Intellectual Property rights, good or bad? Should they be re-evaluated?

Obviously you don't want people selling selling copies of your work or ripping it off to make a profit of of your work, but I think in some ways it's really just a government approved corporate cash grabbing scam. Some examples:
Some car manufacturers have been pushing to make it illegal to work on or modify your car (no this isn't a joke), claiming the you're using their intellectual property to make money. If it's illegal to replace car parts with cheaper alternatives when they break, guess who makes and repairs all the cars? (at whatever cost they feel like charging).
http://jalopnik.com/carmakers-want-to-make-working-on-your-car-illegal-beca-1699132210

Earlier this year someone made a modification to a video game that takes place in a post apocalyptic boston. Naturally, someone made a red sox jersey uniform for the player to be able to equip and wear. Under the terms and services of the mod creation kit for this game, it is 100% against the rules to charge money for these mods. It was completely free and the creator wasn't making a cent off of it. MLB didn't offer any sort of paid alternative, nor was it directly resulting in any loss of revenue to MLB, but they threatened to take him to court for royalty fees.
http://gamerant.com/fallout-4-mlb-boston-red-sox-ortiz-mod/

Other problems are more vague, like the fact that you technically don't own most digital property even after you've bought it, and the rights holders can suddenly revoke your right to use it for no reason at all.

Examples of this are if you change the motherboard in your computer (which can easily fail), Microsoft can force you to buy a new copy of windows (and often they do, I've known people who have just been told nothing can be done and they need to just purchase a new copy).

Other examples include the fact that if someone buys a huge library of movies on something like amazon instant video, amazon can, for no reason according to their terms of service, revoke your right to view those movies, and not be responsible for issuing a refund at all.

Same thing happens with video games. A large portion of PC games digital rights management is handled through Valve corporations Steam software, who provides the downloads for these pieces of software and is the only way to make them functional, can, at any time, without any reason, deny you access to those games or pieces of software, and they are not responsible for refunding you a penny, in fact, this happened to this guy here. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?2848-Steam-will-ban-you-and-not-tell-you-why

For playstation/xbox users, it's pretty much impossible to sell a used game now, because as soon as the disc is inserted it immediately locks the license to your console, making it unplayable on any other console. If microsoft or sony decides to deactivate your account? Too bad, make a new one and buy it again.

Now obviously, a good portion of this is going to come out of the computing world, but here are enough examples to get you thinking. It seems to me it is a giant load of crap that if you buy something, a corporation still owns what you bought and gets to keep the money you paid for it, with no restrictions whatsoever. Plenty of copyright bills have been passed in favor of this sort of thing and it is really becoming a problem.

What are your thoughts? Should this sort of thing be reformed? I think we need more consumer protections and laws giving us ownership rights over this stuff or we are headed for a slippery slope.

 

Socialist?

Intellectual property rights are very good unless you want people to stop inventing (*)(*)(*)(*)..

 

Your low effort post eludes to you not bothering to read the OP, why bother commenting?

 

Patent and copy right laws (monopolies) should be abolished. Food and clothing are not patentable and that is why we have such a wide and constantly changing variety of food and clothing to choose from. Patent and copyright laws take the reward out of improving on the ideas of others, which is how progress is made.


“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." – Bill Gates

 

Microsoft is under no obligation to continue to replace your antiquated O/S. Every computer in which I've had to replace the O/S after a crash had to be replaced because Microsoft no longer made the older O/S. The last time we had to go from xp to seven. They no longer support seven or vista so if you are using an IBM clone that uses one of those to O/S You'll have to upgrade to 8 or 10. This has nothing to do with intellectual property rights but obsolescence.

 

The X-box paywall is why I don't install Windows 10. It is just another platform for that. I also only buy software that comes with a disc--meaning no Microsoft download keys in a box.

As for the wider topic, the Constitution authorizes IP "for a limited time". I think it has gotten far out of control. I would limit copyrights to no more than 10 years at most. Of course with digital theft and creative fair use exceptions on sites like youtube, companies are going to wish they had 10 years worth of royalties before it is over.

 

I'm not talking about replacing it, I'm talking about a modern computer that might have windows 10 on it having a motherboard problem, and JUST the motherboard being replaced and being required to re-purchase the same version of windows.

 

I haven't seen something not tied to a CD key or online authorization for quite some time now. And this is basically what I'm getting at. But it's gotten to a point that in the age of everything being digital, people can actually have things they've paid for be taken from them, or be locked out of it for no reason, with literally no recourse for the consumer. I hate the idea of purchasing something that I technically don't own. For software there needs to be some sort of legal establishment of rights for the consumer, there shouldn't be a line in the EULA that states your license to use something that you paid for can be revoked for any reason, without explanation. As far as I'm concerned, if you pay for something, you own it. Only in the digital world is it acceptable for this kind of behavior. If I bought a laundry basket at walmart, would anybody think it is okay that walmart decides I can only use that laundry basket in the house I currently live in, and that if I move I must buy a new one and destroy that one? Or that walmart can show up at any time and repossess the basket, on a whim? Wouldn't it be insane to think if I modified the basket and sold it to someone else walmart should sue me? I bought the damn thing, it no longer belongs to walmart.

 

A common misconception. There's no reason to believe that. People have invented many things without any concern for intellectual "property."

 

If anything it's probably partially responsible for the creation of mega corporations with scarce competition. If you're interested you might check out how both Intel and Nvidia has basically all but killed AMD using grey line of legal IP laws to their advantage. They pay PC game developers to use their graphics libraries in games and then claim it's intellectual property, barring developers from optimizing the software on AMD hardware. You can take two video cards with equal raw computing power, one from AMD and one from Nvidia and the game written using Nvidia's libraries will be nearly unplayable on the AMD card. Of course, people see this as AMD being less capable and therefore they lose market share, Nvidia gets more cash to bribe more companies into using their libraries and before you know it, we end up here today, with AMD hemorrhaging money and nearly on the verge of bankruptcy, and not because of a lack of innovation or good products either. Gamers complain about this too, as it is harmful to the consumer, which is opposite of what should happen in a free market.

 

With a lot of things for which you have an actual disc, the key/authorization just ties you to updates. The trend that bothers me more is forcing you to be cloud tethered just to have access to your own data with perpetual fees associated. I lokked at one program that stored all data on the cloud and it cost $49 per month per user to have access to it.

 

If you buy any product you are buying the right to use that product however you wish for your own purposes. Intellectual property rights should not apply since you bought the right when you bought the product.

 

When it comes to software, what you buy is the license. With computers in vehicles, you buy the license to the software in the vehicle, and part of the agreement is that anything controlled by the software be from the manufacturer.

 

Copyright infringement laws are in place for a reason in order to protect an inventor or a corporation from stealing their property rights.

 

That's begging the question. How do they obtain property rights to something that isn't property?

The history of copyright is not as clear cut as many like to think. The first copyright laws were created as a means of censorship, where Queen Mary gave exclusive rights to printing in return for royal review.

 

And none of them ever made a dime of what they made but other people did.

 

Clothing designers make huge fortunes despite not having any patent or copyright protection. That's just one small example. 90% of important inventions in the last 40 years were never patented (https://ideas.repec.org/p/ise/isegwp/wp092013.html). If what you say is true about inventors not making a dime if they don't patent, why are so many inventions lacking a patent?

There is no study that shows that intellectual property laws spur innovation. Studies show just the opposite:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/...d=news_view&newsId=20090701006334&newsLang=en

http://stlr.org/archived-volumes/volume-x-2008-2009/torrance/

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5025/

http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/03/study-markets-provide-an-alternative-to-patent-monopolies/

"An extensive empirical literature indicates that returns from innovation are appropriated primarily via mechanisms other than formal intellectual property rights -- and that `imitation' is itself a costly activity. However most theory assumes the pure nonrivalry of `ideas' with its implication that, in the absence of intellectual property, innovation (and welfare) is zero. This paper introduces a formal model of innovation based on imperfect competition in which imitation is costly and an innovator has a first-mover advantage. Without intellectual property, a significant amount of innovation still occurs and welfare may actually be higher than with intellectual property."

Huh! How can that be possible if no one ever makes a dime without a patent or copyright?

 

That's my point. I think it more government approved exclusivity. Obviously we should have very limited IP laws, IE you can't just take something (like software or a movie) and copy it in it's entirety and sell it as your own creation but 90% of the time I see IP laws harming innovation, competition, and consumers.

 

The current patent system is reasonable, as long as they keep it to 20 years. I'm opposed to the current copyright law. Copyrights should be the life of the owner plus maybe 20 years, not the 80+ years they are currently at.

 

The current patent system is completely unreasonable because such a huge number of patents are granted without the proper review required by the patent laws. There are thousands of software and hardware patents for methods and operations and things that are quite obvious to any practitioner of the art or preceded by prior art, either of which should preclude the granting of a patent. The problem is that once one of these bogus patents is granted it takes years and a fortune fighting through the courts to get it invalidated while the patent trolls who hold them terrorize the populace.

The current completely unreasonable copyright term came about because Disney was about to lose the copyright to Mickey Mouse and other Disney properties and lobbied to get it extended. So, you can thank big business Mickey Mouse for making it impossible to get a hold of all the out of print literature from the 20th century.

Btw, trademarks are forever if you keep using them but can become public property some years after last use.

 

I do agree that patents should be examined more thoroughly, but the basic idea is sound, and IMHO, necessary for a technological society.

Well, actually, the copyright law wasn't just Disney. It was to fit the European copyright laws which do have the long limits.

And, it's not all out of print literature, just all that was published after 1923.

 

Windows is an expensive software package and I was mad when my computer stopped working and I couldn't reload the windows on another drive.

 

IP is problematic on many levels, it was first introduced in Britain as a way to protect the profits of monopolies, and raise tax revenue by charging for patent claims. The name of the law when it was first introduced was the "statute of monopolies"

An IP claim by its very definition is a monopoly right, which in turn is bad for innovation. A good example of this is the US's aviation during WWI, because the Wright brothers had a patent on our aviation technology, our innovation in that field fell behind the rest of the world, and we actually had to purchase our military aircrafts from Europe because our homemade aircrafts were so inferior.

Another example of this is in 3D printing, the technology is actually 30 years old, but is only now beginning to excel due to the patent claims expiring http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/...g-patents-expiring-soon-heres-round-overview/

Another consequential element of IP is in the medical field, pharmaceutical companies are able to raise the cost of their tablets from $13.50 to $750 because there's no competitor to overcome them in the market, again an IP claim is a monopoly right.. it is a right to have no competitor

The interesting thing about this discussion is it actually has a mix of opinions from liberals and conservatives alike. In this video, libertarian economist Stephen Davies makes his case against Intellectual Property

[video=youtube;khuuKIL5U8s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khuuKIL5U8s[/video]

Benjamin Franklin is arguably one of the greatest inventors in US history, and he never made an IP claim on any of his his inventions because he believed that IP hurts innovation. Hell, the renaissance era had no intellectual property, and they made a ton of groundbreaking inventions

 

In most nations there is a law for mandatory licensing of IP that the state deems critical or important to the public good.
This has been a big sticking point in trade negotiations, especially in pharmaceuticals and computer software where developing nations cannot afford the high monopoly prices so they mandate that IP holders grant licenses for local production and use and set the price for those licenses.

Anyway, almost all IP these days comes directly from basic research funded by government so any argument that these IP holders don't owe anyone anything is completely wrong.

 

All excellent points.

As for software or digital goods, I've thought of another thing. Copyright infringment of music spawned access to things like Spotify, which if anyone listens to a lot of music and uses a computer or smart phone frequently knows this is the next best invention to sliced bread. When it comes to digital copyright infringement though i'd say 90% of the time it isn't the big deal people make it out to be. Most illegally downloaded applications, movies, or songs wouldn't have been purchased by those who downloaded it anyways, many studies have found it actually had a positive effect on sales when examining peoples piracy and purchasing history, those who downloaded music or movies tended to buy more movies and music than those who didn't.