[A2k] User Rights full circle

[John G. Heim]

I don't think you can categorically state that no one has a basic human
right to someone else's creative works. If I'm dying of an illness and you
know how to save me, don't I have a right to that knowledge whether I can
pay for it or not? Maybe not. I just think it is wrong to state
categorically that I do not. It's debatable at least.

Really the argument for stronger IP protection is self-contradictory. Some
people argue that we need IP protection or nobody will have an incentive to
create. Ie. Drug companies won't create drugs if they can't patent them. in
other words, by making drugs less accessible, there will be more drugs and
therefore drugs will be more accessible. Same for books. By making it
illegal to copy books, more people will write books and therefore there will
be more books. In the end, the world is a better place because intellectual
property is protected.

Well, fine,. I can go along with that.  I am well aware that sometimes the
universe works backward. In our own recent history, laws to improve banks in
fact made them much, much worse. It can happen. But I'm not willing to
believe that more protection will automatically lead to greater good or that
relaxing protection will automatically be bad. That's just not a valid
assumption.

I only just found out about Knowledge Ecology a month ago and i may be
totally wrong here but it seems to me that they're saying that this basic
assumption -- that less is actually more -- needs to be challenged.  That
suits me fine.

----- Original Message -----
From: <cogitoergosum@sbcglobal.net>
To: <manon.ress@keionline.org>; <A.C.Story@kent.ac.uk>;
<a2k@lists.essential.org>
Cc: "Jeff Williams" <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 7:43 AM
Subject: [A2k] User Rights full circle


--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]


It is very ironic indeed that we have gone all the way around the horn. We
cleared the notion the a copyright is indeed a right -- it most certainly is
not.

We established convincingly that users should be afforded some freedoms and
privileges when using created works.

And now we are all speaking as though there is some universal "user rights"
as though they are devinely given like Human or Civil rights. We are wrong
again. No one has, anywhere, the constitutional inalienable right to
anothers' creative works.

This makes abundantly clear that these esoteric linguistic philospher
threads are essential to our debate and understanding of the concepts
involved in Access to Knowledge.

the below indicates a leap from interests to rights without debate;

Under the proposed regulations, if a university chooses not to seek
intellectual property protection, the National IP Management Office
(NIPMO), a proposed body with a staff of experts in IP,
commercialisation and patents, has the right to reassess the decision.
If NIPMO disagrees with the university, it may itself acquire
ownership of the research and IP rights. If, however, NIPMO agrees
with the assessment, the university is free to assign its rights to
the research to the inventor.
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