G-khan
09-24-2003, 07:32 AM
Commentary (http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=1): Information wants to be free... (http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=182&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0)
Posted by: Editor on Sep 24, 2003 - 12:31 AM
http://goldeconomy.com/themes/goldecon/images/pix-t.gifhttp://goldeconomy.com/images/topics/bo_pic_208.jpg (http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=57)
by Ken Griffith
While nature is not a perfect source of ethics (nature red in tooth and claw), in the area of intellectual property rights, Life itself provides us with the original and ultimate statement about the ability to own and control the transfer of information.
Every living cell, even bacteria, contains software that is thousands of times more complex than the most advanced software ever written by man. That powerful software and its associated data are stored on strands of DNA and RNA inside the nucleus of every living cell – trillions of them.
Like the business world, the environment that life must survive in is extremely tough. Most bits of genetic data provide a competitive advantage to the owner under certain environmental conditions. The drive to multiply and fill the earth with offspring provides a drive and a mechanism for the owners of the best genetic code for a given environment to eventually dominate that environment, if they can pass their data to their own offspring.
The only reason that life as we know it continues today is because of the freedom of each and every cell to replicate as many copies of its inherited "intellectual" property as resources and its genetic software allow.
The genetic code stored in the DNA of Helen of Troy was every bit as unique and valuable as the arrangement of notes and instruments in Handel's Messiah. That Sony thinks its computer games and pop music CD’s are more worthy of copy protection than Helen’s DNA or Handel’s masterpiece merely shows how far modern culture has fallen from the concept of cultural value.
Helen gave a partial copy of her DNA to each of her children, but she retained no legal right to prohibit them from copying and distributing it; and indeed, she only could have done so by gross and violent means such as sterilizing her offspring.
The cypherpunk premise that information is yours if you have it and can read it, and exclusively yours only if you can encrypt it, reflects the truth of the ultimate design found in nature. A being can only exercise exclusive rights to information if it has exclusive possession of it. And possession, my friends, is nine tenths of the law. The moment that you sell or give a copy of your data to someone else, you lose the power to control that copy, along with the power to exclusively profit from the further replication, modification or sale of it. But if you still have your original copy you can do whatever you want with that.
Any efforts to use the State to enforce such unnatural claims of ownership over ideas, music, art, words and software are ultimately impossible to enforce and tyrannical in the attempt. In fact, the analogy of Helen of Troy sterilizing her offspring to protect her genetic intellectual property rights shows the absurdity of the ultimate conclusion of the idea of intellectual property rights.
Indeed, the Monsanto Corporation, after obtaining several patents for genetically engineered varieties of food crops, designed a “terminator gene” that sterilizes the resultant plants so they can produce fruit but no viable seeds. Monsanto’s scheme seems to be to seduce farmers around the world into switching to Monsanto-brand one-shot crops, so they will always have to buy each new years’ seed corn from Monsanto, instead of simply saving a portion of seed corn from the previous season’s crop.
The most obvious and dangerous unintended (or intentional) consequence of the terminator gene is that if it spreads into natural plant stocks through cross-pollenization, it could rapidly cause mass extinctions of wild plant stocks. This disaster would greatly reduce the genetic diversity of the planet for the sake of corporate greed.
With some medical research companies attempting to patent DNA sequences for desirable genes, is it only a matter of time before the DNA police start arresting people for making unauthorized copies of copyrighted DNA that they inherited from their parents? Will Monsanto try to collect royalty payments for each child born with a copy of the patented human genes? These evil absurdities are logically valid conclusions from the current premises of the legal theory of intellectual property rights.
Studies have shown that software patents stifle innovation rather than encouraging it. And what is a patent anyway? It is merely a state-granted monopoly that expires after a period of time. So if the intellectual property right can expire, then we have an implicit acknowledgement that intellectually property rights aren’t real to begin with. The record industry instinctively knows this, which is why they have successfully petitioned the United States Congress to drastically extend trademark and copyright protections in the last decade. Walt Disney wants to make sure that Mickey Mouse never becomes public domain.
Ultimately, all this nonsense about enforcing intellectual property rights is as fruitless as chasing the wind. It cannot be effectively enforced except through terror and threats of violence. If I patented the HIV virus tomorrow, my state-granted monopoly would not be able to stop it from replicating. How much less something that people actually want to copy! Like the HIV virus, the only way to control your information is to avoid transferring it to anyone else. Once your data is published the free market will always find a work-around to the tyranny of monopoly. Just as you can’t have cake and eat it too, it is impossible to maintain exclusive rights over information and publish it at the same time.
The attempt to enforce intellectual property rights, whether it be by Madonna or Microsoft, ultimately stifles free commerce. If you want exclusive control of your proprietary data then encrypt it – to yourself – and throw away the key. Whatever profit you gain from that exercise can be your little secret.
If, on the other hand, you want to enjoy the benefits that come from publishing your intellectual work for the use and enjoyment of other people, then sure, charge them a fee for a copy; but acknowledge the fact that once they buy a copy, it is theirs to change, append, replicate, sell or give away as they please.
What has all this to do with digital currency (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#currency)? Two companies in the digital currency arena have attempted or are attempting to monopolize the industry through the use of patents. PayPal is in the final stages of securing a patent on the process of validating that a customer has control of a bank account by making a tiny payment of a random amount to that account and then asking the customer to report the exact amount of the deposit (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#depositstorage). Clever – yes. But patentable? This procedure is essential to the integrity of most bank-based online transaction systems. Why should PayPal be given a monopoly on the wise practice of verifying that your customer is who he says he is?
Likewise, GoldMoney has applied for and obtained several vaguely defined patents for “digital gold currency” and “digital gold electronic cash”. Because these patents do not specify an actual protocol or algorithm, but merely claim (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#claim) a monopoly on the use of electronic representations of specific quantities of gold or silver, they threaten the entire digital currency industry, and JP Morgan too, if they thought about it. If only the Rothschilds could get a patent on banking, I’m sure they would try to do the same thing. Yet, the GoldMoney patents are just as broad and vague, and unenforceable as trying to patent bullion banking after centuries of prior art.
Click on the link for the rest of the article....
http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=182&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Posted by: Editor on Sep 24, 2003 - 12:31 AM
http://goldeconomy.com/themes/goldecon/images/pix-t.gifhttp://goldeconomy.com/images/topics/bo_pic_208.jpg (http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=57)
by Ken Griffith
While nature is not a perfect source of ethics (nature red in tooth and claw), in the area of intellectual property rights, Life itself provides us with the original and ultimate statement about the ability to own and control the transfer of information.
Every living cell, even bacteria, contains software that is thousands of times more complex than the most advanced software ever written by man. That powerful software and its associated data are stored on strands of DNA and RNA inside the nucleus of every living cell – trillions of them.
Like the business world, the environment that life must survive in is extremely tough. Most bits of genetic data provide a competitive advantage to the owner under certain environmental conditions. The drive to multiply and fill the earth with offspring provides a drive and a mechanism for the owners of the best genetic code for a given environment to eventually dominate that environment, if they can pass their data to their own offspring.
The only reason that life as we know it continues today is because of the freedom of each and every cell to replicate as many copies of its inherited "intellectual" property as resources and its genetic software allow.
The genetic code stored in the DNA of Helen of Troy was every bit as unique and valuable as the arrangement of notes and instruments in Handel's Messiah. That Sony thinks its computer games and pop music CD’s are more worthy of copy protection than Helen’s DNA or Handel’s masterpiece merely shows how far modern culture has fallen from the concept of cultural value.
Helen gave a partial copy of her DNA to each of her children, but she retained no legal right to prohibit them from copying and distributing it; and indeed, she only could have done so by gross and violent means such as sterilizing her offspring.
The cypherpunk premise that information is yours if you have it and can read it, and exclusively yours only if you can encrypt it, reflects the truth of the ultimate design found in nature. A being can only exercise exclusive rights to information if it has exclusive possession of it. And possession, my friends, is nine tenths of the law. The moment that you sell or give a copy of your data to someone else, you lose the power to control that copy, along with the power to exclusively profit from the further replication, modification or sale of it. But if you still have your original copy you can do whatever you want with that.
Any efforts to use the State to enforce such unnatural claims of ownership over ideas, music, art, words and software are ultimately impossible to enforce and tyrannical in the attempt. In fact, the analogy of Helen of Troy sterilizing her offspring to protect her genetic intellectual property rights shows the absurdity of the ultimate conclusion of the idea of intellectual property rights.
Indeed, the Monsanto Corporation, after obtaining several patents for genetically engineered varieties of food crops, designed a “terminator gene” that sterilizes the resultant plants so they can produce fruit but no viable seeds. Monsanto’s scheme seems to be to seduce farmers around the world into switching to Monsanto-brand one-shot crops, so they will always have to buy each new years’ seed corn from Monsanto, instead of simply saving a portion of seed corn from the previous season’s crop.
The most obvious and dangerous unintended (or intentional) consequence of the terminator gene is that if it spreads into natural plant stocks through cross-pollenization, it could rapidly cause mass extinctions of wild plant stocks. This disaster would greatly reduce the genetic diversity of the planet for the sake of corporate greed.
With some medical research companies attempting to patent DNA sequences for desirable genes, is it only a matter of time before the DNA police start arresting people for making unauthorized copies of copyrighted DNA that they inherited from their parents? Will Monsanto try to collect royalty payments for each child born with a copy of the patented human genes? These evil absurdities are logically valid conclusions from the current premises of the legal theory of intellectual property rights.
Studies have shown that software patents stifle innovation rather than encouraging it. And what is a patent anyway? It is merely a state-granted monopoly that expires after a period of time. So if the intellectual property right can expire, then we have an implicit acknowledgement that intellectually property rights aren’t real to begin with. The record industry instinctively knows this, which is why they have successfully petitioned the United States Congress to drastically extend trademark and copyright protections in the last decade. Walt Disney wants to make sure that Mickey Mouse never becomes public domain.
Ultimately, all this nonsense about enforcing intellectual property rights is as fruitless as chasing the wind. It cannot be effectively enforced except through terror and threats of violence. If I patented the HIV virus tomorrow, my state-granted monopoly would not be able to stop it from replicating. How much less something that people actually want to copy! Like the HIV virus, the only way to control your information is to avoid transferring it to anyone else. Once your data is published the free market will always find a work-around to the tyranny of monopoly. Just as you can’t have cake and eat it too, it is impossible to maintain exclusive rights over information and publish it at the same time.
The attempt to enforce intellectual property rights, whether it be by Madonna or Microsoft, ultimately stifles free commerce. If you want exclusive control of your proprietary data then encrypt it – to yourself – and throw away the key. Whatever profit you gain from that exercise can be your little secret.
If, on the other hand, you want to enjoy the benefits that come from publishing your intellectual work for the use and enjoyment of other people, then sure, charge them a fee for a copy; but acknowledge the fact that once they buy a copy, it is theirs to change, append, replicate, sell or give away as they please.
What has all this to do with digital currency (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#currency)? Two companies in the digital currency arena have attempted or are attempting to monopolize the industry through the use of patents. PayPal is in the final stages of securing a patent on the process of validating that a customer has control of a bank account by making a tiny payment of a random amount to that account and then asking the customer to report the exact amount of the deposit (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#depositstorage). Clever – yes. But patentable? This procedure is essential to the integrity of most bank-based online transaction systems. Why should PayPal be given a monopoly on the wise practice of verifying that your customer is who he says he is?
Likewise, GoldMoney has applied for and obtained several vaguely defined patents for “digital gold currency” and “digital gold electronic cash”. Because these patents do not specify an actual protocol or algorithm, but merely claim (http://www.goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=3&page=1#claim) a monopoly on the use of electronic representations of specific quantities of gold or silver, they threaten the entire digital currency industry, and JP Morgan too, if they thought about it. If only the Rothschilds could get a patent on banking, I’m sure they would try to do the same thing. Yet, the GoldMoney patents are just as broad and vague, and unenforceable as trying to patent bullion banking after centuries of prior art.
Click on the link for the rest of the article....
http://goldeconomy.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=182&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0