Ideas Want to be Shared
Original Article: Ideas Want to be Shared
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I have contrarian ideas on intellectual property. I’ve come to think that the natural home of ideas is in the commons, that they should not be “owned” for very long. My perspective is neither widespread, nor part of current law, nor have I seen it articulated elsewhere, but I think it might be a better alternative, so I am presenting it here.
The default metaphor for intellectual property in modern times is “ownership.” In this model of ownership, all ideas, stories, inventions, characters, product names, techniques are understood to be inherently born as the property of their creator. These thoughts-made-real are seen to be owned by the mind that births them. You think them, you own them. With this status of ownership, intangible creations such as a novel, a musical melody, a plot, a phrase, formula, etc — all things created by a mind — are given a monopoly of rights in order to encourage further creations by the same creator. And to spur others to create. This lawful monopoly — such as copyright, patents, trademarks — protects the creation from being used by others for gain. By current law, this inherent monopolistic ownership is held strongly for long periods of time, ranging from decades to a century, depending on the conceptual type (patents may be 17 years while copyright may exceed lifetimes). This awarded monopoly has a few exceptions for very limited special cases, such as “fair use” and public domain. In these modes anyone can fairly use the invention for their own purposes. Certain restrictions may apply, like if the use might need to be for education, or for parody, or so used in a transformative way, or bettered by the use. These exceptions were to be kept to an absolute minimum in order to maximize the monopoly of the hard working creator. This framing plays into both the modern idea of ownership as the sacred foundation of wealth and prosperity, but it also plays into the idea of creator as a hero, or at least as the bedrock of progress.
I believe this arrangement is misguided. The whole framework should be inverted. Public domain and fair use should be the default, and an IP monopoly should be the exception.
We have tons of evidence today that independent simultaneous invention is the norm for ideas in science and technology and even to a surprising extent in literature and art. Most technical things, often even artistic things, are invented by more than one person, at the same time, independently. In other words if X did not create it, Y will soon afterwards, if he/she has not already invented it before. Further, we now know almost all “new” things are recombinations of old things (a new book is a recombination of pre-existing dictionary words), and even the most inventive creative work is still mostly older ideas, concepts, patterns borrowed from others. Breakthrough ideas are usually made with the addition of one small idea to a mountain of other, older ideas. In that way ideas are really ecosystems. Ideas can not stand alone; they depend on other ideas for their force. Of course there can be a gem of a really original idea in a work but it is deeply entangled in a deep web of old patterns. More importantly, we have a mistakenly romantic notion of how those crucial key ideas arrive. The popular notion is the hero creates the key idea with immense struggle alone, and if it were not for them, this greatness would otherwise never appear. We tend to believe that Einstein’s, or Picasso’s, or Tolkien’s ideas or patterns would have only come to them, but that is incorrect. The evidence shows otherwise ...