Has the Time Come for Users’ Rights?

Posted by Celia Walter | 6 Nov, 2008

User-Generated Content & the Open Source/Creative Common Movements: Has the Time Come for Users’ Rights?
Source: Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

This paper, written for the 4th Asian IP Law & Policy Day co-organized by the IP Academy of Singapore (Singapore) and Fordham Law School (USA) in conjunction with the annual Fordham Conference on International IP Law & Policy, traces the development of the free software/open source (FOSS) and creative commons (CC) movements and the rise of user-generated content (UGC). In light of existing international treaty standards for copyright protection, growing global Internet penetration and various case law developments, the article considers whether the combined phenomena of FOSS, CC and UGC provide sufficient basis for a re-tilting of the copyright balance toward the user rather than the original copyright owner. Finally, the article examines whether the philosophy, rhetoric and experiences of the FOSS and CC movements make them appropriate models for copyright protection for UGC.

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"Intellectual property" is a silly euphemism

Posted by Celia Walter | 27 Feb, 2008
Cory Doctorow, guardian.co.uk,
Thursday February 21 2008
 

"Intellectual property" is one of those ideologically loaded terms that can cause an argument just by being uttered. The term wasn't in widespread use until the 1960s, when it was adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a trade body that later attained exalted status as a UN agency.

WIPO's case for using the term is easy to understand: people who've "had their property stolen" are a lot more sympathetic in the public imagination than "industrial entities who've had the contours of their regulatory monopolies violated", the latter being the more common way of talking about infringement until the ascendancy of "intellectual property" as a term of art.

Does it matter what we call it? Property, after all, is a useful, well-understood concept in law and custom, the kind of thing that a punter can get his head around without too much thinking.

That's entirely true - and it's exactly why the phrase "intellectual property" is, at root, a dangerous euphemism that leads us to all sorts of faulty reasoning about knowledge. Faulty ideas about knowledge are troublesome at the best of times, but they're deadly to any country trying to make a transition to a "knowledge economy".

Fundamentally, the stuff we call "intellectual property" is just knowledge - ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labour into its development to realise that value... More

 

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Ownership rights in artistic works: Are We Muggles or Goblins?

Posted by Celia Walter | 4 Nov, 2007

Harry Potter and the (Re)Order of the Artists: Are We Muggles or Goblins?
Source: Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, author J.K. Rowling attributes to goblins a very interesting view of ownership rights in artistic works. According to Rowling, goblins believe that the maker of an artistic object maintain an ongoing ownership interest in that object even after it is sold, and is entitled to get it back when the purchaser dies. While this view may strike some as rather odd when it is applied to tangible property in the “muggle” world, it actually has some very interesting parallels to the legal treatment of intangible property, particularly in the areas of intellectual property and moral rights. Because of the way these parallels have been developing and growing, we seem to be becoming more goblinish in our willingness to recognize ongoing rights in artistic objects, including allowing the artist to collect a commission on subsequent resale of the work. Practical and social considerations suggest that we are unlikely to go as far as recognizing a permanent personal right in the creator that lets him or her reclaim such an object after a sale or other transfer is made. However, we are moving closer to recognizing some forms of the collective right that the goblins actually seem to demand, a cultural moral right in important cultural objects that enables the descendants of that culture as a group to demand the return of the object. Thus, we muggles may not be as far from the goblins as we may have at first believed.

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Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation

Posted by Celia Walter | 17 Sep, 2007

From Recipients to Creators: Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

The global economy is being transformed. Deep changes in the ways that people create ideas, goods, and wealth are reshaping national economies. These changes make innovation – the creation of new goods and services – the center of economic activity,

Intellectual property protection plays a central and positive role in the process of innovation. IPR provides the framework for innovation by linking ideas and production. Given this link, the extent to which countries adopt rules that protect IP will determine how they perform in the new economic environment. Yet at times it can appear that IP protections are the antithesis of innovation, growth, and development. IP is on the defensive, assailed for creating monopoly, expanding poverty, and slowing innovation. The problem with these criticisms is that they are wrong.

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How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law

Posted by Celia Walter | 17 Sep, 2007

Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law
Source: Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Intellectual property scholars have begun to explore the curious dynamics of IP’s negative spaces, areas in which IP law offers scant protection for innovators, but where innovation nevertheless seems to thrive. Such negative spaces pose a puzzle for the traditional theory of IP, which holds that IP law is necessary to create incentives for innovation.

This paper presents a study of one such negative space which has so far garnered some curiosity but little sustained attention - the world of performing magicians. This paper argues that idiosyncratic dynamics among magicians make traditional copyright, patent, and trade secret law ill-suited to protecting magicians’ most valuable intellectual property. Yet, the paper further argues that the magic community has developed its own set of unique IP norms which effectively operate in law’s absence. The paper details the structure of these informal norms that protect the creation, dissemination, and performance of magic tricks. The paper also discusses broader implications for IP theory, suggesting that a norm-based approach may offer a promising explanation for the puzzling persistence of some of IP’s negative spaces.

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