Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a strong supporter of FOSS, free and open source software. I’m not going to write an apologia for such software (at least not now); that job has been done much better by many others. (See GNU’s philosophy page for some pretty good ones.) What I do want to do right now, though, is spread around to the world my own small contributions to the FOSS community. They are small, but I believe that, having received so much of use from the community, I ought to give back what I can.
bibsearch: a little Perl program that provides extensive search and work capabilities with the Bible. It’s currently set up to work with the Latin Vulgate (the Clementine version, using the texts from the Clementine text project that formed the basis for the excellent Windows-based Vulsearch utility) and the English version (the Douay-Rheims, the text taken from the same project), but it’s easily extensible to other languages, if only I could find some free text translations of the Bible into those languages. (If you know of any, please let me know.) It allows searching the entire Bible, in either language, with the full power of regular expressions; it also allows saving results to buffers, searching those buffers, and writing those buffers to disk if you want to save them permanently. You can receive search results by book, chapter, and verse, or that information with the actual text. You can also search by book, by testament, or by groups of books (such as the Books of Moses or the writings of St. Paul). Finally, you can also use it simply to read the Bible or to get particular verses. It’s text-based and powerful, with full documentation. God bless you, and I hope you find it useful.
makebook: A bash script for imposing multiple pdf pages onto a single sheet in a configuration suitable for binding. Flexible and powerful.
catechis: This is a macro package for the excellent LaTeX document formatting system (which uses the TeX typesetting engine) for typesetting traditional catechisms. For more information on TeX and LaTeX, visit the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network.
liturg: A macro package for LaTeX for typesetting Catholic liturgical texts, particularly those of the traditional Roman liturgy. Special macros are defined particularly for the Missal and the Breviary.
dozenal: A macro package for typesetting documents using the dozenal numbering system. It includes Metafont characters for the numerals ten and eleven, designed along the lines of the Pitman characters (essentially, an inverted two and a reversed three). It also inclues (now) Type 1 versions of the fonts, sadly enough.
GoodClock: A simply clock program in fvwmscript for the fvwm desktop. Uses the system date command to display the time and date. As configurable as fvwm itself.
FOSS logos: Some vi logos and a general FOSS logo, all drawn in the GIMP. Very simple and basic, but I like them.
I hope that some small part of the world finds these programs useful. As always, in the true spirit of FOSS, if you think of any changes or improvements to any of these programs, please contact me, or feel free to change them yourself, in accord with the applicable license. God bless you all.
Praise be to Christ the King!
Welcome to my blog, which consists largely of my own rantings and musings on Life, the Universe, and Everything (hint: Douglas Adams already told us that the answer's 42!), with little tidbits on the news and such. Browse around and read; let me know what you think, if you have the will.
I highly recommend eSword, a Bible study program. (http://www.e-sword.net/). The default package comes with KJV and KJV+ Strong’s dictionary (in which you can see the translation and definitions for every word).
Don’t be fooled by the download page; there are many excellent Catholic resources out there if you dig a little. I myself have the Douay-Rheims, the RSV (Ignatius) and plug-in commentaries from Haydock and the Church Fathers. (Haydock is a bit of a disappointment, though, to be honest.) It’s got great note-taking features as well.
I also have plug-ins for Catholic concordance, the Cathechism, Imitation of Christ, Practice of the Presence of God, Antiquities of the Jews, Early Teachings of the Church, etc.
There are utilities for comparing versions, mas, daily devotions, etc. It’s highly-expandable, so new stuff is coming out all the time.
I also highly recommend installing Wesley’s and Barnes’ commentaries. Can’t beat them for the Protestant side of the house. Examples:
“She was baptized and her family – Who can believe that in so many families there was no infant? Or that the Jews, who were so long accustomed to circumcise their children, would not now devote them to God by baptism?”
“And her household – Greek: her house ho oikos autēs, her family. No mention is made of their having believed, and the case is one that affords a strong presumptive proof that this was an instance of household or infant baptism. Because: (1) Her believing is particularly mentioned. (2) it is not intimated that they believed. (3) it is manifestly implied that they were baptized because she believed. It was the offering of her family to the Lord. It is just such an account as would now be given of a household or family that were baptized upon the faith of the parent.”
+AMDG
I’ve heard good things about esword; thing is, it appears to be available only for Windows. Also, it appears to be exclusively graphical, which means it won’t fit in well with command lines, scripts, and the like, nor can I just read in the results of a search into a document I’m editing with vi. Similar problems exist with Vulsearch, though it’s an excellent program all on its own (also including some excellent Catholic commentaries, as well as the English and authoritative Latin).
Maybe I’ll try to get eSword running on wine. But so far, bibsearch is doing exactly what I need, no more and no less.
Sorry, didn’t realize you weren’t running Windows at all. My non-profit is inheriting an older PC soon, and I’m thinking of wiping it clean and starting over with Linux. Since it’s been a few years since I’ve been into Linux (aside from my Nokia Tablet), can you recommend an OS version? (Or are are you running straight Unix?)
Yes, I’ve been Windows-free, or mostly so, since the summer of 2000, with a brief hiatus (by necessity, thanks to W&M’s networking policies) for a year and a half or so.
It depends how into Linux you are. I run Debian stable on my desktop, and if I need newer versions of anything, I just compile it from source. If you’re not comfortable with that, I’d recommend one of the Ubuntu variants, though be warned that they’re a Linux flavor which, in its user experience, is bordering on becoming more Windows-like than Unix-like. I run Kubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, but I’ve significantly debianized it, so it’s definitely still Linux (e.g., I’ve reactivated root, limited system commands to root, won’t allow any non-root user to sudo, and so on). If you want a relatively easy-to-use distro that’s still definitively Unix, I understand the latest Fedora is remarkably good. My last experience with Red Hat was eight years ago, and the rpm system left a *very* sour taste in my mouth, but I’m told that it’s almost as good as apt now (almost).
How much older is the PC? You might want a distro that’s flexible with what windowing system you use. KDE is great, but it’s comparatively heavy; if it’s an older system (say, less than a gigahertz or so, or less than 256MB of memory, or both), KDE or Gnome will probably be slower than is comfortable. However, a distro with Xfce (Xubuntu), blackbox (Damn Small Linux), or Fluxbox (none that I know of) by default might be good.
Of course, you could just install Debian, Slackware, or anything else and just tell it to install one of these lighter window managers rather than KDE or Gnome. But I’m not sure how much you’re willing to do.
I’m not very Linux, to be honest. It’s probably been about 5 years since I last did an install. Not fond memories. Even with a few semesters of Unix admin classes under my belt, I found it most unpleasant and time consuming. I’m hoping that the distributions have improved a bit since my children were born.
Ben, the distributions were always good; they just required a good bit of Linux knowledge to get them working. These days, some do and some don’t. If you really don’t want to work at it, try one of the Ubuntus; they make it easier than easy. Significantly easier than last time I installed Windows, in fact.
As a software developer and help desk monkey, I can tell you that one very important factor in whether or not software is “good” is its ease of use. If I told my customer, “Our new XYZ software is good, it just requires a lot of XYZ knowledge to get it working,” I’d be laughed out of a job.
I take your point, though. As far as stability, security, and open-source possibilities are concerned, Linux has it all over Windows. To overcome Microsoft’s entrenched market dominance, however, they have to get over the “gateway problem.” The very best that Linux has to offer must also be the easiest to install.
People look to software to make their life easier, not as an opportunity to learn a new skillset.
I’ll probably try a few different distributions and see what I like best. If any of them are as easy to install as XP, I’ll be surprised. If any of them are harder to install than Vista, I’ll be flat-out shocked!
Any of the Ubuntus (I prefer KDE myself, so I’d install Kubuntu in your place) will be at least as easy to install as XP on most computers; occasionally there will be a hiccup or two, but most of the time it’s seamless and easy. As I said, I had a much easier time installing Kubuntu than I did installing any version of Windows, which I have done many times.
If you do go KDE, though, and you’re not interested in any interesting challenges, Kubuntu won’t be your best bet. It uses KDE4, which seriously challenges current ideas about how a desktop should work. Best to use Gnome in that case and straight Ubuntu.
Ease of use is relative. A Unix guru finds old-school System V much easier than any GUI, while the Windows junkie finds the GUI easier than the command line. I’m enough of an aficionado to know that the command line is really indispensable (which is one of the reasons that Windows system administration sucks).
I agree that most people want the computer to “just work,” like it’s a television or a microwave. They really just want a letter-writing net-surfing email machine, not a computer. And that’s fine, if that’s what they want.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in computers and how they work, and want to make them do what you want, then you’ve got some options. If you like the Windows model (I’m not sure why anyone genuinely would, but it’s possible), ReactOS will give you great insight into that. If you like the Unix model, you can learn a ton about that with Linux or the BSDs. But yes, it sometimes takes some actual knowledge to use them.
I’m really not sure why people object to this. The computer is a fantastically complex piece of equipment, yet people expect it to work like a pocket radio: push this button, something happens. It’s like expecting a rocket ship to have a steering wheel and a brake pedal. When you dumb down the interface to make it “easy to use,” the way Windows and Mac have done, you are always sacrificing power and flexibility.
On the other hand, when you make that power and flexibility front and center, the machine will be more complicated to use, and will thus require more knowledge.
The question isn’t which is “better,” it’s which is better *for you*. If Windows were free, I’d recommend it to anyone who wasn’t really interested in computers and just wanted an Internet console (provided he had a really good firewall up and knew never to open attachments). Since it’s proprietary, I don’t recommend it to anyone, and instead point them to the Ubuntus, which frankly are just as Windowsy and Windows now, but are at least capable of some real power and aren’t subject to the design idiocies of the NT kernel the way XP and Vista are. I would do this because Windows really is better for these people.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in computers and like to do unusual and interesting things with them, Windows isn’t the right system; it’s just not given to that. That’s fine; it’s not supposed to be, and wasn’t designed with that in mind. For these people, I’d recommend Linux or a BSD.
For that matter, I’ve been hearing great things about PC-BSD, which is supposed to be the BSD Ubuntu. Might be worth a try.
In any case, most really hard-core Linux users don’t care much about “overcoming Windows’s market dominance.” Windows can keep it; Linux is not for everyone. We do want to make software free, which means that Microsoft is our enemy. But we don’t think Linux should be on every computer, unless people want it that way. The problem with Windows is that Microsoft makes a concerted and largely successful effort to prevent most users from thinking there’s any non-Mac alternative at all, and that it’s proprietary; a free, non-bully Windows would be a friend, not an enemy, of Linux. Hence many Linux users’ support for ReactOS.
I’ve spent countless hours of my life making computers do “interesting and useful” things. Many of those hours have centered on making these fantastically complex pieces of equipment easy-to-use. Push-button/steering wheel/brake pedal simplicity may forever be out of reach, but good design means trying to get as close as possible to that goal without sacrificing power and flexibility.
As for acquiring “real knowledge,” all I can say is that I must be burned out on technology. I know assembly language. In tech school, I could disassemble and reassemble a PC in less than five minutes…yes they tested us on it. I even learned COBOL! The idea of writing my own drivers or doing an install with a second PC hooked up to the Internet for research and troubleshooting just doesn’t have much appeal to me anymore.
I really just need a stable box to get some basic business tasks done, so I’ll probably go Ubuntu or XP. Like you said, the right OS for the right job.
As for this:
“most really hard-core Linux users don’t care much about ‘overcoming Windows’s market dominance.’”
All I can say is that I know plenty of people who might resent your speaking on behalf of “hard-core Linux users.” It sounds like you’re hanging out with the “Linux hippies” instead of the “Linux soldiers”.
“We do want to make software free…”
And I want to make legal counsel free. The fact that some lawyers choose to work pro bono is all well and good for a start, but I prefer a more systemic change. Legal information wants to be free, after all!
The fact that lawyers who now earn a living wage will be put out of work, and their considerable personal investment in time, money, and education will be for naught is a sacrifice I’m willing for them to make.
I’ll admit that I feel a little uneasy when I think of my personal friends who support their families by practicing law, but then I just repeat my mantra, “free and open” and I feel all warm and squishy again.
Now, have I told you about my plan for the Irish? My dietary recommendations seem unpleasant at first, but in truth they are only slightly more disgusting than traditional Irish cuisine.
+AMDG
You know assembly? You’re my new hero. COBOL, I’ll pass on, but assembly will be forever a badge of honor among geeks.
Anyway, on the “free” issue, you’re really missing the point. “Free” doesn’t mean “gratis.” Linux Torvalds and even Richard Stallman make very respectable livings writing free software, and so do thousands of other programmers throughout the world. Nobody’s suggesting that they ought to be forced to work for free.
I’m glad that you want to make legal information free; the fact is that it *is* free. Go on-line or to any decent library and you’ll find scads of statutes and case law for absolutely nothing. Now, technical legal expertise is *not* free; but the legal information itself often is.
There are many case reporters which are not free, unfortunately; this is largely due to the duopolistic dominance of LexisNexis and Westlaw. I oppose this. Every scrap of binding legal precedent ought to be freely available, and it’s not; lots of it is copyright to private individuals. This is wrong.
Should legal *counsel* be free? No. But legal information should be, and today usually is.
Now, it’s the same thing with free software. Should computer or programming expertise be free? No; it’s not and never could be. Computermen and programmers have skills and will charge for their exercise, and this is good.
The code, on the other hand, is a different matter. Computer code is a form of human knowledge and ought to be free. Making it proprietary is just as idiotic as making the techniques for blacksmithing a horseshoe proprietary.
To say that this will starve programmers is to ignore reality. It just hasn’t happened; and in fact, huge numbers of free software programmers make good livings writing said software. In fact, free software creates *more* jobs for programmers. When the code is available, firms want software to be customized for their own needs. Who’s going to do this? Programmers, obviously, and they won’t work for free. In the proprietary world, these jobs just don’t exist, because the code isn’t available, so such modifications are impossible without (incredibly expensive, because the code is controlled by a monopoly thanks to copyright) individual contracts with the owner.
Free software means that the code is freely available. You can charge for distribution costs; Stallman himself used to charge $100 for a tape of the original emacs code. You can charge for customization services, or ports to new hardware. Free software doesn’t mean that talent and skill are free; it means that knowledge is free. Programmers won’t go out of work anymore than scientists who publish their discoveries go out of work.
It’s great that some people choose to make their code “free,” but it’s also great that they have a choice whether or not to do so. I don’t find the idea of intellectual property to be idiotic.
If a man works hard to develop a new way of smithing a shoe, why is this any less a product of his labor than producing a shoe itself? Why is it just for him to charge for the latter but not for the former?
I’ve written a book, and it is available on Amazon for a very reasonable price. Consumers pay for “distribution” costs, certainly, but they’re not paying simply to have any old bundle of paper, fiber, and ink shipped to their homes. This book has value because of the work and expertise I’ve put into it. It is the product of my labor. If you were to take this book, copy the words, and sell it yourself, what notion of “knowledge should be free” could justify it?
+AMDG
Intellectual property isn’t an *idiotic* idea; it’s just counterproductive. It’s justified generally (as in the American Constitution of 1789) as a stimulus to production; it supposedly provides an incentive for producers to produce.
However, what these arguments neglect is that it also stifles creativity and innovation. It makes it orders of magnitude more difficult to, say, build upon another’s techniques or ideas to make them better. Proprietary software is an excellent example; most of the great leaps forward in software technology were made when software was free, prior to the early 1980s. The GUI, the mouse, the basic types of operating system, and so on. Since that time there have been refinements of these technologies, even significant refinements (compare KDE 3.5 to MacOS 1.0 as an example), which have been great and impressive; but there have been few, if any, paradigm-shifting events which can in any meaningful way be attributed to proprietary development. Even arguably the most influential of hardware developments, the x86 processor architecture, had its specs freely released, which produced an enormous explosion in computing technology.
The next paradigm-shifting event in the operating system world, for example, is probably going to be KDE4—and lo and behold, it comes from the free software field.
I don’t really like the term “intellectual property” because it confuses the idea of property. Since time immemorial (which is a legal term of art), property has been divided into two groups: real and personal. Real property is, of course, the land and the stuff that’s attached to it. (Sometimes this has also included stuff we now consider clearly personal, like Shakespeare’s first-best bed.) Personal property is “other”; it’s stuff that you can move around and carry with you. Often it has been called “chattel,” which comes from “cattle,” indicating the sort of stuff that it originally generally described.
Then, two hundred or so years ago, we come up with this notion of “intellectual property.” It clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time. It’s nothing that you can hold in your hand; it’s neither attached to the land nor transportable. It’s an ownership interest in something that can be multiplied indefinitely with no detriment to the owner, unlike traditional property, which, if it’s given to another, cannot be used by the original owner. In software terms, it’s a kluge; it’s a messy overlay on top of real, well-reasoned, ancient legal principles trying to deal with a new problem.
See, nobody worried about intellectual property until copying of such “property” could be done easily on a large scale. Namely, when the printing press was invented. Prior to that, large parts of written works would not only be copied, but sometimes downright plagiarized, and nobody was particularly concerned about it. Anyone with any kind of education would immediately recognize that as a quote from so-and-so, of course, so what’s the harm? In fact, such things actually *benefit* the original author; they increase his fame and esteem and spread his works farther than they would otherwise go.
But now such copying could be done easily and relatively cheaply. This meant that original works could already be spread far and wide without much difficulty, so such practices didn’t really work very well. Thus far, I follow them. This would be an appropriate place to introduce plagiarism laws to prevent unethical copying (that is, taking credit for another’s work) and be done with it.
However, they instead developed a concept of “intellectual property”, based on Locke’s notion that you gain a property interest in something just by working on it. (An illegal Mexican field hand might be interested to know this.) It just goes to show how much trouble listening to John Locke will get you into. But at the time, while it was a kluge by any measure, it worked fine when the means of reproducing this “intellectual property,” the printing press mostly, were large and expensive and required a guild membership and a seven-year apprenticeship to operate.
Now, however, such things can be copied and widely distributed for practically no cost at all, and the means to do so are available to almost everyone. This makes it a different situation, and the “intellectual property” concept is now not just a kluge, but actually a significant liability.
This above is for copyright. Patents have a somewhat different history, and they never made any kind of sense. This is the difference between copyrighting a book you wrote and patenting a software algorithm (like patenting a cloud chamber; absurd) or a method of production.
The difference between selling the shoe and selling the way of making it? Selling the way of making it doesn’t deprive the maker of anything.
When I sell you a shoe, I’m certainly entitled to the compensation from it because I’m no longer able to use that pair of shoes. On the other hand, when I sell you a way of making shoes, I’m still perfectly capable of making shoes in that way myself. If you further sell that way of making shoes, I still haven’t been deprived of anything, and I still reap the benefit of making shoes in that new way myself.
On the other hand, if you sell me a method for making shoes, and I’m legally prohibited from selling it, you certainly do reap greater monetary rewards than if I’m not. But the community as a whole also suffers. It limits your innovation to those who can afford to buy it from you (and you can demand any price you want; after all, you’ve got a government-enforced monopoly on that method), which means that it significantly reduces the pool of those who can use it. That means that shoe production will not increase as much (except shoe production by you, which will increasingly tie the community to you for its shoes, thus propelling your monopoly on this particular method of shoemaking into a monopoly on shoemaking in general). It also means that fewer shoemakers will have access to this new method, and thus fewer minds will be working on improving it still further.
This stifles innovation in the shoemaking world, limits the production of shoes by the new method, and goes a long way toward making you a shoemaking monopolist enforced by government decree, all in the name of increasing the rewards you get for figuring out a new way of making shoes when, after all, you’d get the benefit of your increased productivity even without it.
Why is it just for him to charge for the shoe but not for the method? I’d turn the question around: why is it just for me to give away the shoe I bought from him, but not to give away the method I bought from him?
The first is clearly just: I’ve paid him for the shoe, he’s reaping the just benefit for his labor. What I do with that shoe now is my business. What makes the second situation different? Here I’m even giving a significant concession; I’m saying he paid for the shoemaking method, which I don’t think he ought to have to do. (And in fact any workingman’s association worth its salt would have the technique spread throughout its members in short order, as was the case for at least a thousand years in Europe.) He’s been compensated for his new invention, and twice; not only can he personally produce many more shoes thanks to his new method, but I’ve given him some extra money besides. What am I taking away from him by showing somebody else the new method?
The answer, of course, is nothing. He’s still benefiting from his new method; I’m just allowing other people to benefit, too. The fruits of his labor in developing this new method is in being able to use it; he’s absolutely entitled to that. But I don’t think he’s morally entitled to be able to control that method for the rest of time, or even for the limited time permitted by patents (which is still ridiculously long), his legal entitlement notwithstanding.
Similarly, if I were to print your book and sell it under your name, I couldn’t justify it, but that’s because we’re bound by current copyright laws. While it’s wrong to break the law, I don’t see anything morally wrong with copying words just because they were written by somebody else. Just as in patents, the bottom line is that writing particular words in a particular order grants a moral right to control those words and their reproduction.
I’ll admit I see a lot more sense in copyright than in patents and the like (software patents make absolutely zero sense, unlike copyrights on written works). We do want to incentivize authors to produce, and they don’t get any immediate economic benefit just from writing, unlike a producer who devises a new way of producing, which benefits him substantially even if others can use that method without paying him a government-enforced tribute.
On the other hand, there are other ways of supporting an author—say, work, which I dare say is the way you support yourself; or patronage by wealthy others interested in supporting the work; voluntary donations, which have supported many projects throughout history; and so on. The typical hat-in-hand statement—”if you like it, please make a donation”—has supported countless projects in the past and will support countless ones in the future. Cory Doctorow has released most of his works for free, and he’s a phenomenally successful science-fiction author (though I don’t recommend his works because of their moral content, or rather the lack thereof). And we must remember that copyright limits the exposure of the work; the higher the price, the fewer people will be able to pay for it and benefit from it.
As I said, copyright makes some sense, but on balance I don’t buy the arguments.
To say, however, that not having “intellectual property” will stifle innovation and artistic creativity is absurd. Prior to copyright law, we had five and a half thousand years of human history. Technology developed from the stone axe to the High Middle Ages without such laws. Triple-masted sailing ships, full-scale blacksmithing, ironmongering, steel plows, gunpowder, block-and-tackle, the Gothic cathedrals, and countless other huge technological advancements were developed without it.
As for artistic creativity, please. Before copyright we had everything from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Divine Comedy. There are entire libraries dedicated to the fiction and nonfiction works which were written before authors had copyrights to give them an “incentive.” The fact is that authors write not because they’ll make money (not the good ones, anyway), but because they love writing and they want their ideas to be spread. Money is great and all, but I refuse to believe that artists will stop creating because they don’t see the incentive in it without a copyright, especially when they went thousands of years in much more economically difficult times writing without such an incentive.
I can’t address all your points right now, but here’s a Cliff’s Notes version:
Your argument seems to be based on the idea of whether or not the legal concept of intellectual property promotes or stifles innovation and creativity in society as a whole.
My argument is based on simple justice. There are any number of things one might impose on a private individual that would result in a net gain in innovation and creativity for society as a whole, but the ends don’t justify the means.
A farmer works in his field. He exercises his intellect. His mind directs his physical movements. The end result is an ear of corn. This is the product of his labor. He can dispose of it in whatever reasonable way he sees fit.
Now suppose at night he works on a mystery novel. He exercises his intellect. His mind directs his physical movements. The end result is a novel.
Whether or not he “loves writing,” cares about whether his “fame and esteem” spreads, or whether he’s broken new ground in the art is beside the point. This work is either the product of his labor, or it is not. If it is, then he may may make such reasonable disposal of it as he thinks fit.
+AMDG
My argument was certainly based partly on practical considerations, but I made considerable argument regarding your attempted proof from justice. There’s no justice in allowing a writer to control the use of these particular words; indeed, it’s pretty unjust to allow him to limit the good that others can make of the work.
I made the point that the author *can* make such reasonable disposal of his writing as he sees fit; he just doesn’t have the moral right to control what disposal other people make of it.
If I were to buy your book, memorize it, and then sell it to another person, I’m not taking anything away from you. There’s nothing just in allowing you to forbid my memorization of your book because it’s a copy of your intellectual property. Yet I’ve deprived you of the right to dispose of your writing as you see fit! You can’t force me to forget it! Is that unjust?
Similarly, if I were to buy your book, scan it into a computer, and then email it to somebody, I still haven’t deprived you of anything at all. You can still make just as much use of your book as you ever could. Sure, you won’t get a royalty, but you don’t have a moral right to royalties, just a legal one. (Which I respect; the law’s the law, even when it’s based on bad philosophy.)
The farmer’s situation is clearly different. When he’s produced an ear of corn, there’s only one ear of corn. He can’t copy it and redistribute the copies; he can only sell one ear of corn, and it will remain one ear of corn. He’s got the right to dispose of it as he sees fit, of course; but once he sells it he’s lost control of it and has no say anymore. Say that I bought it, planted the kernels, and grew a whole field of corn by it. Am I violating his rights if I do that after he tells me not to?
Your theory would be that that ear of corn is his, and when he sells it, he can forbid the buyer from planting the kernels and growing his own corn. Your theory is further that the buyer owes a royalty to the original farmer for every ear of corn that he produces and sells. You argue that this is a moral right, based in justice.
You might argue that copyright is a good practical idea, but to argue that an author has a moral right to control what everybody does with a copy of his work, presumably ad infinitum, is a bit much.
Your argument also means that even our present copyright law is too weak. It only provides protection to the author’s death plus 99 years. To respect the author’s moral right to control everybody else vis-a-vis his work, you’d have to extend copyright into eternity, or until the author himself chose to relinquish it. Do you really hold this?
Do I really hold that an author and his dependents should own and control intellectual property in perpetuity? Yes.
“I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man’s labor. There is no limit to real estate.” -Mark Twain
Like Mr. Clemens (and Mr. Tolkien), I believe that intellectual property is property indeed. A man may sit on a piece of unimproved property his entire life, and it matters not one iota how much good others may have made use of that property. It remains his.
(If he lets it sit fallow while people are starving, then a whole different principle kicks in, but I think we’d largely agree on that.)
Of course, you disagree with the idea that intellectual property is actual property:
“Since time immemorial (which is a legal term of art), property has been divided into two groups: real and personal. Real property is, of course, the land and the stuff that’s attached to it. (Sometimes this has also included stuff we now consider clearly personal, like Shakespeare’s first-best bed.) Personal property is “other”; it’s stuff that you can move around and carry with you. Often it has been called “chattel,” which comes from “cattle,” indicating the sort of stuff that it originally generally described. Then, two hundred or so years ago, we come up with this notion of “intellectual property. It clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time.”
So what if it doesn’t fit with our prior notions of property? I’d like to remind you that we had another category of property 200 years ago: man. We have now reached a point where the world–the Middle East and some parts of Africa excepting–recognizes that man is not, in fact, property. This indicates that our view of property does legitimately develop over time.
So far I say only that our understanding of property can develop. It’s still possible that it can develop in the wrong direction. This, I take it, is what you meant with this comment:
“…they instead developed a concept of “intellectual property”, based on Locke’s notion that you gain a property interest in something just by working on it.”
I can’t and don’t speak for “they.” If “they” believe that someone gains a property interest in something just by working on it, that may explain why “they” made the wholly inconsistent move of limiting property rights to 99 years.
As for me, I believe that a man owns a piece of intellectual property because he created it. It is the product of his labor. It is as much his property as his land or his goods.
The written word is a special kind of property, because its value does not lie in its physical media. The value of a book–the value given to it by the author’s skill and hard work–lies not in the paper or the ink, but in the “use of these particular words,” as you put it.
“If I were to buy your book, memorize it, and then sell it to another person, I’m not taking anything away from you.”
I suspect that deep down you know this is nonsense, Don. Copyright or not, if you really don’t see the injustice in taking my words–the product of my hard work–and using them to make a profit for yourself, then I’m not sure there’s anything I can say to convince you.
“You know assembly? You’re my new hero. COBOL, I’ll pass on, but assembly will be forever a badge of honor among geeks.”
I think we basically learned COBOL because I was in tech school in the late 90′s, and they thought we’d be able to find work fixing legacy code for the 2000 bug. (Office Space, anyone?) We learned object-oriented COBOL, which is a bit like using a hydrogen-powered telegraph.
As for assembly, it’s like wearing a hair shirt without any of the spiritual benefits. It did help me understand an awful lot about higher-level programing languages, compilers, assemblers, etc. (Elizabeth tells me that she didn’t really understand English grammar until she learned Latin, and I think assembly served a similar purpose for me.)
Among the other obscure and basically useless languages I learned: ADA, TurboPascal, VBScript. I guess they aren’t completely useless objectively speaking, but they’re useless to me.
I actually have a topic that ties together every subject we’ve discussed in this post:
I’m interested in publishing a copy of a book in the public domain, but the only existing copies are from the colonial era, so they have the the “long s” (looks like an ‘f’). Aside from doing a terribly painful find/replace scheme, can you think of any tools (in Unix or otherwise) that could help with this problem?
“Do I really hold that an author and his dependents should own and control intellectual property in perpetuity? Yes.”
Okay; that’s fine and all, but do you plan to justify it? I presented lots of arguments as to why this is wrong; do you have any as to why it’s right, or even as to why my arguments don’t work?
“I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man’s labor. There is no limit to real estate.” -Mark Twain
Actually, there is; Mark Twain is dead wrong here. We have all sorts of limits to possession of real estate, not least of which is adverse possession. St. Thomas Aquinas (and the social encyclicals) have also always held that private property is held in terms of ownership, but that it’s use is extremely limited by the good of the community. Plus, we’re not talking here about owning something; we’re talking about owning something, plus the rights of everybody else in the universe not only to that thing, but to even substantially similar things, even when there can be easily created unlimited copies of said thing at little or no cost, with no loss to the original author whatsoever. So this comparison, like many of Mark Twain’s witty little remarks, is transparent nonsense despite its apparent cleverness.
Plus, you’re still ignoring the obvious difference between tangible property and intellectual property. You might believe that intellectual property exists, but you surely have to admit that it’s a fundamentally different kind of property. But these statements assume that it’s precisely the same.
“Like Mr. Clemens (and Mr. Tolkien),”
You didn’t mention anything about Mr. Tolkien. When did he come into this? And why should either of their opinions matter to me?
“Of course, you disagree with the idea that intellectual property is actual property:”
Yes, and justified it with arguments that you haven’t addressed. You’ve contradicted them, but since you disagree I’d expect that. But you haven’t explained to me why they’re wrong.
“So what if it doesn’t fit with our prior notions of property? I’d like to remind you that we had another category of property 200 years ago: man. We have now reached a point where the world–the Middle East and some parts of Africa excepting–recognizes that man is not, in fact, property. This indicates that our view of property does legitimately develop over time.”
Uh…you do know that intellectual property and slavery emerged in the Western world during roughly the same period of time? In any case, nobody ever said notions of property couldn’t develop; I just argued that this particular development was a kluge, which only barely worked at the time and is a complete disaster now. And, I’ll note again, you haven’t responded to that in any particular.
“I can’t and don’t speak for “they.” If “they” believe that someone gains a property interest in something just by working on it, that may explain why “they” made the wholly inconsistent move of limiting property rights to 99 years.”
Study the subject. Intellectual property was *never* considered a matter of justice and *always* considered a matter of practicality until very recently. Copyright terms have been expanded dramatically recently; the “life of the author plus 99 years” only took effect in the 1970s. The “property right by working on it” (which, by the way, is precisely what you’ve argued) was necessary to make it into a kind of property at all. Once it was, they completely abandoned the notion of justice (appropriately, since it clearly doesn’t apply here) and made it an issue of incentives.
“As for me, I believe that a man owns a piece of intellectual property because he created it. It is the product of his labor. It is as much his property as his land or his goods.”
And the ways I explained that it’s different, and the arguments I brought about the ramifications if it were the same? Do you have any response to that?
“I suspect that deep down you know this is nonsense, Don. Copyright or not, if you really don’t see the injustice in taking my words–the product of my hard work–and using them to make a profit for yourself, then I’m not sure there’s anything I can say to convince you.”
Wait, so you seriously believe that by memorizing your book and then selling it I’m violating your rights, doing you an injustice?
Ah, a classic argument. The “you know you’re wrong, and if you don’t, then there’s nothing I can say” argument. It’s convenient, because it avoids the necessity of actually responding to anything that one’s interlocutor has said. Unfortunately for the argument, though, I actually quite sincerely believe that I’m right, for all the reasons I’ve already given, and others which space hasn’t allowed me to raise. If you’re interested in a real discussion on this, then I’m game; but if you’re just going to tell me that in my heart of hearts I know I’m wrong and ignore all my arguments against you, there isn’t much point in the exercise.
As I said, by copying a book and giving it away I’m not depriving the author of anything at all, who still has every right and ability to benefit from what his work contains—the ideas within it—as he ever did no matter how many copies of his work are given away, sold, or whatever. If you disagree, please tell me what you think I’m depriving him of; don’t just tell me that I secretly know I’m an idiot and just haven’t realized it yet.
+AMDG
For that matter, slaves weren’t a type of property; they were a type of personal property. While slavery is a monstrous injustice (as the Church has taught forever), the slave considered as property fit perfectly into the categories of property that all legal systems had held pretty much forever.
Intellectual property, on the other hand, as a concept was wholly new. For a pretty good overview of the topic, email me at dgoodmaniii at gmail. I’ll send you a legal brief on the topic by Stephen Kinsella as a pdf, which gives a much more thorough overview of the history of the topic both legally and philosophically, and why it doesn’t work.
Kinsella’s not a traditionalist of any religion, as far as I can tell; he seems to be a pretty straight-laced libertarian, with all the positives and negatives that that entails. But his brief on intellectual property is spot-on.
I’ve already made several arguments, Don, and countered several of yours. Since they seem to have slipped your mind, I’ll try to restate them in a more memorable way. I’ll even add a few new points to prevent boredom.
You said, “Intellectual property isn’t an *idiotic* idea; it’s just counterproductive.” Yet earlier you also said, “Computer code is a form of human knowledge and ought to be free. Making it proprietary is just as idiotic as making the techniques for blacksmithing a horseshoe proprietary.”
So is the concept of intellectual property idiotic or not? Or is it only idiotic when it’s applied to computer code and smithing techniques?
You said, “However, what these arguments neglect is that it [intellectual property] also stifles creativity and innovation.”
Earlier I countered that whether or not something stifles or stimulates creativity and innovation has no bearing on whether or not it is property. I’ll provide an example and hope that helps it stick this time. Suppose you have an extra computer in your home. No doubt creativity and innovation would be stimulated if a budding young genius had possession of it and was using it for something productive. Nevetheless, it remains your property.
You said, “Then, two hundred or so years ago, we come up with this notion of ‘intellectual property.’ It clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time.”
Your sense of history, while admirable, doesn’t go nearly far enough. Evidence suggests that while men roamed the earth in hunter-gatherer bands, they had a sense of personal property. They personally owned their clothing, hunting and trapping implements, etc. Makes sense. These things have value to hunter-gatherers. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of real property at this point, however. While territories were controlled by particular bands, no individual owned a piece of land. And why should they? Something like that offered no value.
Eventually we see the rise of agriculture, and with it, the concept of personal ownership of land. A very reasonable development. The use of this new technology means that something that formerly didn’t have value now does, and people naturally want to own it. Our concept of ownership developed to accommodate this.
At this point, man has personal and real property, but not intellectual property. This too, makes sense for this era of history. Why would he want it? Why would he even think of intellectual property any more than his ancestors thought of real property? And then, about 200 years ago…well, I’ll let you take over for a bit: “Then, two hundred or so years ago, we come up with this notion of ‘intellectual property’…See, nobody worried about intellectual property until copying of such “property” could be done easily on a large scale. Namely, when the printing press was invented.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. With the advent of this new technology, something that previously had no value, now had value. Ancient man saw land as something to hunt on or gather from—it had value, certainly, but that value didn’t derive from the kind of exclusive control that ownership provides. Likewise, before mass printing, man saw his intellectual work as something to “increase his fame,” spread his ideas, etc.–it had value, certainly, but again this value didn’t derive from the kind of exclusive control that ownership provides. But just as man’s sense of ownership of real property developed in response to agricultural technology, man’s sense of intellectual property developed in response to media technology.
It’s a perfectly natural sequence of events, and some of your other points provide even more support. For example, “It clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time. It’s nothing that you can hold in your hand; it’s neither attached to the land nor transportable.” I can’t help but amuse myself by imagining a Mesopotamian Don Goodman making the case that ownership of land clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time. You can’t carry it in your hand, after all.
“Study the subject. Intellectual property was *never* considered a matter of justice and *always* considered a matter of practicality until very recently.”
I just laid out the broad historical development of intellectual property, and I’m not terribly concerned with the mistakes of Locke and his ilk in trying to establish it. The development seems reasonable and clear enough to me without concerning myself with what every philosopher and lawyer said on the subject along the way. (I believe that men and women have equal rights without spending a lot of time agonizing over all the mistakes and inaccurate ideas of feminists throughout history.) If we’ve only come to realize a truth very recently, then hooray for “very recently.”
“The difference between selling the shoe and selling the way of making it? Selling the way of making it doesn’t deprive the maker of anything…If I were to buy your book, memorize it, and then sell it to another person, I’m not taking anything away from you…Similarly, if I were to buy your book, scan it into a computer, and then email it to somebody, I still haven’t deprived you of anything at all…by copying a book and giving it away I’m not depriving the author of anything at all, who still has every right and ability to benefit from what his work contains—the ideas within it—as he ever did no matter how many copies of his work are given away, sold, or whatever.”
The work itself–the product of my labor–is not simply the ideas contained in the book. I can easily summarize the ideas in “The Great Gatsby,” but only a particularly obstinate philistine would argue that I had created a work with the value of the novel. No, the value comes in the “use of these particular words.” Particular words, in a particular order. If you copy this work and sell it to someone else, you have deprived me of something. I could have sold this work to that same person. Now I can’t, because you’ve already done so.
Yes, yes, I realize that by copying and selling my book you haven’t taken away my ability to make copies indefinitely. So what? The value of the book doesn’t lie in it’s reproducibility. Suppose God tells me, “Ben, for being such a great guy—and at this point the Almighty stifles a chuckle—I hereby reward you with an unlimited supply of lava lamps.” If you take away one of my lava lamps, does it cease to be theft simply because I have an unlimited supply? Is it not still my property to dispose of how I see fit?
If I choose to give the lamps away, great. It’s an act of virtue. If, after due consideration, it’s determined that the poor could really use those lava lamps and they need them to read by, okay, they have the use of them. But at no point is my ownership of them as property diminished.
“To say, however, that not having ‘intellectual property’ will stifle innovation and artistic creativity is absurd.”
So now we’ve come back to the issue of whether or not copyright encourages or stifles creativity. I don’t recall ever making this argument to begin with, and so I felt no need to counter your refutation up to this point. But since you seem to want me to respond to your arguments—even those that don’t seem to be directed at me—I’m game. Be warned, however, that I’ll be playing devil’s advocate in some of these points.
“Before copyright we had everything from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Divine Comedy. There are entire libraries dedicated to the fiction and nonfiction works which were written before authors had copyrights to give them an ‘incentive.’”
They were also written before the convenience of word processors. Arguing that the incentive of copyright isn’t necessary for the creation of great works is like arguing that the convenience of word processors isn’t necessary for the creation of great works. It’s true. Neither one of these things is necessary, but something can be desirable without being necessary. One can attain the ultimate human good of union with God without studying the lives of the saints, but studying the lives of the saints is a good and desirable thing anyway.
“Prior to copyright law, we had five and a half thousand years of human history. Technology developed from the stone axe to the High Middle Ages without such laws…As for artistic creativity, please.”
Yes, and technology has raced along at an even more startling pace since the advent of copyright. I don’t know, necessarily, whether this acceleration of technological innovation is due to intellectual property protection, but I also don’t know that the development of technology from the Stone Age to the High Middle Ages is due to a lack of copyright, either. I could argue that technology would have progressed even further had copyright been in place back in those days. It’s all speculation, though. Harry Turtledove and Hank Morgan may be interested, but I don’t think you and I have much to discuss here.
“The fact is that authors write not because they’ll make money (not the good ones, anyway), but because they love writing and they want their ideas to be spread.”
A romantic and pleasant sentiment—it has every virtue except truth. Writers’ biographies and autobiographies are full of stories about hating the work, but keeping up the discipline because of obligation or a paycheck. Arthur Conan Doyle and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two of the more striking examples.
You may not consider Sherlock Holmes to be great literature, but certainly the world would be a slightly duller place if The Strand hadn’t offered a paycheck to Doyle to continue writing stories that he simply hated. (And none of this would have happened, I hardly need mention, without copyright.)
“St. Thomas Aquinas (and the social encyclicals) have also always held that private property is held in terms of ownership, but that it’s use is extremely limited by the good of the community.”
I may have been a “townie,” Don, but I’ve read many of the same works you have and I am well aware of what the Church teaches about private property—aware enough to disagree with your use of the adjective “extremely” in the previous sentence. In any case, I am a loyal son of the Church and adhere to her teaching about private property. When I finally get to heaven—God willing, after many, many years of purgation—I will ask St. Thomas and all of the 20th century Popes (assuming they can all be found there) whether or not they think my keeping the exclusive rights to sell my intellectual property has somehow damaged the community. Until then, I don’t think your conscious is so far superior to my own that I’ll concede to your judgment on the matter.
(You would have had a much stronger case if you had mentioned drug patents, by the way. There you have an issue of “preference for the poor” and community good with some meat on it. Of course, it’s also one of the strongest cases for the other side, since drug companies almost certainly could never raise the millions necessary to actually develop new medicines and vaccines without intellectual property protection.)
Of course, none of these arguments really matter unless intellectual property is actually property. You seem to be a little divided on this issue. In one instance, you seem to be making the case that intellectual property (usually encased in ironic quotation marks) isn’t property at all. In other instances, you seem to be saying that it is propert, but that’s it so different from other kinds of property that we can’t possibly apply the same rules. In yet other cases you apply the exact same rules—to wit, the Church’s teaching on property-to it as you would any other kind of property.
Finally, a few smaller points:
“You didn’t mention anything about Mr. Tolkien. When did he come into this? And why should either of their opinions matter to me?”
It’s a simple appeal to authority. Not the strongest argument, of course, but something to think about. I thought maybe the reference would intrigue you enough that you might look into Tolkein’s history with copyright issues. Twain, too. He testified before Congress on the matter as an old man. His statement is well worth reading. You will probably disagree with it entirely, but it is full of his “witty little remarks, transparent nonsense despite [their] apparent cleverness.”
The great writers of the 19th and 20th centuries all used and defended their copyrights, including the Catholic ones who were quite serious about their faith like Tolkein and Waugh. (Chesterton? Belloc?) When the world, including respectable individuals, lines up against you, maybe it’s something to think about. Or, do you agree with Twain that “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)?”
(I’ll admit that I included Twain for my own amusement. I had a theory that you hated him, and I wanted to test it without coming out and asking you. Twain is a tragic figure in many ways—not least in his utter inability to comprehend transcendence. For all that, though, he is much deeper than most people give him credit for. There is a “standard” meaning behind books like “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” which I’m sure you’d be all to eager to accept and condemn, but a careful reading reveals an entirely different take on the matter. Maybe even a little closer to your economic ideas than my own.)
“Uh…you do know that intellectual property and slavery emerged in the Western world during roughly the same period of time?”
Uh…maybe you should tell that to the Greeks and Romans. They’re going to be disappointed to learn that they weren’t part of the “Western world.”
“Ah, a classic argument. The ‘you know you’re wrong, and if you don’t, then there’s nothing I can say’ argument. It’s convenient, because it avoids the necessity of actually responding to anything that one’s interlocutor has said.”
I’ve responded to plenty that you’ve said, Don, even before this post. I said what I said, though, precisely because I was tired of thinking of you as my “interlocutor” and of this conversation as an “exercise.” I tried talking to you the way I might if we were having a beer together at Rivendell instead of having a debate in a philosophy class.
Emotions are not a good source of argument, but they are a good source of personal data. I hoped that by checking in with your gut, you might be spurred on to thinking about the issue from a new perspective.
You have made it quite clear that if you copied my book and sold it for your own gain, you would not feel bad about it. So be it. There is nothing I can say that can convince you. It’s not a cop-out, it’s an admission of inability on my part. (Just as there is probably nothing you can say that would convince me that holding my intellectual property is a detriment to the community.)
+AMDG
See, now we’re getting somewhere. All you’d done until now is contradict me; now you’re giving me something to work with. (Contradicting me is fine, of course; but it’s not very interesting by itself.)
>>>>
You said, “Intellectual property isn’t an *idiotic* idea; it’s just counterproductive.” Yet earlier you also said, “Computer code is a form of human knowledge and ought to be free. Making it proprietary is just as idiotic as making the techniques for blacksmithing a horseshoe proprietary.”
<<<>>>
that helps it stick this time. Suppose you have an extra computer in your home. No doubt creativity and innovation would be stimulated if a budding young genius had possession of it and was using it for something productive. Nevetheless, it remains your property.
<<<>>>
property at this point, however. While territories were controlled by particular bands, no individual owned a piece of land. And why should they? Something like that offered no value.
<<<>>>
Couldn’t have said it better myself. With the advent of this new technology, something that previously had no value, now had value.
<<<>>>
myself by imagining a Mesopotamian Don Goodman making the case that ownership of land clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time. You can’t carry it in your hand, after all.
<<<>>>
history.) If we’ve only come to realize a truth very recently, then hooray for “very recently.”
<<<>>>
work with the value of the novel. No, the value comes in the “use of these particular words.” Particular words, in a particular order. If you copy this work and sell it to someone else, you have deprived me of something. I could have sold this work to that same person. Now I can’t, because you’ve already done so.
<<<>>>
unlimited supply of lava lamps.” If you take away one of my lava lamps, does it cease to be theft simply because I have an unlimited supply? Is it not still my property to dispose of how I see fit?
<<<>>>
They were also written before the convenience of word processors. Arguing that the incentive of copyright isn’t necessary for the creation of great works is like arguing that the convenience of word processors isn’t necessary for the creation of great works. It’s true. Neither one of these things is necessary, but something can be desirable without being necessary.
<<<>>>
in place back in those days. It’s all speculation, though. Harry Turtledove and Hank Morgan may be interested, but I don’t think you and I have much to discuss here.
<<<>>>
A romantic and pleasant sentiment—it has every virtue except truth. Writers’ biographies and autobiographies are full of stories about hating the work, but keeping up the discipline because of obligation or a paycheck. Arthur Conan Doyle and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two of the more striking examples.
<<<>>>
I may have been a “townie,” Don, but I’ve read many of the same works you have and I am well aware of what the Church teaches about private property—aware enough to disagree with your use of the adjective “extremely” in the previous sentence.
<<<>>>
somehow damaged the community. Until then, I don’t think your conscious is so far superior to my own that I’ll concede to your judgment on the matter.
<<<>>>
(You would have had a much stronger case if you had mentioned drug patents, by the way. There you have an issue of “preference for the poor” and community good with some meat on it. Of course, it’s also one of the strongest cases for the other side, since drug companies almost certainly could never raise the millions necessary to actually develop new medicines and vaccines without intellectual property protection.)
<<<>>>
property. You seem to be a little divided on this issue. In one instance, you seem to be making the case that intellectual property (usually encased in ironic quotation marks) isn’t property at all. In other instances, you seem to be saying that it is propert, but that’s it so different from other kinds of property that we can’t possibly apply the same rules. In yet other cases you apply the exact same rules—to wit, the Church’s teaching on property-to it as you would any other kind of property.
<<<>>>
Twain, too. He testified before Congress on the matter as an old man. His statement is well worth reading. You will probably disagree with it entirely, but it is full of his “witty little remarks, transparent nonsense despite [their] apparent cleverness.”
<<<>>>
The great writers of the 19th and 20th centuries all used and defended their copyrights, including the Catholic ones who were quite serious about their faith like Tolkein and Waugh. (Chesterton? Belloc?) When the world, including respectable individuals, lines up against you, maybe it’s something to think about. Or, do you agree with Twain that “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)?”
<<<>>>
Uh…maybe you should tell that to the Greeks and Romans. They’re going to be disappointed to learn that they weren’t part of the “Western world.”
<<<>>>
this conversation as an “exercise.” I tried talking to you the way I might if we were having a beer together at Rivendell instead of having a debate in a philosophy class.
<<<<
If we were having a beer at Rivendell, I’d certainly hope that we could have a meaningful conversation beyond mere contradiction. I’m pleased that we’re having one again.
+AMDG
See, now we’re getting somewhere. All you’d done until now is contradict me; now you’re giving me something to work with. (Contradicting me is fine, of course; but it’s not very interesting by itself.)
[quote]
You said, “Intellectual property isn’t an *idiotic* idea; it’s just counterproductive.” Yet earlier you also said, “Computer code is a form of human knowledge and ought to be free. Making it proprietary is just as idiotic as making the techniques for blacksmithing a horseshoe proprietary.”
[/quote]
You’re right; my language in the second statement is overly strong. I apologize for that.
[quote]
that helps it stick this time. Suppose you have an extra computer in your home. No doubt creativity and innovation would be stimulated if a budding young genius had possession of it and was using it for something productive. Nevetheless, it remains your property.
[/quote]
Except that you’re once again confusing tangible, singular property with intangible, infinitely reproducible property. If you took my computer, I’d be deprived of the use of that computer. On the other hand, if you copied a file from that computer, I would be deprived of nothing.
What is theft but the unjust deprivation of property to which the victim has a right? If there’s no deprivation, there’s no theft.
[quote]
property at this point, however. While territories were controlled by particular bands, no individual owned a piece of land. And why should they? Something like that offered no value.
[/quote]
One of the best counters I’ve ever had to this point. Ultimately, however, I think it fails. Sure, we developed a sense of real property; but once again, real property is singular and unreproducible. If I kick you off your land, you lose the use of that land. Still different from intangible, infinitely reproducible goods like, say, the phrase “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
[quote]
Couldn’t have said it better myself. With the advent of this new technology, something that previously had no value, now had value.
[/quote]
Of course, those things did have immeasurable value. Unless things like that Summa were valueless until recently.
While this argument is thought-provoking, I think it ultimately fails, as well. It’s circular: intellectual property is good because now it’s got value, but it only has value because it’s intellectual property. Think about it: you’re arguing that Fitzgerald’s _The Great Gatsby_ is valuable, and that’s why we copyright it; however, it’s only monetarily valuable in that way *because* we copyright it.
[quote]
myself by imagining a Mesopotamian Don Goodman making the case that ownership of land clearly doesn’t fit into any notion of property that we had prior to this time. You can’t carry it in your hand, after all.
[/quote]
Amusing, but it doesn’t work. Land is clearly and evidently something that *can* be owned. The issue being that, when you own Blackacre, you own the only Blackacre that ever has been, is, and ever will be. There *can’t* be any more. On the other hand, when I own a book, there are often millions of other copies that everyone can equally enjoy. It’s very, very different, and clearly doesn’t require or deserve the same privileges accorded to property.
[quote]
history.) If we’ve only come to realize a truth very recently, then hooray for “very recently.”
[/quote]
My only point there is that the burden of proof is on you, not me. If all the ages of man at all times and places did something one way, and then we decide to do it a different way, we might be perfectly right—but it’s definitely our job to show it, and not the other guy’s job to show that we’re wrong.
[quote]
work with the value of the novel. No, the value comes in the “use of these particular words.” Particular words, in a particular order. If you copy this work and sell it to someone else, you have deprived me of something. I could have sold this work to that same person. Now I can’t, because you’ve already done so.
[/quote]
It’s true that I’ve deprived you of the rights that intellectual property gives you; but that only applies if we assume that intellectual property is good. If I kill somebody, I’ve also deprived you of the chance of killing him, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve got a property claim against me.
This argument is circular, too, because it once again presumes that intellectual property is good and protects a natural right. If you don’t assume that, then I haven’t deprived you of anything that you’re entitled to, any more than me selling an apple to a passer-by before you get to him has deprived you of anything that you’re entitled to.
[quote]
unlimited supply of lava lamps.” If you take away one of my lava lamps, does it cease to be theft simply because I have an unlimited supply? Is it not still my property to dispose of how I see fit?
[/quote]
You’ve still lost one lava lamp. That particular lava lamp can never be enjoyed by you again. (Until they arrest me and give it back to you, anyway.) If I copied your book, you’ve lost the use of nothing.
[quote]
They were also written before the convenience of word processors. Arguing that the incentive of copyright isn’t necessary for the creation of great works is like arguing that the convenience of word processors isn’t necessary for the creation of great works. It’s true. Neither one of these things is necessary, but something can be desirable without being necessary.
[/quote]
Right. But you’re not arguing that you have a natural moral right to word processors.
[quote]
in place back in those days. It’s all speculation, though. Harry Turtledove and Hank Morgan may be interested, but I don’t think you and I have much to discuss here.
[quote]
Fair enough. We have insufficient data to produce a conclusion. We’ll ignore this, then.
[quote]
A romantic and pleasant sentiment—it has every virtue except truth. Writers’ biographies and autobiographies are full of stories about hating the work, but keeping up the discipline because of obligation or a paycheck. Arthur Conan Doyle and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two of the more striking examples.
[/quote]
Okay, you got me. There are occasionally writers who write for a paycheck. And sometimes what they produce is amusing and clever (like Sherlock Holmes), or insipid and annoying (like Gatsby). But I’d still argue that our greatest works of literature were produced by authors who *wanted* to right them, not who wanted a paycheck.
That includes Tolkien; he never imagined that anyone would be interested in his little stories. He had no intention of making any money with them.
[quote]
I may have been a “townie,” Don, but I’ve read many of the same works you have and I am well aware of what the Church teaches about private property—aware enough to disagree with your use of the adjective “extremely” in the previous sentence.
[/quote]
Did I say you hadn’t or weren’t? I was just pointing out something I thought you were neglecting, not commenting on the breadth of your reading or knowledge.
[quote]
somehow damaged the community. Until then, I don’t think your conscious is so far superior to my own that I’ll concede to your judgment on the matter.
[/quote]
I never said anything about my conscience. (You did mean this, not conscious, right?) Nor do I think that my conscience is in any way superior to yours. None of this is personal; I’ve been good friends with men I’ve disagreed with on much more important issues, and I hope that I’ll remain friends with you no matter how much we disagree about this.
[quote]
(You would have had a much stronger case if you had mentioned drug patents, by the way. There you have an issue of “preference for the poor” and community good with some meat on it. Of course, it’s also one of the strongest cases for the other side, since drug companies almost certainly could never raise the millions necessary to actually develop new medicines and vaccines without intellectual property protection.)
[/quote]
A good point. Though I disagree with the last bit; a large chunk of drug companies’ expenses are the absurd advertising, which is clearly unnecessary (doctors who prescribe the drugs know about them anyway), and also a bloated and ineffective bureaucracy surrounding them. Eliminating these would go a long way to making drug companies able to produce these drugs without having to rely on overcharging dying people under their patents.
[quote]
property. You seem to be a little divided on this issue. In one instance, you seem to be making the case that intellectual property (usually encased in ironic quotation marks) isn’t property at all. In other instances, you seem to be saying that it is propert, but that’s it so different from other kinds of property that we can’t possibly apply the same rules. In yet other cases you apply the exact same rules—to wit, the Church’s teaching on property-to it as you would any other kind of property.
[/quote]
It’s called a reduction to absurdity. I always and consistently maintain that it’s not property, because it doesn’t bear the characteristics of property. I make some arguments presuming that it’s property to show the ridiculous results that this assumption produces. And I also argue that, even if it were property, the notion that you have an eternal and exclusive right to it is inconsistent with Catholic teaching on property.
I’m sorry if I’m sometimes inconsistent in the way I refer to it, especially if this produces confusion. I’ll endeavor to be more consistent about it.
[quote]
Twain, too. He testified before Congress on the matter as an old man. His statement is well worth reading. You will probably disagree with it entirely, but it is full of his “witty little remarks, transparent nonsense despite [their] apparent cleverness.”
[/quote]
I like Twain, very much. But it’s a simple observation of fact that he often puts wittiness before profundity. Read “The Awful German Language” for a humorous but paradigmatic example.
[quote]
The great writers of the 19th and 20th centuries all used and defended their copyrights, including the Catholic ones who were quite serious about their faith like Tolkein and Waugh. (Chesterton? Belloc?) When the world, including respectable individuals, lines up against you, maybe it’s something to think about. Or, do you agree with Twain that “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)?”
[/quote]
Okay; you’ve got five hundred years of the world, I’ve got five and a half thousand. I’ll rely on my part.
I do agree with Twain on that, though he puts it too strongly.
Just because these authors had copyrights doesn’t mean they had a considered adhesion to the notion of copyright. I dare say most of them probably never considered it; that’s the way it was universally done. And, as I argued before, given the copying equipment at the time copyright was at most a benign nuisance, a legal fiction with little adverse effect. Things have changed a lot now.
[quote]
Uh…maybe you should tell that to the Greeks and Romans. They’re going to be disappointed to learn that they weren’t part of the “Western world.”
[/quote]
You know better than that. Slavery died out in the West under Catholic civilization; it arose again as pagan law was reapplied, at about the same time that copyright was invented.
[quote]
this conversation as an “exercise.” I tried talking to you the way I might if we were having a beer together at Rivendell instead of having a debate in a philosophy class.
[/quote]
If we were having a beer at Rivendell, I’d certainly hope that we could have a meaningful conversation beyond mere contradiction. I’m pleased that we’re having one again.
“See, now we’re getting somewhere. All you’d done until now is contradict me; now you’re giving me something to work with.”
Your arguments were primarily refutations of a line of argument that I never made. I refused to engage those refutations. Call it contradiction if you wish. Anyway, playing devil’s advocate was a bit of fun and kept the conversation moving.
“On the other hand, if you copied a file from that computer, I would be deprived of nothing.”
You can probably predict what I’ll say to this, so I won’t bother. We’re not making any headway on this one.
“Sure, we developed a sense of real property; but once again, real property is singular and unreproducible.”
I disagree with the notion that property ceases to be property simply because it is reproducable. You haven’t really offered any compelling arguments along this line. It just seems to be various restatements of “it’s different, and it’s always been different.”
“Right. But you’re not arguing that you have a natural moral right to word processors.”
No, but at this point I wasn’t arguing the natural moral right bit. I was refuting your argument about copyright stifling creativity in which you hold out copyright as a practical idea rather than an actual property issue.
“And sometimes what they produce is amusing and clever (like Sherlock Holmes), or insipid and annoying (like Gatsby).”
Now them’s fightin’ words. I’ll save a defense of Gatsby for another time.
“Did I say you hadn’t or weren’t? I was just pointing out something I thought you were neglecting, not commenting on the breadth of your reading or knowledge.”
Granted. I was too defensive there. That was an uncharitable assumption on my part and I apologize for it.
“…our greatest works of literature were produced by authors who *wanted* to right them…”
You meant “write,” I think. (Sorry, I had to get you back for the conscious/conscience thing.
“I never said anything about my conscience. (You did mean this, not conscious, right?) Nor do I think that my conscience is in any way superior to yours.”
What I was getting at here is that I do not think that retaining my right to sell my intellectual property is damaging to the community, whereas you might. I would follow my own conscience in this matter. (Though now that I think about it, ‘judgement’ is probably the more appropriate concept.)
“None of this is personal; I’ve been good friends with men I’ve disagreed with on much more important issues, and I hope that I’ll remain friends with you no matter how much we disagree about this.”
Of course. We both like a good exchange. Keeps the blades sharp. If anything, I’d say our disagreement on the matter has probably made the friendship stronger. (Hell, we’ve probably exchanged more words in the last week than we did in our entire relationship up to that point.)
“I do agree with Twain on that, though he puts it too strongly.”
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be all that interesting if it weren’t exaggerated. “It’s not always good to agree with the majority” just isn’t catchy.
“You know better than that. Slavery died out in the West under Catholic civilization”
Yes, but you said:
“Uh…you do know that intellectual property and slavery emerged in the Western world during roughly the same period of time?”
While it died out under the Church, it “emerged” long before that in Greece and Rome. I guess you could’ve said “re-emerged” and it would have been a bit stronger, but you’d still have to ignore the mass enslavement of the native population in the New World centuries before intellectual proerty appeared on the radar.
“My only point there is that the burden of proof is on you, not me. If all the ages of man at all times and places did something one way, and then we decide to do it a different way, we might be perfectly right—but it’s definitely our job to show it, and not the other guy’s job to show that we’re wrong.”
Granted. I think my argument about the broad historical development of property and how it’s affected by technology demonstrates this. You don’t find the argument compelling. I can live with that.
“Land is clearly and evidently something that *can* be owned.”
I doubt that the hunter-gatherers would have found this fact quite so obvious. They might very well have said something along the lines of, “Personal property is clearly and evidently something that can be owned. I can carry it with me. I control it. Land is completely different. I can’t take it with me. I can’t control it.”
“I like Twain, very much. But it’s a simple observation of fact that he often puts wittiness before profundity. Read “The Awful German Language” for a humorous but paradigmatic example.”
Hey now, I read “The Awful German Language” when I was in junior high. Love it. Sometimes putting wittiness before profundity is part of his profundity. (It would take way too long to explain that right now!)
“That includes Tolkien; he never imagined that anyone would be interested in his little stories. He had no intention of making any money with them.”
If you’re dealing only with original intentions, fine. Tolkien by no means held to these beliefs throughout his lifetime, however, and dealt with some rather nasty copyright issues. It’s quite clear from his letters that he considered these violations a form of theft and was quite outraged by them.
I’ve been jumping around a bit tonight. Sorry for the disorganization–I’m coming off of about 14 hours of work.
[quote]
“…our greatest works of literature were produced by authors who *wanted* to right them…”
You meant “write,” I think. (Sorry, I had to get you back for the conscious/conscience thing.
[/quote]
Ah! You got me! Truly ridiculous, too; your typo still made sense, if you read “consciousness” for “conscious,” while mine is completely meaningless.
“The Awful German Language” is, indeed, hilarious. But it’s also pure and unadulterated poof. Putting wittiness above profundity isn’t really a problem, except when people start using your wittiness as profundity.
Still, occasionally his witticisms were quite profound. As the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” quip. Or my personal favorite: “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Anyway, to substance:
[quote]
I disagree with the notion that property ceases to be property simply because it is reproducable. You haven’t really offered any compelling arguments along this line. It just seems to be various restatements of “it’s different, and it’s always been different.”
[/quote]
Yes. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. On the other hand, if it doesn’t look like a duck, walk like a duck, or quack like a duck, it’s probably not a duck. You could call it a duck, if you wanted. We could, as a nation, choose to call rocks ducks. But that doesn’t mean that the things which the words “duck” and “rock” represent resemble each other any more than they did before we adopted this odd bit of lexical reform.
We identify things as what they are by their characteristics. When I note the manifold different characteristics of property and what we call intellectual property, I’m showing that they’re different things and thus properly considered differently.
Real and personal property’s characteristics: tangible, unreproducible, singular. One with control of either type of property can exclude all others from the use of said property and enjoy exclusively the property and the fruits thereof. When one person is using the property, generally speaking another person cannot use the same property, except where it is divisible into parts; even in these cases, there are a finite number of parts, and thus only a finite number of people can enjoy the property or its fruits. Some of this property is the fruit of human labor; however, much of it (like real property) is not, though even this normally can be improved by human labor. *All* of it is ultimately produced from goods which are not the fruit of human labor.
Intellectual property’s characteristics: intangible, infinitely reproducible. One with control of it cannot exclude the enjoyment of others of it. While he fully enjoys and benefits from the property, a potentially infinite number of people can simultaneously also fully enjoy and benefit from it. This is exclusively the product of human labor.
Come to think of it, what exactly do these two concepts have in *common*? Pretty much everything about them is distinctive. This yields the result that the two are themselves distinctive. Frankly, I can’t even find anything in common between them to assign them to the same genus. One must conclude that they are different types of things.
I’ll notice that you’ve failed to respond to my two reductions to absurdity:
1.) If I buy your book, memorize it, then sell my copy to another, am I violating your rights in justice to your intellectual property? Your principles, as explained here, say that I am, because I’ve made a mental copy of the entirety of a work to which you have exclusive and eternal right. I submit that this is an absurd result.
2.) By your principles, then a farmer who grows an ear of corn (and has thus produced a good, like your book, from his labor) has every moral right to sell that corn while forbidding the purchaser to use the kernels to plant his own field of corn. He could further sell corn kernels for planting, but forbid me from planting any kernels produced by the corn that I grow from his kernels. He could further breed rabbits, sell me a buck and a doe, and forbid me from allowing said buck to service said doe, because then I’d be reproducing a work which he produced from his own labor. I submit that this is also an absurd result.
3.) I’ll go ahead and add a third one. By your principles, when you light a fire on a candle, you have produced that fire (though it is intangible, infinitely reproducible, and otherwise quite similarly to what you call intellectual property) by your labor. Thus, your principles indicate that you have an exclusive and eternal right to that fire and the profits derived from it. So if I light another candle from yours, I have stolen your fire. I submit that this is also an absurd result.
But if your arguments produce absurd results, then they cannot be correct. That’s one of my arguments, as well.
[quote]
What I was getting at here is that I do not think that retaining my right to sell my intellectual property is damaging to the community, whereas you might. I would follow my own conscience in this matter. (Though now that I think about it, ‘judgement’ is probably the more appropriate concept.)
[/quote]
No one can ask you to do anything else. Though what is conscience but the faculty of the soul trained by upbringing (God willing) to make sound moral judgments?
[quote]
While it died out under the Church, it “emerged” long before that in Greece and Rome. I guess you could’ve said “re-emerged” and it would have been a bit stronger, but you’d still have to ignore the mass enslavement of the native population in the New World centuries before intellectual proerty appeared on the radar.
[/quote]
Well, fair enough. I consider the Christian era to be a wholesale recreation of the West, which adopts some aspects of Greco-Roman civilization but which is really, in its substance, a different thing, the res Christiana. So the emergence of slavery in the late fifteenth century, and its explosion in the sixteenth, I consider a new insertion into Western life.
Incidentally, the illegal (by Spanish law) enslavement of Indians began at about this time, as well. So this was far from “centuries” before intellectual property developed; it was, in fact, contemporaneous with that development. On the other hand, if you’re talking about the *term* “intellectual property,” that was first used in 1845. But the concept, in the form of copyrights and patents, goes back to about the same period as the discovery of the New World.
In any case, it doesn’t matter. I don’t claim that intellectual property is akin to slavery, and you don’t claim that denying it is so akin. So we needn’t worry too much about it.
In closing, I’ll offer you this uncharacteristically lovely and intelligent quotation:
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” — Thomas Jefferson
* Founding Father and author of United States Declaration of Independence, quoted in letter to Isaac McPherson
Admiring the hard work you put into your website and detailed information you offer.
It’s great to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t
the same outdated rehashed material. Great read!
I’ve saved your site and I’m adding your RSS
feeds to my Google account.
Wonderful article! This is the kind of info that are supposed to be shared around the internet.
Shame on the search engines for no longer positioning
this post higher! Come on over and seek advice from my website
. Thank you =)
Your personal blog, Modern Window Treatments “Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) |
Triumvir Sapientiae” ended up being truly worth commenting here!
Merely wished to announce you truly did a wonderful work.
Many thanks -Jame