IP is a thought crime: Joren De Wachter at TEDxLeuven

[@DJMartin68]

Wow. Great speech. Joren succinctly captures the paradox of intellectual property protection. This is an issue I have struggled with for several years but have come to the conclusion that patent and copyright law have gone too far towards protecting corporate monopolies. The result of this is to restrict innovation which limits growth and improvements to standards of living.

[@aenunnajib2764]

it's amazing that in discussing videos we came to know about the ubiquitous fallacies of intellectual property theory.

[@GinaSmith]

Great talk, Joren de Wachter!

[@JorenDeWachter]

More invitations to talk about this (and other aspects of IP) have been coming in. Great!

[@dharathakore8496]

Very helpful. I hope there is no copyright for this and I may freely use the analogies cited here :)

[@pietermoonen]

Welke aanwinst deze vertalingen van het interessante TED !!!

[@Dodginbulletzz]

Neat introduction

[@markrpope3]

Copyright laws and patent laws are as different as night and day, Why limit to that? Trademarks are IP. Why not attack them too? He contradicts things he just stated. Patents last about 18 years. Copyrights last about 95 years or more.

[@MarioFleurinck]

Great talk Joren! Very inspiring!

[@EltonJThe]

I think that only applies to actually STEALING a rivalrous good or product, instead of taking an idea and innovating with it.

[@Craig6844]

that was the original idea of the law but in last hundred years companies have lobbied politicians with campaign funds to change the law so that instead of just protecting the product so that a company can make back its development costs it now provides a legal monopoly on that product forever. its one of the reasons a corporation is now legally considered a person. because once a person dies his legal patent go bye bye. but a corporation is immortal. that is why 70 years later disney has IP rights on stories of fairy tales told for the last 500 years. so why should those stories listened to by kids in the middle ages be free to use but not disney's stories which he modified from them not be free to use now. in a few year a century will have passed and most of those movies have become a part of our culture that only disney corp has a right to profit from.

[@cnlicnli]

In the US, creative works that are intentionally *"pirated"* (software is a good example) can be subject to both criminal actions and fines. However, the VAST majority of all US copyright infringement disputes are CIVIL actions (torts), where the infringer (defendant) is liable for monetary damages (and attorney fees & legal costs). *To be fair, Joren De Wachter should have disclosed this important distinction during his presentation.* “Happy Birthday to You” entered the US Public Domain in 2016. Prior to that time, if a particular restaurant sang Happy Birthday to its customers without obtaining a public performance license, the restaurant would only be subject to a civil lawsuit -- US federal prosecutors would NOT waste their limited resources to pursue these low-dollar, non-criminal copyright infringements.

[@nicktaylor5264]

And other nitpickery

[@cnlicnli]

@@nicktaylor5264 Nitpicking: Yes, absolutely! Pointing out facts left out from the presentation.

[@nicktaylor5264]

@@cnlicnli So you can try to ignore everything else. You do know what nit-picking is don't you?

[@RamonSuarezV]

Amazing presentation Joren. Thanks for putting all that effort in helping us!

[@mdjoffe1234]

Thanks for making the point about Linux. This really undercuts the argument that IP protections are needed to spur innovation by providing a real world, well known counterexample.

[@bocskai98]

Great talk!

[@portnason]

Well done done Joren(our son-in-law) Well spoken.

[@karlpages4350]

Put an end to corruption and privatisation. Time to elect experts directluly and not lawyer and spin. Community organisation and not mesia manipulation.

[@JorenDeWachter]

My book to substantiate more of what I say is now available for download at my website

[@acebaker157]

Joren De Wachter claims to allow downloading of his book "The Wealth of Ideas" at his site, which has any number of "download here" links. However, it's a scam. The links do not allow you to download anything. In a comments section, De Wachter claims that by accessing Social Media, the download will work. But a great number of people are complaining that doesn't either. What is going on here?

[@palakmotan1988]

Truly said about Pharma Companies..

[@cnlicnli]

I’m a freelance solo creative owner. When third-parties infringe my photographs and videos without a paid license, I’m pushed further and further into going-out-of-business. “Credit lines” won’t put food on my table, and “good exposure” can’t be used to pay my rent and purchase other life necessities. To stay ahead, I had to study copyright law and other legal matters to reinforce my creative rights. I license my art to sustain a living. I include my copyright attribution watermark and other copyright management information to make it easy for licensees to reach out to me. From my years of observation, the folks who are against copyright are themselves not working professional artists nor do they earn a substantial amount of their income from licensing or selling their creative media. It’s easy for many in academics and other professions to bash copyright’s exclusive rights when they have a full-time job. Many speak, teach, and write articles for their institution (work-for-hire) where they receive tenure payment and health coverage -- my art colleagues and I are envious of those robust benefits. *I encourage copyright detractors to walk the footsteps of freelance creatives.*

[@RetroWizard_]

What you say is true but I think it misses the point of what people talk about when they hold these beliefs on copyright. What this video and what most people such as myself believe is that copyright law is being abused by large corporations to bleed intellectual properties dry. Disney is a big offender of this. They alone have been to blame for the extension of copyright law for the best century. Copyright law should work more closely to the patent system, which is designed to encourage innovation while still giving the original creator time to sell their product and then after 20 years other creators come in and improve on your work. People don't want companies to hoard ideas. They want the public and individual creators to be able to take old ideas and improve on them. They don't want to steal independent artists' works. Hope this clears things up for you

[@shadowshadow2724]

you can take photos and charge them and copyright them. But that doesn't restrict me from going to the same place and take photos by myself. but intellectual property in science doesn't make any sense.

[@denada9482]

The abolishment of ip is a paradigm shift that I think will result in a booming demand for creatives like yourself. The establishment will need to win in the field of creativity rather than the legal sphere. Lawyers are demanded today, but creatives in the future.

[@kennyphang5758]

06:30

[@elcorazonaro455]

Alan Harper's spirit animal 😁😁

[@benjaminanderson1014]

I think humans should be more like bonobos

[@erickim2052]

Thanks for your nice talk. But, I think you need to realise that the IP has both good and bad sides like everything in the world. The IP will protect your idea from capitals. If you cannot claim that exclusive right for your profitable idea, you can never start a business because big companies will copy yours and dominate the market with your idea. Even if you have the right, they might do the same thing and you may give up your business after all. The IP provides a minimum protection for your idea. Why should the money conquer your idea and creativity? Although you said the Linux programs are better, they cannot compete with the MS because they cannot earn enough money and reinvest it for further development. Would you like to say that the MS is evil? Not really, because you cannot make their employees give up their jobs. In order to share the knowledge, you need to have another income that you can live with. You will work in a company producing something new. And the new product should be protected, otherwise it cannot make a profit and you will be fired. In conclusion, the world where everyone shares knowledge for free is almost impossible unless you live in a big communist country with 100% self-sustaining economy and 100% of people like angles. Everything has two sides. The problem is how to use it in a good way for our society. For the security of our nations and human lives, we cannot claim the IP because it is harmful to our society. Likewise, by discovering many side effects of the IP, we need to refine the IP law.

[@JorenDeWachter]

Hi Eric, thanks for the comment. Interestingly, IP actually does not protect ideas - it only provides exclusive negative rights (the right to prohibit someone else from doing something) in respect of the implementation of ideas (technology, content), but never the underlying ideas themselves. Also, today we see that it is the large corporations who hoard IP, not the startups (and even less the disruptive startups). IP is not a condition for success for young enterprises - it is a condition for old dinosaurs to stay alive longer and be shielded from market efficiency. As such, it is more of a private, mercantilist tax on innovation than a stimulus of innovation. Some elements of IP are not bad - patents can serve as a knowledge pool for certain technical inventions - but my perspective is that their negative impact far, far outweighs this.

[@erickim2052]

Joren De Wachter Thanks for your reply. I'm happy to debate, and I agree that there are a lot of negative sides. I'd like to give a question then. Imagine that a creative and poor engineer invented a game-changing technology. Without IP, he started a business. A big company recognised its huge potential, produced products based on his idea, and made huge profits from it. Definitely, the developed technology would enhance our lives. But, the profits from it would only return to the company. They would not share the knowledge that was accumulated during the development process. Is this good then? Another good aspect of IP is that by releasing the new idea, it can encourage other developers not to spend their time to develop the same thing but to invent a different one which can be even better. Also, as you said, the patents are the most precious legacy from our ancestors. They are invaluable, and the pride of our intelligence. We all know it has good and bad aspects. Even if there are much more negative impacts, we cannot say it should disappear because it has good aspects and it has worked well in the past. Why don't we discuss about how we can improve it? And we need to know that IP works differently in different industry.

Eric Kim "Imagine that a creative and poor engineer invented a game-changing technology" Any piece of technology now potentially infringes thousands of other patents and design patents. From the shape of the technology, to what software it uses, he can be found for infringement. So the engineer manufactures his device, and then gets sued by his competitors for infringing all of their patents. His 1 patent is nothing compared to the thousands held by a large company.

[@erickim2052]

Cathal Ó Broin Hey, if your idea infringes any other patents, you cannot apply for a patent because it is not new! So you cannot sell it without paying the person who originally invented that idea for 20 years. Definitely you will be sued because you used other's idea. If you want to use the same idea, you have to wait for 20 years or develop something new. This is the patent law that we all agreed in our history. People are expected to develop something new or improved which does not infringe others idea. That is how our patent system contributes to evolution of technologies. The big company can attack the person, and he is not perfectly safe. That is the reason why I said the patent gives a minimum protection. But, he could sell his patent to the competitor of that big company. At least, he has an option and get some rewards thanks to his patent. Do you want him to give his single patent to the big company for free? Or do you think we should protect his right?

"Hey, if your idea infringes any other patents, you cannot apply for a patent because it is not new!" It's not quite as simple as that. For example, most new patents in the USA are software patents. These presume the existence of a computer. But a general computer is covered by many thousands of patents. The fact that you need a CPU, that you need RAM etc implicitly involves thousands of patents. Before you get anywhere, whatever product you make is going to infringe. There are precious few products that do not invoke multiple independent patents. "But, he could sell his patent to the competitor of that big company." if he doesn't agree to cross-license or (more likely) to cross-license as well as pay a fee to the larger competitor, he is already bankrupt, so this doesn't help. Look at how patents work in practice, not how they work in a perfect bubble.

[@dewaynestafford5507]

Joren De Wachter - Have you ever came up with an innovation or new invention ????????????

[@markrpope3]

There are 4 exceptions to copyright including transformation

[@ubik_3786]

But who decides what is transformative? As he said, one one side of an opinion, you're a genius, and on the other, a criminal.

[@直樹平田-s2q]

Can't completely agree to him because IP system also has good sides such as banning of illegal distribution of intellectual works. Without IP system, authors would earn less money as more people get to free illegal watching of movie or comics on the internet. Sorry for not being good at English.

[@mikeperham5847]

I'm sorry, there are straw men and hyperbole throughout this talk. You will not "go to jail" for copyright infringement. He makes the absolute statement that open-source software has superior innovation. Does that mean a better product? Why then is Microsoft, with their admittedly poor products so successful, and the most user friendly Linux distribution, Ubuntu, so poorly distributed? He even says that the distributors of music take "all" the revenue. There is a slight pullback in the next statement, but then how am I supposed to take you seriously if you pepper your talk with absolute falsehoods? And finally, the arguments against patenting drugs. The development of a drug is very expensive. NOT necessarily for the invention of the compound, which is still expensive. It costs many millions, often hundreds of millions, to test the drug to make sure it is safe and effective. What "crowd-sourced" entity will foot that bill? To pay for safety trials of cancer drugs? Particularly when the odds are not stacked in your favor? I found the talk extremely simple-minded, and over-the-top touchy-feely to appeal to base instincts. I found it frequently disingenuous with falsehoods, exaggerations, and straw men peppered throughout. And I saw a complete lack of real evidence that IP has "no evidence" to support it.

[@JorenDeWachter]

Thank you for your reply. Couple of things: 1° the argument is indeed complex; the TEDx format restricts to 10 minutes. So, obviously, there was no way I could go into all details. 2° some of the visual aids are not shown in the video (the editing is, in my view, sub-optimal) - they would help 3° there are no falsehoods in my talk. Copyright infringement does come with criminal liability. That's a fact. The music industry (as middlemen with a distribution monopoly typically do) takes most of the revenue (less since Napster and the PIrate Bay, luckily). 4° you will agree with me that the testing of drugs is not an innovative activity. So why should it be funded by a distribution and reproduction monopoly that has led to many cases of corruption, and clearly distorts the market? The patent system prevents efficiency, both in R&D and in approval process. 5° You ask me to prove a negative. That is logically impossible. IP is a system of state-imposed distribution monopoly. It claims to promote innovation. It is the monopoly-lobby that has to bring evidence that the damage their monopoly does is outweighed by superior innovation. There is no such evidence. Yet there is counter-evidence (open source being only one of them) that lack of IP spurs faster innovation. It's driven by market efficiency, competition and freedom to operate/innovate (opposite to IP, which is a state imposed privately held distribution and reproduction monopoly system). Or do you think it is a coincidence that Android has wiped out Microsoft Mobile OS, Blackberry, and has iOS defending a shrinking corner? Name me one (1) market where proprietary software (IP based) gains market share from open source (non IP based). Or explain the success of the German chemical industry in the 19th century (lower IP). Or why most large pharmaceuticals in Europe happen to be in French-speaking Switzerland (lower IP). Etc Etc. For more details, check out my book "The Wealth of Ideas", available on Amazon and Kindle.

[@ubik_3786]

@@JorenDeWachter 👋

[@ubik_3786]

@@JorenDeWachter 🎤

[@josegegas]

The reason Mircosoft's software is so popular is simple: Ignorance. People don't even know free software exists, and the few who know, quickly replace private software with free software. Yes, it means a better product. Free software is better from any point of view. No viruses, no planned obsolescence, much more compatibility, way more reliable and durable. The biggest research institutions (CERN, NASA, etc) use free software simply because it is better. Of course developing drugs is expensive. Doing science and innovation is expensive, and that is not the point. We need science and technology. The fundamental question is, why is that the major benefits of science and technology go just for a small group of people and not for all the population? Some make huge money from intellectual property applied to medicine, and those who can't pay for it, simply die. Would you show me the evidence that IP works?

[@acebaker157]

Copyright infringement is a property violation, not a "thought crime". Property laws are not to "promote innovation", they are to prevent conflict over scarce resources. Should we compensate a dead composer for use of "Happy Birthday"? Why not? The man who built my house is dead. Does this mean I don't own my house anymore, and the Communists can just give it to the Commons? Good grief. With all due respect, Mr. De Watcher knows little about the music industry. He says "distributor" when he means "publisher", he says "artist" when he means "songwriter". He offers precisely zero evidence to support the claim that open source code is more innovated than copyrighted code. Good Grief, this talk is painful. Google "Intellectual Space" , blog on the libertarian theory of IP.

[@willwohler1616]

Huge non-sequiteur, in several ways! A physical house IS a 'rivalrous item' (theres only one of that particular house), so exclusive right to it is proper (and not at all at issue here). The house's builder (if you mean the Constructor) received his compensation for the construction of it, and can't expect to retain any further interest in it. The DESIGN of that house is presumably the only aspect which might involve "intellectual" property. Don't see what Communists have to do w/ it.

[@JorenDeWachter]

I think you will find that the US supreme court wholeheartedly disagrees with you - it has spelled out in so many words that copyright infringement is not theft.

[@xnf372rn]

Joren De Wachter Copyright infringement is trespass, not theft. Google "Intellectual Space". The U.S. Supreme Court also said Dred Scot was not a person.

[@Phantomrasberryblowe]

How is an idea a scarce resource?

[@Craig6844]

your argument is not valid. supreme court make rulings based on the constitution and our laws not moral issues. at that time the law said blacks were property not people, like how now corporations are considered a "person" in law today

[@dewaynestafford5507]

Everyone is free to innovate. What you want is free access to the innovations of others. How about I have free access to your bank account ???? Open source inventions and open source bank accounts !!!! How about that ?

[@JohnAnonymous]

"What you want is free access to the innovations of others." Which assumes that 'innovation' is an ownable thing, when it isn't even a 'thing'. Intellectual Property is a non-concept. It refers to things that don't actually exist. Good talk Joren De Wachter!

[@chayleaf]

Copyright law creators made the public domain because they want free access to others' works!!! How about they give us access to their positions so we have free access to changing copyright law as well???