The Dark Side of IP

The first time I saw the acronym IP I thought it meant Internet Protocol, geek that I am. This was about 5 years ago and in the mean time I have learnt the hard way it stands for Intellectual Property. The widespread use of this acronym is actually a side effect of the IP which signaled the shift of the western society industries from goods to information.

When the CD came out 30 years ago, copying was hard or too expensive for individuals. Physical roadblocks to widespread copying were sufficient to let the industry charge (very) high margins on their products. Pirates that copied on large scale were easy to prosecute because they clearly violated the letter and intent of the copyright and patent laws.

This changed completely in the last decade. Individuals have been empowered with the means to perfectly copy the originals. Not only for a lower price, but often more convenient than buying it from the vendor; look at Sony with their silly copy protection system which not only abuses your computer, it does not even allow you to play your music on your iPod.

Normally, in a market economy, the industries must adapt to a changing landscape. Not so according to many information producers. Why not use the law to make copying illegal? There US constitution protects the creators of information: patents and copyrights. However, the goal of these is to enrich the public domain and not just the creators. Both create gets a limited monopoly to return the investment, but after this finite period, the information must become public property. An awful thought for companies like Disney that enjoy the fruits of the public domain (Pinoccio, Pocahontas, Belle and the Beast, etc), but have so far in their 77 year history contributed nothing to the public domain because they have been a prime beneficiary of the 11 changes in copyright laws of the last 4 decades.

What has this to do with software? Software and IP is a Siamese twin, joined at the hip. Though I strongly believe that a creator should be rewarded for its efforts, I just as strongly believe that the audience should share part of the ownership because without the audience, there is no success. When Java was introduced, SUN played the idealistic card which gave them a lot of goodwill. This for me was one of the reasons to adopt Java because it came from the good guys. Now Java is widely used, SUN can turn on the screws on the people that caused the success. SUN maintains a lost of all downloads I ever made since 1995 ? SUN is obviously not the only one, all companies are participating in this game, and some are even worse.

In the interest of society as a whole, creators must be able to earn money from their work so they produce new works. However, for a work to be successful, an audience is required which should give the audience a number of inalienable rights. Current practice in copyright and patent licenses have become unworkable in a society where information flows almost without friction. The law should not only be used to enrich the producers, but should also be used to define the legitimate rights of the buyers. The bulls-eye is when the maximum number of new works are created, not when a few companies maximize their profits with re-runs and old material.

I must be on to something, just read this article in the guardian.

posted by Peter @ Thursday, November 17, 2005