Beyond Labels

Proposition: Some parts of intellectual property law not only do not support the purpose outlined in the US Constitution “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” but in some cases actually slow progress.

Note: I don’t think this proposition is true in all fields and in all cases, but I don’t think that its opposite: that protection of intellectual property leads to more progress and more innovation is true, either.

Here’s some reference material.

From the constitution:

The Congress shall have power … To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

For more, see this Wikipedia article.

Wikipedia article on Societal value of patents. It’s tagged as possibly biased. It links to this  article: “The tragedy of the anticommons, the flip side of the better known “Tragedy of the commons.” The original Harvard Business Review on “Tragedy of the Anticommons” is here.

Here’s an article that addresses the question and says that the market is the arbiter. And one in Forbes. A couple of views in the Wall Street Journal.

This Quora topic “Is the protection of intellectual property beneficial for society or is it a selfish behaviour?” summarizes some of the academic research on the question.

Apropos of health care this past week someone pointed out that “Monopoly retards innovation, constrains supply, raises prices.”

That’s the core of an argument against intellectual property protection. IP protection, both in the form of copyright and patent, grants a limited term monopoly to the IP owner. This argument is fleshed out in a 2008 book published by Cambridge University Press with the provocative title “Against Intellectual Monopoly.” The book was written by two academics Michele Boldrin and David Levine, and consistent with their principles the entire book can be found online here. What I’ve read of it (not a lot) is pretty well reasoned and supported.

This sounds like a kind of a lefty position, but there seems to be a thread of libertarian thought that supports these arguments, though with some reservations. This is a review of the book on the blog of The Mises Institute, hardly a bastion of progressivism.

Chapter 9 here, specifically addresses the pharmaceutical industry, which we discussed at our last meeting.

It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between intellectual property protection under copyright and under patent. In the case of copyright, an innovator has created something that did not exist before the creation. Patents, on the other hand, are a matter of discovery, not creation. One discovers that combining this and that in a particular way produces a result. Anyone who discovered the same combination would have gotten the same result.

But all slopes are slippery. Even though artistic creations are unique, none are created in a vacuum. A popular treatment is: Everything is a remix. Lawrence Lessig of Harvard gives a TED talk here on how IP Laws are stifling creativity.

The image on the left is one of the most recognized photographs in the world. The one on the right shows the toll that life took on her in seventeen years.

National Geographic article on finding the girl, Sharbat Gula,  here.

As Paul Harvey used to say:  “Here’s the rest of the story” Wikipedia article here, tells us:

More recent pictures of Gula were featured as part of a cover story on her life in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic and she was the subject of a television documentary, entitled Search for the Afghan Girl, which aired in March 2002. In recognition of her,^[15] National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan girls and young women.^[16] In 2008, the scope of the fund was broadened to include boys and the name was changed to Afghan Children’s Fund.^[17]

After finding Gula, National Geographic also covered the costs of medical treatment for her family, and paid for the costs of a pilgrimage to Mecca.^[18

Wik

There was some discussion on Monday on the differences between representing ideas in Chinese and (say) English. We talked about “The wind blowing the flag” and how it was different.

Google Translate is an online site that will try translating a large number of languages to other languages.

If you go here, you’ll see the English to Chinese translator in action, and be able to play with it. If you go here you can see the Chinese to  English. What I did was to translate English to Chinese on the first site, then take the result back to English to see what was lost in translation. Sometimes there  was loss. Sometimes there was not.

“The wind blowing the flag ” translates to ” Wind flag”

“The wind blew the flag” is also “Wind flag.”

But “The wind will blow the flag” does get translated as “Wind will blow flag”

The images (if you get them) are a bit blurry, so better to follow the links and play for yourself.