Comments on: Copyright, Confusion, and Cooperation

By: phaedral

phaedral — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:24:20 +0000

Cooperation Commons is really broad in scope, intending to cover pretty much anything ostensibly relevant to Cooperation per se or issues of “Commons Management”. So topics range from p2p tech to IP to sociological aspects of FOSS.

phaedrals last blog post..Throwing in the towel

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:58:22 +0000

Thanks for the referrals, and a big thanks for the resource … the feed is now in my reader! I’ve just started to think about this “cooperation” approach (though I don’t know if I’m talking about the same thing as the blog you reference … haven’t read enough yet to be sure). I think it could at least be *a* solution or step in the right direction.
I’ve encountered a few of your more radical ideas through your blog. I think extreme arguments can be helpful, in that they point out otherwise unnoticed implications of various positions, so I’m glad you’re there to make them. I hope to learn more from your thoughts.

By: phaedral

phaedral — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:21:35 +0000

Eric,

First, let me mention that I’ve been pointing folks to your “Coyote Teaching” post ever since I found it.

On topic for this post, you might enjoy dropping by a recent post at Cooperation Commons, a project started a couple of years ago by Howard Rheingold and Institute for the Future, from which I’ll quote:

Had I not blown the whistle [an ostensible infringement] might have lived quietly for quite some time and would likely propagate beyond the rights holder’s ability to prevent. My long term purposes would be well served by such propagation and thus perhaps I should have let the matter lie. Yet I felt a duty to the author, a man I never met, for I refer to this work incessantly.

I’ve wrangled with IP issues quite a bit, and my views tend toward the extreme. Maybe we’ll have a chance to get deeper into them.

Cheers,

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:46:40 +0000

Thanks Bill. I think your last point about incentives is correct, but so is the problem you raise: balancing the need to eat against the creativity that free and open sharing can foster.
If you do come up with an answer, I hope you’ll share it with the rest of us!

By: Bill Fitzgerald

Bill Fitzgerald — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:49:32 +0000

Hello, Eric,

FWIW, I’ve been enjoying your writing on this topic for the last several months — you are doing a great job of framing the issues, and approaching them with incredible openness –

RE: “On the other hand, we should also be worried about reducing or eliminating incentives for artists and inventors to create and share their creations.”

Most of the time when people talk about “incentives” we can safely understand that as a euphemism for “money” — and there is some accuracy there, as we all have to eat.

But the level of creativity and sharing that occurs within open source communities flies directly in the face of arguments that say we need to cordon off the commodity that results from creation.

I don’t have an answer here — I wish I did. My personal experience, however, indicates that we need to re-think the meaning of “incentive.”