2009/10/5 Paul Hartzer <[log in to unmask]>

> ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[log in to unmask]>
> > In other words, stealing an idea is perfectly
> > fine, ideas are cheap anyway and come by the dozen.
>
> Stealing an idea is *not* perfectly fine. If ideas are as cheap and freely
> available as you say, there's no reason to steal an idea: Just come up with
> another one of your own.
>
>
Wait a second. Your perception is based on a distorted view of what
"Intellectual Property" is, and I'd suggest you get a bit more knowledge on
the subject before you accuse me of anything.

First, let me apologise for the use of the metaphor "stealing an idea". I
should have remembered that some people are quite high-strung on the word
"stealing". But you should have realised that even as a metaphor it's
relatively flawed: "stealing" is "depriving someone of their property". If I
"steal" an idea from you, have you suddenly lost it? Has the idea suddenly
left your mind, never to return? Of course not, you still have the idea in
you and are quite able to implement it in whatever manner you want.
Actually, I haven't "stolen" anything: I've just copied your idea. Is it
that wrong? As for your comment: "just come up with another one of your
own", what if I just happened to have independently come up with the same
idea as you? Why should you be allowed to prevent me from implementing an
idea just because you were the first one to call it your own? Is that fair?

Second, you have to realise one thing: there is no such thing as
"Intellectual Property". Unlike physical ownership, which is a human right,
the various things we put under the umbrella of IP are actually disparate
bits of legislation with little in common, and whose goals are never
personal enrichment of a few creative people, but the betterment of arts,
science and the protection of customers. Taking US law, we have three main
types of IP:
- copyright law, which covers specific works of art, in whatever shape they
take (written, aural, pictural, multimedia, etc...). Copyright law gives the
author of the work some specific privileges (like rights of reproduction),
but only covers a specific work, i.e. one can claim copyright on a specific
photograph of a sunset they made, but they cannot use this copyright to
prevent others to make sunsets photographs. They can't even forbid others to
take the exact the same spot they took and try and take the exact same
photograph (copyright has an independent invention exemption). Moreover,
copyright is limited by the fair use doctrine, which actually allows
reproduction by others in some cases (parody, study of the work in question,
etc.), and allows in particular some forms of sampling. The goal of
copyright law as it was set was to ensure a constantly refreshed public
domain, by ensuring that authors would actually publish their work by giving
them a temporary monopoly as an incentive. That monopoly was never the goal
of the law, only the means, and was never seen as a right, just a privilege.
- trademark law, which protects brands (and trade dress, which acts
similarly). Trademark law, unlike other forms of IP, isn't limited in time
(you can keep a trademark forever), but is limited in that it's an all or
nothing affair: unless you actively enforce your trademark against all
infringers, whoever they are, you will end up losing it. As for the goal of
trademark law, it is to protect the customer by ensuring that the product
they buy does come from the supplier they are expecting it to come from.
Once again, this IP law wasn't set in order to protect the owner of the
brand, but the customers who expect a specific service or product from a
specific brand, and would be cheated if they ended up with a poor erzatz of
what they expected.
- patent law, which protects physical inventions (yes, only physical, more
on that below). Patent law was created with a single goal: to fight against
trade secrets, and ensure the development of science and engineering by
giving an incentive (in the form of a temporary monopoly) for inventors to
publish the complete design of their invention, for other to study and learn
from. By definition of patent law (you can look it up), the text of a patent
should be clear and complete enough that someone of the same trade should be
able to build a working copy of the invention using only that patent and
their general knowledge. Once again, the benefit to the inventor was only a
means to a higher end, and certainly not a goal in itself.

And that's it. That's all US law has in terms of IP protection. As you can
see, pure ideas are *not* protected, and why should they be? An idea is just
an emergent phenomenon coming from the sum of experiences and memories a
certain individual has. It's a random phenomenon which takes no effort to do
(and indeed most often happens without us consciously trying, we call that
"inspiration"). Moreover, as social animals we are natural sponges for
ideas, absorbing everything and anything that we experience via our senses,
even unconsciously. In that sense, all ideas are derived from others, and
true originality is a myth (even geniuses like Einstein and Newton were the
first to admit that they wouldn't have reached their conclusions without
using the work of others). If you think of ideas like that (and I have all
of history, psychology, and even literature science - remember that there
are only a few handfuls, something like 7, true independent storyline ideas,
and all literature from the beginning of history is just playing with these
few ideas and assembling them in different ways - to back my opinion), do
you really think that ideas can actually be "owned"? What is there in any
idea that you can really rightly call *yours*? Ideas are not only cheap, as
I said. They are simply *worthless*, they are a commodity, a basis for other
things. What can have worth is actual, non-obvious *implementations* of
those ideas, not the ideas themselves (what's the point of an idea if you
can use it for something anyway).


> > Second, language is a natural phenomenon. It's a *social* natural
> > phenomenon, but it's a natural phenomenon anyway. One of the rules of
> > patents is that one cannot patent the laws of nature. That means no
> > patenting of mathematics either (including algorithms).
>
> Patents on purely mathematical algorithms fail because of patents have to
> have a specific use. Image compression algorithms are patentable, which is
> largely why PNG disappeared as a major compression model (dealing with the
> patent became too onerous for software developers). Software code is
> likewise patentable.
>

Totally false, and based on a misunderstanding of the US situation. You have
to understand that the current situation re. patents in the US is
*anomalous*. If you check patent law, you will see that patents on
non-physical inventions (like algorithms and software, which are just one
and the same thing mathematically speaking) are strictly disallowed (indeed,
there is not a single case where a court has validated a pure software or
algorithm patent). What happened is that a single judge, without technical
knowledge, during a single case that became precedent, bought into the
notion that software, i.e. an algorithm, once *implemented in computer
memory and run* resulted in an *actual physical invention* worth of
patenting. That case allowed software patents to enter the scene, by the
back-door as it were. Software companies were very happy to be able to
doubly protect their software (software was already protected by copyright),
and the US Patent Office, which is paid by the granted patent, was very
happy to allow for the sudden inflow of new patents (patents on physical
inventions are difficult and expensive to make. Patents on software are
comparatively easier to produce and can thus be produced in bigger quantity,
resulting in a net gain of revenue for the USPTO). The rest is history.

The problems with this are many-fold, and I will spare you an analysis of
why software patents are a bad idea (they effectively forbid use of ideas,
unlike physical invention patents which only forbid one to copy a specific
machine, but in no way forbid one to implement the same idea in another,
non-derivative way). I will just point out that even Bill Gates, champion of
IP rights as he is, is on record for saying that software patents were
harmful for innovation and the software industry as a whole (his solution,
in typical Gates fashion, was *more* software patents, to work as a shield
to protect oneself from patent infringement lawsuits from other software
companies, since it was pretty sure, due to the nature of software patents,
that any piece of software would violate at least a few patents). I will
also point out that the only way to overturn this precedent would be to have
the Supreme Court judge on this matter, and this has never been done (patent
litigation is so expensive that it's already nearly impossible to overturn
illegitimate patents, let alone get such a precedent overturned), although
the Supreme Court has judged time and again that pure ideas (especially
processes that can be worked out by people with pen and paper, however
unwieldy and error-prone that may be) are not patentable (and indeed not
protectable at all, except as trade secrets), and has often actually
restricted the range of software that can be patented (the current case in
front of the Supreme Court, Bliski, could even spell the end for software
patents, although it will more likely spell the end only for business
patents, patents even more remotely connected to physical invention, and of
dubious validity anyway already).

However, there is one thing one should realise: all this above is true only
in the USA. In Europe, software and business patents are simply disallowed,
whether a computer is involved or not, and efforts to legalise software
patents have failed (luckily) so far. Software code and algorithms are not
patentable here, nor are pure ideas, or anything that only needs pen and
paper to be fully described and implemented (only actual physical inventions
are patentable here, and pure ideas are public domain). Some patent offices
(like in the UK) have actually awarded software patents, but under current
EU rules those are not worth the paper they're printed on.


>
> Engelangs and exolangs are by their nature *not* natural phenomena.


Are you sure? Maths, according to patent rules, is considered a natural
phenomenon. Can you list a single engelang feature that isn't describable in
terms of maths?


> Exolangs are not useful (since they are intended for creatures that don't
> live on Earth), but for an engelang to be patentable, it would have to
> demonstrate its specific use.


No. Specific use and non-obviousness are not enough to be patentable. Being
a physical invention is the only criterion, US anomaly excepted.


> For instance, in the case of patents already provided on this list, an
> engelang designed to codify natural languages in unambiguous ways to allow
> for natlang1 > engelang > natlang2 translation without the natlang1 speaker
> knowing natlang2 or vice versa.
>
>
Which fails anyway due to prior art: Esperanto has been used in such a way
in the past. I can dig up a few more examples if you want. And anyway,
you're basing your opinion on the misguided idea that ideas can be patented.
They can't. That the USPTO grants invalid patents is nothing new. They are
known to be sloppy.


>
> In my case, when I speak of protecting my language, I mean just what you're
> saying here: Making sure the copyrights on works using that language are
> observed, and making sure that the trade dress is observed.


In that case, we are in agreement. I do believe that current copyright law
is out of line (death + 70 years? Really? Since when is it considered normal
that someone should be able to live of money they've done nothing to
deserve, just because they happen to be the children of a successful
artist?), but I believe the principle is sound. Art expression should
receive protection. However, in no way that protection should extend to the
ideas behind a particular art expression. No one has a right to a monopoly
on ideas.


> Let me give a specific example. I have a pronoun in my conlang which
> represents the current topic. Its use in English (call it "Fe"):
>
> I went to the store today. Fe bought some cookies. As for my sister, fe
> stayed home.
>
> "Fe" means "I" in the first case but "she" in the second case. Now, if this
> pronoun appeared in some other conlang (or, for that matter, in a natlang),
> great. If it appeared in some other conlang because someone saw it in mine
> and thought it was cool, even greater that I inspired someone. I wouldn't
> think of patenting "a pronoun representing the current topic."
>
> What I want to protect, though, is the work I put into developing a
> specific language with specific phonology, morphology, orthography, etc. I'd
> rather not put effort into creating such a language only to have some
> fanboys decide they love it but it could really use some diphthongs and
> besides the clausal structure is too confusing, and on and on. If people
> don't like a language of mine, as a language, then they can take what they
> like and make their own, or make suggestions to me for modification.
>
>
I hear you, and understand your issue. I'm just not delusional enough to
think there is any chance that the current legislative apparatus would
consider conlangs to be copyrightable. To give you an example, a specific
furniture design may be copyrightable, but a specific house architecture
isn't. An architect can't protect a specific room placement. Blueprints
*are* copyrighted, but the *idea* of the house, how the rooms are set, how
the building is built and such aren't copyrightable, and an architect cannot
prevent one to go into a building they built, make measures and such, and
derive new blueprints out of those (that's called reverse-engineering, and
in the US is explicitly mentioned as being fair use). At best, the architect
can prevent anyone to enter a building they wish not to see copied (the
equivalent of trade secret), but then their art stays "unpublished". And
I've never heard an architect complain about this (copycats are easily
recognised anyway), so why should we?


>
> The existence of people who have no problem with public domain and free
> markets and such does not eliminate the existence of people who would rather
> have their hard creative work protected from random repurposing.


Sorry, but because someone wants something doesn't entitle them to it.


> If nobody creative minded their work not being protected, the IP laws would
> have collapsed years ago,


Nonsense. "IP laws" are currently collapsing because they have become too
restrictive, not because they are too open.


> as the likes of George Lucas and J. K. Rowling took up arms of apathy
> against copyright law and, by opposing, ended it.


In ways that border on the illegal. Moreover, this is only about copyright
law, which I have nothing against, not about "IP laws" in general. Don't
generalise where it cannot be.


> Obviously, then, some creative minds care.
>
>
Which doesn't mean they should automatically get what they want. Why should
they? Why are they considered so different that they deserve special
protection? Creativity is hardly a rare thing, and most of *their* work is
derivative anyway (a young hero with a secret unknown to himself and a
family who's been killed by a big villain? I could list a 1000 stories
written before Rowling ever had a pen in her hands that use those exact same
storyline ideas. Her only claim of fame is to have assembled various
pre-existing ideas into something that was considered novel enough, and
happened to be there at the right moment, when the public was ready for it).


> > The true masters still
> > shine, and the copiers are long forgotten.
>
> Shakespeare stole all or most of his plots.
>
> Then again, so has Disney. ;)
>
>
Don't forget: there are only a handful of true original storyline ideas. Of
course everyone steals them! Their true original authors were probably even
hardly able to stand up!

And is Shakespeare really known for the quality of his plots? I thought he
was considered a master for the quality of his *writing*, something that is
already (limitedly) protected by copyright, and rightly so. As I have been
trying to make clear, I don't consider that ideas have value by themselves.
However good an idea seems to be, it's worthless unless it's implemented.
And implementing an idea is the difficult part, the part requiring talent
and hard work, and worth protection. The pure idea itself is not something
that can, or should, be protected.


> I agree with you on patents, although not having an engelang of my own I'm
> unwilling to say it's wrong to patent those.


I am, because pure ideas are not patentable, as they can't be owned.
Anything that can be fully implemented by using a pen, paper and a human
brain has no business being patented. One needs a bit more involvement, and
a process that is more than pure processing of data, to be patentable.


> However, when you go so far as to condone theft of ideas as a general
> concept, I have to disagree.
>
>
That's only because you have the misguided notion that ideas can actually be
*owned*, and that an idea somehow loses value if more than one person
implements it. you also make the mistake of conflating various protection
systems (copyright, trademarks and patents) and the things they protect, as
if they were one and the same thing. That's pure nonsense. And to me, the
very idea that someone could actually lay claims on a pure idea, and thereby
forbid someone else from using that same idea, sends chills down my spine.
Who are we to dare want to control someone else's thinking? Freedom of
thought in general is more important than people's feeling of
self-importance.
-- 
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/