Thoughts on Intellectual Property

I am an Engineer by training and temperament. Perhaps this is not such a good thing since I am often baffled by the mental machinations of philosophers. Reading some libertarian essays on the subject of Intellectual Property (Schulman and Smith come to mind) I am reminded of the old warning to be careful what you wish for.

I understand the value that creators add to the pool of human knowledge. Even when someone tries to prevent it, new knowledge still becomes part of the structure (or foundation depending whether you take your analogies straight or with soda) of human progress. Any system that does not encourage and reward those with the intelligence and determination to make new discoveries will fall behind quickly in the Darwinian competition between societies. However, any good idea can be carried too far.

Have you ever wondered why the first American military pilots in WW1 flew French made planes (Spad) with Spanish built engines (Hispano-Suiza)? Probably not but if you ever do, look no further than American patent law. Every time an American like Glenn Curtis (an innovative inventor in his own right) brought a new design to fruition, he was sued by the Wright Brothers for patent violations. Even though the Wrights held patents in Europe the courts there were less appreciative of Intellectual Property so European builders went ahead and just made planes.

Ignoring intellectual property concerns put the Europeans well ahead of the US in aviation by 1917. Perhaps the worst thing about all the litigation was how badly it tarnished the the image of the Wright Brothers as heroic pioneers. The lawsuits finally ended when, with the outbreak of WW1, aircraft builders established the Manufacturers' Aircraft Association to coordinate making of warplanes. To accomplish this they formed a patent pool at the prompting of the U.S. government. Royalties were fixed at one percent and free exchange of inventions and ideas took place among all the participants. After the war the litigation was not renewed because Orville Wright-- now without Wilbur who died of typhoid in 1912 -- sold his interest in the Wright Company and retired from the business. Once freed from the specter of endless litigation, the American aviation industry surged ahead of all the foreign competition.

Time and Again

Cathy L.Z. Smith, whom I believe is L. Neil Smith's wife, has a new artice on Intellectual Property entitled Time—Going, Going, Gone. Go there and read it if you're interested.

The Intellectual-is-the-same-as-Real Property arguments have always struck me as kind of silly. Carrying Ms. Smith's argument to a logical conclusion would means the design for the 1911 was stolen from Browning (when the Government expired his patent) and all the clones makers are now profiting from that theft. Seems it would also mean that Smith and Wesson might not have not been able to make their first revolver since Colt owned that Intellectual Property. If so, since S&W owned the IP for the drilled through cylinder, the metallic cartridge might not have replaced the cap and ball.

I don't know offhand who owned (owns?) the IP for the metallic cartridge.

Even Ayn Rand recognized the need for an expiration date on IP. An expiration of IP happens because patents and copyright are not property as we normally think of property but represent a debt owed to the creator by people that copy the invention or book. However, debts are not eternal so patents and copyrights are limited.

I think I'll just leave the Smiths to arguing about angels and pinheads while I head to the range to use my pirated 1911 and immorally obtained S&W revolvers.

Arrrr Matey!

FBI Seal Illegal to Display Without Permission

In what has to be a local maximum of bureacratic stupidity, the FBI is demanding that Wikipedia remove the FBI seal from its site.

 The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has threatened Wikipedia with legal action if the online encyclopedia doesn't remove the FBI's seal from its site.

Read the rest here

Just when I started to think the FedGov could possibly not get any further into the borderlands of insanity they proved that you can't keep a stupid bureaucrat down.

On the advice of Patrick at Popehat I invoke this ancient spell of protection:

Ipso facto. E. pluribus unum. Res gestae divi Augusti. Agricola est bona. Shai Gaba Umbala Shoombala OOM!

And a "Klaatu, barada nikto", Just in case.

Melancholy Mathematics

In a thread over on the Free Keene Forum Bill St Clair comments on the Spider Robinson short story entitled Melancholy Elephants

Interesting Spider Robinson story. But let's do the math. Most popular melodies are only about 8 bars long. Assuming all 8th notes in 4/4, we have 64 notes. It's a rare melody that takes more than two octaves. That's 24 possible pitches in the standard well-tempered scale for each note. But in reality, songs are usually in a major or minor key, so that's 16 possible pitches for each of major and minor. Total 16**24 + 16**24 = 1.6E29. That's a bit less than 3E19 melodies for each of the earth's 6 billion (6E9) souls. That's 30 billion billion songs per soul. Yes, many of those will not be pleasant tunes, but I still think there are enough to last us for at least the expected lifetime of our sun.

(He corrects the obvious error in the above here)

The biggest problem with the above anaysis is I don't have to copy an entire work to commit plagarism but only reconizable parts of it.

Remember the plagarism lawsuit over My Sweet Lord and He's So Fine? (If not here is a quick overview) The suit was based on two musical motifs used together in almost identical ways in both compositions.

A musical motif is a short bit of the entire composition. It may be of any size, and is the shortest subdivision of a theme or phrase that still maintains a recognizable identity.

Think of the first four notes from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

A motif must be at least two notes but there is no maximum length. The longest I can think of offhand is the descending eight-note sequence in Dies irae (Day of wrath), a chant later incorporated into the Catholic requiem mass. There may be longer ones.

If I double eight and use sixteen as a working limit then the total number of possible phrases spanning two octaves on a 12 note scale becomes:

24^2 + 24^3 + ... + 24^16 = 1.968e+19

That is not a small number but no means is it an impossible one. If each note is represented by a single octet on a hard drive, the entire possible phrase space represents about four exabytes -- much less with some basic compression.

If plagarism requires at least two phrases be copied then the total is the above number taken two at a time without duplication but without regard to order (combination) which is calculated by:

1.968e+19*(1.968e+19-1)/2 = 1.937e+38

Still several order of magnitude less than Mr. St. Claire's estimate.