Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, envisions a 24th century utopia where people want for nothing. There is no money; replicators can create anything you need. Food? Shelter? Clothing? No problem. Because of this, there is no poverty, no homeless people, no crime, and no violence. It’s a perfect world, except for one thing: intellectual property has gone out the window.
Replicators are the real world equivalent of illegal downloading on the Internet. Bit torrent files allow you to copy information from one place to another, and replicators allow you to copy physical objects from one place to another. If filesharing is illegal, just imagine the unspeakable crime of replication. If we had replicators today, people would be stealing computers, cars, televisions, sofas, and Rolex watches. It would be mass theft on a scale never before imagined.
The elusive concept to grasp, however, is that the world is actually a better place because of it. Let’s take a moment to remember why stealing is illegal in the first place. If I steal your car, you no longer have a car. If I steal your food, you might go hungry and die. Stealing can really hurt people. As a society, it was generally decided that stealing is bad and was thus made illegal.
Copying, on the other hand, is not the same as stealing. If I copy your music, you still have music. Recording a TV show doesn’t prevent other people from watching it. Copying actually adds to the world we live in. Because of copying, there is more music in the world, more information, more video, not less. More people can enjoy it, more people have access to it, more people can learn it, and more people can watch it. Nothing has been lost, and so much has been gained.
Imagine a world where replicators actually existed and people could steal whatever they wanted. Would we really throw people in jail for replicating food for their family? For replicating expensive cancer drugs? For replicating clothes for their children? What if an old man decides to replicate himself a wheelchair? Do we throw him in jail for that? He didn’t pay for it, after all, he stole it. “No,” you say, “that’s different.”
“That’s different” is an easy way out. The funny thing is, we are now on the verge of an information utopia, a world where everybody no matter how rich or poor has free access to all information, and we are trying so hard to stop it. With free information, your child’s future college education might cost $0 instead of $150,000.
Change is always scary, and there is a price for this freedom. If people can replicate their own food, farmers will go out of business. The drug companies and insurance behemoths may collapse if medicine becomes free. Even in the real world, although it hasn’t happened yet, record companies and music labels may become a thing of the past, nothing more than a page in somebody’s history book. Still, is this a bad thing?
The invention of the light bulb probably wrecked havoc on the candle industry. Now that we have refrigerators and pasteurization, we no longer have to fill boats with large blocks of ice or salt all of our meats so that they don’t spoil. Cassette tapes are extinct thanks to CDs. Soon, CDs will be extinct thanks to MP3s. Nobody weeps for the poor cassette tape manufacturers or candle makers who have lost their jobs. Who cares if a few drug tycoons or media moguls have to go into early retirement? If we end up in a world where food is so abundant that we don’t need farmers anymore, I can’t imagine anything better.
It’s important to remember that we should strive to make the world as good a place to live in as we can, for all people. Whether or not a few people can become rich is beside the point. We are already halfway to Gene Roddenberry’s utopia. If it wasn’t for arcane intellectual property laws, originally created for a vastly different world than the one in which we live now, all digital information would be legally free and widely available to everyone. Anything non-physical is now free, and if scientists ever create replicators that can copy physical objects, that will be the final step towards a world where everything, for everyone, is free. And that is true freedom.
Tags: intellectual property, Star Trek
Nice new site
Hi Casey, it’s too bad you don’t have http://www.caseyadkisson.com
Phil… No surprise you would propose such a world could exist. You must know I find holes in your plan (as it is my duty to question everything) and here offer some feedback to help you get your head out of non-existent universes! The main flaw I see is that you assume we will be happy and healthy if we just go on reproducing what we currently have and not focusing resources on creating anything new. What if we evolve and our needs change as time goes on and what about making things new and better for generations to come?
In response to “The invention of the light bulb probably wrecked havoc on the candle industry…”, what business do you think candle-makers should have seen themselves in back when – the business of making candles or the business of producing light? Successful companies need to understand what business they’re really in if they want to see success in the long-term. If candle makers used Brightidea innovation management software, they would have allowed the opportunity to use incremental innovation to eventually move from selling candles for light to selling light bulbs for light. Candle-producing would then eventually become another business, as it has. Therefore, those who understand what business they’re in and become leaders in innovation, have the opportunity to not be hurt financially by new inventions in their industry. And the new inventions and new ways of doing things make the world a better place.
I don’t believe your universe provides incentives to develop incremental innovation to meet people’s needs tomorrow. There are financial and social incentives. In your universe where everything is free and there is no money as we know it, financial incentives are useless. Therefore, we’re left with social incentives. You could attempt to create a society in which innovation is the norm and everyone works together to make things better for all. However, someone would still need to manage processes to be sure the underlying required infrastructure is in place and necessary resources are available. For instance, it takes a lot of resources, physical and intellectual, to develop a new drug to cure a currently incurable disease. Who is going to bring all those resources together and who is to say those people who are willing to help because of some social incentives are the best people for the job? Just because I really want to create a new innovative solution, doesn’t mean I have the education or innate talent to do so. You may say all information will be free so anyone can learn but how are you going to check for accuracy of free information? I may get free information that if I eat an apple day I won’t have to go to the doctor but that’s not really going to do it if I have cancer. Even if there is a social incentive to make the world a better place and I hold the knowledge to do so, resources may not be available.
Lets say we believe the replicators are going to manage resources to meet everyone’s needs. Haven’t we proven that’s impossible in past attempts? No matter how hard you try, things cannot be distributed to meet everyone’s needs. That means things aren’t going to be equal for everyone – and the real problem is that they shouldn’t be physically equal for everyone because everyone has different needs and wants. Whatever or whoever is managing supply and demand – the free market, the government, replicators, etc. can’t do it perfectly. Even if replicators could manage current supply and demand perfectly, people will still inevitably develop new needs and require irreplaceable services as well as tangible goods. There would likely be more waste with all this additional consumption and society will require the development of new knowledge. Then the replicators aren’t just managing distribution of current resources, they’re managing change. In the end, if everything were provided for free, everyone would go out of business – those producing rival and non-rival goods. Just replicating what’s currently available wouldn’t be enough to meet everyone’s future needs including knowledge and resources, and people would continue to steal from others in attempts to survive. Why someone steals is beside the point. I’m sure anyone who has ever broken the law could justify it in some way by appealing to emotions.
If when food becomes free for all that will cause farmers to go out of business, don’t you believe that if non-rival goods are completely free for all that the originators of those goods will go out of business and no new or better versions will become available? Would the world really be a better place for everyone if no one was given responsibility, resources or underlying infrastructure to provide for himself and there was no incentive or ability to improve or create anything new?
In response to Sebulba:
I’m not saying we could just freeze time and live happily ever after with exactly the same technology we have today. The main flaw in people’s reasoning is that without money there’ll be no incentive to do anything. This is a very capitalist mindset. Remember, it took thousands of years for money to even be invented. Don’t forget that there are also nice people in the world (as hard as that may be to believe). Mother Teresa and various philanthropists by definition aren’t doing things for money. Then there’s the open source movement: the entire Internet, including things like Wikipedia, are created by people living in their basements using their free time to make the world a little bit better for people. Something like 70% of all websites in the world run on an open-source operating system; Linux. The people who make Linux don’t get paid a dime. Or, how about every professor ever? They are the ones who actually invent things, they are the ones who have the intelligence, and they hardly make any money. It’s the big corporations, the CEOs of the world, who take other people’s ideas and make money off of it. Professors do all the research and do all the inventing simply because they are intellectually curious. And that is the bottom line: in a world without money, power-hungry evil people who want to take over the world will longer have any incentive. That’s a GOOD thing. Regular people, smart people, intellectually curious people, intelligent people, are the ones who will have all the incentive they need.
As one more example, think of the “starving artist” stereotype. People say that if we illegally download music then artists will have no incentive to write music anymore. That’s just bogus. 99% of artists don’t make any money even today, that’s why they are starving, and just look at the volume of independent music and movies there are, created by people who really are starving. If replicators are invented, the only difference is that they won’t be starving anymore, and it seems to me that well fed artists will create better art and more art than starving ones.
The point I was trying to make with the candle maker is that who cares if people lose their jobs. Industries come and go every day. Record companies who whine and complain about the Internet are living in denial and deserve to die. It never makes sense to stop progress. People should be embracing the Internet as a new form of distribution, rather than shunning it and trying to stop it.
You don’t seem to have much respect for social incentives. However, social incentives are the only ones that matter. It’s never the money hungry people who actually create things, they are simply the ones who exploit others to make money off of it. Sweatshops are created by money hungry CEOs, not intellectually curious scientists (the ones who actually create new things). With replicators, all sweatshops would be eliminated instantly.
You seem to think that there would be a lack of talent if money were abolished. You say that goodhearted souls don’t have the innate talent or education to make new things. Are you going to tell me that rich assholes have innate talent and education to create new things? Being rich doesn’t give you any magical abilities. Once replicators are invented and starvation is abolished, just imagine the incredible surge of new potential talent out there. All those billions of starving people in the world, who have to scrounge around on the ground every day just to find something to eat, who don’t have time to go to school and get an education, now suddenly find all of their needs fulfilled. This means they are now able to spend their time on other things, such as inventing, such as being educated, such as going to college. Right now, only a privileged few, only the very luckiest of people, are actually born into a society rich enough to send them to college. You and I are lucky enough to be born in the United States into good families. With replicators, suddenly everybody is born into good families that can feed them.
Where are we going to check the accuracy of free information? Have you ever heard of Wikipedia? Studies have been done showing that Wikipedia is actually more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html). Why? Because you have 10 million people making sure it’s accurate, that’s why. If there’s a mistake, somebody is going to notice it and fix it.
You go on to say that it’s impossible to meet everybody’s needs. First of all, we are speaking philosophically, so it doesn’t matter if it’s possible or not. Maybe replicators will be invented one day, maybe they won’t. Who knows. Lots of things that we thought were impossible have been done: we went to the moon, we can fly, we can make nuclear bombs, just to name a few. Likewise, just because it SEEMS impossible that we could ever feed everyone in the world, does that mean we should just give up? Well, we can’t do it, so let’s just let everybody starve?
A few years ago, if I told you, “Let’s make it so that everybody in the world has access to every book ever written. What’s more, let’s make it so that everybody in the world has access to all breaking news within milliseconds. Let’s even make it so that anybody can communicate with anybody else anywhere on the planet in the blink of an eye. Let’s make it so that people can send music and videos to each other within seconds.” A few years ago, people would have thought that was crazy talk. But it happened. Thanks to the Internet.
In a similar manner, right now it seems ridiculous to believe that we could ever feed and clothe and provide houses and freshwater for everyone in the world. It’s ludicrous. Making things equal for everyone? What a laugh. Still, who knows what the future holds. If replicators ever are invented then suddenly perhaps we could provide for everyone. It would be a wonderful thing.
The point I’m trying to make is that we are setting ourselves up now to lose in the future. With all of these stupid intellectual property laws, we are screwing ourselves over. Just imagine: replicators are invented and people start cheering and Third World kids say, “Yay, we can eat now! We can have clothes now!” and then we say, “Sorry, actually you can’t, because that would be stealing. It’s against the law. Too bad. Die.”
If replicators were invented we wouldn’t need an economy anymore. We wouldn’t need money. We wouldn’t have shortages of anything. We wouldn’t have to pay people for anything. We wouldn’t have a gap between the rich and the poor. All of these things that we have today (and wouldn’t have with replicators) are not good, they are bad. They are an unfortunately necessary evil in a world because of money. Nobody actually WANTS money to exist, it’s simply necessary at the moment. If we ever find a way to get rid of it, that will be one of the most important days in history.
Finally, just to re-emphasize one of my points, do you think that in a utopian world where nobody is poor, do you really think people will be sitting around on their butts all day doing nothing? I think quite the opposite would be true. I think everybody would be out and about inventing and creating and being artistic every second of every day, because they have such great lives that they are able to do that.
I did read your thoughts on intellectual property, utopia is a goal to strive for. Just wondering about the details, solveable I’m sure. Who will research new medicines and other products? What will be the incentive for change? Where will new inventions come from if everything is copied?
It it were possible to replicate things, would people replicate things “responsibly”? Would the world fill up with guns or jet skis or motorcycles rather than things that I like: canoes, skis, gardens? Just a few thoughts.
I’m sure your thesis can be further supported with additional examples.
“If we had replicators today, people would be stealing computers, cars, televisions, sofas, and Rolex watches. It would be mass theft on a scale never before imagined.”
How would using a replicator = theft? Replicators don’t move objects from one area to another (a teleporter does). Replicators != theft.
“A replicator can create any inanimate matter, as long as the desired molecular structure is on file, but it cannot create antimatter, dilithium, latinum, gold, or a living organism of any kind.” – So no Rolex watch any time soon
I didn’t take intellectual property into account when I made that comment. I was thinking more along the lines of physical theft (which a teleporter would be used for).
You did make a classic argument, though: why is downloading music from the Internet considered stealing? You aren’t taking anything away from anyone, you are simply making a copy of it.
[...] really hate people who try to stop change. As I mentioned previously in my blog post on intellectual property, a world in which information is free is one step closer to utopia. It’s nothing to be afraid [...]
I’m sorry, but downloading music IS stealing. Do you really define something as stealing only if when you take it, someone else then doesn’t have it anymore? That is not right at all. No, you’re not stealing from the seeder, but you’re stealing from the artist. Every time you download a song without paying for it, that is money that the artist never sees.
Mean deal with each other by exchanging one good for another. You exchange money with an artist in order to own a copy of a song he has written. To say that taking a copy without buying it is not wrong is just ignorant and stupid. And no, I’m not some idiot old person, I’m a 19 year old college student.
This would only enslave those producing our agriculture, energy and material goods.
Science fiction is more of an indicator of current times then the future. Scifi extrapolates current desires more than future needs. How would life be if you could get every whim fulfilled with the click of a button? Sounds like madness.
Check out The End of Work by Jeremy Rifken, it will agree with you.
Michael,You need to get LAID….
Shot phil cool post
[...] came across this article by Philip Brocuom on why the concept of intellectual property is unsustainable given that we have [...]
Nice succinct article, and it doesn’t take much imagination to fill in the gaps you left for the sake of brevity. But I don’t think your reply cuts it:
“The main flaw in people’s reasoning is that without money there’ll be no incentive to do anything. This is a very capitalist mindset.”
I don’t think they are saying we need money (money is certainly not incompatible with your utopia – we’ll still have non-social wants at least until we can replicate intellectual labour!), they’re saying we need the current payment structures we’ve built up around copyright. And in fact for them to suggest that in the presence of both demand and supply, somehow the two won’t find a way to meet strikes me as anti-capitalist to the point of absurdity. But maybe you felt that was too absurd to warrant an answer.
@Michael: let me guess, _not_ majoring in economics?
[...] things, it’s that people don’t understand reality. You really should read my post about Star Trek and Intellectual Property before continuing. And I really do mean read it; a lot of people apparently commented on it without [...]
Hi Phil,
We will soon have replicators, but not like the Star Trek ones. These will arrive as the collision between two types of technology.
The first is rapid prototyping machines which are becoming cheaper and cheaper and more common. See:
http://reprap.org/
http://shapeways.com/
The second is the overarching idea of “nanotechnology”. Probably the most likely way in which this nanotech-replicator technology will work is to break apart existing materials (like rubbish) on the molecular level, and then re-assemble them into things that are useful for us, like food and tools, etc.
As this type of technology starts to become cheap and commonplace enough, we will see an exact re-run of what’s going on now with IP law. The big industry hedgemonies will revolt and pass laws outlawing the wonderful new technology. Eventually common sense will prevail and we will finally reach the post-scarcity economy. Hooray! Can’t wait.
Sorry, i forgot to include my website
Like to watch Stargate Atlantis episodes and also Lost. I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
I think replicators would only shift the information property discussion, not get rid of it.
Vladimir suggested that replicators couldn’t reproduce living organisms. I assume that’s some Star Trek rule, but if we figure out a technology like the replicator in real life, I’m sure it will basically just be the same tech as the transporters on Star Trek – since they just scan you, destroy you, then transmit information, effectively copying you – so the replicators, using the same technology, would have no problem creating and copying life forms.
So the question becomes: do you have any rights to copies of yourself?
Let’s say the creepy operator at the teleporter station thought you were cute, so he decided to copy your info (the scanned information that is transmitted when you teleport – i.e. your “blueprint”) and make a copy of you, which he sends to his buddies in one of the outlying planetary colonies where there are no laws. Each of them gets a copy of you to keep in his basement as a sex slave.
Back here on Earth, should the teleporter station guy be prosecuted for stealing a copy of you? Does the copy belong to you? Does it belong to him? The only thing “stolen” was information. Why should you have any rights to it? He has taken nothing from you.
Let’s take this a step further. Let’s say that the law has decided that the teleporter operator in the first scenario did nothing wrong, since information is free – copies of you don’t belong to you. Well, a further complication is that when you are teleported, what they are actually doing is scanning you, then destroying the original you, then sending the scanned information to your destination – they’re copying you. The fact that they destroyed the original, so that there’s only one you in the universe doesn’t negate the fact that the reality of the situation is that the new you is nothing more than a copy. So, since the operator has been cleared of any wrongdoing for beaming copies of you to his pervy buddies, let’s say he decides to send the one and only copy of you off to the lawless planets. Now, of course whatever horrific things he does to you out on the lawless planet is not covered by any laws, but is his act of “theft” here on Earth a crime? After all, he only “stole” information, right?
Whoa, slow down with the strawmen!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Me: “Sharing is good.”
You: “I can’t believe you want to legalize kidnapping and rape!”
I didn’t say anything like that at all. I really shouldn’t validate your argument with a response, but since cloning is actually real and in a few years we will have human clones, it’s a very important discussion to have.
You seem to be confused as to what the crime is in your hypothetical situations. The crime is certainly not copying, rather it’s kidnapping and rape! Regardless of whether the person is real or just a copy, you can’t kidnap and rape sentient beings.
Of course I don’t have any rights to my copy. Would I have rights over my identical twin? No, we are separate beings. It doesn’t matter how identical we are, we are still separate human beings, each with our own rights. It’s the same thing with cloning: I see no reason why human clones shouldn’t have exactly the same rights as everybody else.
Also, all of these horrible situations you speak of? They exist, right now, right here, today, without replicators or transporters or clones, and they are still wrong. People are kidnapped and raped all the time. Third world countries and cultures oppress their women, have slaves, child labor, sweatshops, even cannibalism. It’s not a happy world, but none of these problems are the result of illegal downloading or of copying any sort of information or physical objects.
As far as “rules” go, they have nothing to do with this discussion, but just FYI: Yes, Star Trek replicators cannot create lifeforms. Also, transporters do not destroy the original. Transporters literally send your atoms through the transporter beam and reassemble you on the other side. You are exactly the same person, not a copy. That’s why transporters only work over short distances, but subspace transmissions can go light years.
Anyway, the bottom line is this: I see nothing wrong with cloning, I do not believe anybody should have the rights over a clone (since the rights belong to the clone himself, again, see my earlier identical twin argument), and I don’t see how your arguments serve any purpose other than to reemphasize why kidnapping and rape is illegal, just as it should be.
I think you must have missed my first statement, which was that replicator technology would only shift the discussion, not end it. You inferred that I was accusing you of wanting to legalize kidnapping and rape, but that’s only because you failed to read my post carefully. I wasn’t accusing you of any such thing.
Straw Man indeed.
I wasn’t attacking your argument; I was simply taking it to its next logical conclusion, that although the replicator technology would solve many problems, it would create some new ones, and I think those new problems inform the discussion of information-as-property.
As it turns out, it’s actually you who is confused about what the crime is in my hypothetical scenario. If you had read more carefully, you would have plainly seen that I made a point of separating out the uncontroversially criminal acts (kidnapping, rape) by placing them in a law-free realm. I placed them outside of any legal jurisdiction specifically to take them out of the equation legally, leaving only the possible “crime” of information theft back here on Earth.
The descriptions of being taken to a far-away dungeon was actually just my appeal to emotion, or perhaps misleading vividness (if you wanted to point out logical fallacies). I only included them as imagery of what you might not want done with your copies or with yourself. But what ends up actually being done with the physical copies of you is ultimately immaterial to this discussion.
The discussion (I think) is: should information ever be property?
In the interest of exploring that, I’m offering that all you are is information. If we replaced every atom in your body with a new but identical atom, you’d still be you. Continuity of matter is irrelevant. The matter in your body is constantly being traded out for new matter. What makes you you is the structure, the information. Even if your atoms are all beamed somewhere, they are just a mass of goo without the information to put them back together again.
Now, I would posit that Star Trek has it all wrong – that in most cases it wouldn’t make any sense to send the matter, when it would be much easier to just send the information, and then just reconstruct with local matter at the destination. But it doesn’t matter – either way, the original is destroyed (unless you don’t consider a person destroyed when they are broken down into an atom stream). Whether you are reconstructed with the original goo, or new goo at the destination, the information is the thing that makes the goo into you. With the right information, just about any goo will do. But without just the right information, you are lost. So, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the information is the critical part of the transmission.
So if you’ve been scanned prior to transport, there is a very large data file from which you can be reconstructed. It has every aspect of you encoded – right down to your very last mental state. So once you are destroyed, the only place “you” exist is in that file.
So the question, more precisely, becomes: Do you own that file? Is the information in that file your property – should you have the right to control how it is used – or should it be considered free to be shared?
If I steal that file, am I kidnapping you?
1) I see no point in hypothesizing a law-free realm, and then using it to talk about the law.
2) Yes, information should NEVER be property.
3) Yes, all we are is information.
If you want to take it farther than that, since all information can be stored as a binary file, we are in fact nothing but a single number. In other words, songs (and human beings) are nothing more than sequences of zeros and ones such as 011010… and that is nothing more than a single number in base two. So, intellectual property laws are the equivalent of giving somebody ownership over a number, which sounds ridiculous.
If you steal my file, you are not kidnapping me, you are kidnapping my clone, and as I said before, clones should have the same rights as all other human beings.
The reason it’s okay to steal a song is that songs don’t have rights. They aren’t alive, and they cannot be abused.
Also, remember that I’m not advocating that it’s okay to go to an artist’s home and destroy their guitar, their music studio, all of their sheet music, and everything else. That’s a crime. That’s vandalism. That’s destruction of property.
If you used a transporter to turn me into a file, and then you erased that file, I think you should be charged with murder. If you copy the file and send it off to be a sex slave, I think you should be charged with kidnapping and rape. You aren’t kidnapping ME, but rather my clone.
Simple, no? I don’t see anything complicated here.
EDIT: I would also consider it murder if you have to destroy the original me in order to create the file in the first place. That is, unless you have my permission. I don’t believe in a soul or anything like that, so I wouldn’t mind being destroyed and then re-created. However, I can understand how some people would object.
You’re right. My use of a law-free realm unnecessarily complicated the discussion. I retract it.
So let me simplify it a little more. For the sake of this discussion, from here on out let’s say that the type of transporter you are using is one that transmits only the information, using local matter at the destination to reconstruct you. You step into the transporter in London, hit the ‘transport’ button and are dematerialized. You are scheduled to be beamed to Los Angeles, where you will be reconstructed with L.A. matter – the original matter is always kept on-site in London to reconstruct the next incoming traveler. Only information will be transmitted.
So you step into the transporter, fully expecting to intantaneously find yourself in L.A. You hit the button, are destroyed, and the information is sent. But somewhere between London and L.A., I intercept the information.
So at this moment, the reality on the ground is that you are dead (you were just destroyed in the transporter). Since you pressed the ‘transport’ button, you were the one who destroyed yourself, so clearly I have no hand in your death. It was only after you destroyed yourself that I intercepted a mere sequence of zeros and ones.
For the sake of argument, let’s say I don’t do anything with the data once I’ve intercepted it – I just store it in digital form.
Have I committed a crime by “stealing” that series of numbers? I didn’t kill you – you were already dead. I didn’t kidnap you – “you” don’t exist any longer. All I took was some numbers.
Am I to understand that you would support my right to take this information, since “information should NEVER be property”?
Let me try to make this crystal clear: you have the right to COPY information, not to STEAL information.
As I mentioned in my original post, the entire reason that stealing is illegal is because if you steal something from somebody then they don’t have it anymore. Copying is not stealing.
That’s what makes information different from physical objects. Information can be copied without harming the owner.
If you want to copy my transporter beam and store the Philip file on your hard drive, go for it. That’s not a crime. I would never even know the file exists. It wouldn’t affect my life. However, if you intercept my transporter beam and prevent me from getting to my location, you are now guilty of kidnapping.
Also, for the record, I highly doubt that when transporters are invented we will be thinking of things along the lines of, “I’m going to kill you and then reconstruct you on the other side as a new person.” It would make sense to legally consider me the same person at both ends. It would also make sense to legally consider the data to be me, the person, while I am in the transporter stream.
You said: “Yes, information should NEVER be property.”
Then you said: “Let me try to make this crystal clear: you have the right to COPY information, not to STEAL information.”
Now you’ve got me really confused. How could you possibly STEAL something that is NEVER property? How can you steal something that doesn’t belong to anyone? What would that even mean?
The funniest part about sharing music is that the business model for a musician is to market/advertise via CDs and iTunes and bank on concerts and shows. There’s a reason why you don’t see musicians speaking out against “stealing” their music, the record labels pay them garbage. The money in music, for the musicians, is in live shows.
lame
If you download an artists music and like it, then in my opinion you should probably purchase their album or ep or whatever. They have produced something that you like it would be courteous for you to pay them for their efforts. With out file sharing I would not have herd of many of the band I now listen to, so yes the laws need to change but so do the attitudes of us younger generation. Personally I’d like to see a donation system to be set up, the media, music, visual whatever is free to access and then you donate depending on how much you like it. Just like street performing.
Comparing the present to a not-so-distant time in which most people in the US were farmers, you might say that we practically don’t have any farmers anymore. In the US each farmer feeds over a hundred people with their effort and direction of available energy.
I find this incredible productivity so close in scope to the supposed replication of food that you describe that I am forced to posit that we are already living in an age dominated by cheap replication of goods. It is true that much of this cheapening in replication is driven by available energy supplies. So we can think of the problem as a physical one. But, it is important to observe that the capacity to harvest and control such incredible amounts of energy is largely a function of the cost of information exchange. If you continue the thought you will also see that the productivity of the plants we grow is also a function of information, as through breeding and horticultural knowledge we improve their yields.
It is unlikely (or at least very distant into the future) that any push-button replicator will ever approach the efficiency of plants and generating food. It is far more likely that the free flow of information about genetics and the dissemination of historical knowledge of plants will do just as much for the generation of food as any push-button replicator could.
The replicator is just a metaphor. We already live in a replicating world. The sun provides the energy. The biology provides the structure.
All we really need is cultural change to accept that reproduction and copying is the essence of life, and us, and by pattern our own health and happiness depend on it. I have some hope that this is possible. I’ll call it the “dream that we only recently divorced ourself from nature, and in doing so uncovered nature in our own technology.”
I’d jut like to say that if we had things like replicators, one would probably find that the technological capabilities of the human race would inevitably speed up, rather than slow.
Why? Simple, right now, if I have a great idea, I need to get funding for this idea, and then I need to put it into practice, I also need this idea to be profitable within a short timespan, or my idea will lose its funding.
However, if I didn’t need funding, and I could simply copy all the materials I needed to produce this great idea, I could do so, and then say to the world, “Look, I have had a great idea, and it works, here you go!”
World wide, people who previously had no possibility of producing their great ideas, suddenly do. We would have a sudden influx of information and technology, things like a moon colony would likely become a reality within a very very short space of time. If suddenly there is no cost, and anyone who wants to, can do something, then it will be done.
Philip, I would hate to live in your replicating world. I understand that you are an idealist, and I appreciate that, because I believe change is good too. But I am yet to find beauty in a world where everyone is equal. ‘Dare to be different,’ right? Well, when replication like you speak of exists, there is no chance for anyone to be different. And that is really, really unfortunate.
I’m no Charles Darwin, but not all of us were created to have the same opportunities. Did you ever consider that maybe people who are rich, are rich because they worked hard to get there, are talented, and contributed to society? I know that there is a lot of unnecessary wealth out there, but I just thought I’d mention that because it seems you resent the wealthy. Don’t hate them because of their money. A) You sound quite jealous (no, I’m not wealthy. I promise) and B) It takes all the credibility out of everything you have said. If you want people to give up on the dinero, maybe you should too.
I of course feel bad for starving children in third world countries too. I just don’t fid your solution to be solid enough to fix that though. It leaves me wondering in so many ways and it seems like it would create lots of others problems that you refuse to see.
You obviously think you are very smart. I’m sure you are. But if I may, you might be a little smarter if you tried to listen rather than force your ideals on everyone else. You’re really on to something here! Progress and change are fantastic. But you think that you know what’s best for everyone. Take time to moderate your views. But, hey, that’s only my opinion.
Oh… btw, you said that money has not always existed.. It just wasn’t always called money. Barter system, silly!
The problem with filesharing is that it doesn’t replace the economic model that was adopted by the information industry over the past 100 years.
You create some valuable information as a living, you sell it, you feed your family.
The quandary that piratebay etc. present is that there is no compensation.
I agree information should be as free as possible, but I also think that those who create it should be compensated for it.
The key lies in finding an economic model that suits the way information is now being consumed. I think the idea of subscriptions to sites like the pirate bay is a reasonable one, any suggestions?
The problem with your utopian socialist model is that it doesn’t fit in the 21st century. The “replicator” only works with one type of product: digital files. The people who make these files, the artists, can’t simply replicate food and shelter for themselves and their families. Like Luke said, in the 21st century they still need compensation. If artists can’t make a living on their art, they’ll stop doing what they do and become stockbrokers.
You can switch to your utopian socialism only when all necessities are covered by that replicator technology. Then, when the artists are guaranteed a living no matter what, it would be logical to make their art free.
I really wish people would learn about the music industry before they cry “Oh those poor artists that you’re stealing from.”
Let’s say you’re a musician, and you get signed by a record company, and that company comes to you and says “we’re going to pay you $1,000,000 to make an album.” You’re probably thinking awesome, I’m rich, but that’s where you’re wrong, you’ve just been given a line of credit from the record company as pre-payment for something you haven’t created yet. You have to use that money to live off of, and pay for the production of your album. So you go and make your album, and it goes out to stores and iTunes, etc.. Your album is a hit and you’re sales are immense.
Here’s the catch.
The ridiculously tiny royalties you get from sales first have to go to paying back that line of credit the record company gave you, as “payment” for creating the album, before you can earn any money from the sales of that album.
But don’t worry, the record company is making a tonne of money from all your hard work, and all they had to do was lend you the money to do it, take almost all of the profits, and lock you into a never ending debt cycle to insure that you’re never able to break free from them.
The only artists that make money from album sales are independent artists that pay out of pocket to produce their albums. Buy their albums to support them, the rest if you’re not going to their concerts and buying t-shirts you’re not supporting them.
Most of the content creation industry, music, movies, TV, books, games, etc. work the same way, the artists are paid prior to said content’s release to the public, so when you download something you’re typically only depriving the mega-corporation that distributes the content from receiving their cut.
That’s all academic anyway because 99.9999% of all people who pirate either purchase the content eventually or wouldn’t have purchased it regardless.
As to the economics of Star Trek, I’d like to point out that the financial incentives for doing anything had long since gone by the wayside before replicators were created.
When first contact occurred and people realized they weren’t alone in the universe, there was a paradigm shift in the way people thought. Acquisition of wealth became a negative aspect of humanity, altruism and a sense of community became the predominant factors in society. People worked for the betterment of society not to gain wealth. Without the false scarcity created by the economics of greed, the resources were there (and ARE THERE NOW) to provide everyone with equal opportunities to thrive in the world.
I’m sure at first there were some who took advantage of the system, people who took more than they needed and didn’t do their part to contribute, but I don’t think they would have lasted very long, as people gained access to more information, better educations, the resources they needed for a good quality of life, those who abused the system likely assimilated to the new way of thinking or simply died out and weren’t replaced.
It’s a society we should be striving for, not mocking as a utopian dream.
Interesting, but it is the concept of Intellectual Property that began the age of invention. Without it there was little motivation to expand. To eliminate IP ownership across the board is wrong, but the expansion of these IP rights in the last generation is just as wrong and harmful to growth.
seems to me people are missing Philip’s point. This isn’t about replicators or a future with or without them. It’s about the potential that is unleashed when we openly share, without fear, everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Thanks Philip! I’ve been thinking this way for about 10 years and am glad to finally find a kindred spirit. Cheers for open source!
If intelleectual property has gone out the window, then what’s up with the Doctor from Voyager and his creator?
Nice blog post. Your argument is a BIT underdeveloped. However, I agree with the conclusion. I recommend these three videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6HMrvRSiO8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj7UXUS5XRc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0
they’re all worth checking out.
Casey, thank you so much for those video links, they are fantastic. Especially the first one. I encourage all of my readers to watch the “Dinosaurs Will Die” video.