Reading: Chapter 3 of "Information Liberation"

Against intellectual property

Chapter 3 of

Information Liberation

by Brian Martin

(London: Freedom Press, 1998)

Here is the link to this chapter:

http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/98il/il03.html

"Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals."

-my favourite quote!

This was one of the most comprehensive arguments for and against intellectual property. It answered most of my questions and doubts about this topic. as an example, second argument for IP: "people deserve property rights because of their labour" 

was my main concern thinking about any intellectual creation, "shouldn't author receive something because of his/her labour time and risk he/she is taking?" and even if we just consider effort, time and risk; how to measure this thing after the work is done? there is such measures going on for individuals that work in a company. for example if I work as programmer for a bigger corporation, they pay me based on hours of time I spend there, assuming that the risk is minimal for me, and effort is normal(or if higher, paid more). but still company holds unlimited IP on outcome of my work. nobody calculated time,effort and risk that company itself is taking, all that determines the final benefit of the company is market.

I totally like the idea of need for determining optimum period for promoting intellectual work based on present state of innovation and technological advances.

I agree that IP is not the only way production and distribution of ideas can work, even dont say that it is the best one(or close to be good), but in case of a society without IP, given example is university research and publications, there is a fundamental change in Infrastructure of the society necessary. since in universities people dont earn from monetizing their ideas but they get funds from government and industry which that shapes corse of their research. although this is a problematic manipulation in their freedom, it is still very difficult to map and implement into other areas such as art and literature.

another point that caught my eye, was that all of the successful examples of no-IP, were happening in an IP dominant world. we have a world that things are working mostly based on IP and then we have small islands of free from IP areas such as universities or open softwares. we dont know how all these things will function if we remove IP totally.(still this does not mean that I suggest that it wont work, but may not work the same way that we see in these islands now)