In 1860, pro-slavery apologist Edmund Ruffin forcefully argued in support of a proposition: “[T]he greater profits of slaves as property, compared to other investments for industrial operations.”
I’ve no doubt that IG Farben functionaries, touring their shiny new Buna Works complex in 1942 occupied Poland, quelled any twinges of conscience with an identical observation respecting the use of Jewish slave labor from nearby Auschwitz.
Has humanity morally evolved since the US Civil War? Since the Holocaust? If oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States in Bowman v. Monsanto is any indicator, well, no.
“Without the ability to limit reproduction of soybeans containing this patented trait [resistance to a particular pesticide],” says IG Farb … er, Monsanto … attorney Seth P. Waxman, “Monsanto could not have commercialized its invention, and never would have produced what is, by now, the most popular agricultural technology in America …”
Chief Justice Edmund Ruf … er, John G. Roberts … seemingly agrees: “Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?”
Like Ruffin and IG Farben, Roberts and Monsanto argue the issue without reference to its moral dimension.
I willingly stipulate to the truth of Monsanto’s claim that its profits would be greatly enhanced were the state to grant it ownership and control of Vernon Bowman’s farm, of Vernon Bowman’s crops, and of Vernon Bowman himself (and for that matter of every farm and farmer on God’s green earth). That’s exactly what Monsanto is asking the state to do, on the basis of precisely that argument.
Keep one thing firmly in focus here: Vernon Bowman had no contractual obligation whatsoever to Monsanto with respect to the seeds he purchased, planted, and saved the progeny of in this case. He’d previously bought other seeds under contracts forbidding such use, and he’d honored those contracts, but these particular seeds were not so encumbered.
If those past contracts cloud the issue for you, keep in mind that this case reprises the Canadian Supreme Court’s 2004 award of “license fees” to Monsanto at the expense of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser, for reproducing seed bearing “their” patented gene — seed which had come into his possession via natural cross-farm contamination (wind and pollen happen, folks).
Monsanto’s entire case against Vernon Bowman — as with Percy Schmeiser — is that their profits will be negatively affected if they’e not empowered to dictate what Vernon Bowman does on his own land and with his own stuff. The relief they’re requesting is that the state should therefore so empower them.
This is not a case of a “bad” or “over-broad” or “improperly applied” patent. By its very nature, “intellectual property” always represents an assertion on the part of one person of ownership title to the minds, bodies and property of others.
Whether it’s Monsanto’s genetic “patent” claim, or the “copyright” demand of a novelist that once he’s strung some words together in a certain order nobody else may do likewise without coughing up, or Ron Paul’s plea to the United Nations to seize an Internet domain name he wants, “intellectual property” is, simply put, an attempt to turn the world into one big antebellum plantation, with the state as indispensable overseer.
Fortunately, most variants of the fiction of “intellectual property” are quickly falling apart under the pressure of advanced copying and sharing technologies, and the state as we know it is on its last legs too. Neither will be missed.
Translations for this article:
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, “Intellectual Property”: This Land was Made for You an … er, for Monsanto, Before It’s News, 02/21/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, Monsanto vs. Vernon Bowman’s Farm, Counterpunch, 02/22/13
I guess any original idea or derivative of my mind is not mine. Why do they call it MY idea or YOUR idea? I think a persons original ideas and innovations are owned by him. I think taking a persons intangible innovations without his permission is stealing.
1) I guess any original idea or derivative of my mind is not mine.
Actually, it is — until you decide to make it everyone else's too by making it copyable.
2) I think taking a persons intangible innovations without his permission is stealing.
And I think that if I have an idea and you copy it, I still have it.
I just think there is something cheesey about taking someone's idea and telling everybody it's yours. I guess some people are okay with it. Another thing that bothers me is that Kinsella is a lawyer. I'm always weary of people who spend years studying man made laws and will argue those laws for their client right or wrong.
By disclosing my original innovation I don't expect moral people to take it and claim it is their own. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I think that stealing people's innovations and making them your "own" is not only uncool, it discourages innovators from disclosing and that is a bad deal for human progress. It's like your saying ha ha ha I got your new innovation and I am going to tell everyone it's mine. If you think that's a good thing I feel sorry for you.
Copying an idea isn't taking an idea. The person you copied it from still has it.
"I think that stealing people's innovations"
That's just begging the question.
If you come up with — for example — a better way to pick beans, you have a better way to pick beans.
If I copy your way of picking beans, you still have that better way of picking beans.
I didn't steal anything from you at all.
On the other hand, if you propose to stop me from copying your better way of picking beans, you are claiming a right to enslave me and to dictate what I do and how I do it.
I think that's a lot more "uncool," as you put it, than copying your idea is.
Protecting my.idea from being stolen by you is enslaving you? …Now that is rich!
"Protecting my.idea from being stolen by you is enslaving you?"
You don't have to protect your idea from being stolen by me or by anyone else, because it's impossible to steal an idea from you. No matter how many people copy it, you still have it. It didn't go anywhere. It's right there, and you still have full use of it.
What you don't have is legitimate ownership of anyone else's mind, body or stuff, which is what you're trying to claim with this absurd fairy tale of people "stealing your ideas."
Chuck, you had the idea to make this type of argument for intellectual property. Suppose I like your argument, and make the same basic argument in another comment section. Have I stolen from you?
I understand what you're saying. You can't ask everybody for permission to use their ideas. That would not only be absurd, it would be impossible. I don't know where to draw the line but I would hate to discourage great innovators from disclosing because they didn't get credit for their ideas. The world would be much more primitive without the innovations of people like Newton, Tesla, Maxwell, etc. Can you encourage innovation if the innovator knows he will not get credit for his work?
There seems to be a huge difference between one being able to "get credit for his work" (by this I assume you mean recognition and such) and the state of affairs that IP actually creates.
We can use the Monsanto seed example to as an illustration. Some researcher and team, no doubt, spent a fair amount of time developing the technique to alter the seeds' genes to make them resistant to the herbicide. In order for he and his team to "get credit" for the work, all that needs to be done is to have the research submitted to various science journals for publication. (I don't know any particular details in this regard; this may have in fact been done). He and they would get credit and recognition for being the first ones to develop that technique to that particular plant species. IP doesn't add anything to that particular process. That is of course unless you're referring to a different notion of "getting credit."
What IP does in the real world is create scarcity where none exists. This in turn enables the holders of IP rights (usually giant corporations) to generate profits higher than would be possible had they been exposed to market competition. Call me cynical, but in my mind, IP is nothing but a giant exercise in rent-seeking.
If copying is stealing and harms the originator of creativity then look at the open source movement in software: a culture founded on the idea "contribute and hope as many people copy you as possible". Does the open source movement recognize and appreciate those programmers who have good, original ideas?
If you are in the can originate good (beneficial to people in some way) ideas (code, music, painting, conclusions, etc) you have far more power in an IP-free environment than in a state-protected system of IP laws.
1. The majority of people doing the copying want an environment in which the authenticity of the source is secure. Folks after "the real thing" (original art, software/drugs from a safe source, etc) are better off when "knock-offs" can freely pose as copies. People will gladly pay for authenticity where they feel it matters and eagerly accept duplicates elsewhere.
2. Copying/mirroring is a virtue, not a vice. Spreading and sharing good ideas isn't as good as being able to originate them, but it is certainly NOT a crime. Yes, means inventors can "lose" sells to potential customers (e.g. went to competitor, did it themself, got a copy, wouldn't have bought anyway). But creating artificial scarcity through IP law only makes criminals out of your customers and peers, inflicting real penalties in response to imagined losses.
3. Copying is neither inherently fraudulent nor is it deceptive. These are completely separate issues that can be dealt with independently of IP.
Lastly, I've never heard a coherent definition the natural scope of IP. I'd sure like to invent and patent a special way of hugging people that makes them feel less troll-ish. That way I can charge $500 per hug and hire a few nice people for $50/hr to do the hugging for me. I should be able to live on the difference and still afford a lawyer to litigate against unauthorized hugs, rogue employees who steal and sell my secret, and issue DCMA take-down notices to websites (and their webhost) that link PDFs of my hugging handbook.
Your problem is getting some one to pay $500 for the hug.
Well, there are really people who steal ideas. They just have the nerve to call them theirs although it wasn’t theirs at all, and I really do not know how they could do such. What a shame.
My recent post Adams, Stepner Attorneys Win Important Sovereign Immunity Issue
"it discourages innovators from disclosing and that is a bad deal for human progress."
That's EXACTLY what IP is doing. IPS HAMPERS progress. IP FORBIDS people to improve ideas which it says has already been "owned" by monopolists. If improvements of existing ideas are not progress to you, I wonder how ye'd use double-speak to redefine progress.
Moreover, a plagiarist can easily fraudulently claim that an idea thought out by somebody else to be his, as long as he gets to the copyright office quicklier than the original thinker. Then the plagiarist has the state enforce copyright the idea, & prevent many others (including the original thinker) to even use & improve the idea to compete with the plagiarist-turned-monopolist. Real-world example: Stephane Picq, who has thought of 13 great ways to string sounds together, resulting the soundtrack album "Spice Opera," was forbidden by EMI, the copyright holder, to re-release the album.
"Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?"
Are those seeds pinnacles of improvement? Can't they be further improved by others who actively built on the original idea? In this case intellectual monopoly clearly hinders progress.
Plagiarists don't "steal" ideas. They don't give credits to the original discoverers of those ideas that they imitate.
Your problem is getting someone to pay grossly high amounts of money for junk drugs.
Jonny: "inventors can "lose" sells to potential customers." Those sales don't belong the inventors. Moreover, sale is just too abstract a noun to lose. A better way to express that will be: The inventors will make less money when there exist competitors who will use their own property to produce things similar to (or even better than) what had been invented by the inventors, then when the inventors can establish a monopoly to sell those things and charge grossly high price for them.