intellectual property

Spideynw:

And again, this is just lying, not committing fraud.  The customer still gets a book.

If I pay for a book by one author and get a book by someone else, at the very least the person I bought it from owes me what I actually paid for.

 

MacFall:

I think you misunderstand what I mean by "copyright", Spidey. If a person claims to be writing a book as Terry Goodkind and is not actually Terry Goodkind, they are committing fraud. Same with trademarks. If you pay money for Nabisco crackers and get some off brand, you paid for something you did not recieve. It's implicit theft.

 

Trademark laws are a joke.

Trademark laws are not about customer's being tricked by a vendor. Trademark laws allow Rolex to prevent others from competing with them.

If I want to deliberately buy a knockoff Rolex there is nothing Rolex can do about it.

 

 

 

But if you deliberately buy a Rolex and get a knockoff, you got robbed. I wasn't referring to what the government calls "copyright laws". I was referring to a person's right to exclusively copy their products in their own name, which is similar to the function of trademarks. But wouldn't you agree that a person also has the right to sell a book under the condition that it may not be copied? If so, how is that not a copyright?

Then you do not understand monopolies.  They reduce innovation, they do not increase innovation, because competition is reduced.  As such, patents and copyrights reduce innovation and so inventions are delayed or we do not get them at all.

Of course I understand monopolies.  I understand that there's a huge incentive to get a monopoly, because then you don't have to compete on things like price and efficiency of production and distribution.  In fact, the incentive is so great that people will invest a lot of research money to come up with new inventions that they can patent and get monopolies on.  Compare that to the situation where someone invests a lot of money in an invention, starts selling it, and then has a bunch of competitors come along and spend far less money reverse-engineering it than he spent inventing it...  That is why patents encourage innovation.

Now once someone has a patent, there aren't the same kind of competitive pressures as there usually are when it comes to manufacturing, distributing, advertising, etc.  Of course, most patents don't really lead to market domination, for the simple reason that there are few things that can only be done one way.  If I have a patent on a new thing called a paper clip, I still have to worry about competing with that guy who came up with the banker's clip.  In fact, there's a hint about another way patents encourage innovation:  they force people to come up with different ways of doing the same thing, instead of just competing for more market share with the same product.

But wouldn't you agree that a person also has the right to sell a book under the condition that it may not be copied? If so, how is that not a copyright?

That's just plain contract.  There's no point in giving it a special name if it isn't actually special, especially when that name is already used by most people to refer to a certain body of law.

And the main problem with contracting for a book not to be copied is that it becomes unenforceable as soon as you have a large enough volume of sales.  If 2 people buy a book from you and then you find a third party selling copies, it will be relatively easy to find out how the third party got a copy.  If a thousand people buy a book and you find a third party selling copies, it will be practically impossible to find out who breached their contract.  Copyright gives you an action against the third party.  Contract doesn't.

MacFall:

But wouldn't you agree that a person also has the right to sell a book under the condition that it may not be copied? If so, how is that not a copyright?

That's almost an impossibility as you could simply have someone else buy the book and make an agreement not to copy it and then give it to you. Since you never made an agreement, you have no obligation not to copy the book.

Of course not, but that limitation does serve to extend the originator's period of exclusivity for a while, and by perfectly just means.

MacFall:

Of course not, but that limitation does serve to extend the originator's period of exclusivity for a while, and by perfectly just means.

Exclusivity can be maintained by simply not publicizing, since the elimination of exclusivity is only a single transaction beyond that which the publisher makes in making his works public, or trading them to someone else.

 

MacFall:

If I pay for a book by one author and get a book by someone else, at the very least the person I bought it from owes me what I actually paid for.

 

Uh, if I buy a tomatoe that someone else grew, and then sell it to you and claim that I grew it, who cares?  You still got a tomato.

JonBostwick:

Trademark laws are a joke.

Trademark laws are not about customer's being tricked by a vendor. Trademark laws allow Rolex to prevent others from competing with them.

If I want to deliberately buy a knockoff Rolex there is nothing Rolex can do about it.

 

What?!  Trademark laws do not stop anybody from competing at all.  Anyone can still make watches.  They just cannot make watches, and then sell them as Rolex watches.  But this in no way, shape, or form impedes competition in producing watches.

Callisthenes:

Of course I understand monopolies.  I understand that there's a huge incentive to get a monopoly, because then you don't have to compete on things like price and efficiency of production and distribution.  In fact, the incentive is so great that people will invest a lot of research money to come up with new inventions that they can patent and get monopolies on.  Compare that to the situation where someone invests a lot of money in an invention, starts selling it, and then has a bunch of competitors come along and spend far less money reverse-engineering it than he spent inventing it...  That is why patents encourage innovation.

Now once someone has a patent, there aren't the same kind of competitive pressures as there usually are when it comes to manufacturing, distributing, advertising, etc.  Of course, most patents don't really lead to market domination, for the simple reason that there are few things that can only be done one way.  If I have a patent on a new thing called a paper clip, I still have to worry about competing with that guy who came up with the banker's clip.  In fact, there's a hint about another way patents encourage innovation:  they force people to come up with different ways of doing the same thing, instead of just competing for more market share with the same product.

 

Hmm, let's see, for twenty years no one can make improvements to an idea, whether it cost $1 to invent or a hundred million dollars.  It also results in probably billions of dollars being wasted on litigation instead of other activities.  It also results in things being invented, and never used, simply because a company owns a patent and does not care to produce it, but does not want anyone else to either.

No, you obvioulsy do not understand monopolies or how patents actually work.

Spideynw:

Uh, if I buy a tomatoe that someone else grew, and then sell it to you and claim that I grew it, who cares?  You still got a tomato.

That's not a proper analogy. It's more like, I paid for a tomato and got a carrot.

So if you paid me for a Dodge truck and I gave you a Ford, and the Ford performs just as well, do you not still own the title to a Dodge? And regardless of whether you would care to demand it, would you not still have the right to have the exchange reversed?

There is a condition implicit in the purchase of the book that the author who appears on the book actually wrote it. When I buy the book, I also intend to compensate the person who wrote it - not some sorry hack who copied his work so he can bum off his reputation. If the terms of sale include those things and I do not recieve them, it is an act of implicit theft on the part of the seller.

And what if my name is Terry Goodkind and I write a book, and you buy the book expecting to get a book by the other Terry Goodkind - do I owe you something?  No.  There's no fraud or lying or anything at all involved.  Your mistake.  There's more than one Terry Goodkind in the world.

(What if my name isn't actually Terry Goodkind, but I use that as a nom-de-plume?  Think that makes a difference?  Consider that I published my first book under that name before the other Terry Goodkind published his...)

It is only fraud if the seller does not sell what was promised. Confusion over similar naming and packaging can be solved by product sampling.

But the scenario you've put forward relies on an error in description and confusion in what product was wanted. A book is like an apple. It is a common, base commodity, but there are many variations of books just like there are of apples. If I describe a certain apple to a vendor and pay him for it by what it contains, what it tastes like and looks like and has on it, he can interpret that any way he wants and it's my fault for not making sure there could be no discrepancy.

 

But suppose I ask for fuji apple and the vendor sells me a gala. The vendor has not met the stipulations of our bargain. He has taken what was mine and not met the requirement I set on releasing ownership of it. Essentially the property I traded still belongs to me and it is theft, an act of agression upon me, if he does not return it. If there is a dispute in what the requirements of each party were prior to making the trade, it would have to be a matter decided by a court system.

Thanks banned, that's basically what I was saying. People are coming up with some rather absurd scenarios to avoid admitting that a party's failure to meet the terms of a contract creates a debt against that party toward the rectification of the discrepancy.

 

MacFall:

That's not a proper analogy. It's more like, I paid for a tomato and got a carrot.

And this is where your argument falls apart.  We are talking about re-selling something as if I produced it, when I did not.  The product is the same regardless of who produced it.  The tomato does not magically change to a carrot in the real world.  My analogy is the correct analogy.

It is the same as selling a story as your own when you did not write it.  The story does not change.

banned:

But suppose I ask for fuji apple and the vendor sells me a gala.

 

But this is not what he is talking about.  He is talking about a vendor selling you a fuji apple, and claiming he produced it, when he did not.  You still got a fuji apple.  There is no "fraud".