Positive Intellectual Rights and Information

ExchangesPhilippe Aigrain

Hui Zheng 311289827

Historical Prologue

The Crisis and the Risk of a Tragedy of Enclosures

Digging the Foundation

Public Domain and Public Space

Creator Rights

Keeping Patentability Where It Belongs

Integrity, Libel and Redress

Introduction

Intellectual Property:

Granting the ability to restrict usage of intellectual entities

Negative effects of such a

restriction.

Re-foundation of intellectual property: a wider societal production and exchange

A new framework should be set up

Historical Prologue

1930s – mid1950s (revolution):information technologyinformation control centersbiotechnology

1960s-1970s the information revolution was described.

1980s: Two contradictory processes,

1.New area of free creation and exchange of info

Internet revolution; free software

2. Huge industries being reshaped or born.

highly depend on the ability to

gain and control information and knowledge entities.

Difficulty:

fight against oligopolies’ rules without cutting innovation resources of free knowledge.

The Crisis and the Risk of a Tragedy of Enclosure

common-based peer production

cheaper and easier to duplicate and exchange

New activities: immature

enthusiasm but uncertainty of realization.

Expectations and Concerns for Creator

property management-based business & Old forms of business

Cooperative usage intellectual property as a life vest to

construct new oligopolies disease

Disease symptoms:

Multinationals asking governments to put a 16 in jail for creating software that could be used to illegal copy protected content.

Patents on genetic sequences to which governments are still giving a hand.

Protected e-books or digital TV settings won’t let you transfer or quote contents without risking to be charges with breaking the law

Proposals to make people collectively liable for the compound virtual loss of income that may result from their disputably illicit behavior.

Long-lasting damage

a new tragedy of enclosures if a positive foundation is not established

Digging the Foundations

intellectual property -- the only way

but current framework is poor.

attempts failed.

Definition of intellectual entity:

an artefact constructed under control of human minds;

using other such constructs and signals or information extracted from the physical world;

that can be made perceptible to other humans or executed to control technical process;

can be separated from the carrier or signal that embodies it.

Direct rights:

R1 To create new intellectual entities, including by making use of preexisting ones

R2 To make one’s creation publicR3 To be acknowledges as creator of all or part of an intellectual

entityR4 To obtain economic nor noneconomic reward for one’s

creation, in proportion to the interest others show for it.R5 To access any intellectual entity that ha been made publicR6 To quote extract of an intellectual entity whatever its media,

for the purpose of information, analysis, critique, teaching, research or the creation of other intellectual entities.

R7 To redress mistakes, libelous statements, false information or erroneous attributions.

R8 To give reference, link to or create inventories of intellectual entities produced by others as soon as they have been made public.

Essential parametersC1 The size of the initial investment necessary to create an intellectual entity

before it can first be used or accessed

C2 Whether the entity is created once and then accessed without modifications or on the contrary incrementally created and revised through sequences of usage and creation. The intellectual rights framework influences the nature of the entities.

C3 Whether the creation is individual or collective

C4 Whether the creation is or not the embodiment of knowledge about the physical world or about society.

C5 The relation between the entity and action on the physical world at one extremity to intellectual entities whose only link with physical processes arises when they are mapped into physically perceptible signals.

C6 Whether the usage of the entity is of such a nature that one needs to allow long lasting appropriation to make possible for this usage to develop in a sustainable manner

Public Domain and Public Space

In pre-digital era:Public domain was fed by extinction of

rights

In digital era: People contribute directly to the

public domain

Is there any valid reason to limit voluntary contribution to the public domain?

Principle ： The voluntary contribution of one’s

creation to the public domain is a right that can not be restricted by any commercial interest.

Some entities are considered naturally belonging to public domain.

Industrial applications (gene sequence patents)

Default principle: intellectual entities belong to the public

domain, except if allowing their temporary appropriation is absolutely needed and does not result in unacceptable consequence.

Protection technology should not block the possibility of quotation and access.

Creator Rights

Patent and Copyright:Patent: limited scope, mechanical

inventions, high entry cost

Copyright: major scheme

Two business models

Centralized media

Decentralized media

=> inefficiency of remuneration

Copyright-based remuneration can be enforced by the assent of most to pay as to reward creators.

Choices:

Which licensing model they desire

Maintain physical carriers such as books’ accessing and using links.

Mix of compositions in a symphony: special cases as a reminder.

Finally, the duration of copyright should be made shorter

Keeping Patentability Where IT Belongs

Patent criteria

C1= big investmentC4= not a discoveryC5= design for physical devices and

processesC6= not lasting appropriation

needed for deployment of usage.

Birth of information-based technology:

challenge traditional patent protection

causing a drift on extending patentability to more entities.

National Rifle Association argument:

Dangerous mistakes: gene sequence and computer program

Some claimed to defend themselves in competition.

The meta-machine deserves patent protection but the software tools should not be covered by patents.

Software does not meet the criteria.

Softwares are not mechanical inventions.

Integrity, Libel and Redress

false information dissemination and privacy

two approaches: strengthen the control before

information publishing;

try to constitute positive counterweights to the potentially dangerous trend

investing in the positive right approach

How can the positive rights approach turn into a widespread reality?

Free software Additional safeguards

avoid misuse of voluntary contributions.

true Renaissance

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