasing, with the statistics covering music, and the anecdotal evidence covering music, movies, and self development books. > Like it or not, we *must* have some legal regime for protecting the > intellectual work and output of people whose skills are best suited > that direction. Like it or not, we *must* have guilds to protect against unlicensed production of beads. Like it or not, we *must* have protection for the buggy whip manufacturers. Like it or not, we *must* have slaves working the cotton fields. There's no must in either of that. It is a choice of laws, a choice where society pays with a set of restrictions covering the activities for some (or many people) to further other activities, and where change in technology change the payoffs for various groups. We may choose to keep protection, or we may choose not to, and this will give different payoffs for different groups in society, leading to different activity. We are heavily invested in the present form, so changes will be expensive. It is difficult to say whether a different set of restrictions would be better for society as a whole or not. However, there is no "*must*" about it. We managed to live well without these restrictions, and I have not seen anybody that have shown in any convincing way that we wouldn't be doing reasonably well without them today. If you've got simulation results or research results that show otherwise, I'd be very interested in seeing them. 'cause I don't know of any proper research (simulations or similar) that says much at all here, just a bunch of people taking it for granted that we "have to have". Eivind.