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How Intellectual Property Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here and this is the Don't turn
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: it off. It's actually more interesting than it sounds.
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  Speaker 1: Edition. Yeah. Can I just write off the bat shout
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  Speaker 1: out Olivia? Uh, this was a I don't know, it's
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: not the most fun topic. But she really dug in
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  Speaker 1: and it's great.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she's amazing at it actually, And this is yeah,
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  Speaker 2: she figured it out, like there is something interesting in
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: intellectual property and she found it so.
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  Speaker 1: Uh great, hudos, Ip.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we are talking about intellectual property today. Everybody's heard
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  Speaker 2: that term. You have to have been living under rocks
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  Speaker 2: and not heard it. But we'll still tell you what
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: we're talking about, because we're those kind of people. I'm
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: just teasing everybody.
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  Speaker 1: We're not talking about the Great Book The Yellow River
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  Speaker 1: by Ip Freely no, no.
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  Speaker 2: Okay no, or a building by Impay, nothing like that,
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  Speaker 2: although that would fall under I'm sure some sort of
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  Speaker 2: intellectual property protection. Intellectual property is basically the fruit of
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  Speaker 2: your mental labor. It can be an invention, it can
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  Speaker 2: be a.
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  Speaker 1: Slogan, yeah, screenplay, song.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it can be a movie you wrote, it
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  Speaker 2: could be a way to do business like business methods.
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  Speaker 2: It's gotten so crazy now that types of strains of
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  Speaker 2: certain kinds of bacteria can be protected.
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  Speaker 1: And the whole algorithm.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another one, Like it just keeps going and going.
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  Speaker 2: But anything that you can imagine, it doesn't even have
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  Speaker 2: to be a tangible thing, Like an algorithm is not tangible.
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  Speaker 2: Even when you put it down into code. It's not tangible.
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  Speaker 2: It's an idea that you can make a computer you
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  Speaker 2: to do really neat tricks with, but it's intangible. And again,
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  Speaker 2: coke is it. It's a slogan that's not at all tangible,
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  Speaker 2: and yet it's treated in most developed countries in the
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  Speaker 2: world or most industrialized countries in the world as the
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  Speaker 2: same thing as a property like your car or your
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  Speaker 2: house or your wedding ring. Like it's protected, and the
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  Speaker 2: way that it's protected is in really weird ways. Intellectual
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  Speaker 2: property and intellectual property law are a very unique animal.
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  Speaker 2: But what they all boil down to, Chuck is that
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  Speaker 2: if you get some sort of protection for your slogan,
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  Speaker 2: for your invention, for the screenplay you wrote, the government
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  Speaker 2: says that's yours. You are the only person who has
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  Speaker 2: any claim to it for X number of years, and
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  Speaker 2: congratulations on the thing you came up with using your creativity.
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  Speaker 2: And the whole purpose of having protection for intellectual property
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  Speaker 2: is to spur creativity, to spur discovery, to spur invention,
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  Speaker 2: to get it going. Because if you if you incentivize that,
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  Speaker 2: if you say, hey, if you come up with the screenplay,
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  Speaker 2: we're gonna make it so that no one else can
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  Speaker 2: just come along and make the movie that you wrote,
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  Speaker 2: that's yours, it's gonna make you want to keep pursuing
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  Speaker 2: a career of writing screenplays. But if you wrote a
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  Speaker 2: screenplay and you wrote it and it just didn't belong
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  Speaker 2: to you from the moment you finished the last sentence,
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  Speaker 2: and anybody could come along and make the movie and
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  Speaker 2: not give you a dime for your creativity, for your labor,
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  Speaker 2: you probably wouldn't do that, And so the public domain,
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  Speaker 2: the cultural public domain, would suffer as a result. We
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  Speaker 2: wouldn't have movies, we wouldn't have algorithms, we wouldn't have
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  Speaker 2: coca is it amazing? Slogans like that. We would be
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  Speaker 2: culturally bereft. If it were not for intellectual property protection,
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  Speaker 2: and yet it is one of the most insidious legal
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  Speaker 2: protections around today because it's been so thoroughly perverted from
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  Speaker 2: its original intent.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, it's been a while since who had one of those.
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  Speaker 2: I feel pretty strongly about IP.
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  Speaker 1: Here's a stat that LVIA found for US, which I
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  Speaker 1: think is pretty interesting as far as like how big
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  Speaker 1: IP is. And I think that this is from the
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  Speaker 1: US Patent and Trademark Office, And things have been ticking
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  Speaker 1: up as far as IP and how valuable it is
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  Speaker 1: and how you know how much people are registering IP
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  Speaker 1: and buying up IP since the nineties, and the US
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  Speaker 1: PTO said by twenty nineteen says a few years old
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  Speaker 1: that IP intensive industries accounted for forty one percent of
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  Speaker 1: the US gross domestic product. That's great, and thirty three
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  Speaker 1: percent of all employment was IP based. Yeah, that's startling.
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  Speaker 2: We used to invent things. We used to make machines,
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  Speaker 2: we used to develop airplace and cars and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 2: But now we invent ideas. Although we still invent stuff too,
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  Speaker 2: sure of course, but for the most part, that really
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  Speaker 2: kind of goes to show you like we have come
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  Speaker 2: to say, like, no, we're trading in ideas, and those
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  Speaker 2: things are very valuable, and you can build an entire
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  Speaker 2: industry around certain kinds of ideas, which is pretty nuts
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  Speaker 2: if you think about it totally.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're talking about US law, there are four
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  Speaker 1: kinds of ip that law covers, and we've talked about
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  Speaker 1: some of these here and there. I think we did
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  Speaker 1: a whole episode on patents in me. Well. If we haven't,
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  Speaker 1: we will. Patents are granted by the government, and everyone
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  Speaker 1: kind of knows what a patent is. I think that's
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  Speaker 1: when you invent an idea or a process or a design,
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  Speaker 1: and you can get different kinds of patents. You can
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  Speaker 1: get design patents or utility patents things like that. If
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  Speaker 1: you're like if you invented the rebox pump mechanism for
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  Speaker 1: the rebox shoe that we talked about, you would get
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  Speaker 1: maybe a design patent and a utility patent that says
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  Speaker 1: no one else can put an another pump and a
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  Speaker 1: shoe that kind of thing. So it has to be novel,
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  Speaker 1: which is the real key, useful and non obvious. If
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  Speaker 1: it qualifies, and you're generally it depends, but you're going
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  Speaker 1: to get about twenty years out of that patent. And
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  Speaker 1: you got to pay for it to get it, and
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  Speaker 1: it's not cheap to get a patent. You have to
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  Speaker 1: pay an attorney to do all the legwork and that's
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  Speaker 1: never cheap. Right.
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  Speaker 2: The next one, Chuck, is trademarks, which everybody knows what
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  Speaker 2: a trademark is, especially if you grew up in the
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  Speaker 2: second half of the twentieth century. That's when trademarks were
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  Speaker 2: everywhere and kind of what we wore on our T
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  Speaker 2: shirts and stuff. Right, Coke, is it who didn't have
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  Speaker 2: that T shirt or a bud Light T shirt with
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Spuds Mackenzie surfing on it?
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  Speaker 1: I had has puts mckenzy shirt.
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  Speaker 2: So trademark is basically a brand name, kim be a slogan,
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  Speaker 2: and it is something that you specifically associate with a
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  Speaker 2: specific company or a specific brand. Yeah, and you actually
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  Speaker 2: don't even have to trademark or register your trademark just
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  Speaker 2: from using you know, the Spuds Mackenzie drawing that you
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  Speaker 2: see everywhere are used to you're exercising your right to
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  Speaker 2: use that trademark and you can actually enforce in action
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  Speaker 2: against infringement on it. So if you haven't registered something,
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  Speaker 2: you'll see the TM That means that hey, this is
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  Speaker 2: our trademark. Don't mess with it. We haven't gone to
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  Speaker 2: the trouble of registering it. A registered trademark is that
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  Speaker 2: a capital are in a circle.
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  Speaker 1: That means that they.
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  Speaker 2: Actually did go to the trouble of registering it, and
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  Speaker 2: you really better not mess with them.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like an example is when you've seen court cases
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  Speaker 1: plenty of times where you'll see a company go in
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  Speaker 1: and say, here are one hundred and fifty examples of
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  Speaker 1: where we used this over the years. That's people trying
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  Speaker 1: to argue that they that's their trademark because they didn't
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  Speaker 1: copyright it or they didn't trademark it.
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  Speaker 2: That's why McDonald's had a legitimate case against McDowell's.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Oh man, great movie.
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  Speaker 2: There is also copyrights. That's another big one. I think
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  Speaker 2: everybody's pretty familiar with that. But that screenplay that you wrote,
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  Speaker 2: or the computer program that you came up with that
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  Speaker 2: you coded essentially a creative work, and you, as the
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  Speaker 2: copyright owner, you as the creator, have the sole right
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  Speaker 2: to do as you please with that, to turn that
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  Speaker 2: software into something that you sell over and over and
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  Speaker 2: over again, turn that screenplay into a movie. Like it's
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  Speaker 2: totally up to you, and nobody else can do it
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  Speaker 2: while you hold that copyright, and copyrights are the ones
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  Speaker 2: that last the longest. I don't know if we said
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  Speaker 2: trademarks never run out.
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  Speaker 1: Right, we didn't say it.
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  Speaker 2: As long as you're using as a trademark, you never
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  Speaker 2: your exclusivity never runs out. With patents, like you said,
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  Speaker 2: I think twenty years. With copyrights, it's seventy plus years
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  Speaker 2: after creation.
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  Speaker 1: Typically, I think it's seventy years after the death of
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  Speaker 1: the creator.
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  Speaker 2: Right, that's plus the creator's life is ensconced in that
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  Speaker 2: plus symbol.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Okay, I got you, and we'll talk about
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  Speaker 1: that later. That came from nineteen seventy eight. As far
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  Speaker 1: as screenplays and stuff, I think you can get a copyright,
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  Speaker 1: but the WGA has registration methods. You can register your
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  Speaker 1: script but you don't even have to do that stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But you would be wise too, because then you would
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  Speaker 1: have to if you haven't, you would have to prove
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  Speaker 1: that it was your id for idea first and someone
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  Speaker 1: didn't rip it off.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that other way to do, which is mail
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  Speaker 2: it to yourself in a sealed world. I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: but it seems like if you don't have to go
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  Speaker 2: to the trouble of registering it. That would help your
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  Speaker 2: claim quite a bit.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the poor person's copyright. I've heard that before. Sure.
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  Speaker 1: And what else? We got trade secrets and that's recipes, strategies,
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  Speaker 1: customer customer information, which is big any kind of process,
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  Speaker 1: like industrial process that you don't want another competitor to
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  Speaker 1: know about. And I don't think you need to register
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  Speaker 1: these either. No, And I meant to look up whether
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  Speaker 1: or not that's an actual downside because then you have
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  Speaker 1: to disclose things.
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  Speaker 2: No, you, oh, if you, if you registered it, that
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  Speaker 2: might be why you don't have to register it, because
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  Speaker 2: I wonder if we said or not. One of the
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  Speaker 2: reasons that patents are so beneficial is because you have
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  Speaker 2: to disclose exactly how that thing works, so that after
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  Speaker 2: your patent runs out, somebody can come along and make
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  Speaker 2: the same thing from your your patent. Trade secrets, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: you would not want to do that because they never
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  Speaker 2: run out. Just like trademarks, they're your secrets for as
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  Speaker 2: long as you actively work to keep them secret, like
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: you make employees and sign NDA's remember that episode that
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: was a good one. Yeah, or you you keep the
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  Speaker 2: recipe to Kentucky Fried Chicken's original chicken like under lock
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: and key with armed guards standing outside. That would be
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  Speaker 2: a pretty pretty good demonstration of actively protecting your trade secrets.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't need to register it. They have guns.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly exactly where this.
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  Speaker 1: All started is pretty interesting. We'll kind of quickly go
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: through the history. It could go as back as far
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: as ancient Greece, but as far as ip as we
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  Speaker 1: think of it today. You can point to fourteen twenty
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  Speaker 1: one in the Republic of Florence and June nineteenth of
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: that year when the government said, hey, Filippo brune Shelley, Nope,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Brune Leschi ski ski.
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  Speaker 2: Remember it's is it really sound with the ch in Italian?
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  Speaker 1: Filipo brune Leski There you go. Okay, I'm doing the accent,
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  Speaker 1: you guys. We heard from Italians it said, keep doing it.
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  Speaker 2: There you go.
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  Speaker 1: Filippo was an architect and had a patent for a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: technique to move marble over a barge, and they said, hey,
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  Speaker 1: this was really smart and you should make money off
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  Speaker 1: this and only you, and that kind of kicked the
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  Speaker 1: whole thing off and over the next you know, one
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  Speaker 1: hundred years or so, governments across Europe started sort of
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  Speaker 1: doing the same things and getting together these ideas that
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  Speaker 1: you should be able to patent and own processes and ideas,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: including the Venetian Patent Statute of fourteen seventy four yeah,
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  Speaker 1: which said, hey, it's up to us and our government
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  Speaker 1: can grant you a ten year monopoly on the use
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  Speaker 1: of a technology that you have made up, and if
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  Speaker 1: you violate it, you can get fined or you can
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  Speaker 1: get like a public citation.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. And again, by using government power to protect people's
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  Speaker 2: inventions and ideas help spur creativity and discovery and new inventions.
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  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just the Venetians who figured this out.
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  Speaker 2: About one hundred and fifty years later, England said hey,
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  Speaker 2: we're going to pass our Statute of Monopolies and it
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: basically said that if you have a new invention, you
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: have a monopoly to it for a certain period of time,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: very similar to what we have now for patents. But
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: what's interesting about that is that that actually rolled back
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: even more draconian law where basically the king could hand
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: out patents or sell patents exactly to whoever they wanted,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: and you could get a patent on vinegar, so like
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: there existing stuff. If you were a friend with the king,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: you could be the sole producer of vinegar if the
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: king gave you a patent for vinegar. And the Parliament said,
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  Speaker 2: this is actually stifling progress and discovery. We're going to
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  Speaker 2: say this is limited to new inventions and for a
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: limited period of time, which were two really good kind
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: of points to add to that whole idea.
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  Speaker 1: Totally well, and it prevented you know, they were definitely
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: getting kickbacks and or just outright selling stuff, right, the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: king selling Yeah, the king was so here. In the US,
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  Speaker 1: our Constitution's Patent and Copyright clause gives Congress the power
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  Speaker 1: to quote promote the progress of science and useful arts
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  Speaker 1: by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: excls right to their respective writings and discoveries. This was,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I think past. I think the first patent was in
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: seventeen ninety granted to one Samuel Hopkins, who is producing
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it had a method of producing potash. And they're like, hey, congratulations,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you are patent number one.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: He said, wow, gee, that's amazing. I've never been first
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: at anything.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: He's done his shoelaces, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: He was first on the internet, commenting all the time,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: but no one counts that.
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  Speaker 2: So this whole thing, if you, if you stop and
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: think about it's all legal fiction. Like the government is
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: saying you have a monopoly on it, but that's that
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: doesn't there's no actual concrete anything going on here. They're
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: just saying nobody else can use this thing that you
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: came up with. We're the government, we're saying so. But
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the whole concept of protecting intellectual property actually is rooted.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It has a philosophical basis. There's a few different justifications
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  Speaker 2: for it. The first came from well, I don't know
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  Speaker 2: if it's the first, but the first in this list
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: came from Hegel, the German philosopher, who said that intellectual
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: property is an extension of you. Like if you go
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: out and you buy some seeds, and you buy some land,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: and you grow crops from those seeds on that land,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: those are your crops. You mixed your labor with your
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: own resources and created something, and that's yours. Why would
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: it be any different for your ideas? You used your resources,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: say schooling or inspiration, and you used your brain power
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: to turn it into an idea or a thought. That
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: you could tell other people. I can't do that, but
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: you know other people can. According to Hegel, why would
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: you not own that as well just as you would
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: those crops.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Now, what's the difference between that and Lockian?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Lockian is there's actually not a lot of difference, to
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: tell you the truth.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: So that's just another, you know, similar school of thought
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: from another philosopher.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, an earlier philosopher too, by a couple hundred years,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: I think, But it's essentially the same thing from what
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I can tell.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Well, there's also a utilitarian which means your INCENTIVI is
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to create something, which is what you've been talking about,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and the fact that you know, no one's going to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time doing this stuff. If that
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: they it's all about money. If you don't have the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: incentive eventually of fortune, then you're not going to spend
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: your time doing it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Probably, yes, And I understand the difference now if I
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: kind of make correct myself. Locke was the one who
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: is essentially saying, you just like mixing seeds with land
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: and growing crops. You same thing with your thoughts. Hagel
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: was saying, like, you own your thoughts just as much
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: as you own your body, you own your thoughts, and
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: that they're your thoughts and they should belong to you.
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  Speaker 2: So there's definitely a distinction between the two. I was confused.
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  Speaker 2: Has happened sometimes.
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  Speaker 1: So let's take a break, good idea. All right, we'll
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: be right back. All right, we're back everyone, and we're
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: here to talk about some criticisms of the whole concept
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of IP. And things have really changed a lot since
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the Internet age and the tech boom as far as
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: IP goes, things really really ramped up and took off.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And there's a legal philosopher named Samir Chopra and Livia
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: found this article in aon and basically said that, you know,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: kind of grouping all this stuff together and it's not
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: just choprah like other critics will argue the same thing.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: If you say trademarks and copyrights and patents and trade
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: secrets and everything is all the same thing, which is IP,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it really just sort of diminishes each one's specific purpose
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: because they all have a specific purpose. And calling it
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: just intellectual property, you like, using the word property even
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: makes it sound like you're a thief, that you're taking
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: something tangible, when in fact it still exists, Like you,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: if you download a song for free, you're not taking
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that song from the artist. You're just getting that song
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: for free, and that song still exists and the artist
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: still owns it.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That was a big part of Chopra's point that
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: calling it intellectual property theft or crime makes it a
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: moral thing, whereas if you just call it copyright infringement,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: it sounds like a bureaucratic issue, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: that makes sense, and that that's unfair semantically to kind
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: of put it all together. But even more so, they
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: don't all really relate to one another as easily as
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: you would think by being all lumped together under one term.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And so, like most legal protection and probably all legal
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: protection of intellectual property around the world, they say, well,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: there's actually we'll put some limitations on here. One of
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: the big ones is that there's a time limitation on it. Yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And again the reason why is because they're they're saying,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: there's a very difficult balance that's being struck here. One
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: is that you want to foster discovery. You want to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: incentivize people to go out and invent new things and
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: come up with new ideas, because everyone benefits from that.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, you don't want to incentivize
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: it so much that you actually disincentivize it by giving
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: people too long of a monopoly. So you give them
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: twenty years for a patent or something, right, which works
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: out because you know, I think about it, Think about
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: if the first mobile phone had like a seventy year
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: patent where we be right now? You know, so twenty
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: years seems fair, I guess in that context.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Well, also that gives you that's basically saying like, you
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: got this amount of time to do something with it.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: M yeah, go, nobody else is going to do it, Yeah,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: should do it for sure.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: There's also like with copyright law as well, there's like
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: fair use, like we talked about in the Mad episode
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: how parodies allowed, or you can comment on it that
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: there's there are some exceptions to the rule. It's not
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: just like ironclad, and for good reason, because again, this
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: is a very difficult balance to strike.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've had our struggles with that over the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: year in our own show when we're doing an episode
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: on something where it would be like hip hop or something,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: or record scratching, like those really lend themselves to playing
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: examples and we've never been super clear on the actual law.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: We could probably get away with it, but we different
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: companies we've worked for over the years had different tolerances
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for just getting you know, even having to suffer through
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the hassle legally of seeing if it's okay to do that,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So we've always just not done it generally.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have a few times, like I
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: think the Disco episode we did, but we were clearly
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: commenting on the stuff. We weren't just using it for fun, like.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's also a time limit that we were
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: never sure, like you can play so many seconds, you
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: have to comment on it. And Jerry was always the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: fun killer. You know, Mom had to come in and say, guys,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: you can't do that. And not a great position for
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Jerry to be in.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: No, but a highly natural one. It felt right.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: The other thing we should talk about is the cost
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: to consumers, which is there are people that say, and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of course this is when we're going to talk about
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals because that's a big part of IP. But there's
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: an econoistman named Dean Baker and others who say, like,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: you know, the effect of this IP law is really
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: making the one percent just even more rich, and there's
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: a transfer of wealth to the tune of about a
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: trillion dollars a year because largely because of pharmaceutical companies,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: they're a big chunk of that trillion dollar. When you
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: grant a monopoly on a drug, and sometimes even the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: government funds that to help make it happen. But then
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: this one company has this drug and they can charge
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: whatever they want for it, and then all of a
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: sudden there's a trillion dollars being you know, put in
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: this rich person's pocket and then transferring it to another
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: rich person's pocket.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and the trillion dollars he calculated, is that's
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the amount we pay a year beyond what we should
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: be paying.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pharmaceuticals mainly.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good, easy example, he calculated. They
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: make up about three hundred and eighty five billion of
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: that trillion trillion. But there's also other stuff too. There's
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: like types of fertilizer and types of seed that are
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: patented that because they own a patent, And if you
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: want this life saving medicine and you want this one
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: kind of seed, you have to pay whatever price we
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: want because we're the only ones who can sell it.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Because we have a government sanctioned monopoly. That all of
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: that adds up to about a trillion dollars more a
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: year that we're paying. And like I said, the pharmaceutical
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: companies in particular are they're an easy target. But the
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: reason they're an easy target is because they demonstrate so
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: thoroughly the problems with intellectual property protections. And that is
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: like you were saying, they make ridiculous amounts of money.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: They charge whatever they want to charge because they're the
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: only ones making this drug for X number of years,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: like twenty years or something like that. Right, and then
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: to add insult to injury, they have tons of government funding.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: In the United States, the National Institutes of Health kicking
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: forty billion dollars for research, and I think the pharmaceutical
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: industry total spends about another ninety billion. There's a lot
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: of money on research, but they found that they in
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty, the ten largest pharmaceutical makers spent more on
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: selling and marketing existing rugs than they did on research
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: for new drugs. They also spent seven hundred and forty
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: seven billion dollars between I think twenty two thousand and
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: one and twenty twenty and stock buybacks and dividends and
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: stock buybacks are not the worst thing in the world.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: There's definitely worse things you could do with your corporate cash.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: You're essentially paying back loans that investors gave you. Nothing
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: inherently wrong with stock buybacks. But pharmaceutical industry, it's a
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: different example. And one of the things they could be
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: doing with that extra money, rather than upping their share price,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: is pouring it into more and more research and development,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: because there's a lot of diseases that still need to
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: be cured, and they're instead spending it on ads that
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you see on nightly news.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. True, that is why there are some people out there.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And LVIA found this one guy from Columbia University and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: economist named Joseph Stiglitz's great name, that said, what we
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: should be doing is giving out big cash p for
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a new discovery, a new pharmaceutical discovery that's like a
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: game changer, and instead of spending your money on advertising
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and marketing or on like drugs for balding and a
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: rectile dysfunction. Not saying that those aren't issues. I don't
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: want to diminish anyone's problems with any of those things.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: To be clear, but a cure for cancer would be better.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I think we can all agree. And or you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: drugs to treat malaria when developing countries are being ignored
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: because they're concentrating on something like a cure for baldness.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: So like, let's give a cash prize instead of a
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: monopoly and say, hey, we'll give you I mean, I'm
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: just throwing out numbers. This it wasn't from Stigletz, but here,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: we'll give you five hundred million dollars if you come
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: up with a cure for cancer. And then that's just
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: a cash award given to your company. And then it's
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: open source and any pharmaceutical company in the world can
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: make this stuff and get it out there super fast
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and competitively speaking, probably cheaper.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, And if you they threw out that five hundred
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: million figure the pharmaceutical industry, we'd be like, huh, yeah,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: that's lunch. So Stiglay, you're like a doctor evil five
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: hundred million dollars totally. So Stiglas is saying, like, you
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: don't want to just do away with the patent and
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: trademark protection, like you want to keep that because it
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: does incentivize research in other areas. What he was saying
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: is identify the really terrible diseases that don't have a
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: financial incentive to have research and development money thrown at.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I'm like malaria. It's one of the top ten killers
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: in the world, but it kills people in less developed,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: lower income countries who don't have the money to spend
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: on that kind of drug, so the malaria is allowed
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: to run rampant. What Stiglas is saying is governments can
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: get together, or the US could do it alone and
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: say we'll give you five hundred billion dollars for a
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: cure familaria and then the other stuff you guys keep going,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: you know, and doing and making your money off of.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: But how about an extra five hundred billion nothing to
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: sneeze at. So exactly, it's a it's a good idea,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: but I think there's a flaw in it to chuck,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: and that is that if the US government did this
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: and made it open source like he's suggesting, like you said,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: then the rest of the world would benefit from the
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: US government funding. We'd become the drug research funders for
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the world. The rest of the world would become free
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: riders who would just get the recipe for free because
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: the US government handed out that prize to the company
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: that created it or discover.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd have to get together and sign a pact
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: with like most of the major countries of the world
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, that they all do the same, Okay,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean it would have to be
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a global push because that's and in fact, that kind
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: of segues into our next section, which is the global
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: globalist world that we live in. It becomes a little
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: sticky because IP law I think generally just covers the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: country that you're in. I think when you get a patent,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you have to get it in different countries if you
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: want to sell it in different places. And there's a long,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: long history of countries not respecting IP law from other
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: countries and stealing stuff. China is a big one. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: in the case of China, it's sometimes it's hey, why
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: don't you give me We'll let you do business in China.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: You know, people we have over here will let you
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: do business here if you give us. If you like,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: open source your stuff only to us.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Right, right, you have to partner with the Chinese business
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: who will have full access to your intellectual property if
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: you want access.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Right or they'll just steal it, which also happens.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: That's a big one. There was an operation that was
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: funded and supported by China's government between twenty nineteen and
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty two where Chinese hackers stole trillions of dollars
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: worth of intellectual property from just thirty companies, just took it.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: They had everything to create pharmaceuticals, create guided missile systems,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: like just they got everything, and there's not a lot
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: you can do about that, Like there's there's basically nothing
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: you can do about those things. Now China has those now.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: And the big argument against that is that if China
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: can just steal ideas, it doesn't have to spend tons
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: of money on research and development, So that means that
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: it can make those products cheaper than the people who
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: actually whose idea it was and did spend that money
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: on research development in price the legitimate owner right out
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: of the market. And that is about as unfair competition
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: as you can possibly ever encounter.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also something that has been going on forever.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: It's not new. China's not the first country to do this.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Liba points out that when economys are emerging, and especially
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: during like tech boom, and they're catching up to richer countries,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: then they will steal ideas, I mean everything from I
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: mean it happens all the time and has for decades.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: The lawsuit guitars like Japan made knockoffs of like Gibson
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and Fender guitars in the seventies and eighties and sold
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a ton of them, and they were really good guitars.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: And I think there may be a short stuff in
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: there about the lawsuit era, but it's always happened. Even
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: in the United States, we did the same thing, and
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: from the very beginning of our copyright law in the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: eighteenth century, we very much explicitly exempted foreign works from
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: protection so we could go out and steal things like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the power loom and stuff like that.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those two Carnegie and Dominic guys are saying like
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: this is just part of the trajectory that developing economies
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: hit upon at some point in time. It's just way
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: easier to steal the ideas and use those to grow
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: your economy. But they said that trajectory also usually includes
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: more strictly enforced IP protections on the other side of
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: that development. And apparently China is starting to show signs
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: of that that they're taking IP protection a little more seriously,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: at least according to the Carnegie people. But yeah, that's
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons why we're in a trade war
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: with China is because of hacks like that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Hacks like that was almost
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the name of our show. We'll be right back, man.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I'm still cracked up about hacks like that. So one
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: of the things about intellectual property protection is that it
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: is kind of grown in lockstep as American industry has.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Because as American industry grows and comes up with more
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: and more valuable intellectual property, they like to go to
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the government and say, hey, why don't you guys come
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: up with stricter and stricter laws giving us longer and
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: longer monopolies to those ideas to that intellectual property. It's
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: basically the snake starting to eat its tail, where the
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: government has now become Charles the First and the corporations
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: are like all of Charles's first friends getting patents on
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: vinegar and stuff like that. It's not quite that egregious,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: but it's the same contours the same idea. Basically, where
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: incredibly wealth wealthy people are given unfair, anti competitive advantage
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: over say startups or people who have even better ideas
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: through these monopolies.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Contour is one of my words, like cellar door. It's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: not a combination. But oh yeah, yeah, the word contour
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: just I don't know, that's velvety to me.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Hack likes that.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: So you're saying copyright law like it's just sort of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: extended over the years as far as how long you
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: could own these ideas. In the seventeen ninety when we
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: first started out, it was fourteen years, you could renew
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: for another fourteen and then you know, over the ensuing
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: like a couple of hundred years. Basically, it just grew
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and grew and grew until nineteen ninety eight with the
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. That's when the seventy
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: years after the person's death was put in place, or
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: if your corporation ninety five years from the original publication
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: or one hundred and twenty years from creation, whichever is
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: less a little confusing, but it makes sense if you
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: think about it.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that actually brought the United States into line
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: with international agreement on copyright limitations in time frames. I
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: think there was lower than other countries. What other countries
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: were at but regardless, people just kind of smelled a
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: rat and snuck around, actually ironically a souda mouse. It's
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: all frequently called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act because around
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: that time, Disney was supposedly in danger of losing the
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: rights to Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse in twenty
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: twenty three, and they were lobbying very hard to make
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: that not happen, to get the Sunny Bono Copyright Term
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Extension Act passed, which was successful. But I've also read
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: that Disney wasn't quite behind it like people say, and
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: that even if Steamboat Willie does come into public domain
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: this year, I don't think he did. But even if
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: he did, just that specific version of Mickey would be
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: in the public domain. And the Mickey that we know
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: in love will probably never be in the public domain
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: because not only does he have copyright protection, Disney also
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: uses him like a trait, like a slogan or like
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: a brand name. It's like he has trademark protection, and
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: trademark protection never runs out as long as you keep
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: using it. So Mickey will probably never enter the public
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: domain even if Steamboat Willie did. I didn't see that
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: he did.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Though I don't know. I don't think so, but this
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: just occurred to me that with every year we do
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: our show, we can look for a Halloween podcast story
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: from a year later in history.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why we ended up doing Philip K. Dick
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, because he finally started to
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: come into the public domain.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I love it. And by the way, people that wrote
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: in that either had ideas or wrote their own stories.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I haven't looked yet, but I say those emails and
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to take a look at those, all right.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: The next thing we should talk about is in nineteen
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: ninety eight the Dilgital the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which basically,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the way I understand it is that it covered the
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Internet such that it created a way for someone to say, hey,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: you're using my thing on your website, go take it down.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: I want to officially register that you are taking my stuff,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and as long as they take it down, then they
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: are not penalized. Right.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: That was a kind of a big deal because it
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: allowed the Internet to start to flourish, and it kept
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: people who ran social media sites or YouTube or something
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: like that from worrying that they were going to get
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: their pants sued off and allowed for the spread and
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: really kind of boosted the economy quite a bit, as
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you can imagine.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: One of the problems though, with these long protections, and
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: sometimes in some cases like trademarks like limitless protection, is
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: that so seventy years beyond the lifespan of the creator.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: That is a long time. Yeah, as you can tell
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: from like the Halloween stories we pick, like sometimes we
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: have no idea what they're talking about because the the
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: language they're using is English, and you understand that they're
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: English words, but the context is so old that it
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: doesn't really make sense. Just like remember that one thing
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: about how I thought the guy was reading tea leaves
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: or something like that to see who's coming in and
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: yeah and yeah. So that's a really good example of
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: one of the problems of it, because when we use
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: those stories, we are building on them. We're taking the
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: we're taking them and putting our own spin on them.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: We're making silly voice sales, yes exactly. We're creating something
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: new using that original work as a building block. And
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: that's one of the purposes of creating protections for creative stuff,
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: so that eventually it will spread out into the public
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: domain and people can do new, amazing things with them.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: The problem is if it's seventy plus years before you
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: can do that, it's not as easy to make new
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: ideas from as it would be if it were twenty
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: years old or ten.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this one I understand in a way because like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: how many great films have we gotten based on the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: works of Shakespeare? Which is Lvia points out that who
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: was it Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke University Center for
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the Study of the Public Domain. That's pretty specific. Sure,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that's an argument that Jennifer Jenkins makes, which is like,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have you know, these great adaptations of the
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: works of Shakespeare's films and stuff like that, which is true.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: But I also can see a world where like come
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: up with a new idea, you know.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Well supposedly it might have been Shakespeare said it. There
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: are no new ideas on nothing new under the sun. Like, yeah,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: all the ideas have been essentially come up with, and
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: everything else is just basically a remix of it.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like seven real movie plots essentially, I over
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: seven dramatic I can't remember how many it is, but
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: that there is an argument to me and made that
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: there are really only seven different stories you can tell
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and everything else is a version of those.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we don't protect those specific seven ideas, we
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: would be totally messed if we if we did, right,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: the protections are more nuanced than that. It's like how
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: that story develops, what the characters are doing in it,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: that's what's protected. And so in that sense, yes, you
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: are coming up with a new idea rather than just
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: remixing a Shakespeare play. And I agree with you. I
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I have the same that same kind of quibble with that,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: the idea that you can't that is too long to
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: remix stuff, even though we do that every Halloween.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Uh. The Internet is very tricky though, because on one hand,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you want like uh, the idea of like the paywall.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: You want people to hear your stuff and see your stuff.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: But if you are and Olivia's is a great example,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: if you're like a reporter in the South Sudan covering
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: something very important to you, you want everyone that you
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: can think think of to find this and discover it.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: But you also, like it costs money for you to
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: be there and to be on the ground in the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: South Sudan for a year doing this intensive reporting, like
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: a company needs to be paying you to do that
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and to fly there and to stay there and per
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: diem and all that stuff, and they're not doing that
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the goodness of their hearts. So they may say, well,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: we got to put this behind a paywalk because we
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: got to make money.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And when the Internet came along in the beginning,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: it followed a hacker ethos, which was that it should
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: be free and open to everybody. Information is now easiest
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: pie to disseminate, and we should it should all be
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: free and unfettered. And we actually see that that colliding
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: with what you were just talking about, how you know
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: someone's reporting is valuable and is worth money, with colliding
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: with the idea that information should be free on the internet.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: With Canada right now, where I think Canada passed a
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: law that says that if you are like a social
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: media aggregator and news aggregator, you have to pay the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: creator of that news some form of compensation for aggregating
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: that news because you're making money off of it. But
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: you're just taking their work for free, right And Canada
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: is in a real pickle right now because Google and
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Facebook said, okay, well, we're just not going to be
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: available in Canada anymore because we're not going to pay
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: that and what's Canada going to do? So that seems
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: like that is very ironic. The free Internet, in the
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: form of the most profitable, most expensive and valuable companies
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: in the world, is crushing the journalistic value that's brought
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: by people who create news and come up with the
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: articles that those companies make their money off of. It's
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: a terrible jam.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: It really is. And over the years, of course, we've
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: had sort of activist crusaders like Aaron Schwartz, who in
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven was indicted for downloading one of our favorite websites,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: jastore jstr database. What does that stand for? Actually, I
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: don't even know.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: I can't even possibly come up with anything on this
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: short and notice chuck believe me.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: But anyway, Schwartz downloaded millions of academic articles from the
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: jastore database, which is behind a paywall, and the idea,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: you know, presumably, was that he was going to share
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: those and he even had a manifesto, the Gorilla Open
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Access Festo, where he's like, there's a moral imperative to
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: have these academic articles available to the world and to
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: someone who might not have the money in the global South,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: these institutions that can't pay for these journals, maybe like
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: we should get it out there. And Jaystore did not
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: press charges. Yeah, but US attorneys came after him and
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: he took his own life at the age of twenty
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: six and twenty thirteen before the trial started.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, US attorneys Carmen Ortiz and Steven Hayman really aggressively
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: pursued charges against him. And it's kind of explained that
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: he was the scapegoat in the post WikiLeaks world. They
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: were seeking to make an example out of him. And yeah,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: he took his life at twenty six, and like a
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: real luminary was lost, especially if you stop and consider
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: what he was doing, and especially if you stop and
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: consider that Jay Store was like, you gave the articles back,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: We're not going to press charges. And if you want
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: to know like a little peak behind what Aaron Schwartz
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: was doing, if you're like that's a weird thing to
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: die over scientific journal articles, who cares. There's an amazing
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: article from Prisonomics that Alec Mayasi wrote in twenty thirteen
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: called why is Science behind a paywall? And everyone should
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: read that because it's about the scientific journal publishing racket
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: that is basically keeping science in the hands of just
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: the wealthiest universities in the world and out of everybody
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: else's hands because they make time of money off of it,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: even though science is supposed to be spread everywhere far
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: and wide, so people can try new things based on
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: those findings.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Because money's the root of all evil.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Right, there's an article that I think Dean Baker wrote
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: his ip the Root of All Evil?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting, we're talking about earlier. Yeah, So enforcing this stuff,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: especially on the Internet, has been very tricky over recent years.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: When you talk about websites like BitTorrent and Napster. Back
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: in the day, lime wire is what I use, remember LimeWire.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And what was the other one with the why? I
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: can't remember, but yes.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Someone will write in let us know.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: But Napster if you don't know about that, and you're
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: pretty young and you were a kid when that happened,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: that was sort of one of the first free music
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: downloading sites, and it was all over the news at
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: the time because it devastated the music industry in a
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: lot of ways, and a lawsuit shut them down in
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one. But this was a case where
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the world and the internet and the music industry pivoted
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: eventually when things like Spotify and Pandora came along and said, hey,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: we can't police this. You cannot shut down people trading
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: music online. The genie has left the bottle. It's too late.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: But why don't we get together and at least we'll
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: start these services where people can sign up and they
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: can pay for this stuff, because we think people will
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: do that. They may not buy your records anymore, but
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: they'll pay ten bucks a month or whatever for unlimited music,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and then we'll give you a tiny little piece of it.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And they said, all right, I guess that's the best
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: we can do. This is a stat Livia found in
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two inflation adjusted dollars revenue from and this
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: is just music sales like selling a CD or whatever.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: At the time in nineteen ninety nine it was twenty
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: six almost twenty six billion dollars, which was the peak,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: went all the way down to eight point three billion
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen and twenty fifth, and as backup as
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of a couple of years ago, to about sixteen billion,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: which is still you know, a little more than a
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: little less than half. I guess of the peak because
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of largely because of like paid subscriptions and stuff like that.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: But that's a huge decline and the only reason music, Like,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: if you complain about the price of concert tickets, it's
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: because you stopped paying for recorded music. That's there's a
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: direct line you can draw between musicians having to make
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: money somehow and you stealing their music.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: That's the thing. It's not necessarily the musicians making that money.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Like there's huge companies that make most of the money
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: on a ticket these days, and.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: That's a like a concert ticket.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why tickets sales and prices are so jecked,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Like you can go on to Ticketmaster or something like
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: that and the show won't be sold out, and yet
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: they're suddenly at scalper prices for some reason. It makes
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: no sense. It's a total racket. And that's the reason
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: why it's a record because again, like you said, they
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: stopped making as much money off of recorded music, so
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: they figured out how to make as much money as
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: they could off of live music. Where before, Yeah, that
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: was like that was the artist's piece, the live thing,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Like the record company got the record money you go
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: off and do your tour. We don't care. Have as
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: much fun as you like. And when the record company's
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: pie was removed by Napster completely just chattered. They moved
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: over to Live and now they have a stranglehold on
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: ticket prices, which is awful.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean back in the day it was ticket
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: prices were low because you toured to support the album sales. Yeah,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: you put out a record, you go on a big tour,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: you charge like eight to fifteen dollars, and you sold merch.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: You got some money, merch money, and you sold a
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: ton of records. Once the record thing went away, they
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: had to make money and then all the other you know.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, not knocking them because we work
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: with these people, but promoters and venus and they all
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: take a big piece public service announcement. If you'll allow
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: really quickly, please when you go to buy a stuff
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you should know live ticket, please please please only go
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and make sure you're looking at your computer screen, make
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: sure you're going to the ven you only because when
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: you type in stuff you should know live Boston, the
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: first thing that pops up might be a scalper site
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and you might not realize it's a scalper site because
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: they don't look like, you know, shady guys and leather
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: jackets on the corner anymore. It looks like, oh, this
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: is just the place where you buy the tickets to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck show. And we had a few people
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: that wrote in and said like, hey, I just paid
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: two hundred dollars for this ticket blah blah blah blah blah,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, you went to a scalper site and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: they said, no, I didn't. And I said, I guarantee
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: you did, because our tickets are not more than like whatever,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: like thirty five bucks or something. So just people should
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: know that we never have a chance to say that.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: So please don't buy scalper ticket unless you just can't
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: get a ticket and you're loaded and don't care.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the original price is thirty five dollars.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: And then there's you know, whatever fees the venue puts
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: on it, and then once you get out of away
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: from the venue, it just keeps going more and more
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: people put more and more egregious fees on it. So
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I think the best thing to do is to either
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: if you can go to the box office and buy
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: them directly. That is far and away your cheapest as
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: close as you're going to get to face value. And
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: if you can't do that, look for pre sales. We
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: always have pre sales, a couple of days of pre
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: sales first where that has the least amount of fees
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: attached to it. There's the fewest cooks in the kitchen
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: at that point, and then after that and regular sales
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: when it just turns into the wild West.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we love these live shows, but I
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: gotta say once my eyes were really open once we
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: started doing it as to how it all works. It's
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: really really kind of like, uh, okay.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because we can't do anything about it. It's like, oh,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: you guys can sell the tickets yourselves then, and no,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: we can't. We can't possibly do that. Where you have
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: to deal with the people that you have to deal with,
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: and there are some that are better than others. There's
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: some that are there's promoters and ticket sellers that are
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: aware that there is a lot of terribleness to their
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: industry and they're trying to do the opposite, and you
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: can seek them out, but they're not in every city.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: You're eventually going to run into having to work with
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: people that you don't want to work with, and that's
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: just part of being on tour.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. And this all started because of Napster and
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: me talking about Napster.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to close that loop other than
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: to say I don't know.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: We could just end the episode.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I got nothing else.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, I got nothing else either. If you want to
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: know more about intellectual property protection, there's a lot of
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: really interesting, if not kind of dry, articles out there
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: about it. And since I said dry, it's time for
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: a listener mail.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: It's time for Chuck. This is I just thought a
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: pretty cool little tidbit from Nicole Adreon. Hey guys, wanted
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: to say thanks for the show. Love listening while I
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: drive and learning something new, and you always infuse some
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: laughter into my day. It just listened to the episode
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: on the Manhattan Grid. It's an oldie but a goodie,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and as a gal who grew up in the shadows
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: of New York City on Long Island, spent quite a
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: lot of time there and hold it near and dear
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: to my heart. One thing you missed out on, though,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: was a little explanation on Broadway. You mentioned that it
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: does not stay consistent with a grid. And here's the thing.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: The reasoning for this is because it was a deer
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: run that indigenous people used to hunt prior to the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Dutch coming in and colonizing the island. There are also
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: some really interesting studies and maps that were created to
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: assess what plants were native to the island before it
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: became a concrete jungle. So Broadway, like that little diagonal
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: thing was a deer run and it became a road eventually.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: I guess that's very cool.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool anyway, thanks for the opportunity to learn. We'd
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: love to hear an episode on the high Line. It's
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: got a great history. And that again is from Nicole ad.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Thanks Nicole. We love learning stuff we didn't know about.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks for taking the time to write in and tell us.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Nicole and just
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: be super cool with some great info, you can send
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.