You, Bill Bartlett, wrote:

>As an admirer of your thoughtful comments in this forum I would appreciate
>some persuasive arguments in support of "intellectual property".
Your arguments against the form that IP laws take is familiar to me, and
I am sympathetic to them in many cases. Case in point, which you may have
had in mind: pharmaceutical companies that patent drugs based on native
plants used by Third World cultures. The TW argues that the companies owe
the profitability of their drugs to the "research" of the cultures that
discovered and used the drugs, and therefore should share in the profits.
Also, by patenting the drugs made from these plants, the companies
effectively ruin any chance the TW has of profiting from these products
of their own cultures. I agree with the TW: this is unfair and should be
changed. As I said in the earlier post, patent law does not distinguish
between inventions that require lots of R&D and those that don't, and
there is nothing rational about that.

But that objection goes to the form that IP laws take, not to their
necessity. To restate: IP laws recognize that it's  a lot easier to copy
an invention (or other creative product) than to invent it in the first
place, and that society has an interest in protecting the inventor's
investment of time and money if it is to encourage technical innovation.
This does not mean that money is the only reason that people create of
course. In the case of artists I think it's clear that if the likelihood
of profit were the sole motive, very few works of art would be created.
Still, try telling an artist that his reward is the beauty of his artwork
and the appreciation of the public. People have a visceral sense that
copying another's creative work is theft, no matter what the reason for
its creation in the first place. If we are concerned about the theft of
workers' labor under capitalism, how can we carve out an exception for
creative labor?

I also dispute the implication that IP is solely a perk of the ruling
class. Everyone has a creative mind, even if they don't have access to
capital. If anything, IP laws in theory cut across class lines, rather
than reinforce existing ones. This of course doesn't mean, like
everything else in our society, that wealth can't distort its application
in individual cases.



_________
Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
"Did you know there are more LESBIANS in the MEDIA--than there are on the
pro tennis circuit???" -- Televangelist W.V. Grant