Re: The Perils of Copyright

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: : My take on it would be that Nova takes copyright very, very seriously. You are : : your media image, and people mainly create information of various kinds - : : hence copyright violations are theft of the worst kind. Using AI it might : : even be possible to scan the net for violations, something that hampers RL : : copyright enforcement. : : Atlantis is another fairly clear case, they have practically no copyright : : or patent system. This is mainly based on various rants I have overheard on : : libertarian forums :-) The idea is that instead of preventing people from : : copying stuff, just come up with new stuff faster so that yesterday's stuff : : is obsolete. : _That_ is going to produce serious trouble between Nova and Atlantis, somewhere : down the line. : Incidentally, with Atlantis having no IP law to speak of, I would expect : Atlantean engineering to employ obfuscation and anti-tampering measures as a : matter of routine. The more time one's competitors have to spend on reverse : engineering one's product, the more time one has to sell that product, and to : improve on it in private. : : I guess New America is somewhere in between. It is an information economy, : : but not as extreme as Nova or as unrestricted as Atlantis. I don't really know : : how intellectual property would be handled there (since it is so much like the : : real world, where I'm also uncertain about how things ought to work). : I'd assume that New America's IP laws are a streamlined version of the current : IP laws, with the present-day controversies resolved sensibly. My guess at : the basic principles would be: : Information is divided into three categories: artwork, instrument, and fact. : Artworks are creative efforts that exist for their own sake; they can be protected : by copyrights, for a period of several decades. After this period expires an : artwork goes into the public domain, and even during the period a "fair use" : proviso allows others to make short excerpts from the artwork without explicit : permission from the copyright holder. : Instruments are creative efforts that exist to serve a purpose, not for their : own sake; they can be protected by patents for a period of several years. An : instrument, like an artwork, goes into the public domain once the patent period : expires, but there is no "fair use" proviso. : Facts are not the result of a creative effort; they are discovered, not invented : or composed. Facts cannot be protected at all; a compilation of facts (as in a : textbook or encyclopedia) can be copyrighted under the same terms as artworks. : For instance, a computer game is an "artwork"; the engine for that game is an : "instrument"; the algorithms used by the engine are "facts". : : Arcadia is rather communitarian. I would imagine a more relaxed but credibility : : based system, a bit like the open source community. You may copy things, but : : pay the shareware fee or at least acknowledge the originator. Otherwise you : : shame yourself and your hive. : : Ridgewell and Dionysos might be something like this too, or a bit more like : : the current system. : Ridgewell, with its "family" mindset, would have laws like Arcadia's, yes. But : Dionysos doesn't seem to have the communal bias needed for that; they would : likely keep our modern system, without the New American refinements. (Unlike : New America, Dionysos hasn't been a peaceful place, and imperfections in IP law : would not have seemed important when graver issues loomed.) : : Gaia and Negsoa doesn't have the problem at all. : Nor would Pi3: society isn't complex enough for the issue to arise. : : : For example, let's assume a Nova citizen travels to another colony, and : : : takes along an AI he owns personally, or one owned by a company he works : : : for. What is the AI's legal status in the various colonies? And what : : : happens to a copy of the AI, if it's created outside the Nova system? : : Exactly. Themis has designs along these lines - when I ran the campaign, it : : bought citizenship on Atlantis and went on to make quite a nice business : : career. But I guess Nova companies would regard it as a foreign pirate version... : : However, this mixes AI rights into the copyright problem too, making it a total : : mess. : True enough. Intuitively, at the start of contact only Nova would have laws : specifically for AIs, since Nova's the only place where AIs exist at all. The : other colonies would probably regard an AI as simply a computer program, and : treat it accordingly. However, this is _very_ likely to change as time passes, : especially on New America and Atlantis where freedom is much valued and slavery : abhorrent. (In the official timeline, it appears, Atlantis began treating AIs : as legal persons, capable of signing contracts, sometime late in 2351.) : : : Or assume a case of technological "theft" between colonies -- someone : : : learns a useful technique on one colony, then goes to another and sets up : : : a business around that technique. Would the inventor be able to assert a : : : legal claim against this person? Could the "thief", contrariwise, lock : : : out any subsequent importers of the technique? : : I think that it depends on what system could be set up to deal with these : : interstellar law matters. This is one of the big things for the Process and : : other groups wanting to influence the human sphere to do - without some kind : : of interstellar law things can quickly get out of hand. : But would the Process see the necessity for it? They are, after all, based from : Atlantis, where IP is non-existent. Writing a latter-day Berne convention and : getting all the colonies to agree to it feels much more like a Columbus Project : enterprise; it's political, not commercial, and the Process seems to focus more : on the commercial. (Witness Promonss, the interstellar currency exchange and : the Process' first major project.) Though obviously, once the negotiations : started, the Process would want to participate...

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