Steve Wozniak and Stuart Brand Discuss Control of IP (1984) [video]

https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/video/at-the-first-hackers-conference-in-1984-steve-wozniak-and-news-footage/146496695

by 1970-01-01 • 2 years ago

88 40 2 years ago

gettyimages.in

mikewarot• 2 years ago

I find it ironic that such a free and flowing discussion about the nature of IP itself becomes the IP of a corporation.

1970-01-01• 2 years ago

The irony was not lost on me! This piece of "information" seems to be free to link, view, and enjoy (with a big watermark).

legel• 2 years ago

Love your username, the beginning of Unix Time — you’re like our Jesus

iteygib2• 2 years ago

Paraphrasing, but I do agree with the "information should be free but someone's time should not be" statement. How to properly execute and balance that though is the hard part

andsoitis2• 2 years ago

I do agree with the "information should be free but someone's time should not be" statement.

While it is a nice idea ("information should be free"), I don't know that the statement is rooted in practical reality. Information doesn't have autonomy so needs to be created, it can have time value, it certainly has relevance value, or entertainment value, has quality value (signal > noise); all these things require effort to produce, maintain, curate, distribute.

Leaving the practical constraints behind, I also struggle to see moral or ethical reasons for information to be free. Which information should be free? All information? Why?

pjmorris2• 2 years ago

"What does society need? It needs information that is truly available to its citizens—for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate. But what software owners typically deliver is a black box that we can’t study or change. Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives."

- Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman

adhamsalama• 2 years ago

To advance our civilization.

carapace3• 2 years ago

The lack of practical constraints on copying bits is exactly the rationale for the statement.

Since the cost to copy information (once the original bit patterns have been crafted, which process is, as you point out, typically costly) is close to zero it becomes regressive to charge for copies of information.

Clearly we should pay handsomely those who develop the original useful information.

- - - -

edit to add:

Sorry, I realized I was just paraphrasing the clip, and you probably already get it and are asking a different question, something like, granted that copying information is very cheap, still why should we just freely give each other useful information? Eh?

The answer there is that we're all in this together and we have serious challenges to face (climate, plastic and other "forever chemicals" and pollution, crashing of the marine ecosystem by destruction of plankton resulting in widespread famine (we eat more fish meat than all other animals), asteroids, etc.) and so we should do our best to accelerate our capabilities and power-with-wisdom to cope with it all.

iteygib2• 2 years ago

I feel it's essentially what a library is. There is a public or private cost behind it (like taxes to pay for it), but for all intents and purposes, the information inside of it is 'free' from the standpoint of the sheer amount of use and good it can provide for that cost. It is not technically free, but as close as it can be, and the information it provides has undoubtedly paid it self back a countless amount of times to the public (getting inspired, research to create things, relaxation, etc. etc.).

Gormo• 2 years ago

Information doesn't have autonomy so needs to be created, it can have time value, it certainly has relevance value, or entertainment value, has quality value (signal > noise);

The point is that information per se is non-rival and non-scarce, so the normal drivers of market exchange don't apply to it. Since we want to incentivize the creation of information, we have created positive law that generates artificial scarcity, and allows market forces to work mostly as they would for physical goods, but this is just a stopgap solution due to the difficulty of commoditizing the downstream uses of information.

To echo another commenter in this thread, if we were better at commoditizing and marketing the uses of information directly, rather than the information itself, we wouldn't need to use artificial scarcity as a proxy to generate that incentive.

all these things require effort to produce, maintain, curate, distribute.

But these inputs are not the determinant of the value of the end product. They only describe the process of creating it, but value is determined by the subjective utility enjoyed by the end consumer.

If you view time and effort necessary to create and distribute information as a capital expenditure on par with the time and effort necessary to design and manufacture any physical good, perhaps things come into clearer relief. Is anyone entitled to a guaranteed return on capital investments, or are they bearing risk in making them in pursuit of a potential, but uncertain, return? I think most people would hold the latter view.

Leaving the practical constraints behind, I also struggle to see moral or ethical reasons for information to be free.

I'm not sure I see where moral or ethical considerations even come into the discussion. The closest moral consideration that applies to the question is the way it affects property rights, but in that regard, it seems that it's the artificial scarcity in information that seems to lack sufficient moral justification.

There are no natural property rights in information itself, due to its conceptual and non-rival nature, and the attempt to take the norms of ownership associated with natural property and apply them to information actually constitutes an abridgment of natural property rights: functionally, 'intellectual property' amounts to a restriction on what patterns other people may arrange their own physical materials into, based on fallaciously reifying the pattern itself into a putative concrete thing to which rivalry applies.

Zambyte2• 2 years ago

Don't spend your life producing information. Spend your life doing things derived from information. If information is Free, what you do with it becomes the only valuable aspect of it.

Don't sell manuals. Write manuals, and sell labor (I will make your device behave in X way by doing Y, as described in my manual). Don't sell software. Write software, and sell labor (I will configure your computer to do X using Y software).

We have been held back so much by the artifical scarcity of information... it's absurd. It's nice to have a nice, cushy ecosystem where you don't have to compete in your domain (ie hardware manufacturers bricking devices for "unauthorized" upgrades / fixes, software proprietors having a monopoly on maintenance), but imagine a world where you had to compete or fail. I think we ought to try that sometime.

resource_waste2• 2 years ago

I have fears that the work I do today, will cause some sort of negative externality like Apple.

I might be a hardware engineer, make something cool, but you have some psychopath take your work, manipulate people's emotions and make them feel status insecure, then sell to them. Think of how much pain low income people feel watching Apple's commercials knowing they have an old iPhone. Think of the Apple legal team, promoting themselves at consumers and developers expense. Close to a billion people had their neurotransmitters negatively affected because of Steve's hardware success.

It just worries me that my good intentions today, can turn into immoral actions 10-20 years later.

josfredo• 2 years ago

I think this is a general rule. Everything we do today, regardless of the short-term benefits they may achieve, will eventually “turn to the other side”, effectively balancing things out.

My take is that it is far more valuable to do things just for the joy of it.

ecocentrik2• 2 years ago

The amplification of Apple's prestige brand status and it's influence on conspicuous consumption is a function of Apple's marketing and branding efforts and not related to any IP they developed.

Sorry to break it to you but most people who can't afford the latest iPhone find alternatives that fit their budgets with very little emotional distress. It's only individuals that feel the desperation to gain the approval of peer groups that discriminate based on middle class luxury prestige brand markers that experience any kind of emotional distress from not being able to display those brands on their person.

resource_waste2• 2 years ago

It's only individuals that feel the desperation to gain the approval of peer groups that discriminate based on middle class luxury prestige brand markers that experience any kind of emotional distress from not being able to display those brands on their person.

They don't matter? Why do their brains and neurotransmitters mean less than others?

teddyh• 2 years ago

If you make beautiful art, then psychopaths and murderers will still look at your art and enjoy it. Should this dissuade you from making beautiful art?

tuyiown• 2 years ago

I might be a hardware engineer, make something cool, but you have some psychopath take your work

You forgot the apple periods where they had little general appeal and it was just weird to use apple hardware. The process you describe started with the iPod, but its dynamic wasn't only due to marketing, at the time, the thing was really unique to interact with. You could really genuinely still think to do a great engineering work at the time, and the kid being killed over an iPod being a freak event.

I don't like this anti-corporate over simplifications, the psychopaths may be are, but they are not all controlling semi-gods, things emerges out of proportion also by themselves, like any kind of self-reinforcing processes.

apercu2• 2 years ago

I stopped primarily using Apple for a couple years, until they released OSX and I could run Apache, PERL and MySQL on my local machine instead of needed an internet connection to ssh to a linux host. Wifi not really being a thing in public spaces then, it allowed me to work from a coffee shop.

At the time, Apple seemed like they were about to go out of business.

cpach• 2 years ago

It’s Stewart :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

corytheboyd• 2 years ago

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. ...That tension will not go away.

Damn, that is very well said.

robg• 2 years ago

Pretty sweet sweater Woz is wearing, anyone know the story? Did early Apple custom make apparel?

mistrial9• 2 years ago

early Apple culture is unrecognizable compared to the modern versions IMHO

source: 1987

apercu2• 2 years ago

I remember (as a mac owner from '92 on) getting a catalog in the early 90's of Apple apparel. I'm not dreaming right?

A quick search definitely brings up an 87 catalog and clothes available from the website in 97, but I swear I got a paper catalog in like '93 with some corny clothes....

brcmthrowaway• 2 years ago

It was Grateful Dead then turned into then turned into The Matrix

schappim• 2 years ago

It's ironic to watch a video about IP and information freedom constantly marred by the Getty watermark.

Steve Wozniak and Stuart Brand Discuss Control of IP (1984) [video]

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