What are some of the overriding concepts for IP? (6)
- everyday life
- everyone implicated
- economic concerns
- law and power
- play, our work, our health care
- fairness, justice, ethics
What are the 4 elements of the broader social context of IP?
- increasing ‘propertisation’ of cultural commons- e.g. things we can’t even imagine being property, organs
- strengthened regimes for rights owners- extending ownership rights of things
- digital technology- increased availability of of film through cheap and fast distribution, creating probs for rights owners
- “scramble”- resulting scramble, everyone trying to figure it out
What are the three types of property?
- real- existing
- personal- things i own, a dog
- intellectual- outcome of human creation
What is intellectual property?
the nonphysical property- manifestation of your ideas- work or invention that is a result of creativity
Why is IP harder to justify than other types of property?
bc it is non-exclusive- JK Rowling can’t walk up to you and steal your copy of Harry Potter, bc it is your personal property. But she does have copyright
What are the three justifications for Intellectual Property?
- labour theory
- personality (sovereignty) theory
- Utilitarian (Economic) Theory (Incentive Model)
Discuss the labour theory
- John Locke
- converts goods into property through the application of human labour
How do you apply labour theory to IP?
- the production of ideas requires a persons labour
Discuss exclusivity as a critique of the labour theory
many things are made based on other things around them- how do we therefore say that something is original/unique?
Discuss absence of labour as a critique of the labour theory
sometimes labour is very minimal or non-existent, e.g. a machine made it. Thus, it cannot always be about labour.
Discuss the personality (sovereignty) theory
- owning property is a good mechanism for self-actualisation- we become recognised by other people, achieve dignity and achieve personal expression
- these objects become infused with our personality “a piece of us”
- property = embodied personality (mostly for creative things)
- it is not morally correct to sell this “essence” of yourself. You shouldn’t make your personality into something that can be given away
What are two critiques of personality?
- where is personality, how do you quantify/identify it. Subjective
- common property/joint-ownership. Who should own a film when hundreds of people worked on it?
Discuss the incentive model?
- economic justification
- if we give people money for this, they will do what they do, and society will improve as people will have incentive to create new things
- maximises social value
- tied to social utilitarian theory
Discuss the incentive model as a paradox
-exclusive rights to produce more sharing, the more we try to protect rights and keep it exclusive, the more sharing that will exist
What are some critiques of the incentive model?
- above paradox
- is getting something back really the primary motivation- will people not just do things for the sake of it, or for other reasons?
- many other ways to compensate people for their work- other than give them rights
