Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

got IP game?

Author:David McCusker
Posted:9/21/2000; 10:37:36 AM
Topic:got IP game?
Msg #:21595
Prev/Next:21594 / 21596

Here I spawn a new thread from the Anti-Microsoft sentiment topic, so we can discuss IP (intellectual property) issues without specifically discussing Microsoft. (Since Microsoft is just one player in the landscape, I see no reason to dwell on it.)

Josh Allen: Sorry, I meant ways to redistribute the power created by IP. You said you do not intend this to go the same way that capital has; I'd like you to share some of your ideas about things that might happen in society to fix the problem, things that should happen, things that will happen, etc.

Okay, and I'm interested in other folks' ideas, too. But to discuss this we might need to invest some time in defining more context in the landscape. Describing power situations for an activity or piece of technology is like analyzing a game. So what is the game layout?

This will be hard because it involves verbalizing a thing I visualize and model in my mind's eye without having used many words to think about before. So I can only start this by sketching in a milieu in which I want to place the ideas, like a fiction writer setting a scene.

I intend to imply several things in this post, without saying many things explicitly. The most efficient way to communicate anything is implicitly because human brains are marvels at providing and finding appropriate context. This is why folks are quick to infer implicit insults. :-)

(Yes, much of my writing implies at least as much as I say. I don't consider this evil or manipulative. It's more an unavoidable circumstance I might as well handle well since I can't banish it. Writing can even be more cohesive when implicit resonates with explicit.)

Imagine two economists playing rock-paper-scissors. :-) Okay, that's silly, but introduces the idea that some economic interactions require significant game analysis. (When I played Magic cards years ago, one of my cohorts was a Stanford econ grad studying game theory.)

Now imagine all those folks in the marketplace trying to collectively invent a new set of rules to control what happens to intellectual content in economic terms. Note the game rules are not fixed. Rules are always subject to change according to social consensus.

I'm getting to the hard part, so this might be more incoherent. I have three more ideas to convey in this introduction to the IP context. The first idea is game theoretic and easier to explain. The second is almost a cliche in the context of software. The last idea is rather foggy, and almost mystical in its ambiguity.

A common tactical motif in games is the following consideration. Can you stop the other player? Whole expanses of game play are determined by whether it's feasible to stop certain actions. Obviously this idea is highly relevant in both economic and legal matters.

Capital is different from purely intellectual content because it's scarce and not trivially easy to replicate. Game rules for capital cannot possible work unchanged for the entirely different context of very low scarcity digital content. Obviously folks are testing this now.

[I do not advocate that digital content should be free. I'm just acknowledging that rules must be different. I don't know what the rules are yet. I'm making up rules right now in front of your eyes. Watch closely. :-) Actually this prestigitation will take a while yet.]

The last idea is a curvature of space analogy. Is the universe open or closed? What does this imply? In games of enough complexity, is game play or or closed? When you cannot stop other players from doing certain things, does this make play space more open or more closed?

My intuition is that folks who wish to tightly reign in control of intellectual content will be unable to do so, because this tactic in game play can be refuted in the game we are going to play. If possible, I will figure out how the refutation works, and tell other folks.

Also, folks cannot stop me from saying how to refute certain kinds of play, because this would first require that they always understand what I am saying. Working around obstacles comes very naturally to me. It's what I see all the time. I see how to open closed doors.

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