FYI, "Happy Birthday" was declared to be in the public domain in 2016. Warner/Chappell publishing paid its way out of a class action lawsuit. So, at this point, nobody is getting royalties for singing Happy Birthday. I read it in the Hollywood Reporter, so it must be true.

Copyright, trademarks, and patents do give one an exclusive right, but only for a period of time. For instance, if you write (and publish) the Great American Novel, the copyright on your GAN will last for as long as you live, plus 70 years. After that, it is in the public domain. Copyright can backfire: If, 5 or 10 years after you publish your GAN, it fades away because the publisher decided not to reprint it, you get no more royalties and the public is denied ready access to your book. It's "Out of Print" and hard to find. Tragedy! IF your book could be put up on the internet for free, millions could read your masterwork. You'd still be eating beans and rice, but at least you'd be famous.

The lifetime on patents (like for drugs or gadgets or processes) is quite a bit shorter--17-20 years.

Trademarks apparently work a bit differently. "Scotch Tape" is a registered trademark of the 3M Company (used to be Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing). You can call the roll of cheap crappy tape you bought at the Dollar Store "scotch tape" informally, but you can't sell it as "Scotch Tape™". Zipper lost its trademark status but Kleenex didn't.

if someone were paying a significant sum to license an idea - and can legitimately market those goods, why would they produce bad goods? — karl stone

In the long run, they probably wouldn't -- that's why there are cheap knock-offs. Cheap crappy tape is often "good enough" and one might not want to spend twice as much on the roll of refined Scotch Tape™.

Suppose we didn't live within the capitalist legal system of the western world. Would we still need to protect intellectual property so carefully? I'm in favor of authors having a right to the proceeds of their work at least for their lifetime. I don't think that commercial texts and images should be protected for anywhere close to that long.

Advertising copy and images, for instance, are often quite ingenious, creative, and novel. I enjoy looking at advertising. Somebody deserves credit for creating the Marlboro Cowboy (music, scenery, costume, mustache, the whole package) or the GEICO gecko, and Philip Morris and GEICO would naturally want to have exclusive use of that imagery. But if a different company wants to use a butch cowboy or a clever carnivorous reptile like the gecko, I don't see why they should be blocked in court for copyright infringement.

I ran afoul of copyright law when I was producing extremely limited-run AIDS/HIV prevention messages. Sometimes only 5 copies of the message were made, sometimes maybe 500 were made and given away as part of a safe-sex package. I ruthlessly stole images from books and magazines to create small posters and hand-out packages. I had a budget only for copying materials in house, not for buying expensive images. I wrote my own copy.

All materials created with the use of public funds had to be approved by a committee at state Departments of Health (under the Bush II presidency, and on to the present). These committees tended to be obsessed with copyright and protecting the public's sensitivities. They half-way bought my fair use argument, but they didn't like the wholesale appropriation of published stuff, and they found that my creations were effective and on target but likely to offend public sensitivities. So, I started circumventing the whole approval process which got me into hotter water and eventually I was fired for being a pain in the ass of the management.

Fair use needs to be made a much stronger principle for thieves like me.

A very interesting post, thank you. I should probably work up a list of questions, but at this stage I'm still struggling with the idea. Your practical experience is ample evidence that the question is a complicated one. I'm going to read and think about it some more. But great post. Thanks again.

Okay, I think I know what I think, and I'd like for you to criticize these ideas. If you can. Or just tell me how right I am.

It occurred to me that the trademark question is unambiguous. Trading under someone else's name is fraud, as simple as that.

That so, if we apply it to the copyright question - what if everyone had their own internet ID? The only way to access the internet was via your own ID - and all forms of media were available online, and only online, and were charged directly to your account. That would imply that all sales were primary sales, that returned revenues to media producers - enabling them to produce better quality media at lower prices to consumers.

The other issue is patents - and there I think my instinct is correct. The idea can be patented, but the manufacture, marketing and distribution cannot. Anyone using the idea should pay the person who registers the patent, to license the idea. My reasoning is that, this is a question of rights - and while it is consistent with natural justice, and natural rights - that I get paid for my idea, it's not consistent with natural justice that my rights as inventor, inhibit everyone else's freedom in the whole wide world.

It's the cat's eye guy solution. I think it promotes a meritocracy of ideas negotiated through the market - rather than a system where, Dragons take 99% for 99 cents from some struggling inventor, and take the lion's share of the profit for doing nothing more than plug the idea into pre-exiting production, marketing and distribution chains - or, if the inventor won't sell, deny access to those chains.

So this is my reasoning - take it apart if you can.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they easily could be adopted by anyone.

"Worst idea ever!"
(Comic Book Guy. The Simpsons.)

The idea can be patented, but the manufacture, marketing and distribution cannot — karl stone

I really don't know much about patents, but practice is the reverse, isn't it? -- you can't patent an idea (like toasting bread) but you can patent a novel toaster (it copies DVDs, it makes toast, it hops off the counter to vacuum the floor, and it recycles pet hair into dental floss).

The idea can be patented, but the manufacture, marketing and distribution cannot
— karl stone

I really don't know much about patents, but practice is the reverse, isn't it? -- you can't patent an idea (like toasting bread) but you can patent a novel toaster (it copies DVDs, it makes toast, it hops off the counter to vacuum the floor, and it recycles pet hair into dental floss). — Bitter Crank

Sure. I wasn't suggesting a change to the established doctrine on what can be patented:

"An invention can be patented if it has a useful purpose, has patentable subject matter, is novel, and is non-obvious. The patent could cover a composition, production process, machine, tool, new plant species, or an upgrade to an existing invention. Inventors must meet certain government guidelines to get a patent."

I could not patent the idea of individual internet ID's for example - unless there were some unique coding mechanism, or other such feature. But given that qualification, the argument remains the same. My principle concern is with the justice of the overall arrangement.

what if everyone had their own internet ID? The only way to access the internet was via your own ID - and all forms of media were available online... — karl stone

Printing presses and paper were expensive, there were all sorts of distribution and sales problems. I read the other day that Victorians didn't buy many books; they were too expensive, but they read a lot. What publishers did was sell books to for-profit lending libraries. Readers subscribed to the commercial lending libraries, and the libraries then rented and distributed a given book to many people. Authors quite often wrote under contract to publishers, with the text broken up into 3 volumes (to keep the customer coming back for more). This kept the author and printer in business and kept the readers well supplied.

Cheap books (like penny dreadfuls) were sort of the "True Detective" of their day -- featuring stories about crime, disasters, and so forth. Men liked them and they were bought and traded around. Since they were cheap they wouldn't last too long, thus keeping the market in need of new goods.

The modern book store is relatively recent: Tons of books, affordably priced, sold not borrowed. I don't think it's any earlier than the late 19th or early 20th century. So we grew up during the heyday of the physical bookstore.

Bookstores are now being phased out (more or less) in favor of selling books from a few giant stores (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) Books are often sold and read in digital form.

The digital book is the form your idea of direct, democratic distribution and sale of books by authors to` individuals needs, and it's here. (Of course, not all books are digital).

Just as the "browser" was needed to to help people find things on the net back in the late 1990sxx, probably an automated sales force of some sort would be needed to help connect particular readers with particular titles. Your scheme of individual authors selling their books to individual readers seems to me to be quite workable. But a public relations industry will develop within the model to help achieve more sales, if so desired by a given author.

Some bands have resorted to the direct model: they put their music on their web site for sale at attractive prices, but they make most of their money from touring and ticket sales.

The real problem with intellectual property (patents, copyrights and trademarks) is enforcing them in a global economy and in a digital world where almost anything can be copied, mass produced and distributed through the internet.

My argument is concerned primarily with the justice of the overall arrangement. — karl stone

I don't think there is anything unjust about direct sales between creators and consumers of art work (music, writing, etc.) One could argue (it has been argued) that the present system exploits the author and reader by the printer. The direct sale (author to reader) might be more just; it might also be less efficient because it is too decentralized.

Books don't just sell themselves. Cover art work, recommendations, reviews, ratings, blurbs, sales rank, and so forth all help get the book sold. Marketing books is a legitimate business activity (it's not merely a ripoff) and it helps move the product. Some form of marketing will be done, or most books will never find enough customers to keep the author from starving.

If the major publishers and media producers weren't out there policing their products, I would expect pirating would take over, and the quality of pirate-produced product would be abysmal.

But there must be mechanisms of guaranteeing the validity of given works. (I'm guessing -- are there? Yes? No?)

I don't think there is anything unjust about direct sales between creators and consumers of art work (music, writing, etc.) One could argue (it has been argued) that the present system exploits the author and reader by the printer. The direct sale (author to reader) might be more just; it might also be less efficient because it is too decentralized.

Books don't just sell themselves. Cover art work, recommendations, ratings, blurbs, and so forth all help get the book sold. Marketing books is a legitimate business activity (it's not merely a ripoff) and it helps move the product. Some form of marketing will be done, or most books will never find enough customers to keep the author from starving. — Bitter Crank

My thought was about things like video games, movies and music - which are now so easily reproducible, and available online that the industries are being decimated. Consider CEX - the second hand store, and how there's one primary purchase that benefits the creative talent, then a long line of other sales of the same physical object - at as close to market price as they can get away with, that are of no benefit to the creative talent, and indeed, deny them would be customers. It sucks! Then think about youtube - and the endless amount of music freely available. And movies, and the work of comedians, and so on and on.

All this goes back in turn, to Tim Berners Lee's ostensibly magnanimous gesture - where he gave away his invention - making it freely available. And it's used very freely indeed. Consider the dark web, endless amounts of gratuitous pornography, the dark web selling stolen visas cards, drugs and goodness knows what else.

Individual internet ID is less than ideal - sure, but it's got to be better than all of human knowledge dissolving into the infinite landscape of an open internet.

How about formally produced knowledge disappearing behind the very high priced walls of academic journals? Journals didn't pay for the research to be done, they don't pay the salaries of the researchers, they don't support the universities, so really... what good are they? It seems like a few publishers control a lot of the journals - like Elsevier.

How about formally produced knowledge disappearing behind the very high priced wall of academic journals? Journals didn't pay for the research to be done, they don't pay the salaries of the researchers, they don't support the universities, so really... what good are they? It seems like a few publishers control a lot of the journals - like Elsevier. — Bitter Crank

Is there not an editorial standard worth paying for?

Interesting side note - someone created a post modernist essay generator program, and produced entirely meaningless essays from random words set in a grammatical and syntactic structure (I presume.) The essays were published by the journal. Unsubscribe.

But arguably, is not the expertise required to understand, edit and publish worthwhile articles a skill and deserving of remuneration? Whether it's too high a price, I can't say. Would there not be a fairly limited readership? Lots of questions - when I could have just said, I don't know.

If your research is supported by public funding, does it not seem the results should be available to the public?

But there must be mechanisms of guaranteeing the validity of given works. (I'm guessing -- are there? Yes? No?) — Bitter Crank

Well some works are difficult to reproduce (iPhone knockoffs are lesser quality), original Monet's (good copies but only one original) but books, videos, music and even patented drugs can be copied faithfully and enforcing US patent or copyright laws in say China or India (good luck).

If your research is supported by public funding, does it not seem the results should be available to the public? — prothero

Sounds reasonable. In relation to my suggestion that ideas* should be licensed and not confer exclusive rights to manufacture, marketing and distribution - would not researchers want their ideas to be open source - in order to sell licenses to produce?

*Not actually ideas, but a composition, production process, machine, tool, new plant species, etc.

Not actually ideas, but a composition, production process, machine, tool, new plant species, etc. — karl stone

As pointed out you don't really patent "ideas" you patent products, and there are a thousand "ideas" for every patentable product based on an "idea" and even fewer that get to market a fraction of which are a economic success.