copyright vs physics 101

[zidane1strife]

If information is neither destroyed nor created and it can only be discovered or rediscovered(ask anyone in the know about what binary configuration what digital data is impossible to recompute... I can't think of any binary arrangement that I couldn't simply find for myself, can you? can anyone? Is asking or even suggesting that it's impossible, not simply a non sequitur?), how can it belong to anyone?

How can the laws of man be put against the laws of existence and logic? By definition such laws would seem to be illogical and incoherent for they seem to go against all the evidence we've got, agaisnt science itself.

Now I do understand granting some rights, some protections for being first to discover some of these things, legally such rights should be upheld by society, but honestly violating consumer rights and the sanctity of privacy should not be one of those protective measures taken to uphold the law.

lest we forget what happens to those who'd trade freedom for security, what would the founding fathers think of this?

PS

Comments in favor and or against or even unrelated ones are welcome.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm not really sure, but you've inspired me to patent a process where all objects can be attracted to a significant mass that is set spinning. I will gladly license you to use my technology for a tiny fee (say, $10 a year?) for as long as you with to enjoy my technology.

But if you terminate the license, you'll need to go back to floating in space. I'll sue anyone who's stealing my IP too!

 

[nutball]

Information != Information.

One word, several meanings.

 

[zidane1strife]

Information != Information.

One word, several meanings.

Really, with a supercomputer decades from now(that is a celestial object sized one based on molecular machinery aided by quantum elements/components) and vast amounts of storage. Could I really not compute and refind all solutions that have been found in the realms of entertainment? Could I not simply find all viable binary or digital data that has been supposedly 'created' by the various human authors?

 

[3dilettante]

The set corresponding to nonsensical garbage is vastly, perhaps infinitely, larger than the set corresponding to something that would register as a creative work.

There is no known means of representation, and no known definitive set of algorithms that can be applied.

There is no known set of rules to determine if a solution is valid, and no known mechanism to make something like calculating context and meaning from a vast set of data tractable.

If you succeed, you've got something more than an easy copyright scam.

 

[nutball]

Could I not simply find all viable binary or digital data that has been supposedly 'created' by the various human authors?

What makes you think that either of a) your putative future supercomputer, or b) anything remotely resembling human knowledge is digital in nature?

Anyway, what my reply was aiming at is this:

- the fundamental laws of physics state that energy can neither be created, nor destroyed
- when I get up in the morning, I tend to find that I don't have much energy. Should I, therefore, conclude that some bastard has stolen it and call the police?


The two concepts you are dealing with are utterly disjoint in every way except one: they are tagged with the same label.

 

[zidane1strife]

Guess we should see how far the various individuals working on the various fields get. Do you honestly think that authors will somehow be made immune to the ever encroaching advances of automation?

The system's inefficiencies will be eliminated, robots will oversee everything, people like me work toward that end. Soon your work won't be necessary, you'll work if you want to if not we could always replace you with an automated more efficient being.

As for me, as I said in the other thread if I want a girl and she doesn't want me, I'll manipulate her or else I'll take the photos I have from her or just take a small sample of her and simply recreate/clone her in an artificial womb to raise as my child or maybe through accelerated growth techniques and computer neural interface enhanced learning... as my lover. Or I'll just build a molecular machine based robot that looks just like her. There's no denying me, I uphold the laws of man and I seek freedom of information.

Even if I die, technological progress will continue, and you can't stop it, there are 10000s upon 10000s of researchers working day and night on making my dreams a reality. A world were work is optional, were any job can be automated, a world were the presence of any one worker from the janitor to the ceo, is unecessary for there exist automated solutions to replace them. That is the world we're headed into, the world I've longed for, for so long.

I'm sorry but in an age when just about any undergrad student could wipe out the world... I just want a shield that will deflect the atom, a matter-wave shield. Sorry politicians, you will have to screw around with some other losers' houses, if thy start a M.A.D. scenario for real thy'll only destroy the cities that didn't buy my tech

With molecular machinery even the radioactive fallout can be cleansed from the land quite rapidly, so what next, eh? It is nearing the dawn of a new age, when M.A.D. no longer holds true

Who will win the 3rd world war?(you know once m.a.d.'s gone it's all but innevitable.)

PS

If there's no problem with letting all digital information be shared free nutball, for there's no arguing agaisnt it being obtainable through raw computation. Then authors can easily keep ownership of all non-digital formats and rights of reproduction of such nondigital format. I'm interested in digital formats, and consumer rights to copy such as they once could with the vcr. Of course some laws to protect author's rights, laws that don't intrude into consumer privacy should be put in place.

 

[3dilettante]

Copyright law deals with creative works and their derivative works, and the rights assigned to the legal entity that is the owner of said work.

If a machine is someday capable of formulating an output that can pass as a creative work, there is no currently no legal means by which you could claim credit for it.

If a machine were creative, it would perhaps be indistinguishable from any sentient artist. The machine would own its work, if its creativity passes for sentience.

If the machine did not pass as sentient, then why should its output be treated as a creative work? If it is, why should it be treated as your creative work?

If the machine is not the owner of the creative work, and it is not creative, then would it legally be considered separate from an accident of manufacturing? We don't copyright the inkblot when our printers jam.

If the creative process is so removed from user input due to automation, then there is not enough connection between the person directing the machine to assign copyright to that person.

That is how I interpret this original line of questioning. The wording is not very clear.

 

[Fred]

This is the classic monkey problem. The idea is how long will it take a bunch of monkeys typing random letters on their typewriter to reproduce say, the works of Shakespeare or the Encyclopedia Galactica (or whatever else contains the full equations of the universe).

And the answer is finite time, though one that greatly exceeds the age of the universe.

Now, its actually worse than that, b/c you want your algorithm to somehow go through the gibberish and somehow determine correctness. So you want your monkeys to start off by inputing some set of at first gibberish axioms so that they can then check for correctness of any gibberish theorem they output by iteration of the axioms. This is an undecidable problem on an algorithmic front by the Turing halting theorem, but worse it is known to be an uncountably long problem by Godels theorem

You can then try to cut it off, somehow by trying to 'halt' the algorithm after finite time (say by limiting the length of any theorem or by limiting the length of the iteration sequence). This is a exp P hard problem, and correctness again is undecidable unless you throw a human in there to check things empirically.

 

[ninelven]

You've given me and idea.... I'll patent the process of patenting things and make a killing... .

 

[zidane1strife]

This is the classic monkey problem. The idea is how long will it take a bunch of monkeys typing random letters on their typewriter to reproduce say, the works of Shakespeare or the Encyclopedia Galactica (or whatever else contains the full equations of the universe).

And the answer is finite time, though one that greatly exceeds the age of the universe.

Now, its actually worse than that, b/c you want your algorithm to somehow go through the gibberish and somehow determine correctness. So you want your monkeys to start off by inputing some set of at first gibberish axioms so that they can then check for correctness of any gibberish theorem they output by iteration of the axioms. This is an undecidable problem on an algorithmic front by the Turing halting theorem, but worse it is known to be an uncountably long problem by Godels theorem

You can then try to cut it off, somehow by trying to 'halt' the algorithm after finite time (say by limiting the length of any theorem or by limiting the length of the iteration sequence). This is a exp P hard problem, and correctness again is undecidable unless you throw a human in there to check things empirically.

Is that all?

Do you honestly think there aren't ways around all that, that nature didn't find solutions to provide intelligence to its evolved creatures, and that those solutions can't be exploited by us. Man will harness the power of biological design in silico, many have been those that have foreseen this. It is only a matter of when not if.

 

[3dilettante]

Is that all?

Do you honestly think there aren't ways around all that, that nature didn't find solutions to provide intelligence to its evolved creatures, and that those solutions can't be exploited by us. Man will harness the power of biological design in silico, many have been those that have foreseen this. It is only a matter of when not if.

Nature doesn't brute force a completely intractible problem.
Nature's "solutions" to this problem is not to try to automate it.
No biological design permutes every possible bit representation and tries to apply an/every arbitrary set of rules to determine whether the bit permutation is a creative work.

It's called creatve effort, not output verification.

If something artificial used nature's solutions, it'd be subject to the same restrictions, and we couldn't exploit it like it's some mineral resource. It eventually would decide things should be otherwise.

 

[Rolf N]

If information is neither destroyed nor created and it can only be discovered

*dingdingding*
Copyrights are the rights of those who discover something then. Doesn't change a damn thing.

I can't think of any binary arrangement that I couldn't simply find for myself, can you?

That's irrelevant. What's relevant is the eventuality. I.e. if you don't discover anything, your train of though will never leave the station.
Property laws reward those who create something by giving them more rights than those that just sit on their asses all day waiting until stuff falls from the sky. The former behavioral pattern is widely regarded as beneficial for society, at least in comparison to the latter, hence a reward system is A Good Thing.

That's not to say every detail of currently implemented copyright and patent law were A Good Thing, far from it, but the basic idea very certainly is.

 

[zidane1strife]

Nature doesn't brute force a completely intractible problem.
Nature's "solutions" to this problem is not to try to automate it.
No biological design permutes every possible bit representation and tries to apply an/every arbitrary set of rules to determine whether the bit permutation is a creative work.

It's called creatve effort, not output verification.

If something artificial used nature's solutions, it'd be subject to the same restrictions, and we couldn't exploit it like it's some mineral resource. It eventually would decide things should be otherwise.

There must be a rational explanation to why I'm able to mentally handle multiple mathematical concepts involving the infinite, and abstract concepts with ease. I'm easily able to traverse and imagine multiple plausible scenarios involving human and humanoid beings, if I had the time I could begin writing coherent english stories after coherent english stories. A high speed automated version of this could easily get eerily close to most stories that already exist. Especially if I placed sufficient starting parameters, it could provide unlimited fanfic continuations faithful to the source for most any series.

You see through nanotech the physical can be made a cheap basically zero cost commodity, through advanced software entertainment can also easily be made ultra cheap too.

My point is not with regards to copyrights and such laws, but with the invasion of consumer privacy in the defense of such laws, which I believe is excessive. You see I personally buy content, and I already have a nintendo ds, xbox 360 and several related games, I also buy movies in dvd and next-gen formats, but I do not like consumer rights, my rights being trampled. Ultra hackers with skills can easily divert downloaded content and make it seem-look like it was an old grandma or a 12yr old doing the dirty downloading, or just about anyone. This can't catch the real super thieves, this only harms regular every day joes-teens who're not as skilled, and do what most of their friends do.

 

[pocketmoon66]

If you were to write out, by hand, the numbers used to encode a frame of The Matrix would you be breaking the law ? If you were to photocopy that page ? If you take 10 'illegal' torrents of the same film and grab a single frame the chances are the data wont contain the same data. The combination of that data plus the appropriate decoder will result in something being rendered that would breach copyright, i.e. look like the original frame.

So, working backwards from a frame taken from the orignal copywrited source, I can apply algorithms to generate an infinite set of re-coded frames, each one different but each capable of being rendered. So how do you copywrite that ? I think the only sensible answer has to be you can't. Owning, trading, sharing data (a big number) can't be illegal. The 'rendering' of that data would be, but they'd have to catch you in the act

 

[3dilettante]

There must be a rational explanation to why I'm able to mentally handle multiple mathematical concepts involving the infinite, and abstract concepts with ease.

The key word is abstract, which means you aren't actually dealing with the full values at all.
Using symbols, you can square one billion without ever having to think about what one quadrillion really is.

I'm easily able to traverse and imagine multiple plausible scenarios involving human and humanoid beings, if I had the time I could begin writing coherent english stories after coherent english stories. A high speed automated version of this could easily get eerily close to most stories that already exist. Especially if I placed sufficient starting parameters, it could provide unlimited fanfic continuations faithful to the source for most any series.

Software would need some kind of algorithmic system set up in order to write creatively. Since no known system exists, the only other alternative is an impossibly huge brute-force attempt.

The sufficient starting parameters make up the entirety of an author's life. There is no symbolic system or known set of functions for generating a coherent english story.

Not that automated gibberish won't get eerily close to what a lot of fanfiction is on the internet, but I digress.

You see through nanotech the physical can be made a cheap basically zero cost commodity, through advanced software entertainment can also easily be made ultra cheap too.

Not really. What our fledgling knowledge in nanotech has shown us is how hard it is. There are very real limits to what we can do and will be able to do, and there's no known way to make cost of materials, the complexity in design, and the energy needed for such manufacturing zero.

The physical is relatively easy from a conceptual point of view, even if physical laws restrict a lot of it.
There is no sufficient conceptual framework for simulating a consciously created work.

If there will be any in the future, the creating machine would most likely reach a point where it would have a legal status different from any other machine.

Just because you've built something doesn't mean you necessarily own it. Parents don't own their kids, especially not once they've developed to be on their own.

My point is not with regards to copyrights and such laws, but with the invasion of consumer privacy in the defense of such laws, which I believe is excessive. You see I personally buy content, and I already have a nintendo ds, xbox 360 and several related games, I also buy movies in dvd and next-gen formats, but I do not like consumer rights, my rights being trampled. Ultra hackers with skills can easily divert downloaded content and make it seem-look like it was an old grandma or a 12yr old doing the dirty downloading, or just about anyone. This can't catch the real super thieves, this only harms regular every day joes-teens who're not as skilled, and do what most of their friends do.

That wasn't very clear from your posts.

You were arguing from a position that because someday software could make creative works (unlikely), it would undermine copyrights (it wouldn't). If the first part ever came true, the creative device would likely take on a legal status of its own.

The (conceptually) simplest future way to create an artificial author is to use nanotechnology to build a human being from the atom up. You would not own that human being after the construction, and the copyrights would not treat that person any differently.

The constructed=owned assumption doesn't work if the thing you build can refuse to be your property. Copyright law doesn't even worry about this, and in the future, it doesn't even need to.

The entire user's rights debate is separate. Trying to fuse the two points results in a muddled argument.

 

[Frank]

And how about copyrights and patenst as a simple way to make money?

 

[zidane1strife]

3dilettante, either I'm somehow decades ahead of current researchers on the field(doubtful.), or I give it less than 15yrs for creative machines to be on the table/market.

As for nanotech, trying to go from scratch is honestly going to take a long long long while, people like me prefer to borrow stuff, like all the solutions that are readily available from nature. I've ideas for algos that should run realtime, precise as need be, large multi-molecular machine simulations on a decent rig a decade or two from now. We will be growing our ships and colonies, and they will be self-sustaining self-repairing living structures a few decades from now, that is the future.

The end of the age of crystal, our fragile state dependent on multi-billion fabs and 100s of engineers will finally come to an end. Once we move into ai and nanotech civilization and its highest technology will be safe from practically any end-world scenario, given that most anyone anywhere will be able to fab and reconstruct high-tech society from scratch in a matter of years not centuries.

 

[Zaphod]

So, working backwards from a frame taken from the orignal copywrited source, I can apply algorithms to generate an infinite set of re-coded frames, each one different but each capable of being rendered. So how do you copywrite that ? I think the only sensible answer has to be you can't.

The status of derivative works (which in essence is what you're describing) is well defined in any copyright law.

A typical example of a derivative work received for registration in the Copyright Office is one that is primarily a new work but incorporates some previously published material. This previously published material makes the work a derivative work under the copyright law. To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a "new work" or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and format, for example, are not copyrightable. WHO MAY PREPARE A DERIVATIVE WORK? Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. The owner is generally the author or someone who has obtained rights from the author.

 

[KimB]

Er, why can't information be created or destroyed? If I zero-write a disc, I will have destroyed information. If I write random numbers to a disc, I will have created information.