Protection of Ideas

[Tim May]

On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 01:10  PM, Anonymous wrote:
> Brilliant.  Let the market solve the problem.  Why bother with the 
> auction
> part, then?  If the market's going to solve the problem for the 2nd guy
> to hold the copy, why not let it solve the problem for the 1st?  The 
> fact
> is, quoting this mantra is simply a way of avoiding the hard issues.
> You've got to show *how* the market is going to solve the problem.
> Why would content creators get "a lot of money, cash"?  Obviously, only
> if your #2 guy knows that he is also going to get a lot of money for it.
> So you haven't taken a step towards solving the problem; you have simply
> handed the problem off from #1 to #2.
>
> The fact is that the market can't solve this kind of problem.  That's
> right, markets are not perfect.  They do fine for ordinary, private
> goods.  But information objects, absent successful DRM restrictions,
> are effectively public goods.  That is, you can't restrict their
> dissemination.  If you try to provide such goods only to a small group
> of people, you've effectively given them to everyone.

Ideas are not generally protected in any major society.

(Certain _expressions_ of ideas are protected in specialized ways 
through the copyright and patent systems, which vary from society to 
society. But not general ideas.)

People generate ideas. Ideas are usually much more important than 
specific copyrighted items or even specific patented items are. When 
someone writes a book, with lines of reasoning, new ideas, summaries of 
old ideas, those ideas are not protected intellectual property.

Likewise, fashion and architecture and styles in general are not 
protected. (Attempts have been made, especially with the "look and feel" 
nonsense, but generally anyone is free to copy the "idea" of a 
miniskirt, or red tennis shoes, or skyscrapers.

Could ideas even plausibly be protected? The Galombosians, a fringe 
subset of libertarians, argue that ideas are protectable in this way. 
"You were influenced by my paper on crypto anarchy, so you owe me $25."

>
> This idea of digital content as a public good is developed in detail at
> http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-602.html#lnk5.

Ideas are even better examples of public goods. A good idea benefits 
many people, few or none of whom ever pay for the idea. Good ideas are 
in fact more important than nearly anything else. This has nothing to do 
with whether they should (or can) be protected as intellectual 
property...or subsidized by government, as I'll get to later.
>

> Markets do not handle public goods well.  It is a standard theorem of
> economics that they underprovide public goods.  There is no way to 
> charge
> for goods that everyone can get for free, and ideas like Kelsey and
> Schneier's Street Performer protocol don't work because of free riders.

Apply this reasoning to the general world of ideas and arguments.

Or, more prosaically, to mathematical proofs. Should we start charging 
for mathematical proofs? Should someone planning to use a chain of 
proofs pay a fee for the various lemmas and theorems he cites or uses?

> The traditional way to provide for public goods is by government.

No it isn't. People paint paintings even when the vast bulk of them 
never sell anything. (Even well-known painters like Paul Gaugain never 
made more than a few francs from his paintings...his fame came after his 
death. Examples like this abound.)

Most actors don't make enough money to qualify for their union. Most 
writers never sell _anything_.

Some of these works are used by others, inspire others, even are later 
sold by others.

Altruism? Have I written upwards of 20,000 articles on this list and 
others. At least some of them were and are useful for other people. And 
yet was I paid?  Was I generating a public good? Should I have demanded 
that government finance my generation of these public goods?



> If we don't get DRM, that's probably what we will end up with: 
> government
> subsidies of the arts.

About 20 years ago the American program "60 Minutes" did a nice piece on 
how the Dutch government, using reasoning identical to yours,  was 
paying artists a stipend for their artistic output. Warehouses and 
warehouses were being filled with the crud generated by these subsidized 
artists.

> Most musicians and other artists won't be able to
> make enough money to live on even if their works are relatively popular.

So? Not my problem.

After all, most would-be writers and actors can't make enough money on 
their ideas and artistic expression to live on without also working as 
waiters and waitresses and driving trucks.


> The government will have to tax consumers and distribute the proceeds
> to artists (and the RIAA, etc) in order to protect the content industry.

And to fill warehouses with CDs no one wants, with paintings no one 
wants, with stages where actors perform plays for each other because the 
public won't voluntarily pay, and with software programs which the 
market didn't want.
>
> This is the true alternative to DRM.  Anyone who respects the power of
> markets should understand that DRM is the key to allowing markets to
> function with information goods.  If you oppose DRM, you are working
> to insure that creative content will become a public good.  And if you
> understand econmics, you will see that this is an outcome to be avoided
> if at all possible.

I have no problem with Microsoft or Apple or Autodesk attempting to 
protect their IP by requiring that I buy a dongle from them to attach to 
my computer, or that I provide a palmprint or retinal scan before their 
programs run. If they can do it, and get customers to go along, hey, 
it's a free country! People who are willing to mess with the dongles, or 
attach a palm scanner, or jump through whatever hoops the vendor is 
asking for will be doing so voluntarily. Those who won't, won't. Sounds 
fair to me.

(In fact, dongles have been tried. And may be tried again, as USB and 
FireWire make use of such dongles less awkward. It's a free country, so 
Digital Datawhack is free to do as they wish along these lines.)

However, it is NOT a function of a legitimate minimal government to 
*require* that I buy a computer with certain features.

To the extent the Hollywood-led push to adopt some form of DRM is very 
likely to also be a government _requirement_ for DRM, we should fight 
it. From what I have seen, the interests of Hollywood, Redmond, 
Washington, Beijing, and Moscow in DRM are coterminous.



--Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States
" The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood 
of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787