Re: Piracy and cypherpunks

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 7:33 AM -0800 11/19/98, Jim Gillogly wrote:
>holist writes:
>> Having read a significant amount of material on the ideological (rather than
>> the technical) background of cypherpunks (Tim May's writings, mainly) it
>> seems to me rather obvious that a relative newcomer to these circles would
>> come to expect to find people who may not be "mannered intellectuals", but
>> who are certainly not erstwhile defenders of intellectual property,
>> particularly asthe concept is applied to software today.
>
>Hurm.  Does Tim May advocate passing around unlicensed copies of an $895
>Statgraphics program?  I think I must have missed that post.  In any case,
>cypherpunks are not a monolithic bunch.  While many (like me) are wild-eyed
>libertarians of one flavor or another, others are feds, corporate shills,
>government apologists, prepubescent hackers, and (d'oh) working professionals
>in the computing industry.  I, for example, do believe that the concept of
>intellectual property makes sense in some cases -- e.g. the inventions of
>public-key encryption and the RSA algorithm, which were important
>breakthroughs
>that merit substantial rewards, and I recognize that this is probably not a
>majority cypherpunk opinion.  I do <not> appreciate patents on all the
>ticky-tack trivial modifications of every silly algorithm that nobody else
>thought was worth patenting.

Somewhat off-topic, though issues of property, ownership, law, enforcement,
etc., are related to Cypherpunks and/or anarchocapitalist topics.

Anyway, I've expressed my views in many posts, mostly in the early years of
the list, and in the 1994 Cyphernomicon. Off the top of my head, without
reference to these earlier items, here are a few points. Some of them may
contradict other points (I contain multitudes):

-- "warez" distribution is not a primary purpose for Cypherpunks, either at
the physical meetings I've been to, or in the 6 years of the list

-- I generally pay for my programs, though this has often made me a sucker
(paying $400 for a product which failed to perform, or where the company
ceased to exist)

-- I have "borrowed" programs, e.g., pirated them. I think most of us have.
This is not my normal practice, but, then, I don't blithely write out
checks for $400 or $795 for programs I have only _heard_ about, or have
only read _reviews_ of.

(Corporations have the resources, and the number of potential "seats," to
make evaluation purchases feasible. In many cases, even most, the companies
are given copies for evaluation. Private individuals usually have no such
paths available to them. I'm not arguing for a "right of theft" for
individuals, just noting some obvious differences. An individual who has
"borrowed" a copy of a program is in a somewhat different position than,
for example, a corporation which has made 30 illegal copies of that program
for their office use. And not just because of the number of copies, in my
view.)

-- all issues of intellectual property are also issues of _enforceability_.
To the extent anonymous remailers, information markets, regulatory
arbitrage, systems like "BlackNet" ("BlackeBay," anyone?), and other crypto
anarchy technologies proliferate, enforcement of any particular nation's
intellectual property laws will become problematic.


-- finally, the U.S. position on patentability and copyrightability of
software and words is not the only position one may find morally
supportable. We do not, for example, allow "ideas" to be patented or
copyrighted (I don't mean "expressions of ideas," as in patents, or
"precise words," as in copyrights. Rather, I mean that we do not allow a
person to "own" an idea. To imagine the alternative, cf. Galambos.)


Long term, I expect current notions about intellectual property will have
to change.

I'm a big believer in "technological determinism." For example, in my own
view (which I have debated with some well known cyberspace lawyers over the
years), the widespread deployment of video cassette recorders (VCRs)
necessarily changed the intellectual property laws. The Supreme Court, in
Disney v. Sony, uttered a bunch of stuff about time-shifting, blah blah,
but the real reason, I think, boiled down to this:

"VCRs have become widespread. If people tape shows in their own homes, even
violating copyrighted material, there is no way law enforcement can stop
them short of instituting a police state and doing random spot checks. The
horse is out of the barn, the genie is out of the bottle. The law has to
change. But rather than admit that copyright is no longer practically
enforceable, we have to couch our decision in terms of "time-shifting" and
other such fig leaves."

So, too, will anonymous remailers, black pipes, information markets,
regulatory arbitrage, and suchlike change the nature of intellectual
property.

What form these changes will take, I don't know.

--Tim May

Common Y2K line: "I'm not preparing, but I know where _you_ live."
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.