“Intellectual property” is a stupid euphemism.

Once ideas have broken free, you cannot turn them back ...

“Intellectual property” is one of the most ideologically loaded terms, which causes objections, even if it is just mentioned. The term was not used until the 60s, until it was adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the trade union body, which later received high UN agency status.

The WIPO case of using the term is easy to understand: people who “stole their property” are much more sympathetic in the public imagination than “production organizations that have violated the contours of regulatory monopolies,” as was customary to talk about violations, until “intellectual property” dominate as a term.

Does it matter how we call it? Property, after all, is a useful, understandable concept in law and in everyday life, such a thing that a man in the street can figure out without special wisdom.
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This is true truth — and that is why the phrase “intellectual property” is a fundamentally dangerous euphemism that leads us to all sorts of erroneous judgments about knowledge. Mistaken ideas about knowledge cause problems at best, but they are deadly for any country trying to move to a “knowledge economy”.

Essentially, the thing we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge — ideas, words, melodies, drawings, identifiers, secrets, databases. This thing is somewhat similar to property: it can be valuable and sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labor in its development in order to realize this value.

Out of control

But it is also different from property in an equally important degree. First of all, it is not “exclusive” in its essence. If you enter my apartment, I can throw you out (remove you from my house). If you steal my car, I can bring it back (exclude you from my car). But if you listened to my song, if you read my book, if you just watched my movie, then I lose my control over it. Except with electroshock, I can't make you forget the sentences you just read here.

It is this discrepancy that makes “property” in intellectual property so problematic. If everyone who comes to my apartment would physically take something from her with her, I would go nuts. I would spend all my time worrying about those who crossed the threshold, I would force them to sign all sorts of intrusive agreements before they go to the toilet, and the like. And as everyone who bought a DVD knows, and was forced to sit through the offensive, clumsy movie “You won’t steal a car,” this is exactly the behavior that talk about property encourages when it comes to knowledge.

But there are many things that have value, although they are not property. For example, my daughter was born on February 3, 2008. She is not my property, but she is very dear to me. If you take it from me, this crime will not be “theft”. If you harm her, it will not be an “encroachment on the right to property.” We have a separate lexicon and a set of legal concepts to consider issues related to the value that human life represents.

Moreover, although it is not my property, I still have a legally recognized interest in my daughter. She is “mine” in some sense of the word, but it also falls under the scope of many other individuals — the governments of Great Britain and Canada, the National Health Service, the child protection services, not to mention other family members — they can all be interested to the living conditions, treatment and future of my daughter.

Flexibility and subtleties

Attempts to push knowledge into the framework of the concept of "property" leave us without the flexibility and subtleties that a real system of rights to knowledge could possess. For example, there is no copyright on the facts, so no one can say that he “owns” your address, health insurance policy number or PIN of your credit card. Despite this, in all these things you are very interested, and this interest can and should be protected by law.

There are many works and facts that are not subject to copyrights, trademarks, patents and other rights that make up the “intellectual property” hydra, from recipes and telephone directories to “illegal art” such as musical mash-ups. These works are not property - and should not be taken for it - but around each of them there is a whole ecosystem of people with legitimate interests in relation to them.

I once heard a WIPO representative at the European Association of Commercial Broadcasters explain that, taking into account all the contributions made by their members to record the ceremony of the 60th anniversary of the capture of Dieppe during World War II, they should be given ownership of this ceremony, the reason they own TV shows and other “creative work”. I immediately asked why the “owners” should be some rich people with cameras - why not the families of those who died on the other side? Why not beach owners? Why not the generals who gave the order to take? When it comes to knowledge, “possession” loses all meaning - many people have to do with the records of this ceremony, but to assert that someone “owns” it is just nonsense.

Copyright - with all its zamorochki, exceptions and features - from time immemorial was a legal system of regulation, which tried to handle the unique properties of knowledge, and did not pretend to be another set of rules for managing property. After forty years of “property debates,” we had an endless war between the uncompromising positions of ownership, theft, and fair deals.

If we want to achieve a stable peace in the wars for knowledge, it is time to put property aside, it is time to understand that knowledge — valuable, cherished, expensive knowledge — is not in possession. They can not be owned. The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral world of ideas, but this regulation should concern knowledge, and not be a clumsy remake of the property system.

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Original: "Intellectual property" is a silly euphemism , Cory Doctorow
Translation: ruguevara , iAdramelk , Orie
Crosspost: JetStyle Company Library

PS Translator Postscript: See, what an irreconcilable discussion broke out in the comments! About that and speech, it was worth only a little touch on the subject. The way we call it matters.