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What is “intellectual property,” exactly? Where does this pernicious idea come from? And how does this philosophical wrong turn lead us not just into the heart of absurdity, but toward the censorship of the internet and the control of your genome? Find out in this jam-packed edition of The Corbett Report . . . and stay tuned for the worldwide debut of James Corbett’s blockbuster online protest song, “IP Freely (Screw YouTube)”!
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SHOW NOTES
How today’s copyright policy impacts me
Guy Gets Bogus YouTube Copyright Claim… On Birds Singing In The Background
United States Patent 5443036 “Method of exercising a cat”
United States Patent 6025810 “Hyper-Light-Speed Antenna”
United States Patent 3936384 “Religious soap”
Reese’s trademarks the colour orange
Restaurant Trademarks Bozo; Bozo The Clown Unhappy
Why Intellectual Property is not Genuine Property
The Dumbest Propaganda Video Ever
Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation
Against Intellectual Monopoly.
David K. Levine is Against Intellectual Monopoly
Against Intellectual Property.
Open Seeds: Biopiracy and the Patenting of Life
The Ethical Case Against Intellectual Property (by David Koepsell)
Interview 1363 – New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato
As Expected, EU Nations Rubber Stamp EU Copyright Directive
EU Looking To Regulate Everything Online, And To Make Sites Proactively Remove Material
Haha great song at the end my brother. And thanks for bringing this to attention, I hadn’t given it much thought
For anyone interested in decoding the Coen Brothers, they make a rather interesting veiled comment concerning the patentability of genes – a subject of significant interest to this crowd – hidden within Inside Llewyn Davis.
In particular, you may recall a scene involving Llewyn at the helm of Al Cody’s mom’s car as it heads west to Chicago, while Johnny Five is in the passenger seat and Roland Turner waxes authoritative in the back seat. Roland is in the process of calling Llewyn “cowboy chords,” saying “there’s 12 notes in a scale, dipshit, not 3 notes on a ookulele…” and then parodies, “G-G-C-G-C-D-G,” while not actually singing those notes, but rather singing notes that sound suspiciously more like the traditionally trumpeted funerary dirge known as Taps.
Now the interesting part. In consideration of the scene in A Serious Man, in which Rabbi Nachtner tells Larry the story of the Goy’s Teeth, our heroic film-makers illustrate the dentists attempt to understand a riddle by transcribing numbers to letters in the process common to the Kabbalah known as gematria.
So what happens when we perform gematria translation to G-G-C-G-C-D-G? Well, it becomes 7-7-3-7-3-4-7. And what happens when you google that sequence?
Why, lo and behold, “USPatent 7737347 stroke B2 – plants and seeds for hybrid corn variety CH684476” …held by none other than… drum roll please… Monsanto Technologies LLC.
You’re welcome.
In my experience one of the worst offenders was the 3D Alias/Maya animation software hotbox patent. We should all have the option for hotboxes on all our software. This claim holds us all back.
When you right click on an object you get a very simple menu on your average PC experience.
A hotbox is, in Maya, when you pull up a menu, from the center point/dot/anchor there are options across the top, left, right and bottom – each to be selected and/or with their own sub menus. Initially it may seem foreign but you get used to it quickly enough. You can customize it and add huge amounts of options if you like. As you use it you become very spatially aware, anticipating which direction your option is, much like you get use to where the options are in a standard menu list.
There are a few examples here, though some of them the user has custom loaded with LOTS of options. By default it would start out with a smaller list. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=maya+3d+hotbox&iar=images
Throughout my life, I’ve had many ideas and wanted to get them patented. On some of them I made a “poor man’s patent” just to show when I came up with the idea. On several occasions, the product was made by someone with the capital to manufacture before i could get it patented. For example THIS and this . The last thing I invented, I didn’t bother with a patent. I wanted to get it to market quickly before someone else came up with the idea. I figured it would be easier just to make it and sell it at a reasonable price. It was just a simple thing I thought of in the middle of the night. I woke up and sketched it out. A month later, I had a prototype made and I’ve sold thousands of them. It’s very unlikely anyone here would be interested, but i’ll share the video: HERE .
I’ll never forget when I was 11 years old in 1980, playing basketball with my friend and i had my boombox (with cassette) playing. I was playing the radio and I heard a song that I liked but I didn’t want to record over my mixtape that I made and I told my friend, “It would be really neat if there was a way to record a song and save it to some type of internal memory on my boombox.” I really thought about it and was frustrated that I didn’t know anyone who had the ability to design something like that. -this was in 1980.
I have two ideas at the moment and I’m really considering just prototyping them without going through the patent process just to get them to market. The patent process is very expensive -hiring a patent attorney, etc. The owner of this company decided to make all of his modules open source. He has been very successful and other people have used his code and circuit designs and made their own versions of it. Innovation!
That’s some interesting stuff you have there. I wasn’t aware of the concept of “poor man’s patent”, thanks for sharing.
Thanks @mkey,
If you haven’t already swisscows’d it, you draw an accurate picture of your device and include as much information about it, it’s application, etc., date the document, then you stick it in an envelope and mail it to yourself. Make sure you use certified mail. when it comes back to you, don’t open it. put it in a safe place. This gives a “time stamp” of your invention. I’m not sure how legal it is if you needed to use it as a way of saying “Hey, that’s my idea and I came up with it and here’s the proof.” type of situation.
Really though, I’m just going the direction of prototyping and making the products w/o any patent.
On a brief tangent though, somewhat related, I have a lot of friends in the music industry -my sister too and when Napster came out in the late 90’s, it was a free-for-all on mp3’s and artists lost a lot of money (this is their income). David Byrne (Talking Heads) wrote a fascinating book called How Music Works. It illustrates how the music industry has changed because of technology.
I only purchase music from Bandcamp.com now. From what I have learned, Bandcamp provides the highest profit margin for musicians out of all other online music services (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc.)
Like my sister and friends, they all say “If you’re in the music industry to make money, you’re in the wrong business.” It’s sad that artists aren’t compensated fairly for their work.
Some of my friends are using Patreon to fund their projects and it provides a way for their fans to be more closely connected to their work. it’s a win-win. I’m not sure how much of a cut Patreon takes though.
I doubt that’s very much “legal” since the whole scheme was put into place to curtail competition for the big players, those that can afford the cost of having the state go after the offenders of their rights to poorly fleshed out ideas.
I find it hard to imagine how would thinking of something first put anyone in the position to make any sorts of claims over the idea by simply being the first to think of it. Especially if the idea hasn’t even been made public in which case there can’t be any notion of plagiarization.
Let’s suppose there are two entities, A and B. They got the same idea, but B later than A. A kept it for themselves while B took it somewhere, invested into production and while undertaking some considerable risk and investing labour managed to turn a profit. I don’t see how would that make B liable to claims by A.
Imagine if I had a sealed envelope dated prior to your plate idea describing a very similar product. But instead of doing anything with it, I had just made some drawings, sealed them in an envelope and sent it to myself. Now, years later, I see you turned a profit on obviously your somewhat original idea, investment and labor and I’m supposed to make a claim against those profits? Because I was “first”? I find the notion completely preposterous.
As far as music and artist that produce it go, maybe I tend to oversimplify now and again, but if they can’t turn a profit in the business they’re in, they should change lanes and look for projects that would allow them to meet goals they’d find acceptable. It’s a very basic matter, I’d say.
Some artists/bands I know share their music for free because they realize they can only earn by doing gigs and selling merchendise. Making the music available to a wider audience will increase the scope of concert-goers and t-shirt buyers. Some big label artists have made statements to that effect as well, stating they don’t care much about piracy because they don’t make much on selling albums anyway.
Thanks for the heads up. Link corrected.
Very timely video.
I was struck by the connections of the concepts laid out here to the brewing trade war between China and the USA. Indeed, one of the main complaints laid against China is IP theft.
New IP laws, changing monetary systems….. these are fascinating times we live in.
Keep up the great work James.
BTW Loved the Neil Young impression at the end of the show 🙂
Just gotta say I loved that song. You should start touring soon.
Even on a topic where I consider myself well informed James gives me new information and further food for thought.
It came to my mind, that the judge(s) that allowed the patenting of human genes were instantly in transgression of any approved patents because their bodies were, millions of times a second, producing unauthourised copies of said genes.
This is, literally, patently absurd.
And now the “upload filters” (which I fought hard against, including an interview with the BBC’s tech program “Click”):
So, I can write whatever hateful drivel that I like on a page, photocopy that and hand it out on the street. The state, in order to repress that oppressive behaviour, needs to do things like charge me with a crime, allow me a day in court in which to defend my right to distribute said drivel, and may impose some restrictions on my property or liberty as punishment for distribution of said drivel.
But, on the internet, the state forcefully deputizes commercial corporations to enforce some magic control of what they think should not be said.
But, says GooFace, we’re getting 400 libraries of material every hour, how can we possibly interpret and enforce your ideas of “you shall not pass” in any reasonable time? Nerd harder, says the super-state. We are doing our level best to pander to the wishes of the devolved USA empire which needs IP protection, the last of its useful industries (apart for weaponry). In doing so we may be entrenching their largest internet companies. This is not a bug, its a feature.
Mutherfockers.
Note to James:
Firstly, I am amazed by the breadth, but also the attention to recent detail (Malamund’s efforts) of this podcast. OMG, how the hell can you do this?
When the Malamund article went up on TechDirt I chastised them for not mentioning Aaron Swartz, and you did immediately. Hats off.
This may not be something as monumental as your WWI work, but I think that this is right up there with your greatest work. Asking very deep questions, throwing a wide collection of reputable references into it, and I think importantly, showing a little flair. I didn’t like the “Documentary Channel” style of the WWI efforts, but understand why you did it. (Its an easy play to distribute completely counter-narrative in the style of the producers of the narrative.)
Now we are back to your style. The guitar intro, the “Liberty Jar” to “Swear Jar” play. This is what I love about *you* and your output. Its you (supported by a vast array of well cited material/guests etc.). But its you.
This really is up there with your greatest work. It forces the viewer to ask deep questions buried by so much propaganda, and pokes at the weak foundations of so much of the elites at the head of the western empire.
And, finally, hats off to Brock. The dancing copyright symbol over the lyrics “Screw YouTube” is priceless.
Yes! I loved that too!
Speaking of copyrights, “nerd harder” – you could make a fortune with that! 😉
“thought-pantenting” a beautiful phrase that you should …
oh, shit.
great podcast, James and Broc 🙂
there is something fundamentally wrong in today’s society.
every soul has to abide to rules made by a certain ‘chosen’ group of people,
either ignorant of the material they make laws about, or with a different agenda than the greater good.
i consider myself a free person, so i try to make my own decisions about which laws make sense and which don’t. now this gets you in trouble sometimes obviously…
and now for something completely different:
from Monty Python, 1972, about the ridiculousness of intellectual property:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dj_X3vexak
San*A-
Nice catch with that old Python bit. I haven’t heard that sketch in so long I’d forgotten about it. It was recorded forever ago, but it could have been just recorded for this Corbett podcast. Perfect.
Those are my thoughts, which are mine.
Wrong topic, bud. Or is Ernie so damn nauseating for you that it echoes across various, separate bits of content?
Steal This Podcast (Please!)
What an appropriate title.
Corbett “stole it”. 😉
The 1970-71 book by Abbie Hoffman (and others), Steal This Book, exemplified the counterculture of the sixties.
It focused on ways to fight and resist the government and corporations.
We are in a new era of “counterculture”.
There is also the album of similar title, by System of a down.
Great comment. Thanks for the giggles!
“[…]once they’ve dealt with the concept of thought-patenting (just thinking a thought that contains a patented concept or word can land you in hot legal waters).”
Seriously though, with transhumanism on the horizon, that is a very scary thought.
I read something about author Blake Crouch being very cool with fans adding to his Wayward Pines series, adding all kinds of side-stories. If I recall, he even gave honorable mention to some of his favorites. I don’t know about his other works, but that resonated with me. Very cool.
T’was too good to be true, Ahmed. I scoured my kindle hoping to find where he mentioned that to readers in one of those books, but it seems I deleted it. So, I searched on-line and found an interview with him where it was addressed (see below). Alas, it was a controlled fan-fiction environment created by Amazon.
https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2013/11/interview-with-blake-crouch-interviewed.html
Where Does It End? New ‘Monarch’ Brain Device Approved for ADHD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXCpLNoE1xk
Another difficult topic that shouldn’t be looked over.
Thanks mkey!
Kid Mind Control
I watched this Saturday.
It had a lot of personal impact on me.
Playing with the minds of kids makes my blood boil with rage.
Dr. Peter Breggin communicates well.
In the past, when I had some money with my businesses, I often supported getting information out about the Pharma industry hijacking the minds of kids.
With my wife being a teacher, I watched the school structure change, advocating Pharma’s “solutions”.
Funny — I thought you were saying “Screw U2” at first, which sounded inadvertently appropriate because
A) I thought maybe U2 created the song from which the chord was ‘pirated’ and, or more importantly,
B) When I think about U2, I think about Bono, and then think about “The Bono Act” (although named after Sonny Bono of “Sonny & Cher” fame, not the U2 Bono), which extended copyright to, “the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship.” It was later extended further to life of author plus 90 years, if I remember correctly.
Source (Bono Act): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bono_Act&redirect=no
Bonus (South Park): …and the record holder for biggest poo ever is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW1bzTTy8eY
WHAT IS JAZZ?
Music is a language. Those who became exceptionally fluent in the language of music (by playing all the popular songs every night for many years) started to “jazz up” their playing. One of the most celebrated tricks was to “quote” other riffs and melodies. When you see members of a jazz group simultaneously laugh, often it is the result of a well-placed quote.
Jazz could not exist if chords, melodies (i.e. the building blocks of the language) were copyrighted. New music may have ended entirely in the 1700’s if Mozart was copyrighted. Newton had the final word on Physics at about the same time. Absurd. Creative people stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
“Ownership of ideas thwarts creativity.”©
Were I to obtain a copyright for the phrase within the quotation marks, I would be stepping on my own dink. Some guy who might be inspired, for example, to print a line of t-shirts with my copyrighted phrase printed on it would NOT do so. Fear begets fear.
m.clare says:
“Ownership of ideas thwarts creativity.”©
hi james, etal. loved the gootube song and yes, screw all those abc entities. i’m curious if changing the resonance that you tune your guitar to, would essentially take what you create w/ c.r. cords out of the c.r. status. as you know all commercial music is constructed in 440 hz resonance at middle A. a much more bio synchronous freq. like A at 432hz (natures resonance). or even lower, which i prefer, at 424hz (heart chakra resonance). i’ve witnessed the A at 424 induce spontaneus weeping in a hardened lawyer. the 440-a had no effect. that aside i wonder if the ip algo’s would flag a different resonance. it is all vorticity and resonance. we are a complex set of intertwined vibrations, aligned w/ the cavity resonance of the earth/ ionosphere. we manifest reality out of the vibrational field. now, not to derail this thought train, think of 5G vibrating near the rate of our dna. what could go wrong?
Hi James, one doubt: is your guitar tuned to A 440hz? if so why not move to A 432hz??
hey, good to see another 432 vibe-aware member. all of nature sings at A-432hz.
The new COUNTERCULTURE
I never thought I would hear Corbett say “I pee freely” followed with Broc’s dancing © landing on the words “Screw YouTube”.
Yes, it is official.
The 60’s may have faded, but the new era counterculture is here.
Across the gamut of alternative media, there are some hardcore messages.
They fly directly in the face of the mainstream culture.
Perhaps this rising, resilient counterculture is part of World War 3.
Don’t worry guys. I tabbed it out.
Screw YouTube
INTRO
Dsus2, Cadd9, G (repeat X2)
VERSE
(Dsus2) Screw (Cadd9) You (G) Tube
(Dsus2) You don’t (Cadd9) own (G) Dsus2
(Dsus2) Screw (Cadd9) You (G) Tube
(Dsus2) We’re headin’ on (Cadd9) over (G) to Bi-it-Shute
CHORUS
(Dmajor barre chord) Cause IP freely (Fmajor barre chord) and so can you
(Gmajor barre chord) IP freely (B-flat barre chord) on DTube
(Dmajor barre chord) IP freely (Fmajor barre chord) it’s so much fun
(Gmajor barre chord) IP freely (B-flat barre chord) on Minds dot com
INTERLUDE
A7
VERSE
(Dsus2) Now intellectuals (Cadd9) call it their (G) property
(Dsus2) But we all (Cadd9) know that they’re just playin’ (G) monopoly
(Dsus2) And you can call this call (Cadd9) this high seas (G) piracy
(Dsus2) But you’re day are (Cadd9) numbered YouTube (G) you’re gonna see
CHORUS
(Dmajor barre chord) That IP freely (Fmajor barre chord) and so can you
(Gmajor barre chord) IP freely (B-flat barre chord) on Steemit too
(Dmajor barre chord) IP freely (Fmajor barre chord) it’s so much fun
(Gmajor barre chord) IP freely (B-flat barre chord) on Minds dot com
INTERLUDE
A7
OUTRO
(Dsus2) Screw (Cadd9) You (G) Tube
(Dsus2) You don’t (Cadd9) own (G) Dsus2
(Dsus2) Screw (Cadd9) You (G) Tube
(Dsus2) Screw (Cadd9) You (G) Tube
I love your smartness, I think some of it is rubbing off on me *giggles* at least I hope so.
There is a way to get a large chunk of the population to defend the insane ‘intellectual property’ laws; you simply give them a taste of the action — you help them become dependent on the laws for their own income.
That is the primary reason so few people speak out against Google online.
Google has made it exceptionally easy for tens-of-millions of people to profit through ‘services’ such as YouTube and AdSense.
Simply cut people in on the action and they’ll become your personal army, or at the very least keep their mouths shut.
This IP madness is full of constant developments.
Check this out:
https://itsfoss.com/shotwell-lawsuit/
I had never heard of “patent troll” before.
It is yet another clear sign of how rotten our society is.
Well, well. Who would have thunk it.
The fight to halt the theft of ideas is hopeless
China will not accept inferiority — and the west should not want it to – from the FT!
https://www.ft.com/content/d592af00-0a29-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67