Stolen or Borrowed, just tell me man

It’s never been okay to use someones work and get credit for it. It is by essence stealing their creativity.

You have a great idea, you create it, it gets big and you win big.

Not always the case though. How about it’s not your great idea, but you know how to make it better. Or the idea is yours and you create it but you get somebody else to get it off the ground. Either way your share gets smaller the ore people get involved. And that’s the money argument

The Levine & Boldrin article presents the progress argument, that without patents there is increased productivity and creativity.

Some people don’t believe it’s ok to use or borrow anther's work and use it in you own while citing the source, but I do.

I agree with Levine’s statement that without borrowing, technology would not blossom as it has. Sure, some people get left behind; you hardly hear about the inspirers or the first person there (you don’t hear about the first Nepalese person to climb Mount Everest, just saying) we only care about who did it better.

I heard that pretty much everything you see on an iPhone is patented, from the ringtones to the rounded edges, even (Ted’s favourite) the “swipe to unlock” function. The new Samsung (?) smartphone is having trouble even getting off the ground because of Apple’s patents on their own smartphone.

A perfect example of how copyright and patent can stem progress.

There was discussion in class with the question “why would you buy anything if you could get it for free?”. Most of us brought up music, as most of us have all downloaded music. There was the argument that the music industry is in turmoil because no-one is buying album’s anymore, they’re just downloading them.

I agree, the music industry as it was is in turmoil. I don’t agree that the future of a music industry is impossible.

Think about it. Artists get effed over by their record companies all the time, it’s a rare occurrence when they make it big off their first record sales. It’s touring that makes the mullah.

So, my argument is that if everyone downloads the album for free, they like it, and then they pay to go to concerts to see them. More revenue is raised through touring than record sales, for the artist that it. So, in theory, his new music revolution could turn out better for the artists, but not so good for record companies. But who likes them anyway!

And what about Disney? If he hadn’t ‘stolen’ mickey mouse we wouldn’t have the timeless classics we have today (even if his methods weren’t so honorable...)

Boldrin, M., and Levine, D.K. (2007). Introduction. In Against Intellectual Monopoly (pp. 1-15). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press [URL: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew01.pdf]

Lessig, L. (2004). Creators. In Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Strangle Creativity (pp. 21-30). New York: Penguin [URL: http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-4.html]