From: Pat Fallon (pfallon@ptd.net)
Date: Mon Dec 21 1998 - 10:14:53 MST
>
If we privatize the enforcement of contracts, let those who wantto "own" ideas
pay for the enforcement of that contract. Market
forces will probably lead computer programmers to tie a
perceived value to the registration of the program (cheap upgrades,
technical support, etc.); rather than paying for a protection agency
that tries to police the digital information realm. But they would
be welcome to try to enforce a contract against copying a program
that the purchaser would sign when he buys the product. I just
wouldn't subscribe to a protection agency that used some of my
subscription fee to police copyright protection.
Any service or good has, as a component of its' cost of
production, not only the costs of labor, marketing, capital,
etc., but also the cost of exclusion. For the owner of a movie
theater, these exclusion costs include paying for walls, ticket
windows, ushers. These serve to exclude or fence out
'freeriders'. Now they could set up projectors and show the
movies on low level stratus clouds (ok, screens in parks), and
then attempt to prevent casual passerbys from watching. The
method of marketing their product is their choice. In the case
where their marketing decision results in the publicness of a
good, it seems to me to be grossly unjust to ask the government
to force all who might potentially see the show without paying
to kick in some bucks, whether they DO in fact see the show or
not. Or to force passerbys to don glasses that prevent them from
viewing the movie. Yet the proponents of property rights in
ideas choose such a method when they attempt to get every person
purchasing a blank tape to pay a royalty to a third party.
Alternatively, as with DAT tape recorders, their proposals seeked
to ban or cripple entire technologies. This method, done in the
name of preventing technologies which are capable of recording
publicized (broadcast) music without loss of fidelity, would have
made mere ownership of tangible property (DAT recorder) a crime.
I view proposals for such an implementation of property rights
in ideas, which wipe out other areas of property rights
altogether, as inconsistent.
IMHO, you can't really "own" ideas. You can imbed your labor
in tangible property and try to exercise property rights over
that, but claiming ownership of ideas is a reach.
Pat Fallon
pfallon@bigfoot.com
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