1. Intellectual Property

2. What Is Intellectual Property?
Intellectual property: any unique product of the human intellect that has commercial value
Books, songs, movies
Paintings, drawings
Inventions, chemical formulas, computer programs
Intellectual property ≠ physical manifestation
Does right to own property extend to intellectual property?

3. Information Technology Changing Intellectual Property Landscape
Value of intellectual properties much greater than value of media
Creating first copy is costly
Duplicates cost almost nothing
Illegal copying pervasive
Internet allows copies to spread quickly and widely
In light of advances in information technology, how should we treat intellectual property?

4. Property Rights Locke: The Second Treatise of Government
People have a right…
to property in their own person
to their own labor
to things which they remove from Nature through their labor
As long as…
nobody claims more property than they can use
after someone removes something from common state, there is plenty left over

5. Locke’s Notion of Property Rights

6. Expanding the Argument to Intellectual Property
Writing a play akin to making a belt buckle
Belt buckle
Mine ore
Smelt it down
Cast it
Writing a play
“Mine” words from English language
“Smelt” them into prose
“Cast” them into a complete play

7. Analogy Is Imperfect
Ben Jonson, walker Art Library/Alamy; Shakespeare, Classic Image/Alamy
If Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare simultaneously write down Hamlet, who owns it?
If Ben “steals” the play from Will, both have it
These paradoxes weaken the argument for a natural right to intellectual property

8. What are the benefits and harm to society that comes from IP protection
Encourage people to produce work. Professionals create better quality work, often.
Increases income disparity, prevents creativity. E.g. disney movies made from non-protected work. Now, no-one can build on that.
Wrongly granted ownership of IP, such as with hastily granted patents.

9. Benefits of Intellectual Property Protection
Some people are altruistic; some are not
Allure of wealth can be an incentive for speculative work
Authors of U.S. Constitution recognized benefits to limited intellectual property protection

10. Limits to Intellectual Property Protection
Giving creators rights to their inventions stimulates creativity
Society benefits most when inventions in public domain
Congress has struck compromise by giving authors and inventors rights for a limited time

11. Kinds of IP Protection Trade Secrets Copyrights Patents
Digital Rights Management

12. Trademark, Service Mark
Trademark: Identifies goods
Service mark: Identifies services
Company can establish a “brand name”
Does not expire
If brand name becomes common noun, trademark may be lost
Companies advertise to protect their trademarks
Companies also protect trademarks by contacting those who misuse them

13. Screenshot by Xerox. Copyright © 2012 by Xerox Corporation
Screenshot by Xerox. Copyright © 2012 by Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

14. Patent
A public document that provides detailed description of invention
Provides owner with exclusive right to the invention
Owner can prevent others from making, using, or selling invention for 20 years

15. Copyright Provides owner of an original work five rights
Reproduction
Distribution
Public display
Public performance
Production of derivative works
Copyright-related industries represent 6% of U.S. gross domestic product (> $900 billion/yr)
Copyright protection has expanded greatly since 1790

16. Benefits and harm to society that come from IP protection
Open Source vs. protected IP
Productivity and creativity enhanced through IP protection?
Creativity coming from sharing
Increase or lower prosperity and income disparity?

17. Lawrence Lessig on Copyright
(Better video to watch than the others.)

18. Copyrighting
Without copyright protection, innovation would die in the digital age.
Innovation will never die, as it is part of the human spirit. Money is not needed as an incentive.
Other

19. Natural right to property
John Locke ( )
Property in their own person
Right to their own labor
Right to resources removed from nature through their own labor.
Quinn, page 163

20. Does this qualify as my natural right?
Tree in a forest
Wood cut from a forest
Corn grown by me
Corn grown by my employee
1, 2, 3, 4
2, 3, 4
2, 3
3, 4

21. Intellectual property
Product of human intellect that has commercial value.
Music is IP, not the sheet on which it is printed.

22. Protecting IP Trade secrets – example? Trademark – example?
Patent – example?
Copyright – example?
Coke formula; BandAid, Xerox; GMO seeds, fuel injection; Harry Potter characters;
My patents:

23. P2P (peer to peer) and sharing
Napster – 1st kind
Central server has list of people (clients) who have movies, songs etc. List consulted by clients seeking to download.
Grokster – 2nd kind
No central directory
BitTorrent – 3rd kind
No central directory, and file chopped up into pieces, because
Blown page 202;

24. Napter and FastTrack From Quinn, Chapter 4.
Comparison ofthe Napster and FastTrack implementations ofpeer-to-peer file
sharing. (a) In Napster, a central server maintains the index of all files available for sharing.
Retrieving a file is a three-step process: (1) making the request to the central server, (2) establishing a peer-to-peer connection between the sending and receiving computers, and (3) transferring the file. (b) In FastTrack, the index of available files is distributed among many “supernodes.” Each supernode has information about files available for sharing on “nearby” computers. Different users connect with different supernodes.

25. Traditional Client-Server
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.

26. Traditional Client-Server
Is the house liable for copyright infringement?
A: YES
B: NO
C: Depends
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.

27. Napster style peer-to-peer
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.

28. Napster style peer-to-peer
Is the booth liable for copyright infringement?
A: YES
B: NO
C: Depends
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.
Napster holds a directory of who has what. They are facilitating copyright infringement, so courts found them liable.

29. Grokster style peer-to-peer
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.
No centralized server or directory. But Grokster still liable.

30. Grokster style peer-to-peer
Is anyone liable for copyright infringement?
A: YES
B: NO
C: Depends
From Blown to Bits, Chapter 6.
No centralized server or directory. But Grokster still liable.

31. Napster The service operated between June 1999 and July 2001.
Its technology allowed people to easily share their MP3 files with other participants.
Original service was shut down by court order.
This time signifies the end of the album era, with multiple songs in 1 album.
Individual songs downloaded through Napster.

32. Grokster Ltd.
Was a privately owned software company based in Nevis, West Indies that created the Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing client in.
Rendered extinct in late 2005 by the United States Supreme Court's decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.
The court ruled against Grokster's peer-to-peer file sharing program for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, effectively forcing the company to cease operations.

33. RIAA Recording industry artists association
Searches for computers offering upload of copyrighted material
Gets IP address from computer
Subpoena to ISP asking for real name behind the IP address
Sends notice of infringement and settlement offer to IP address user

34. Fair use Better if Educational Non-fiction Published Excerpts only
Out of print (effect of copying on sales)

35. Clicker
Professor copies journal articles and makes them available for students, with a password.
Fair use or not?
YES NO

36. Clicker
Art teacher copies pictures from art book and makes slides to show to her class. Fair use or not?
YES NO

37. Google Books
Google, in digitizing materials from libraries around the world, created an archive that includes many books still covered by copyright.
Many (most?) books are searchable
Those out of copyright are fully readable
Snippets of copyrighted books are shown with search terms in context

38. Authors Guild v. Google
Author’s Guild says, “Google’s copying and storing in its own database is not Fair Use.”
Google says, “Is too!”

39. Fair use? Educational, or commercial Non-fiction, or art, fiction etc.
Published, or not published
Excerpts only, or the whole thing
No effect of copying on sales, or reduces sales/profit
Answer A for Yes, B for NO for each
Google is winning as of Nov. 2013
Ted talk on Youtube Copyright

40. IP wars
“rich countries often impose unjust laws on poor countries to squeeze money out of them. Some of these laws are “intellectual property” laws, …”
India is likely to drag the US to World Trade Organisation (WTO) if America includes it in the 'Priority Foreign Country' list for intellectual property rights, a development that could further escalate trade tensions between the two. – Feb 24, 2014
Quote from Richard Stallman

41. Digital Rights Management
Schemes to control executing, viewing, copying, printing and altering of works or devices.
May use digital encryption, or locking.

42. Digital Rights Management
Pros
Cons
Controls copyright protected work
Not effective – repeated examples of people breaking it
Inconveniences people
Prevents legitimate copying, as for backup, format changing for disabled etc.
Could make works inaccessible if DRM scheme changes or service discontinued.

43. Info Wars In 1999 … DVDs were scrambled with CSS
Windows PC’s and MACs had licensed CSS software to decrypt DVDs.
Linux Operating System computers did not.
Jon Johansen, 16 years old in 1999, cracks the CSS software with DeCSS.
2066 Magazine gets successfully sued for publishing the software
Software is not protected under free speech
They are encouraging copyright violation
Jon Johansen gets off free
Page 186 of quinn

44. DRM vs. hard protection – bits vs. atoms
You may legally tell people in a publication how to pick a lock.
You may not legally tell people in a publication how to break DRM.

45. DRM – how content providers control it
If a DVD player has a decrypter for the CSS scrambling system used in DRM’s, they have to abide by movie producers’ rules to avoid being accused of circumventing DRM.
Have to abide by ‘region coding’.
E.g. North American DVD players cannot play DVD purchased in Asia.

46. Copyright or not, DRM or not
Pro people say
Protection keeps creative content production alive
Con people say
Protection stifles technological innovation

47. Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/
Way to create a blurb about who may or may not use copyrighted works, and how they may use it.

48. 4.7 Protections for Software

49. Software Copyrights Copyright protection began 1964
What gets copyrighted?
Expression of idea, not idea itself
Object program, not source program
Companies treat source code as a trade secret

50. Violations of Software Copyrights
Copying a program to give or sell to someone else
Preloading a program onto the hard disk of a computer being sold
Distributing a program over the Internet

51. Important Court Cases Apple Computer v. Franklin Computer
Established that object programs are copyrightable
Sega v. Accolate
Established that disassembling object code to determine technical specifications is fair use

52. Software Patents (1/3)
Until 1981, Patent Office refused to grant software patents
Saw programs as mathematical algorithms, not processes or machines
U.S. Supreme Court decision led to first software patent in 1981
Further court rulings led to patents being granted for wider range of software

53. Software Patents (2/3) Thousands of software patents now exist
Microsoft files ~3,000 applications annually
Licensing patents a source of revenue
Secondary market for software patents
Patent trolls: Companies that specialize in buying patents and enforcing patent rights
Companies would rather settle out of court than spend time and money going to trial
RIM didn’t settle quickly; ended up paying $612 million

54. Software Patents (3/3) Critics say too many patents have been issued
Patent Office doesn’t know about prior art, so it issues bad software patents
Obvious inventions get patents
Companies with new products fear getting sued for patent infringement
Build stockpiles of patents as defense mechanism
Software patents used as legal weapons
Bezos: software patents should expire in 3-5 years

55. Safe Software Development
Reverse engineering okay
Companies must protect against unconscious copying
Solution: “clean room” software development strategy
Team 1 analyzes competitor’s program and writes specification
Team 2 uses specification to develop software

56. 4.8 Open-Source Software

57. Consequences of Proprietary Software
Increasingly harsh measures being taken to enforce copyrights
Copyrights are not serving their purpose of promoting progress
It is wrong to allow someone to “own” a piece of intellectual property

58. Open-Source Definition
No restrictions preventing others from selling or giving away software
Source code included in distribution
No restrictions preventing others from modifying source code
No restrictions regarding how people can use software
Same rights apply to everyone receiving redistributions of the software (copyleft)

59. Beneficial Consequences of Open-Source Software
Gives everyone opportunity to improve program
New versions of programs appear more frequently
Eliminates tension between obeying law and helping others
Programs belong to entire community
Shifts focus from manufacturing to service

60. Examples of Open-Source Software
BIND
Apache
Sendmail
Android operating system for smartphones
Firefox
OpenOffice.org
Perl, Python, Ruby, TCL/TK, PHP, Zope
GNU compilers for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada

61. Screenshot from OpenOffice
Screenshot from OpenOffice.org, a registered trademark of Apache Software Foundation. Copyright © 2012 by Apache Software Foundation. Reprinted with permission.

62. GNU Project and Linux GNU Project Linux
Begun by Richard Stallman in 1984
Goal: Develop open-source, Unix-like operating system
Most components developed in late 1980s
Linux
Linus Torvalds wrote Unix-like kernel in 1991
Combined with GNU components to make an O.S.
Commonly called Linux

63. Impact of Open-Source Software
Linux putting pressure on companies selling proprietary versions of Unix
Linux putting pressure on Microsoft and Apple desktops

64. Crititique of the Open-Source Software Movement
Without critical mass of developers, quality can be poor
Without an “owner,” incompatible versions may arise
Relatively weak graphical user interface
Poor mechanism for stimulating innovation (no companies will spend billions on new programs)

65. 4.9 Legitimacy of Intellectual Property Protection for Software

66. Do We Have the Right System in Place?
Software licenses typically prevent you from making copies of software to sell or give away
Software licenses are legal agreements
Not discussing morality of breaking the law
Discussing whether society should give intellectual property protection to software

67. Rights-based Analysis
“Just deserts” argument
Programming is hard work that only a few can do
Programmers should be rewarded for their labor
They ought to be able to own their programs
Criticism of “just deserts” argument
Why does labor imply ownership?
Can imagine a just society in which all labor went to common good
Intellectual property not like physical property

68. A Consequentialist Argument Why Software Copying Is Bad
Beth Anderson

69. Utilitarian Analysis Argument against copying
Copying software reduces software purchases…
Leading to less income for software makers…
Leading to lower production of new software…
Leading to fewer benefits to society
Each of these claims can be debated
Not all who get free copies can afford to buy software
Open-source movement demonstrates many people are willing to donate their software-writing skills
Hardware industry wants to stimulate software industry
Difficult to quantify how much society would be harmed if certain software packages not released

70. Conclusion Natural rights argument weak
Utilitarian argument not strong, either
Nevertheless, society has granted copyright protection to owners of computer programs
Breaking the law is wrong unless there is a strong overriding moral obligation or consequence

71. 4.10 Creative Commons

72. Streamlining Creative Re-use
Under current copyright law, eligible works are copyrighted the moment they are created
No copyright notice does not mean it’s okay to copy
Must contact people before using work
That slows down creative re-use
Free Creative Commons license indicates
Which kinds of copying are okay
Which rights are being retained
Flickr and Magnatune two well-known sites using Creative Commons licenses

73. Screenshot from Creative Commons. Copyright © 2011 by Creative Commons
Screenshot from Creative Commons. Copyright © 2011 by Creative Commons. Reprinted with permission.

74. Is Fan Fiction legal?
Disclaimer: If I owned Star Wars, Jar Jar Binks wouldn't exist.
From a Harry Potter fic: "Jo owns the characters, the plot, and my soul. I own only the spaces in between."
Does fanfic make the copyright owners lose revenue?
Quotes from: