Property
Resources
Consumerism is eating the Future
Minutes
Role property plays, has been for things with a limited supply; evolution of availability of objects: moving away from one individual piece to replications to simulacra, now not even necessarily a physical manifestation of object; we seem to be recreating a scarcity in online environments
Second life, prestige, location to other people, property values
Study on voting for songs, when you couldn’t see what other people liked it balanced out, when you could see random things became popular; arbitrary value being added online, everyone following what they think everyone else likes, how that jars reputation economy
Clump together rather than spreading out as identical individuals, we mod our own works so they’re no longer identical
Not selling digital content any longer, just amassing fans/subscribers; turns it into a reputation
Selling the idea of belonging to a group, not the content of the group; token of participation
Digital library, costing money to give things away for free online
Net Neutrality, you have to be a digital distributor as well as a creator; if you allow unlimited copies to exist then you no longer have to be the server
Versioning, if you don’t have a central distribution center you can’t update all in one go
There needs to be an original somewhere to have version tracking, mixing is great but you need to have an idea of what the original was (public library) in order to relate it to the group; if everything is going to be shared the government needs to support that in some way
Giving credit where credit is due, you don’t annotate and say it’s yours; authorized texts of things
Are you hoping to support yourself or just share things?
Speed of distribution being its own legitimization; how close to the source are you? If you receive something hour even days after release, you can be pretty sure it’s original or close to
The content distribution is up to the record company, the artist wants their music to be heard (live venue, etc), it’s about creating the experience
Has giving things away for free or having that as the assumption devalued the music? Faux music which took hours based off of technical constructions which took months getting just as much attention to an untrained ear
The things you put online are your loss media, then you get popular and move into the old media (people buy to be a part of the group, thousand true fans model)
Online galleries as representation of the work, seeing it IRL is completely different; live versus CD versus MP3
Marketing and PR has always involved free samples; also having something that no one else can do; no matter how many tools you give a person and how many samples you present them with they can’t replicate it
Starting to value the soul of things a little more
Creative works are not necessarily property, not supported by laws of the country nor laws of physics. Atoms and bits need to be treated differently. We treat physical objects differently because of their scarcity; art works are different in that you don’t detract from the original; value is based on supply, as supply approaches infinity, value approaches zero (the original piece as being quite valuable but the replications thereof as losing value – statement about not disvaluing art but as an example of infinite supply)
Reconstructing scarcity online transferring to new tech, if you’re able to give everyone everything they need but we’ve already imposed socioeconomic guidelines (if we have replicators or meat trees or whatever, why would we prevent anybody from having all their basic needs fulfilled, why would we still have castes, etc)
Transposing structures into a game because it’s based on life; it’s fun when it’s a game
People participating in a game are opting into a set of rules; on the Internet the rules are not as standardized, always in flux; counter to scarcity; Net Neutrality trying to impose RL scarcity onto the internet
Games are fun in that you’re overcoming obstacles; socialist games are not fun
Cannot duplicate excellence in mental abilities
Nature of copyright – patents cover physical objects and machines, copyright covers the representation of an idea, not the idea itself (two authors can write on the exact same topic but each can be copyrightable because it’s their representation of that idea). Software is awesome in that it’s the representation of an idea within a machine; also algorithms and code as being seen by the courts as basic mathematics and therefore unpatentable/copyrightable, but any programmer will tell you it’s the representation of an idea
Pouring your heart and soul into something in order for proprietary rights; but if we have islands of information we don’t have a big picture; having the big picture is more valuable; global warming
Patent, copyright, etc; life forms
Difference between intellectual properties
What gains value when you share the information, what just no longer has value for anyone because no one owns it (you can’t improve upon it)
Invasive species and adaptively in plants, narrowing of genetic field
India outlawing patenting plants
By overspecializing you’re killing yourself
Pharmaceutical companies altering natural occurrences in order to be patentable, gives it side effects that it wouldn’t otherwise have; you want to be able to reward people for their work
You can’t generate income if you’re not patenting what’s coming out, difficult to regulate
Values shifted from looking out for people to making money
Copyright is about what economic system we’ve chosen to work within
Prestige motive causing people to hoard scare things, we can now make some things less scarce but can’t eliminate it completely
What things don’t you want the general public to have access to? How do you keep that stuff back to the people that know how to handle it?
Popular decision is not always the most trustworthy, name brands are not necessarily best
Beta Testing the Future
How do you make a living when everything is given to you? What are you going to do when everything is available?
Enabling knowledge and skill, producing knowledge and skill; first in non proprietary way, second as provided in a mass way
If all the technologies we had were distributed we could support everyone right now, but we don’t; we have technologies to be much more efficient and sustainable but they’re in pockets instead of being distributed; inequality in economic system
Any system we do things in exchange for food and a place to live; so if we don’t have artificial scarcity how do we legitimize getting those things?
Who makes the boxes that make everything for us?
Copyright is no longer about holding the rights to distribute something, it can’t work that way in these days; the effort put into the work is what is valued
Open source drugs, how quickly could we come up with cures if we open-sourced science? Who supports sciences if it’s open-sourced? Does the government support it? It does now
What role does the government take in serving the public good? What role does government take in sharing information with the populace?
For the good of society, ideas should be free
If you do things, you should get stuff (within reason)
Bartering cutting out the middle man, copyright being cut out when you give directly to the fans; urban gardening writing books but also giving ideas away for free online, people share seed stock, ideas, supplies IRL, creating alternate economies based on what can the individual bring to the group and being supported
Bringing something to society through force or contribution, building community or taking it down; need some level of regulation to keep the Vikings out
We have the ability to cut down drastically on scarcity but at the same time, but also need carrot v stick; sharing a resource pool that is constantly dwindling
Ithaca Hours interacting with outside economy
Disrupting economy is an easy way to piss off the government: no taxes are going out so who’s paying for your firefighters?
We’re using old school economy for information exchange
Information economy
