Ethics and Law in New Media - Week 7

Task:
Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book. Write a blog review (especially, comment on his strategies for change).

In his article "Against Intellectual Property" Brian Martin discusses the arguments against the laws, which are meant to protect intellectual property. He criticizes the concepts of patents and copyrights and finds them retarding innovation. Martin brought out an example, that companies tend to collect or buy patents on ideas connected to their fields to prevent competitors from applying their ideas. Therefore it means that when they don't develop the idea no one can. In Estonian there is a saying "Ise ei taha, teistele ka ei anna" (Doesn't want it and don't want others to have it either). Ok, maybe they do want it but are actually not as competent to get the best out of the idea or maybe it could be done better collectively.

Martin brings out some means to fight against the intellectual property. He suggests the next strategies for change:

Change thinking - intellectual property becomes undermined
Expose the costs - show how much do the companies dealing with intellectual property really own compared to the original authors
Reproduce protected works - piracy, actually similar to stealing therefore not so recommended
Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property - boycotting using of protected intellectual property, which in conclusion loses its value
Promote non-owned information - use and promote freeware
Develop principles to deal with credit for intellectual work - find a way to give credit to the authors of intellectual work.

I believe that there is a human characteristic, which is one of the reasons why people tend to keep their intellectual property to themselves so that only they can get credit for it. That is envy. They are not willing to let someone else take credit from their ideas and are generally suspicious. The copyright or patent gives them a kind of security, that it is something that they have come up with and if someone tries t steal it, they get punished or have to pay. Martin's last strategy of change would improve this situation. People want to be granted credit for their ideas.

Reproducing protected works and exposing costs is a kind of blind revenge, which is probably not a good solution. Boycotting protected works to some extent could be a solution but in general it seems kind of childish. I believe in motivation and positive feedback rather than punishment.

Therefore I would say that the most influential solutions are motivating authors with credit and promoting non-protected works. If people feel that they are socially more accepted if they share their ideas with others and create collectively new value for their ideas, they do not feel the need to protect their works so much. This is of course an ideal world which assumes that everyone is good, honest and smart enough not to let take an advantage of themselves.