Re: An impending economic singularity? [Re: Singularity: Vinge responds]

haradon@acsu.buffalo.edu
Mon, 21 Sep 1998 14:05:38 -0700

--On Friday, September 18, 1998, 2:08 PM -0400 "Mike Linksvayer" <ml@gondwanaland.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 1998 at 11:46:33AM +0100, Charlie Stross wrote:

>> Copyright was
>> introduced because the effects of _not_ restricting the ownership of
>> copying rights to the originator of a work were damaging the ability
>> of those originators to support themselves, producing more work;

>
> Copyright was introduced to protect the profits of publishers, not
> originators, although that justification was later used. See
> "Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law and Economics Approach"
> by Tom G. Palmer in the Hamline Law Review, 1989, pp. 261-304 and
> the cover story of the September Atlantic magazine on IP for
> discussions of this.
>
> I feel that the property status of information will be the single
> greatest non-engineering factor in shaping societies of the next
> century. If we continue down the path of increasing property
> protections for information we will likely have a society run by
> state/corporate cartels with huge disparities of wealth between
> information owners and non-owners and a very boring culture.
>
> However, I feel that anything qualifying as a "singularity" will
> be engineering-driven. Nanotech implies drastic changes irregardless
> of the property regime it occurs in, short of a totalitarian one
> that could completely control access to the technology.
>
> --
> See From: and Organization: above. Call +1 415 553 6408 for assistance.
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I think I've heard this somewhere before...



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