We all copy — all the time
Often, apologists for things like trade secrets, patent and copyright law, or the corporate media oligarchy itself, claim such structures are ‘understandable’, because ‘why help potential competitors?”
It’s — supposedly — taken as axiomatic that those within a given field of endeavor inevitably regard all others in that field as adversaries … in other words, zero-sum thinking.
If one of your ‘competitors’ gain (say, by having fans come to their shows, or being able to produce a comparable medication in the case of pharmaceutical companies) — they it follows logically, that *you* lose, by that same amount.
The only problem with this, is that it’s completely wrong.
1. First — and this goes for EVERY activity, skill, career, whatever you want to call it — copying is inevitable: the process of learning itself, is nothing but more or less formalized copying by the apprentice, of the master.
For instance: I had to “copy” my uncle to learn the chord formations and scales and such which form the basis of what I do, musically. To my knowledge, the only credible instances of folks who did NOT learn via some form of ‘copying’, are savants such as Leslie Lemke, Tony Dublois, and Kim Peek — people who, for whatever reason, just seem to ‘know’ how to play a lot of musical instruments or do really advanced mathematics, with no apparent instruction whatsoever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
Barring that, we are all — inevitably — guilty of ‘copying’ every day of our lives, right down to such supposedly basic skills as speech or learning to walk.
Learning IS copying.
2. The fact that learning IS copying goes a long way toward explaining the various techniques people have devised in an attempt to thwart this pattern in pursuit of social, political, or economic advantage:
From guild secrecy (still echoed today in the various ’secret rituals’ of Freemasonry, for example), trade secrets and patent and copyright monopolies right on up to various attempts at DRM — digital restrictions management — all are, at root, predicated on the idea that monopoly-power is important, because it puts potential ‘competitors’ at a disadvantage.
3. Interestingly, it’s actually MORE advantageous if it’s not ‘your’ knowledge you’re monopolizing. It’s a simple program, really: control the distribution-channels, and convince those engaged in creative pursuits — inventors, musicians, songwriters, poets, authors — that you’ll ‘protect’ them from (supposed) competitors. By doing so, you — the publisher/distributor — can very easily gain control of a vast amount of ‘content’ of various sorts, which you can then distribute (or withhold) at your own discretion.
(A good example of the latter is when corporations use patent ‘protection’ NOT to distribute a product, but instead, to keep other corporations — or even the original inventor — from distributing a product.)
4. Copyright, patent, and ‘trade secret’ are all ultimately predicated on the notion that monopolizing knowledge, technique, or ‘content’ is advantageous.
5. Now, the basic tension — and the dirty little secret that haunts copyright/patent apologists — is that in order to be able to create what they monopolize, they’ve inevitably had to have access to — and unfettered use of — a VAST cornucopia of ‘content’ and knowledge, to be able to get to that point:
Somebody TAUGHT you those chords. You LEARNED things like sentence structure and the basics of songwriting. Even the pharmaceutical companies which supposedly need patent monopolies and the arbitrary prices that go with them to ‘recoup R&D costs’ had the benefit of the entire accumulated knowledge-base of science behind that research.
That’s one of the dirty secrets which no apologist for intellectual ‘property’ will ever mention, because to mention such an obvious — if seldom admitted — truth risks putting the lie to the OTHER part of their scam:
6. Physical and intellectual ‘property’ are different, fundamentally and irreconcilably:
For instance, if I ‘own’ an apple, I can eat it, smash it into pulp, even plant it to see if it’ll grow into another tree. What I can NOT do, is prevent others from owning their own apples, or claim ownership on every future apple tree, simply on the grounds that they *might* be descended from one of my apple-seeds.
Oh wait, somebody actually tried that:
http://roguepundit.typepad.com/roguepundit/2008/09/seed-piracy.html
(Hmm… can you overturn bio-patents on the grounds of ‘prior art’?) 
In other words, *physical* ownership doesn’t stop others from owning one of their own. Nor can I charge for the privilege of allowing them to grow another apple tree. (Although we’re rapidly reaching that point, as the above link — disturbingly — illustrates.)
Copyright and patent ultimately represent the privilege of restricting what OTHERS are ‘permitted’ to do with their OWN physical property:
I’m a musician. I own my instruments, and a club owner presumably owns the venue, but somehow, we are both prohibited from using OUR property as we see fit in regard to content monopolized via copyright, because such would constitute an ‘unauthorized public performance’.
I repeat: my ownership of an apple does NOT prevent you from owning one, or even growing your own tree and selling your own apples….YET.
7. IP law is predicated on exactly this understanding: that’s why the U.S. Constitution requires that such monopolies are intended to ‘advance science and the useful arts’, and that they be imposed for a ‘limited time’ — in order that the ‘content’ so encumbered is later free to be used generality, so as to contribute to the knowledge-base from which future ‘innovators’ will inevitably ‘copy’ by way of learning.
8. IP apologists understand this. They KNOW that in order to be able to make the ‘innovations’ they’re monopolizing, they had to ‘consume’ a vast amount of un-monopolized ‘content’: they had to learn NOT just how to play the instrument, write the song, speak the language, do the experimental researc, but even how to walk and be potty-trained when they were infants.
To get a glimpse of what happens when people do NOT have access to the accumulated (non-monopolized) sea of cultural ‘content’, one need only examine cases of so-called “Feral Children”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_Child
9. This brings me back to my first point about “competition” vs. cooperation:
For you see, if the basic notion justifying monopolies like guild secrecy, copyright, patent and ‘trade secrets’ is valid, then the mere act of ‘teaching’ becomes equivalent to cutting ones own throat, because you are, in a very real sense, inevitably ‘helping potential competitors’.
Or, so it APPEARS.
10. I say “appears”, because people very seldom think about the tremendous amount of co-operation that inevitably goes on, even within the most supposedly ‘competitive’ activities:
For instance, the club owner, musician, and songwriter co-operate to mutual advantage every time the musician performs one of the song-writers’ songs.
Importantly, the songwriter STILL gains an advantage (of exposure) EVEN WHEN it is (in the words of copyright law) an ‘unauthorized public performance.”
Even if the song-writer doesn’t get royalties, people still get exposed to the song.
Club owners also benefit from the other clubs with which they THINK they’re ‘competing’, in that it is entirely possible — even common — for folks to go to more than one club. (Hell, the British even have a name for it: “Pub-Crawling”).
Every other musician (my supposed ‘competitors’) are a benefit to me, in that they keep people interested in music.
In a more mundane example, how many of you had — for example, albums by several groups? Beatles fans don’t inevitably only buy Beatles records.
So there you have it: far from the expiration of copyright ‘taking’ something from the monopolist, it is the MONOPOLIES THEMSELVES which represent an unearned benefit bestowed on someone who has already — inevitably — used freely available knowledge to create what he now claims the ‘right’ to monopolize.
And that, at least to me, is shameful.
Something to think about.
Henry Emrich – p2pnet
[Emrich says he's, "just some guy," sometime musician, wannabe writer, sporadic blogger, and (hopefully) good-natured person. He and his wife live in Pennsylvania with two cats, and, "entirely too many record albums".]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
August, 2009
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August 22nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Aren’t you forgetting that patent law provides the opportunity for people to copy inventions after a certain time has passed? This ensures that learning reenters the common pool from which an inventor takes information, thereby becoming available to everyone once again.
August 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
After reading more Henry, I am more convinced of his influences (I haven’t finished reading those influences yet, but I did watch the corporation).
Henry, I have a question for you that is a little off topic from this one. Or maybe something you can write about next? When regulations, laws and Acts are themselves outdated due to the evolution of a people and the technology around them, what is the course of action? I’ll lay a few examples down here:
1. Price increases as technology and people evolve (example Kodak-Eastman versus the photo-plates)
The photo-plate industry was tightly controlled, regulated and prices controlled, only skilled people who mastered these things were able to shot pics properly. Along comes Kodak-Eastman who put a camera in the hands of children. Prices lowered, an industry lost control of their price-schemes and so forth. How does one battle such a beast?
2. Of course we have to look at the music industry:
Recording prices drop: kids can now make videos at home, kids can now sing and put their video’s online, kids don’t need to know anything about a diamond tipped needle to pay a record. Download and play.
Has technology and people evolved together making the record companies obsolete like the photo-plate? If so, are copyright acts and other legislation become outdated for this generation of people who are recording their culture using these technologies?
3. Telco control over smaller players. These Big Telco’s are fixing the prices via regulation right now. But, Bandwidth prices have dropped to just above a couple of cents, yet the big players are forcing mandatory big dollar figures to it upon smaller players, thus preventing people from running to smaller players who are, or should I say, were less expensive.
Would this not be the same type of example as Eastman-Kodak and the music industry? After all this generation is using the net to record their culture. If this is true, should it not be a guarantee to use this evolved technology that this generation evolved with as a human right? To deny access or price it out of the average users wages would be to deny them access to their own culture and freedom of expression, would it not?
4. RCA versus FM radio: As Radio and human understanding of frequencies evolved to produce FM radio, RCA tried to hold it back. Not only holding back a vastly superior technology but holding back culture who could propagate their messages and music from within their own homes to reach other people at great distances, unlike RCA and those who controlled the AM transmitters every x-miles. FM allowed a signal to go across a country. Gone was the control in every village dotted with AM to reach across the land. This stifling of people-technology evolution and culture evolution occurred for years.
Just curious on your thoughts since I’m behind the game here, and you are obviously ahead of it. Maybe there is more you can add in terms of culture, expression, market control from a dying industry, capitalization and control of a dying industry, preventing evolution of technology, preventing evolution of a people, perhaps fear from gov and industry, perhaps a taxation revenue scheme being exploited on the backs of the people? etc…
Yes, human evolution is based on copying the past and evolving the technology, evolving the culture, evolving the people. This is who we are. This is evolution of a people, this is the evolution of technology and cultural evolution.
Just useless random thoughts that I’m trying to equate with current events and they way regulations are protecting it.
August 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Creation, or recreation (no, not vacation) may be looked at as a state of mind. What is ownership? What is it when we say that we possess something? Is the first person to apply paint to canvas the true owner of every subsequent painting “created” by every subsequent “artist” or, as our accepted way of thinking states, is the owner merely the one who expresses? Two writers use essentially the same words to write novels; one writes ‘Huck Finn’ and the other writes ‘Valley of the Dolls.’ Are they the same?
August 22nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I’ll answer all three in one reply, because they’re all related:
Oz:
“Arenât you forgetting that patent law provides the opportunity for people to copy inventions after a certain time has passed? This ensures that learning reenters the common pool from which an inventor takes information, thereby becoming available to everyone once again.”
You obviously didn’t read what I wrote very closely. What part of “limited time” did you miss? At root, the essential problem with any and all term extensions of monopoly privileges like copyright (AND patent) is exactly what you’re describing — the ‘content’ DOESN’T become “freely available” for others to build upon, which is exactly the essence of Lessig’s book, “Free Culture.”
The dirty secret behind patent and copyright monopolies, is that innovation, creativity and problem-solving in general is, at best, a more or less lamentable ‘cost’ of doing business, and that profit-seeking, in many cases, trumps any and all other considerations.
You can see this same pattern playing out all across corporate capitalism: why produce quality, well-designed, durable, and long-lasting products when you can produce shabby, badly-designed junk assembled by third-world slave laborers, and charge a hell of a markup, in the process? The other advantage to that, is that the worse the product gets, the more of a market for repairmen, and the more STUFF you sell, when it’s less expensive to buy another one, than have the existing one repaired.
That’s why the slogan “production for use, not for profit” appears as such a paradox: it’s not profit, so much as the relentless maximization of profit by ANY MEANS, that pisses people off. When patent or copyright terms are extended — no matter how short of long the amount — the ‘content’ being monopolized ISN’T free to become part of new creations.
That’s also why our existing version of IP law has seen fit to carve out exceptions like “fair use”: almost everybody recognizes that permitting COMPLETE monopoly-control would be horribly destructive (how would authors or commentators be able to quote what they’re referencing?)
Read back over my article. I explicitly mention the fact that the clause permitting such monopolies specifies that they exist only for a ‘limited time’, and are intended for a specific purpose — advancing ’science and the useful arts’.
The fact that the Supreme Court has basically stated that perpetual copyright on the installment plan is permissible (if for no other reason than they failed to specify a maximum upper limit, or maximum number of times it can be extended/renewed) effectively ensures that cultural ‘content’ encumbered by copyright will NEVER enter the cultural “gene pool” again, UNLESS those using it beg permission AND are in a position to keep bribing the gate-keepers at every turn.
That’s flatly unacceptable, and the more I learn, the more certain I become that IF the choice is between monopoly privileges gone mad (the status quo) and the RIAA’s darkest nightmares of a “digital wild west”, I’ll gladly put on my Stetson.
Sorry for the — admittedly rather florid — verbiage, but I’m in a weird mood today. (Just found out my Grandmother is dead).
Anon:
Yes, that documentary is one of my influences.
Stallman, Lessig, Linus Torvalds, and Eric S. Raymond, as well.
Howard Zinn (”People’s history of the United States” really shattered my preconceptions.)
Another big influence on my thinking here, is that I started my involvement in music by way of Bluegrass jam sessions and an uncle who was one of those old-time fiddle players (Yes, we have that kinda thing here in PA, too.)
That led me to studying folk music, which led me to Ledbelly, which got me thinking about how most of the old Delta blues folks got screwed over by the record companies, which led me to reading about how OTHER people have gotten screwed by the record companies, etc.)
Another big influence is the fact that I live in Pennsylvania, in one of the many decaying, “rust-belt” cities that were left over after the steel industry decided to abandon us, in favor of whatever the hell they’re doing nowadays.
Lots of resonance between where I grew up, and Flint Michigan, how it looked in Michael Moore’s documentary “Roger & Me.”
Plus, there’s the Centralia coal-fire. Some of us from around this area have a sore spot in regard to towns having to be abandoned. I never lived in Centralia (or Picher Oklahoma, for that matter), but they were pretty much like where I’m from, as far as I’ve been able to gather.
Resource-extraction corporations (mining, logging, etc.) poisoning the land to the point where it’s uninhabitable pisses me off, and cultural monopolists — corporate feudalists — killing the very ‘public domain’ from which they INEVITABLY drew to create what they monopolize pisses me off, too.
Thanks for the idea: one of my next submissions will be a recommended reading/viewing list.
Sorry if the article wasn’t as tight as some of the others. Glad you got something from it.
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
i copy everthing i can, how else is one to learn their trade?
we copy our mentor or what we read in books.
this is the circle of life for humans, end of story.
in a different direction i copy ever disc i buy for backup purposes, dvd’s and cd’s can get damaged, same goes for hard drives.
so what does the riaa have to say about persons making copies of their iTunes files for bacup purposes?? (probably comeup with a law suit)
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
corporate person-hood has gone well beyond what you think..
read about the Bilderberg Group. You sheeple have no clue….
you really should learn how your death is scheduled, all 3 billion of you…
be sure and get in line for your mandatory Swine Flu vaccine…
if your not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 am
joe biden is an admitted plagiariser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/2607505/Joe-Biden-plagiarised-Neil-Kinnock-speech.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/2614572/Joe-Biden-Barack-Obamas-Vice-Presidential-running-mate-Profile.html
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:37 am
“copying” is a rather crude uninventive term, if useful. the debate can be expanded by deploying terms like, reuse, recycle, reimagine, rework, reiterate, which then leads us many new places of contemplation, oe of which is the debate concerning repetition. why for example is music most effective when it repeats itself? beats, harmony, etc. complicating this area of thinking is the convergences brought about by the forces of variation. exlent blog thanks.
August 23rd, 2009 at 7:58 am
i 4got i wrote this song. the lyrics have much relevance to this debate. the blurb underneath the tune has little relevance to this blog and complete connectivity to the year long discussions upon the audio forum the song rests. http://icmus.ath.cx/dear_prudence_5_7_09
August 25th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Brilliant blog, not for any other reason that it is absolute one dimensional rubbish. Here’s why: Everything mentioned is in reference to some neccessary basic skill that we learn from copying a systematic method; speaking, writing (music and words) or learning to walk. There is no reference to improvisational practices, or advanced inductive cognitive faculties such as Zen mediation, who through their polysemical (and deeply subjective) nature are extremely difficult to trace to a simplistic copy+function model. In other words, there is absolutely no way whatsoever another self-conscious human being can copy what is in my self-conscious mind right now – my precise subjective experience can never be replicated, perhaps not even by me, the bodily agent.
This blog represents a pathetic attempt at understanding human consciousness, since it treats the mind as a one dimensional form of matter, whose entire existence is geared towards sense and functionality. In its materialist essence it denies the possibility for anything beyond ‘these four walls’. The only salvation may be that the wording is restricted to ‘learning’, but this in itself is indicative of a person who treats the mind as merely a functional entity. devoid of that which resides within all of us – total and utter nonsense