From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Sat Jun 15 2002 - 17:42:53 MDT
> (Phil Osborn <philosborn2001@yahoo.com>):
> This issue will keep coming up, of course, as we move
> more and more into a society in which the "primary"
> property (I use the quotes to differentiate my use of
> the term from that of the late Andrew Galambos) is in
> fact data or ideas. We are seeing now, for example,
> people selling characters from on-line multi-user
> games on ebay.
But that's only tangentially related to IP. "Property", in any
form, is nothing more or less than an exclusive right to perform
some action or group of actions: in the case of physical property,
those actions are "all actions exercising control over a specific
physical object".
Contractual rights are property too, in the same way: If you pay
me for, say, the right to have all your e-mail to me answered within
24 hours, and we sign a contract to that effect, you now "own" that
right, and (unless the contract stipulates otherwise) you can sell
that right to someone else, or sell it back to me, etc.
But what I have sold you is not IP--what I have sold you is a piece
of my /time/. I have sold you the right to demand some of my time
and effort under certain conditions. That's what a MMORPG character
is--not just a bunch of bits, but a contractual obligation with the
maintainers of the game server to treat those bits in a special way,
allowing you to play the game. The bits themselves are worthless
without that--try selling them the day after the game shuts down.
Despite being a total skeptic about copyrights and patents, I have
no problem at all with either physical property or contractual
rights property. One is carving up and trading pieces of space and
matter, the other is carving up and trading pieces of individuals'
time and energy. IP is something entirely different; IP is a case
of person A forbidding person B from selling B's own matter, time and
energy in certain ways by force of law. Whether or not that's a good
idea is arguable, but let's not confuse them.
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