Brian Martin starts his third chapter (of Information Liberation) by presenting some basics of copyrights and intellectual property (IP). He describes how the situation is corrupted through government´s power to grant monopolies, how intellectual property has kind of got out of hands with some big owners. He uses a good metaphor to enlighten the IP: shoes. One pair of shoes can be used only by one person at a time. Instead a poem can be copied a thousand times but the creator, the one who has the original, has still the full use of it. Patents exist in order to give the inventor the right to make, use and sell the invention. But there are also some cases where patents have been blocking the improvement, even used to suppress innovation. Martin gives the examples of radio and fluorescent lights, how certain companies collected the patents for years.
One interesting example is how nowadays even biological information can be claimed as IP. As long as some artificial means are used, things from nature can be patented; so some companies have patented genetic codes.. And to go further, for example soybeans have been patented; this has caused inhibition to research (by non-patent holders), and Third World is exploited by transnational corporations. Rich countries could really do as Martin suggests: give the Third World countries permission to provide ideas of rich countries free.
Another problem of IP is that even though the financial returns is said to inspire individual, they are quite seldom benefited; especially in companies since the inventor doesn´t get the patent, it´s the company who gets it. The deeper problem of the IP behind the above mentioned symptoms (privatization of government information, suppression of patents, ownership of genetic information and information not owned by the true creator) is that "Intellectual property is a form of private sovereignty over a primary good -- information." as quoted in Martin´s text.
There are good examples of the problems in Martin´s text, including how a Scottish newspaper went to court to stop an online news service from making a hypertext link to its web site. How crazy is that?
Martin presents also some critique to standard justifications of IP made by Edwin C. Hettinger. The obvious argument is that even if you share intellectual objects you can still use it. And the common justification is that people are entitled to things they have done. But as the text points out: how about the people behind this certain guy/girl? There are always quite a bunch of people supporting the actual work - teachers, parents, other writers/inventors and so on. Every intellectual work is always done based on something that already exists. And why to prevent others from using it? Also the market value of a piece of intellectual work is not a reasonable indicator of the contribution.
Another argument is that people deserve the rights since they have worked to get it done. But what really people deserve? This is tough question even to philosophers. According to the text it´s usually said that the reward should be in balance with the effort, risks and moral. There is just the but of the fact that intellectual work is also about natural talent and luck - people doing things according to their talent or pure luck don´t deserve anything? And on the other side of the coin: being natural talent doesn´t give the rights to own everything in the field of the talent or developing a product doesn´t give the rights to own everything related to that.
Response to third argument - private property stands for privacy and personal autonomy - is that privacy can´t be protected by owning it, you just need to keep it to yourself, not to reveal it, if you want to keep it private.
IP is justified because its needed to promote the creativity, to have more ideas. So IP gives financial help. With this fourth argument Martin and Hettinger see that it is the only one which has some reason. There is still some controversy because in order to promote creation and development of ideas you need more freedom, not restrictions of use. It should also be noted that innovation really is a collective process, best way to support it would be open collaboration or tacit cooperation.
Martin also talks about the marketplace of ideas, which means that ideas compete for acceptance in a market; good ideas will win since people will recognize their value. This of course demands fair competition. The text asks a good question: why would the ideas be owned? And on the other hand, marketplace of ideas is quite vulnerable, it doesn´t work all in all, since some groups just don´t commonly get their viewpoints presented and some directions rule over others. So the biggest reason for the failure is inequality. Economic inequality can´t be solved even with intervene of governments.
And the point of all this is that intellectual products shouldn´t be owned. As isn´t language and almost all scientific research. But what would happen then? Plagiarism is quite feared since copyright law isn´t that good protection against it even now. Royalties are a way to get some more money but hardly no one gets them enough to make living; and to those few could be paid salary, grant or bursary instead. So what would be a good incentive to create? Well, quite many are making their inner real, they don´t do it because of money and fame. Without IP there could be greater equality in economic and politics. Freedom and diversity.
How to get to that point? To start the change in thinking, the term should be changed to monopoly privilege. Doesn´t sound that good anymore does it? After this Martin points out that IP should also be discussed not in terms of property and trade rather than in terms of speech. Things shouldn´t be taken off their context. The frames of a product makes big difference in how to relate to it. Next step would be revealing all the costs around IP. These figures would most likely shock the fountains of it.
Martin also plays with the thought of piracy, if you want to use such a biased term. People already do it everyday, it is so easy. Just that it isn´t that effective as is ever any sort of theft. But a better way is to refuse to cooperate with IP; to boycott for example. Third parties can be won over by this open action, civil disobedience is strong especially when masses are behind the cause. In India it is said to be happening a mass discontent, maybe it would start a snowball effect?
A kind of continuum to this is promoting non-owned information, from which freeware is an excellent example. The Free Software Foundation is really taking this thinking out, as the text quotes: "-- is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on people's right to use, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs". They also highlight the so called copyleft which requires those who pass on a program also to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code.
Also what to do according to Martin is to develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work, including guidelines how to respect other´s work. In this it is important again to underline the fact that intellectual work can´t be done totally independent, it is always collective. This is why IP can be seen as theft.
Brian Martin: Information Liberation, Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property"
