ratfish

Thoughts on IP and automation

2017-02-12

@SwiftOnSecurity had an interesting recent thread (archive¹) about automation. She wrote about how she sees the term “unskilled labor” as a way for us to deal with automation replacing human jobs, but hints that this current line is already blurring.

Humans consistently overestimate the level of intelligence required to replace them.

— SwiftOnSecurity👩‍🔬 (@SwiftOnSecurity) 7 February 2017

She continues by considering companionship.

In the comments of an Ars Technica article on Prince’s estate licensing his music to streaming services, editor Lee Hutchinson made some useful remarks (archive) on the purpose of copyright law. Hutchinson points out that

Good for him that he insisted on controlling his copyright with an iron fist, but it was bad for the enrichment of the world as a whole. Prince, like so many other copyright owners, missed the true purpose of copyright: to grant control of distribution of a work for a limited time to incent creators, and then to allow the work to pass into the public domain and thereby enrich the world’s collective of freely-accessible culture and entertainment.

In a reply (which appears to be deleted, but is still quoted by Hutchinson), a commenter called SFC writes

As for the previous point about “limited time” - why should the time limit be anything shorter than the life of the content creator? If I made a piece of artwork the rest of the world wants, I should be entitled to profit from it for as long as I’m alive. I’d go so far as to saying my children’s lifetime as well in case I die prematurely, and having it end there. But you can debate that one way or the other. You seem to be suggesting that an artist should be forced to give up their creative works after a much shorter period of time and that seems completely unjust to me.

Hutchinson replies, in part,

Your interpretation is at odds with the words in the clause:

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.

Promotion of progress is a double-sided coin, but the rights of society always outweigh the rights of the individual. The intent of copyright is to allow people to make money from the distribution of their works purely for a limited time, precisely so that they will create more works, not so that they can hold art hostage and continue to draw unlimited revenue from it. by sequestering it away from the public domain. Long-duration copyright is a detriment to society, because it incents creators to not continue producing works. The long-duration copyright of the 20th century is an obscene, absurd corporate-driven aberration that has monstrously distorted the original intent of the clause.

The clause that Hutchinson refers to is Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution.

I found it interesting how vehement SFC sounded, and that it seemed very important to him that he was entitled to profit from an idea for a lifetime or two, and that the government should protect this right. (Of course, I don’t know this person; it’s the viewpoint expressed here that interests me, not the individual commenter). I think this sort of thing comes from fear; the world can feel very competitive, and the thought that you can have one profitable idea that protects you and your children is tempting.

I think this kind of protectiveness of ideas and the right to exclusively profit from them will only grow as automation increasingly replaces higher and higher “skilled” jobs. We will feel that our best chance is to have a copyrightable or patentable work to profit from; that ideas are what is left for humans to make, and we will need to ensure that we can make a living from them. These are the pressures that drive us to the shitty Nash equilibrium: we don’t want to improve the world by sharing our ideas because we don’t have income security.

In a later comment, Hutchinson moves to link the drive to make art and ideas to a human need, rather than a need for money:

This is worth more of a reply than I can make at the moment, but here’s the short version: if money were to vanish tomorrow and we were all suddenly transported into an impossible Star Trek-style utopia where all needs were instantly granted, humans would still produce art in all its forms. It’s one of the things we do, for no reason other than that it’s inside of us and it’s continually trying to get out. Painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, poets, writers—people who do these things do them because the creation of art is a drive. It’s concomitant with our need to communicate with others and interact with the world. … I am not arguing that artists of all kinds don’t deserve to be compensated for their work. They do. But the scope of that compensation does not deserve to be unlimited. Art in all its forms functions to make the shared culture of humankind richer and more diverse and grander; it’s one of the many things we do that elevates us from base animals, and we as a species are lessened if a creator’s work is withheld from view by a paywall.

We accept that lessening in the near term in order to incent and allow artists who might not be able to create complex works remuneration. That’s what copyright is about. But copyright is not an end in itself. The purpose of it is not to get people paid. The purpose of it is to give the world more art.

I think he is right, and maybe the reconciliation between this ideal and those fears is universal basic income.