Common as air

What Hacker News says

1. intslackMay 2014
   'Intellectual Property' doesn't exist at all, people just like to group copyright, trademarks and patents into the same term despite the separate, drastically different sets of laws backing them.

   Lewis Hyde's Common As Air is a good read on the framers' original intentions when it came to issues like this, and why our modern system is in violation of their original constitutional mandate. Personally enjoyed it more than his other well known work The Gift.

   On the subject of the article, and as per Bradley Kuhn's analysis[1], it should be noted that the court did not consider the question of fair use in this case and a jury will be able to sit down and consider that can of worms going forward. Not the end of the world, considering.

   [1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/05/10/oracle-google.html

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2. chopsueyarSep 2010
   For those of you interested in the history of intellectual property, copyright, and its "evolving principles", may I suggest the book Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership.

   http://www.amazon.com/Common-Air-Revolution-Art-Ownership/dp...

   Also, since we love hypothetical situations, how about this:

   I create a replication device that can create an identical copy of any physical object.

   Walking down the street, I stop in front of your brand new Lexus and make a copy of the car for myself. I then drive away in the replica.

   Now, did I steal your car? Is that larceny? Or did I violate some other law? What if it was a Model T manufactured in 1908?

   Of course, if new laws need to be created/revised/abrogated to treat IP violations as acts of larceny, clearly the original laws were never intended to equate the two. Otherwise, additional legislation would not be necessary (DMCA, ACTA, etc...)

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3. rpdillonSep 2025
   What a great question! There is no complete answer, but I've been studying this for years. My position often comes off as anti-artist, because folks combine "I want artists to get paid" with "Copyright should be respected": this is a cognitive error: wanting to solve a problem is different than advocating for a particular solution. I'm particularly prone to criticizing solutions that have proven ineffective.

   But to be more substantive: I think copyright laws are woefully out of date. First, the have eaten into the commons to an unhealthy degree. As copyright has been extended further and further, we've introduced a "copyright cliff" where works remain under copyright, but have been abandoned by their owner because the payoff just isn't there to make them available. So the public generally has access to very old works, and very modern works, but there' a big hole in the middle, especially for less popular works. Lewis Hyde discusses some aspects of this in his book "Common as Air".

   https://lewishyde.com/common-as-air/

   In addition to the term of copyright, the way copyright is framed is antiquated - it assumes the presence of physical copies, and a lot of trouble stems from that.

   William Patry was at one point of a lawyer for Google, but is more well known in legal circles for "Patry on Copyright", which Berkeley Law describes as:

   > Patry on copyright provides an encyclopedic analysis of copyright, placing court opinions and statutes in their real-world context. In addition to enumerating a complete legislative and statutory history for relevant provisions, on pertinent litigation issues, a circuit-by-circuit breakdown is provided. The extensive discussion of remedial, jurisdictional, choice of law, and international issues is unparalleled in other legal work.

   Patry wrote another book that I read called "How to Fix Copyright", and he dives into the sort of changes to copyright would help. They are summarized in the book description as:

   > The task of policymakers is to remake our copyright laws to fit our times: our copyright laws, based on the eighteenth century concept of physical copies, gatekeepers, and artificial scarcity, must be replaced with laws based on access not ownership of physical goods, creation by the masses and not by the few, and global rather than regional markets. Patry's view is that of a traditionalist who believes in the goals of copyright but insists that laws must match the times rather than fight against the present and the future.

   https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199760098

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4. igraviousAug 2013
   Very true. Perhaps I should have said that prior to Queen Anne's statute of 1710 there was no robust national legislation? Would that be better. I did mention there was precedent :)

   Really nice video on this _exciting_ topic btw

   Video talk on Hyde’s book, Common as Air:

   http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2011/hyde

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