Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Week 7: The Author vs the Information Society

Brian Martin discusses in the 3rd chapter of his book 'Information Liberation' the reasons behind Intellectual Property and the regulations associated to it as well as the strategies for change in the field.

Patents, copyright and other legislation are created to protect the authors right to it and to guarantee economical support or benefit to endorse further work. But who support (or benefit from) the intellectual property the most? The most powerful governments and the largest corporations.

With technological developments and the emergence of World Wild Web, the control over spreading intellectual property is losing its point. The change is needed and the crowd against the constraints growing. Martin gives his perspective to intellectual property and its alternative:
"The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to."
His strategy to change consists of following steps:
  • Change thinking
  • Expose the costs
  • Reproduce protected work
  • Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property
  • Promote non-owned information
  • Develop principles for crediting intellectual work
These points are rather radical all together. I agree to the idea that the way we think of things and therefore frame them makes change in legislation and it is a way to go around the property. Exposing the costs makes sense to me, it would help to understand the way things really work in the system and is in the interest of reducing the legitimacy of the world intellectual property system.

The point of reproducing the protected work freely, openly and with no respect to it, to show ones confrontation to the system may be understood. I like the approach that if you do it hidden and secretly, you accept the system but violate the rules whereas with free and not hidden copying of copyrighted property one shows disapprobation of the system. As much as I like the approach I would not start fighting for it on my own.

Promoting non-owned information and developing the measures to credit intellectual work are softer points and make sense to take into consideration. I find it important to credit the work of the creator, whereas I evaluate the free distribution of ideas and intellectual products.

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