[Upd-discuss] 3 minutes documentary on Public Domain

[Yannick Delbecque]

On August 14, 2005 18:51, michael.davis@law.csuohio.edu wrote:
> Could you tell me what paper this is from? 

I'm referring the paper Richard Stallman constantly points to when he 
says that we should not use he term "intellectual property":
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

Here are the exemples given:

    "People often say "intellectual property" when they really mean some  
other category, larger or smaller than "intellectual property". For 
instance, rich countries impose laws on poor countries to squeeze money 
out of them. These laws often fit the category of "intellectual 
property"--so people who question the fairness of these laws often use 
that label, even though it does not really fit. That can lead to 
incorrect statements and unclear thinking."

and

    "For instance, one issue relating to copyright law is whether music 
sharing should be allowed. Patent law has nothing to do with this.  But 
patent law raises the issue of whether poor countries should be allowed 
to produce life-saving drugs and sell them cheaply to save lives. 
Copyright law has nothing to do with that."



Stallman give two categories of errors made by users of the term 
"intellectual property": over or undergeneralisation (first example) 
and the fact that "It leads people to focus on the meager commonality 
in form of these disparate laws, which is that they create special 
powers that can be bought and sold, and ignore their substance in form 
of these disparate laws, which is that they create special powers that 
can be bought and sold, and ignore their substance", for which he gives 
the examples in the second quotation above. 

I belive we have withenessed the first type of error many times here on 
this list, since in many occasion someone had to specify if, for 
example, trademarks are to be included or not. Maybe this can be blamed 
on the fact that some of us are ignorant of the official legal generaly 
accepted definition of the concept (if there is such a thing), and can 
only infer it's scope by coming across many examples. 

The second type of error will be considered as such only if we 
temporarily limit our language to what is necessary to express that 
inventions, works of art and other products of the intellect are 
proprietarised to give them the economic attributes of proprietarised 
physical objects. At that level, there is nothing that allow someone to 
talk about what make inventions differents from works of art in the 
application of the general principle; anyone wanting to talk about the 
social or economical consequences of the general principle is 
necessarily lead to consider different categories of "products of the 
intellect" if he or she belive that these consequences are differents 
for these differents categories. 

> anybody thoroughly familiar with this legal
> area would tell you quite the opposite: copyright law and patent law
> are so similar that it does not make sense to talk about them as if
> they are different, and to do so betrays an ignorance of the subject
> matter.

I'm certenly not as familiar with this legal area as any lawer would be, 
but having read a lot from these laws for Canada and some other 
contries by myself, I find these quite differents in the way the 
implement the general principle of proprietarisation of immaterial 
things and in their practical consequences. As I understand what you 
said, you seem to put yourself the limited language situation of the 
second type of error above, and, using this limited language, you are 
certainly right to say that these law are similar. The problem seem to 
be that you cannot say much more without considering, at least, 
different categories of immaterial things.  

That said, having a list of examples of errors would make this whole 
debate a lot more profitable for everyone, since for example, according 
to what you said, anybody thoroughly familiar with this legal area 
should be able to rule out most proposed examples of errors of the 
second kind illustrating the potentially wrong consequences of assuming 
that copyright law and patent law are similar. 

Yannick Delbecque