Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 13:51:38 +0000
Subject: Re: The rearview mirror stage


Eric and Todd

I have no wish to get involved in the argument regarding the market. Indeed
I think it is scarcely credible that Eric uses Hayek to defend an
anti-copyright position.... Given the Keynesian element in the economic
discussion contained below.

I am curious as to what intellectual institution would replace copyright and
intellectual ownership. In the specific cirumstances where a creator has no
rights to control usage, control of distribution nor the right to be paid
for the use of the intellectual property. Please expand (Eric) as to how
artists would be paid in a Napster driven world.

regards

sdv


Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

> TODD VANNOY,
>
> When you say you completely disagree with my analysis, I'm not sure what
> the level is you are referring to.  Are you saying you don't believe the
> conflict constitutes a differend, in Lyotard's sense of the term, or
> simply arguing with me because you believe in the inherent value of
> intellectual property rights?   The latter seems to be the real point
> because if the issue is simply a matter of litigation where the
> Constitution, the 1976 Copyright Act and courts hold sway, then
> certainly any question of justice outside of this rule of law becomes
> merely a meaningless abstraction.  Politics becomes a genre (one of
> terror) and not merely the linking of heterogeneous genres.
>
> I assume you are familiar with some of the countervailing arguments that
> can be made against intellectual property rights, even from a free
> market libertarian position.  Any copyright or patent is usually
> considered a state-imposed monopoly that tends to restrict the market.
> Such intervention on the part of the state can be justified to the
> extent that it protects creative interests and thereby encourages
> innovation. The situation changes dramatically, however, when "the work
> of art in an age of digital reproduction" becomes defined by this very
> reproducibility.  Art without the aura tends to function like
> information in the marketplace and this unprecedented situation imposes
> a new dynamic upon free trade and exchange.
>
> Friedrich A. Hayek argued that the market operates as a kind of
> self-organizing complex system, what he, borrowing from Adam Smith,
> termed a spontaneous order.  Such a system is placed on the razor's edge
> between order and chaos, and results from human action, not human
> design.  In a manner similar to language such a system is too complex to
> be completely understood by any single group or individual.  As a
> result, Hayek argues that economic activity cannot be effectively
> planned and coordinated from a central bureau.   On this basis he
> critiqued the planned economies of his day, arguing that attempts by
> government to regulate had a discoordination effect in the market and
> also that such imposed information always lagged significantly behind
> market information.
>
> With regard to the changes brought about by the development of
> information technologies, it becomes possible to stand Hayek on his head
> and argue in a similar fashion against the restraint of trade in
> connection with digital reproduction.   In today's new economy,
> multinational corporations such as those found in the recording
> industry, function as quasi-states which plan and intervene in the
> market in order to manipulate it in ways that maintain and increase
> their private profitability.  Nor do they act unilaterally in this
> effort.  In order to succeed they must also enlist local government's
> cooperation to monitor and regulate the flow and exchange of information
> to ensure that illegitimate activities do not occur.  Furthermore, there
> is always a lag between such intervention and the complex operations of
> information systems so the corporate state will never succeed in
> achieving its planned ends.  In short, the logic is such that such
> controls from above can only lead us onto a new road to serfdom.  A
> restricted information economy ends by becoming a police state.
>
> You will probably disagree with this analysis as well, but you must
> realize that software which duplicates Napster's functionality is
> already being disseminated as freeware and that the ultimate restriction
> of copyright piracy probably has as much chance of succeeding as our
> current failed war on drugs, and for very similar reasons.  To imagine
> that this whole conflict will be brought to closure by a single court
> judgment seems nave at best - which was my basic reason for naming it a
> differend.
>
> PS - you also make the following comment:
>
> "Why should a pharmaceutical company, for example, invest millions of
> dollars in R&D, marketing, manufacturing and distribution if the patent
> is not going to be enforced?"
>
> This is an issue for another day, but as a matter of fact you are wrong
> about this particular issue.  The growing trend with drug research has
> been for the government to publicly underwrite the cost of such research
> either through research grants, subsidies or other venues at the state,
> university or corporate level.  Once a breakthrough in the research
> develops, the results are then handed over to the corporation to develop
> them for private commercial application.