Created Tuesday 19 October 2021
Freely Available Art, Knowledge and Culture
read all the FSU rules and follow them...
--or maybe not..
Morals, Ethics, Law?
I start here because, in this realm, there's a very very huge disjoint...
Ideally: Morals → Ethics → Law.
Really, it's all over the place.
“Micro”
needs, etiquette, psychology
“Macro”
Economics, religion, sociology
Code/Technology/Science
Law
“The Lambchop Machine”
“The Lambchop Machine”
When X is free, when is it appropriate, if ever, to deny X to someone?
- Simple, intuitively; 3 year olds understand it.
MINE!
But, consider the law(s) of:
Personal Property
Real Property
And later Intellectual Property
STILL, fundamentally about exclusion.
Which makes sense for “limited” stuff; but could be likened to a state-sponsored monopoly
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Rewarding creators is a means to an end, not the end itself.
The words.
Consider the theory vs the practice;
"I own that idea" or
"That idea is mine because I came up with it"
"I own that idea" or
"That idea is mine because I came up with it"
technically has NO BASIS IN LAW, unless it fits the below
...but HOW MUCH DOES THAT MATTER?
When someone takes time out of their day to SUE YOU;
(Or perhaps to try to inform and/or scare you into some compliance)
For better or worse.
(not governed by the IP clause)
Trade Secret
Trademark
“Privately held info that confers economic advantage or benefit”
Different from the others because ITS A SECRET. (think about it, the others are PUBLICLY KNOWN)
Must “make efforts to protect”
Perpetual
Something like a corporate right of privacy (and perhaps least controversial?)
Different from the others in that it's not (theoretically) inherently valuable, but only symbolically
“Expresses Source of Origin”
Potentially perpetual
Can be a very wide range of “things”
(names, phrases, logos, even sounds, smells and colors)
Mostly not too controversial, except:
Unfairly scoped and/or wielded (e.g. Sam Bucks Coffee?)
Weirdly Deceptive? (Famous Amos Cookies?)
And wait – what is FSU doing?
Broadly, what is the relationship between TRADEMARK and BRANDING?
(weirder than you think)
Copyright
Patent
Protects inventions and ideas
Must be:
Naturally occuring things like – plants and algorithms.
BUT
Simply patent the “process”
Patent don't care.
This is why a lot of people oppose them CATEGORICALLY
Weird, and you'll see them more soon, because of a shift from
- Deep descriptions
to
- General perception
Automatic (Berne Convention)
but, must be registered to sue
“Expression of an idea”
Not infinite, but almost-- (70+life)
+ The “5th” measure. Is it icky or weird?
Patents didn't exist, now they do.
Consider browsers, theoretically?
Safari,Edge,Firefox,Chrome
vs.
BROWSERS
SO CLEVER.
"Copyleft"
It's not not copyright?
Trick Question
e.g.
- you may have one copy
- on one machine
- you may NOT take it apart
- you may not make copies for your friends
ALSO A LICENSE, but
- you may make copies
- you may take it apart
- you may make a copy for yourself and change it and NEVER give it away
- you may sell a copy* (really, yup?)
THE ONLY THING YOU CAN'T DO...
YOU MAY NOT
Make a copy,
then give it to someone else,
and then also prevent them from doing anything
we let you do on the last slide.
Again, lambchops.
Consider the performer?
Why get paid multiple times to
perform a thing once?
Frequently, you have a middle man.
Today, tech can help resist that?
really?
Consider schools, consider social media.
The lesson might be, "don't infringe.."
But if you do GO HARD.
Google, Youtube, Napster
Spotify..
and today — AI