[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

Thu Feb 4 07:40:18 CET 2010

Hi Ryan,

Artificial scarcity is an objective fact, actively enforced through
creation, as I think Kevin has well established.

A different point is, are some forms of artificial scarcity 'acceptable'. My
point is that important social forces do find moderate protection for
authors and creators acceptable, and that we have to contend with that, but
that the radical and extremely lengthy monopolies demanded and gotten by
content multinationals, do not have the same level of social support, and
hence an active social movement is brewing to oppose this, while a more
radical group wants to abolish it altogether.

There is a whole range between those polarities. If I remember correctly,
Lessig wants a return to the seventies, is that about 20 years for
copyright, as acceptable; while the Pirate Party proposes five years. So
this is all about, 'artificial scarcity' can be a necessary temporary evil
to protect some other social good.

Now about your commons entities,

- what about patent pools like GreenXchange, IBM giving away its patents,
and David Martin's ambitious pool of green patents now freely available, so
it seems to me that things are indeed moving in that direction and that
those 'not seen entities' are indeed emerging as we speak.

Michel

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/3/10, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > I think it is high time to separate the term artificial scarcity from
>> > abundance.  Abundance is about capacity.  Artificial scarcity isn't.  I
>> > think there is no coherent view of what artificial scarcity is or what
>> it
>> > would look like in practice in a modern society.  Increasingly I am of a
>> > mind that "artificial scarcity" is a nonsensical term.  It sounds like
>> it
>> > means someone is blocking abundance.  That isn't what it means.  It
>> means
>> > someone is taking abundance.  Those are two very different ideas.
>>
>> Artificial scarcity is a way of controlling the *use* of capacity and
>> determining who profits from it.  In that sense, it is directly (and
>> inversely) related to abundance:  it is a secondary constraint on the
>> ability to take advantage of abundance.  It enables the owners of
>> artificial property rights to capitalize the efficiency gains and cost
>> savings from abundance and collect them as rents for themselves,
>> rather than allowing the market to pass them on to consumers.  It
>> imposes artificial costs where they would not otherwise exist, and
>> thereby neutralizes the competitive advantages resulting from
>> abundance.
>>
>> Blocking abundance and taking abundance are two sides of  the same
>> coin:  blocking or controlling access to the benefits of abundance is
>> prerequisite to taking rents from it.  By way of analogy, artificial
>> appropriation of vacant land is necessary to *block* independent
>> access to it, before privileged landlords can *take* rents from those
>> forced to access it on their terms.
>
>
>
> It is a good discussion point and I think an important one.  In law, there
> is great importance given to precident.  Precident is a social rule we can
> follow.  They can certainly change--there was a precident for states to have
> the capacity to punish with death.  Some nations have made that impossible
> as a fundamental rights issue.  Times can indeed change.
>
> But there is precident in most societies for the right to own property.
> There are also precidents for organized "takings" usually in real property
> law but also in intellectual property law...vaccines or medical discoveries
> are the classic example in IP.  If you owned the way to cure cancer and
> would not share, it would be appropriate for society to take it from
> you.  However, takings assumes property rights.
>
> Artificial scarcity seems to deny property rights to ideas.   CC3 and
> Lessig have always been clear that they want to preserve and protect
> rights.  Artificial scarcity suggests that anything blocking the right of
> access is "artificial."  If so, bike locks are "artificial" too.
>
> In my view, the best system from where we sit is one where more and more
> rights are entered into a commons.
>
> There are several entities I have not seen:
>
> 1. An organization that raises money to buy property rights of ideas and
> put them into a commons much like a land trust can do.  A manufacturing
> system that builds open items should own a commons trust of patterns for the
> distributed foundry "members" of the commons.
>
> 2. A commons that solicits donations from those who hold IP just as a
> college or charity solicits the gift of estates from affiliates.  For
> example, where is the P2P commons entity that offers someone a license
> annuity for their IP while they grow old on the basis that the underlying IP
> becomes part of the commons when they die?  That's a no brainer.  It has
> been part of civil society management for a generation or more.  I see it
> nowhere in commons entities...or nowhere prominent.
>
> My preferred model is Wikipedia raising money to buy Britannica and then
> giving it away.  To my mind, Google comes close to this by selling
> advertising.  Bill Gates is effectively doing it by converting Microsoft
> wealth into vaccine discoveries.  Others do it by giving stock to Harvard or
> Johns Hopkins for medical discoveries.  Sure, they get intangible benefits,
> but so what?  There is precident for those and there is no compelling reason
> to take them away.
>
> We can go round and round whether the little old lady gets her soap operas
> for free on the television.  She thinks she does.  She is compelled by the
> deal.  To here, the airways are a commons accessible by the purchase of a
> set of rabbit ears and a set.  So much so that when the "free" airways were
> about to go away with digital broadcast, there was a huge groundswell that
> forced protection.  People are similarly motivated for land trusts.  Commons
> ought to be international trusts.  It isn't rocket science to get people to
> think a new way.  To theorize about taking their property rights away
> is simply going to antagonize interests and make P2P a fringe force.
>
>
>
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