Bounty Hunters, Map Makers Gold Miners

Bounty Hunters
Map Makers
&
Gold Miners
Metaphors for Designing Fair Intellectual Property Laws
version: 21 October 2006
Copyright 2006 Greg London
email at greg london dot com
This work licensed under the CreativeCommonsDAttribution license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
The following information is provided for attribution purposes:
Author's Name: Greg London
Title of Work: Bounty Hunters
URL: http://www.GregLondon.com/cc/by
For the latest version of this work, HTML or PDF, go to:
http://www.greglondon.com
This document was created using OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org
running Fedora Linux
http://fedora.redhat.com
on a Penguin x86 PC.
http://www.penguincomputing.com/
18 April 2005: first public draft made available
29 April 2005: fix typos (Thanks to Robinson P. Tryon)
26 May 2005: fix typo (Thanks to Richard Eriksson), remove CC images to reduce bandwidth load, use compressed JPEG image to reduce bandwidth.
2 April 2006: fix links to Bruce Lehman's bio that had changed. Added some court cases to "external links" section, changed proposed term solution to 42 years instead of 40 years.
21 October 2006: change character names in story to avoid misunderstandings with initials.
Table of Contents
1 What Should Be? 5
1.1 "What incentive systems should exist in the world?"- Bill Gates 5
1.1.1 "Systems" 6
1.1.2 "Incentive" 6
1.1.3 "Should" 6
1.2 Models and Metaphors 6
1.3 Cake Cutting 7
1.4 A Model / Metaphor for Intellectual Incentive 7
2 A Town that Never Was 9
3 Art Imitates Life 24
3.0.0.1 Intellectual works are abstract ideas created by the labor of human minds. 24
3.1 Wild Frontier 24
3.1.1 The First Outlaw 26
3.1.2 The Hostage Scenario 26
3.1.3 The First Bounty on Earth 27
3.1.4 Measuring Success (Catching the Bad Guy) 28
3.1.5 Winner Take All 30
3.1.6 Cutting Cake for Bounty Hunters 31
3.2 The First American Bounty 31
3.2.1 Isaac Preston pays a visit to Mayor Maddox. 32
3.2.2 The Bounties Keep Going Up 33
3.2.3 An Immortal Mouse 34
3.2.4 The Argument Against Life Plus N 36
3.2.5 Resetting the Bounties, The Ideal Goal 38
3.2.6 Resetting the Bounties, The Realistic First Step 41
3.3 Galen's Trust and Copyleft 41
3.3.1 The Hostage Scenario 43
3.3.2 An Alternative Incentive System 44
3.3.3 Galen's Trust Competes with Preston Corporation 45
3.3.4 The Halloween Documents 46
3.4 A Metaphor for Copyright and Patents 47
3.4.1 Map Makers and Miners 48
3.4.2 Progress: Expanding the Known Universe 49
3.4.3 Map Makers are Writers 50
3.4.4 Miners are Inventors 51
3.4.5 Copyright Versus Patent 52
3.4.6 Gold On the Ground 54
3.5 Patenting Language 56
3.5.1 Starting the Slippery Slope 57
3.5.2 Land Grab 58
3.5.3 Linux Competes with Microsoft 60
3.5.4 Mute Patents 61
3.5.5 Software Patents: Bounty Hunters Setting the Bounties 62
3.5.6 An End to Software Patents 63
3.5.7 Impeding Progress with Language Patents 64
3.6 Digital Millennium Copyright Act 66
3.6.1 The Case For the Anti-Circumvention Clause 67
3.6.2 The Case Against the Anti-Circumvention Clause 68
3.6.2.1 It doesn't work 68
3.6.2.2 It Isn't Needed 68
3.6.2.3 It Kills Fair Use 69
3.6.2.4 It Creates Patent-like Powers Without the Mess 69
3.6.2.5 It Has Stunted Independent Research 71
3.6.3 An End to the Anti-Circumvention Clause 72
3.7 Bruce Lehman Gets Corporate Donations 73
3.8 Eureka's Prologue 73
3.8.1 Championing the Fight 73
3.8.2 Barn Raisings 74
4 Summary 75
5 External links 79
5.1 Bill Gates Interviews 79
5.2 The Statute of Anne 79
5.3 The Longitude Prize 79
5.4 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution 79
5.5 U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 79
5.6 U.S. Copyright Term Extension Act 79
5.7 The Halloween Documents 79
5.8 Bruce Lehman's biography 80
5.9 Wheaton v. Peters (1834) 80
5.10 Atlantic Works v. Brady (1883) 80
5.11 Graham v. John Deere (1966) 81
1 What Should Be?
In January 2005, Bill Gates had an interview with CNET that included the topic of Intellectual Property (IP) reform. At one point, Bill Gates made a reference to communists. Many reformists became upset, thinking Gates was calling them communist. Later that same month, Gates had an interview with Gizmodo, and the "communist" remark came up in the discussion. Gizmodo asked Gates to clarify his previous comment. Gates replied:
"No, no, no. I didn't say those people were 'communists.' I did say that they're..."
Up to this point, it's all pretty standard. Gates denies any wrong doing. He's about to clarify what exactly he did say IP reformists were, but then he seemed to realize at the last moment that there was no cheese down that tunnel.
Gates then stops, and starts from a new approach. He asks a question that completely changes the topic.
"What incentive systems should exist in the world?" -- Bill Gates
And when I read it, I said "yes, that's exactly it."
This is an exceedingly important question that keeps getting asked over the centuries of copyright and patent law evolution. The rights and terms for copyrights and patents keep changing over the years. Individuals with large monetary stakes in a written work often push to have the rights and durations of copyright extended in their favor. New writers and inventors complain that these large stakeholders have taken the whole pie for themselves, allowing no one to compete with them. The public seems to be stuck in the middle, wanting to reward writers and inventors, but also wanting competition to drive progress.
I was disappointed as I read further that Gates never answered his own question. And so I was left to ponder it