[free-sklyarov] reasons for restriction of competition

[Bob La Quey]

At 04:39 PM 8/20/01 +0200, you wrote:
>>>Curiously copyrights, licenses, certificates have one thing in common
>>>They restrict competition Can anybody give me reasons why competition
>>>should be restricted ?
>
>CS> The basic theory is this:
>
>CS> (1) Most of the work involved in creating something copyrightable is the
>CS> creativity/mental effort etc.  Once it is embodied in a copyrightable form
>CS> (on paper, on a diskette, whatever), making additional copies is really
>CS> cheap.  (This is not just true of writings, music & programs, BTW: consider
>CS> what Intel has to do to get the first new chip out the door, versus the
>CS> 100,000,000th one.)
>You talk about what mass production together with efficiency can bring
>What would happen if all people could have access
>to mass production lines. Just imagine automobile factory at your home

Well people do have the mass production equipment for publishing in their
homes (I speak only of affluent nations, an important caveat), which is 
I suppose your point. 

>CS> (2) If anybody could take a cheap copy of a work and, totally without
>CS> restriction or payment to the creator, make as many additional cheap copies
>CS> as the market will absorb, the people who actually did the creative work
>CS> will be screwed.
>I must disagree. This is not necessarily true.
>If new product creators were paid IN ADVANCE this would not happen.

How would you propose to pay creators in advance? 

How, indeed, do you propose to identify creators? 

>CS> (3) Therefore, unless we restrict copying, etc., there will be insufficient
>CS> incentive for creative people to actually create and distribute their stuff.
>This is a BIG LIE. creative people (as i define this term) do create
>not because they want to make money but because they LIKE creating.
>So if someone create to get money i do not call him creative person.

While there is a powerful element of truth to this it is also the case
that creative people eat and have families who do as well. Once cannot
ignore the possibility that earning a living while being creative is
better than subsidizing ones creativity by working at some other
non creative activity. 

Or are we to revert to the old world where only wealthy gentelmen 
could afford to be scientists? 

One definition of an artist is a "Man who would sell his grandmother to buy paint". 

Passion is not the same as ethics and many a "creative" person is as 
uethical in pursuit of their goals as a corporate chieftan. The goals
are however different.  


>CS> Hence the reference in the constitution to advancing "science and the useful
>CS> arts."  The restrictions on competition in copying/distribution are done
>CS> with the conscious purpose of rewarding inventors (patents) and creators
>CS> (copyright) with money, to keep them inventing/creating.

>Since people are lazy by their nature ( usually try to get as much money
>as they can for as little effort as possible) there is a need to force
>them to create goods. 

This seems contrary to your previous statement about the motivations
of creative people. 

>Now this can be done by introducing copyrights
>and other forms of restrictions. This way seemed to work good.
>But i can predict it will not perform good in the future as more
>and more easy it becomes to resist restrictions. 

You are right that the old system is broken. It will need be 
replaced by a new system. This new system will almost certainly 
require new law and new technology (DRM?), and perhaps truly new 
ideas.

>What must be done
>is to make people creative 

I am not convinced we need to make people creative. People are
what they are. I am convinced we need to find better ways to 
compensate creative people. By "better" I mean those which do a
better job of balancing the needs of society for creation and 
those of the creators for a living and other rewards. 

Draconian measures such as those embedded in the DMCA and which have
been used to put Dmitry in jail are the opposite of what is needed. 

We don't need laws that make powerful third parties, whose only 
value added is distribution (increasingly worth very little, hence
their violent reaction to a loss of their business) safe from competition. 
Certainly not at cost to freedom of giving those third parties the right 
to use the police powers of the state to impose their absurd economic 
order. 

That way lies corporate facism. We need no more of this. 

>so i think a special copyright-tax
>collected from public and distributed among authors would be
>more appropriate than copyrights.

This is an interesting idea, but I have a major problem with 
the idea. Who decides who gets the money? What is a creative act? 

The arts bureacracies in the USA are not a pretty thing to watch up
close. What was it that is said about making sausage? 

I believe, but would immediately defer to those more knowledgable, that
the Dutch among other have tried tax support with visual artists and 
that the results was a lot of oil going on canvas and very little art. 

It is I suppose good for the paint business :) 

Thanks, though, for putting some creative thought into this puzzle.
As much as we rever our fore fathers, and as good a start as they
have provided us in analyzing this problem, theirs may not be the
last word on the subject. 


Bob La Quey