Debate discussion: intellectual property in an AC land

[zyqwert]

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if people aren't compensated for incurring 'discovery' costs then what incentive do they have to properly invest their time into discovering new ideas.

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The claims about what inventors deserve reminds me of socialist ideas about how much life's essentials -- food, medicine, housing -- should cost. It's all well and good, but what do you do when supply and demand disagrees with you? Then you curse the hoarders, speculators, pirates, and thieves.

Lots of IP today exists in digital form and can be reproduced for nothing. When copying costs something, enforcement can make unfavorable pot odds for copycats. With no ante to redistribute, enforcement is really impossible. The IP owners are trying to solve their divide by zero problem with infinite (draconian) enforcement, with serious, expensive consequences for society -- not just the pirates.

If you believe creators got to get paid, can you offer a mechanism where that is possible? How much damage are the creators allowed to do to innocent people in their quest to get paid?

I suggest it is better to recognize the limits of economic laws, and protect our other rights instead of sacrificing them in a war for IP rights for digital media.

[zyqwert]

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IE why cure cancer if as soon as you find the cure 10000000 companies buy your medicine then reproduce it themselves.

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I know a salesman who has all the big pharma companies as clients. In making small talk with scientists at one of them he was told while they had previously had done lots of research on HIV, HIV research was now decimiated. Lifestyle drugs for erections, baldness, and cholesterol were all the rage. The reason is simple and obvious: they know they can get paid for these drugs and they've learned they won't get paid for HIV drugs.

The lesson is we should demand free Viagra and let the drug companies go crazy with prices for cures to serious life threatening illnesses.

[ShakeZula06]

FWIW, here's an older thread. I particularly like Borodog's first post.
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IE why cure cancer if as soon as you find the cure 10000000 companies buy your medicine then reproduce it themselves.

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For one, it can keep it secret. There is also always a value to being the first to the market with an idea. If a company thinks it's can cure cancer, do you think that just because others might copy them is going to make a difference? There's still money to be made, and they stand to make the most all other things being equal. But this situation is inheriantly a double edged sword. If we are going to only let the company make money of the origninal idea, competition to make the product better or cheaper suffers.

There are ways to protect IP cheaply, through voluntary contracts, such as say "You agree not to copy and distribute this or aid others in it by buying this" or whatever labels on the back. However, other then that protection of IP is very costly and in a free market I doubt would be very prevelent (notice that the costs of protecting IP now is externalized onto taxpayers).
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the result is a competitive market where no economic profits exist. why should I work on entering a market that would create ZERO (economic) profit?

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What do you mean by economic profit (I'm guessing it means something different from just plain profit)? Because finding a cure to cancer, even if you knew companies would duplicate it, surely is profitable, no?

[ShakeZula06]

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meaning you are reducing the incentive for discovering ideas below its optimal level.


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How do you judge what level is optimal?

[almostbusto]

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if people aren't compensated for incurring 'discovery' costs then what incentive do they have to properly invest their time into discovering new ideas.

[/ QUOTE ]

The claims about what inventors deserve reminds me of socialist ideas about how much life's essentials -- food, medicine, housing -- should cost. It's all well and good, but what do you do when supply and demand disagrees with you? Then you curse the hoarders, speculators, pirates, and thieves.

Lots of IP today exists in digital form and can be reproduced for nothing. When copying costs something, enforcement can make unfavorable pot odds for copycats. With no ante to redistribute, enforcement is really impossible. The IP owners are trying to solve their divide by zero problem with infinite (draconian) enforcement, with serious, expensive consequences for society -- not just the pirates.

If you believe creators got to get paid, can you offer a mechanism where that is possible? How much damage are the creators allowed to do to innocent people in their quest to get paid?

I suggest it is better to recognize the limits of economic laws, and protect our other rights instead of sacrificing them in a war for IP rights for digital media.

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my argument is totally marketcentric? how are you being reminded of socialism.

ideas are the product of a person's investment in their own human capital. how is that not something they own?

furthermore, you take a person's IP away, despite it not being philosophically consistent with the acist framework from which this debate is originating, how doesn't this not necessitate an inefficient market for idea production? the benefits of coming up with an idea for an individual is far far less than the benefit recieved by society for the idea. so society benefits way more than the creator. this seems way more socialistic

I think your post suffers from this notion that reproduction has zero marginal cost, therefore the product comes at zero cost.

instead the fact of the matter is that these ideas are largely very costly. however these costs are discovery costs. however, the marginal cost is near zero for reproducion. but if you set the price at zero, there is no incentive to create ideas to reproduce at that cost.

other forms of IP like trademarks i hope are discussed at well. If an ACist is against trademarking, what does it think of fraudlent companies who try to benefit from other companies reputations by ripping off their products. like the fraudulent money orders the Nigerian scammers make.

[Skidoo]

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The claims about what inventors deserve reminds me of socialist ideas about how much life's essentials -- food, medicine, housing -- should cost. It's all well and good, but what do you do when supply and demand disagrees with you?

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These issues were discussed last week. See my first two posts on the following page:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...Number=9500675

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If you believe creators got to get paid, can you offer a mechanism where that is possible?

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Make the innovator an offer. Otherwise, it will be settled in the courts.

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How much damage are the creators allowed to do to innocent people in their quest to get paid?

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How much did the imitator benefit by adopting the innovation?

[almostbusto]

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meaning you are reducing the incentive for discovering ideas below its optimal level.


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How do you judge what level is optimal?

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ideally you want to maximize the net benefits resulting from the IP framework. furthermore, you want to make sure the resulting framework is philosophically consistent with some ideal. but that is almost never a problem.


Also, regarding keeping the cure secret. you can't. scientist can reverse engineer just about anything, though at some cost. so you might be saved somewhat if the cost of reverse engineering is very high. of course going in you have no idea what that cost will be since you haven't even invented the compound yet. so that doesn't solve the incentive problem.

[almostbusto]

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IE why cure cancer if as soon as you find the cure 10000000 companies buy your medicine then reproduce it themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know a salesman who has all the big pharma companies as clients. In making small talk with scientists at one of them he was told while they had previously had done lots of research on HIV, HIV research was now decimiated. Lifestyle drugs for erections, baldness, and cholesterol were all the rage. The reason is simple and obvious: they know they can get paid for these drugs and they've learned they won't get paid for HIV drugs.

The lesson is we should demand free Viagra and let the drug companies go crazy with prices for cures to serious life threatening illnesses.

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you tell an interesting story. but there are many HIV drugs going through testing as I type. anyway that is a product of the market. there may be some externalities in play(i am sure there are since HIV must have external effects on the economy of Africa). If you are saying you'd like those internalized then i would agree. otherwise, let the market decide what to produce. i see no problem with it.

[zyqwert]

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my argument is totally marketcentric? how are you being reminded of socialism.


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I'm sorry I made my point badly, again.

Here is a socialist who wants to have the government set the price of food, damn the market:

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Among other things Chavez addressed on his Television program Alo Presidente (Hello President) was the new Law Against Hoarding and Speculation of foods under the price control system, due to be passed today. Chavez said this law would enable the government to take stiff measures against hoarders and speculators, which would include the possibility of large fines, and prison sentences of between 2 and 6 years.

“Reflect,” Chavez urged agricultural producers, “as I will not allow this to go on,” he warned, saying “speculation, the hoarding of foods, is a crime, an attack on the health of the people, the health of the nation.”

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He isn't happy with the market price of food, and he's going to put people in prison to correct the market.


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I think your post suffers from this notion that reproduction has zero marginal cost, therefore the product comes at zero cost.

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There are lots of people willing to redistribute digital content at zero cost. How far are you willing to go to stop them?

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instead the fact of the matter is that these ideas are largely very costly. however these costs are discovery costs. however, the marginal cost is near zero for reproducion. but if you set the price at zero, there is no incentive to create ideas to reproduce at that cost.

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I don't deny the expense of making the first copy. I don't set the price at zero. The market sets the price at zero because many people are willing to redistribute for free. You want the government to enforce another price that is far from the market price, just like socialists (but in the other direction). It's not that I think protecting IP is bad, I don't think protecting digital IP is possible -- zero is a big number. Those who disagree dream up expensive and invasive schemes to do the impossible, and society suffers.

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ideas are the product of a person's investment in their own human capital. how is that not something they own?

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Yes, and when I steal your idea your mind isn't wiped blank, you still own the idea.

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other forms of IP like trademarks i hope are discussed at well. If an ACist is against trademarking, what does it think of fraudlent companies who try to benefit from other companies reputations by ripping off their products. like the fraudulent money orders the Nigerian scammers make.

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Protecting IP for tangible goods is different, because it is possible.

[MrWookie]

Shake,

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For one, it can keep it secret.

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For the most part, this is a fallacy. Any self-respecting analytical chemist should be able deduce the structure of any drug in a fairly short time frame. You stick it in an NMR spectrometer, maybe you enlist the help of a mass spectrometer, a Raman spectrometer, or a number of other structure determination techniques, and bam, you know what the drug is in shockingly little time, and with equipment any self-respecting pharma company already has. Hell, even if you have to crystallize the SOB in order to get a structure, there are some extremely efficient, high-throughput techniques that can do that for you. Next, you enlist a team of organic chemists to hammer out the synthesis, and you're in business. It's almost certain that, once the synthesis is solved, the big pharma will have more efficient and larger scale production process than a small company that actually discovers the drug. If this whole process took months to years time, then conceivably the little guy would be able to get in there, get enough brand recognition, and get the word out so that people choose his product over the copy (Advil vs. Ibuprofen, etc.). However, we're talking weeks to months here for a team dedicated to solving and synthesizing one molecule. That's well within the range of big pharma's large marketing coffers to catch up with. The only strategy for the discoverer would be to stockpile huge quantities of the drug (assuming it's stable for that long) without announcing its existence (and hoping no corporate spies from big pharma caught wind of the clinical trials) until he has enough to sell all at once so as to make sufficient profit before our big guy catches up. At that point, he gives up and finds something new.

In a battle of equally large companies, sure, the one that gets there first will be able to have a secure market advantage, but the incentive for the little guy to enter the market and try to compete with a new drug is minimal.