Exercising the fundamental human right to invent new things and speaking out against the powers that restrain it.
posted by Jackson Lenford at 9:11 PM
The freedom to create is an essential human right, with us since time immemorial. For most of world history, an individual could invent at will, using any idea that they encountered or that occurred independently to them. Today, this right has been deeply eroded. Right to Create is dedicated to exposing the abuses of patent and copyright systems, demonstrating that limiting the power of the Intellectual Property Regime will result in a better world for inventors, industry, individuals, and society as a whole.
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4 Comments:
Domain names are one of the few natural forms of intelectual property. You are not the controler of unfairpatents.com. If AJ and you have a falling out, he can direct all that use that domain to any site he wishes. What would you do in that situation? Would you try and enforce a trademark? If AJ copied your content, would you try and enforce copyright?
All content at Right to Create is in the public domain. AJ is welcome to copy all of it, modify it, etc. He is welcome to try to use my words against me. Since the content is in the public domain, no strings attached, anyone is welcome to do the same.
AJ is welcome to redirect his domains any way he wants (they are his, after all, aren't they?). I have no trademark on unfairpatents. And I have already relinquished my copyright to the articles posted here. Some might think this leaves me defenseless. On the contrary, I don't see any way for this to cause me harm.
As for domain names being natural forms of property, I don't think I can quite agree -- UCANN arbitration is heavily skewed towards corporate and business ownership or mandatory transference. For example, if you start up a business today called "unfairpatents," I'm sure you wouldn't have much problem hijacking AJ's domains from him, even though he got there first and registered those domains before you ever thought of using the phrase. That doesn't seem very natural to me.
I am the anonymous guy again.
I must say, I like your answer! I did not know that you consider everything here in the public domain, but I believe it is the intellectually honest thing to do. A natural form of trademark, I probably should have said. It is natural only in the sense that law isn't necessary to implement it. Sure, the current guardians of DNS may bend to political will, but we are free to create our own parallel DNS system with better managers. The hard part is convincing the public to use it. We all use the current one because we all use the current one. There is no law that makes this happen. It is a network effect and inertia.
Another natural form of trademark is the digital signature. You could digitally sign your posts without need for copyright. If someone tried to use your words against you by making key modifications, you could show that they are not yours since the signature would not match.
Let me also say, I am a fan of your blog. I have been arguing against patents and copyrights for a while now. Your posts are appreciated.
-Peter
Peter,
Thanks for the comments. Your points about non-legislative ownership are very good, and align nicely with much of what Lawrence Lessig has written on the matter.
Glad you are enjoying the blog!
Regards,
Jackson
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