Why is the public domain (in terms of intellectual property) useful?
The public domain is not just useful but unavoidable and necessary.
You could imagine a world where all available physical matter is owned property. But intellectual property is an arbitrary legal creation. It is not finite.
EG Trademark law. Only the owner of a mark may use it to trade. The mark proclaims who is responsible for a product. If there were no unowned trademarks, you could not start a business without first paying off some owner. This would clearly be economically disastrous. So having unused, potential trademarks is necessary.
EG Patent law. Only the patent owner may use a certain invention; some trick of doing something. The patent is published so that others may learn from it and perhaps come up with other ways of achieving the same end. After (usually) 20 years, everyone may use the invention. Scientific theories, mathematical theorems, and other such things are always public domain.
If patents were broader and/or lasted for longer, you’d eventually not be able to do much business without having to pay off some owner. The owners could basically demand a tax on any kind of economic activity and deny consent for anything that might threaten their status. Progress would grind to a halt. It would be a new kind of feudalism.
So, a public domain is not just useful but absolutely necessary to our civilization.
Anything could be made into intellectual property. For example tax farming in ancient Rome and elsewhere. Monarchs granted special privileges, such as granting the East India Company a monopoly on trade. Or they might grant some person the monopoly on opening coffee houses in the country or a certain city. A title of nobility could be seen as a kind of intellectual property. Such titles were traded in a limited way. Anything that can be allowed or forbidden by the government could be turned into intellectual property.
The public domain allows free use of anything in it. It allows people to innovate and expand upon established knowledge without having to pay tribute to original creators or their estates.
Intellectual property was created as a compromise to get people to be more open with their works. It allowed artists and writers to create things without risking their creations copied and losing their livelihood. Similarly inventors were also encouraged to publish how they invented because it granted them a period of exclusive access to controlling that method. In the long term the public benefits by getting access to everything.
Intellectual property is a lie. Pure propaganda. You can own physical things. You can’t own concepts.
Public domain is the default natural state of humanity. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents have only existed for a few centuries. For most of history, you could copy any song, work, or invention you wanted. Hell, for most of history, you claiming ownership of an idea would have been downright sacrilegious. God/The Gods/The Muses were the ones responsible for creative works; human creators were just the channelers of that divine will. In the Medieval era and earlier, artists didn’t even sign their works.
Again. This is the natural state of humanity. We naturally have the freedom to build and create whatever we want from whatever inspiration we want, including copying others. That is after all how humans learn anything. Everything you have ever done, every behavior more complex than simple biological functions is something you learned how to do. Someone figured out how to make even the most rudimentary objects in your life. No one patented the first bowl. Someone just figured it out and everyone copied from there. This is the natural state of human beings. Knowledge is meant to be shared.
At some point however we decided that in order to facilitate the arts, science, and invention, providing a limited time restriction on people’s rights was justified. We temporarily take away some of everyone’s freedom to creatively express themselves. In exchange, we encourage authors, inventors, songwriters, etc. to create high quality original works.
Over time, this purpose has been lost and the fundamental nature of the arrangement forgotten. Rights holders started spreading propaganda, using the term “intellectual property.” You are a victim of this propaganda. As if the ability to restrict the creativity of others is a natural right like the freedom of speech. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are not rights. They are PRIVILEGES. They are a practical arrangement. To encourage you to create a thing, we restrict everyone else’s freedom to use that thing for some period of time. But it’s just a practical arrangement. It’s not something you’re entitled to as a creator by natural right.
Of course, the balance here has now all been thrown out of whack by corporations buying laws. Originally the term for copyright was just 7 years, renewable to 14. After that the temporary restriction on everyone’s freedom ended. That was still long enough for creatives to make a living off of their work. But now it’s been extended bit by bit, everyone’s freedom restricted more and more, longer and longer. Now copyrights take everyone’s rights away for generations.
There is a reason respect for copyrights is at an all time low.
Please don’t lump trademarks with the rest. Makers have stamped their goods with their mark since ancient times, both as advertising and to signify quality products (and not knockoffs). Swords were especially commonly marked with the smith’s trademark.
It was illegal to sell bread in ancient Rome without a trademark, for example. The punishments for doing so were harsh, as they wanted to be able to track down the baker if someone sold tainted bread.
In modern days, they’re useful for customers to know what company they’re buying from.
Trademarks have valid uses but they, too, are perverted. Think about luxury goods. The purpose of the brand name is simply to signal that the owner is able to afford the brand. These brands have nothing to do with consumer protection.
I consider them parasitic. Whatever utility someone gets from signalling with an exclusive brand is provided by society, not the company.
Your thesis missed one important element right here:
As if the ability to restrict the creativity of others is a natural right like the freedom of speech.
Practically or legally speaking there isn’t a restriction of creativity. Its a restriction on the ability to profit from that creativity or negatively affect the profits of the rights holder with your work using their name.
If you call yourself the Burger King in your kitchen, there’s no trademark infringement there. However, if you start selling you food and calling yourself the Burger King, then that is a trademark violation. If you want to write Twilight fan fiction using the characters and story lines from the books, you’re free to do so. There is no copyright violation. However, if you want to profit from your expansions to another author’s work, you have to rename the characters and setting and call it “Fifty shades of grey”.
There is a reason respect for copyrights is at an all time low.
I’ll agree with this though. Large rights holders have been able to get changes to law that exceed the original IP mandates. This means extensions wildly beyond what was reasonable before, or getting things protected by IP law that are questionable at best.
If you call yourself the Burger King in your kitchen, there’s no trademark infringement there. However, if you start selling you food and calling yourself the Burger King, then that is a trademark violation. If you want to write Twilight fan fiction using the characters and story lines from the books, you’re free to do so. There is no copyright violation. However, if you want to profit from your expansions to another author’s work, you have to rename the characters and setting and call it “Fifty shades of grey”.
I believe in must jurisdictions its the distribution that makes it an issue not the selling. If you started handing out your “Burger King” burgers in a public place I would expect to be shut down.
You’re right, but I didn’t want to dive too deep with a throwaway internet comment. I’m using the word “profit” here loosely not to mean only dollars. The act of distribution can negatively affect the rights holder if the person violating the copyright/trademark dilutes, tarnishes, or misrepresents the rights holder’s IP.
I touched on this a tiny bit with my comment in there “or negatively affect the profits of the rights holder with your work using their name.”
deleted by creator
By the same argument, owning physical things is an unnatural state. For millennia, the idea of a human being owning a physical object was completely foreign.
People made tools and used them as necessary, then discarded them for another person to use. It’s only in the most recent 5% of human existence that private property had existed.
go on…
Can you imagine needing to pay a licensing fee in order to use the alphabet? Or your telling of Jack up the Beanstalk being subject to copyright?
IP law itself is a band-aid over capitalism’s disincentivizing of humanity’s innate tendency toward ingenuity, innovation, and iteration
public domain is the default - its IP law and the artificial scarcity it creates which is useful to the capitalists
It’s supposed to be an exchange between the public and artists. The overall purpose is to increase the amount of art available to everyone. Artists get legal protection for a limited time to be able to monetise it. And in exchange the public gets full access to the art after that time is up.
That’s not correct. There are other forms of IP besides copyright, such as trademarks, patents, or even trade secrets.
What you are saying is somewhat true for US copyrights (and patents) per the copyright clause in the US Constitution. But mind that typically copyrights are owned by the employer of the creator, who may be a writer, even a programmer, photographer, or any other such professional who may not be considered an “artist”.
You would probably not consider yourself an artist for writing comments here, but you get copyright nevertheless.
European copyright has a very different philosophy behind it, which does not consider the public at all. It’s quite harmful to the public, actually.
