quick pondering on artificial scarcity

Posted on by Luis Villa

This deserves to be developed more fully, but perhaps the thread that ties together my irritation with the MS-Novell deal, my irritation with the Mozilla TM licensing, and what worries me about the push against copylefted DB data, is the creation of (or in the DB case, allows the creation of) artificial scarcity. I’m OK with charging for things that really are scarce- cars, service, etc., but creating artificial scarcity, either through the use of patents, copyrights, or trademarks, or by allowing others to use trade secret and SaaS tactics to take data from the commons and then proprietarize it, seems problematic.

(This is hardly an original thought; I just wanted to get it out and searchable later, since I’m wrestling with the trademark demon again.)

Published by Luis Villa

15 thoughts on “quick pondering on artificial scarcity”

  1. Luis Villa has left a placeholder for a larger discussion on artificial scarcity. Luis has a problem with… creating artificial scarcity, either through the use of patents, copyrights, or trademarks, or by allowing others to use trade secret and SaaS tactics to take data from the

  2. All private property in ideas (i.e., all IP) serves to create artificial scarcity. The only way to really fix artificial scarcity in ideas is to abolish IP.

    There are ways to support the creation of goods that do not involve scarcity (e.g., prize funds, service based models, certain blanket compulsaries) that avoid this issue but it’s not clear to me that they are really IP policy any more — even if copyright is the hook that makes them work.

  3. The only way to really fix artificial scarcity in ideas is to abolish IP.

    As long as by ‘abolish IP’ you include ‘compulsory publication of trade secrets’, then yes, I agree. This is the aspect of the anti-copyleft-for-DB problem that bothers me- merely disclaiming copyright in DBs still allows the databases to be appropriated, enhanced, and provided in chunks to the public from behind a trade secrets/contract wall. Until that sort of thing is impossible, it seems naive to pretend that disclaiming a protectable copyleft actually enhances the commons in any way.

  4. If you mean compulsary publication when someone else asks for the cost of doing so then I think that makes sense.

    Keeping something secret that nobody wants to know doesn’t really imply artificial scarcity to me. It’s only when you exert effort and resources to keeping a secret secret that I think it makes sense to talk about artificial scarcity.

    I think it’s very useful to talk about artificial scarcity because it has strong negative connotations. It puts the burden of justification on those that would act to create it — a necessary first step to any sane IP policy (IMHO).

  5. I should have though more and batched my messages. Sorry to spam your blog with lots of little disconnected things.

    I haven’t thought enough to have a strong position on the DB directive stuff. In a principled sense, I think we are in complete agreement. In the email you link to, I was speaking about tactics.

    Arguing for a strong copyleft by arguing for strong copyleft may put us at a net loss in terms of freedom. We need to consider this potential and weight it against the benefits we think we’ll achieve. We might, for example, be able to make very strong copyleft for novel interfaces in GNOME by arguing for interface IP (copyright?). Apple attempted to do just this in the past. I think it would have been a mistake to join their side because the result will be a net loss of freedom for software designers and users.

    If we’re fighting on the side or arguing for a plan created by people who want to restrict freedoms in ways that we find dystopic, we need to think hard about what the effect of those actions will be.

    I don’t claim to know enough about any of the particulars in the DB directive. My only claim the email you linked to was that John Wilbanks, who knows quite a bit and is *definitely* on our side, seemed to have used the logic I described (more an ecosystem view) to come to a very different conclusion than Rufus (who seems to be reacting against particular imagined cases of enclosure).

    I have no opinion about this issue in question yet. I do have a strong opinion on how the decision should be made in our community: strategically.

  6. Privacy is a natural and ethical enclosure.

    Copyright is an unnatural, and unethical enclosure of the public domain.

    Copyright is unethical. Copyleft nullifies copyright. Copyleft doesn’t make copyright ethical, it removes its unethical privilege.

    Please don’t get carried away and create copyfarleft that punches a hole into the private domain.

    The fact that copyright polices the private domain does not demonstrate that policing the private domain is actually ethical in the first place.

    Hesitate before you cross that threshold.

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