The internet is changing the shape of intellectual property

According to Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

-On the Internet, ideas run free and know-how can't be protected. Internet moguls insist that in today's world it's pointless to hide. Winners no longer try to protect themselves with patents. Instead they make decisions as quickly as possible and innovate. So is there really any point to protecting intellectual property the old fashioned way?

-You protect your property by applying your know-how more quickly. Or you sell it to those who can. Someone who is simply copying you will never catch up.

The problem of intellectual property is extremely interesting. I have a perhaps revolutionary point of view on the issue. I think that the purpose of human intellectual activity is to spread knowledge as broadly as possible, not to establish control over property.

Attempts to rewrite the history of scientific achievements as someone or other's personal discovery is simply a means to flatter certain egos. These achievements belong to humanity as a whole. Major discoveries should immediately become public domain, for all to have and use.

I think the same way regarding rights to lyrics and music. Three years ago, the Rome Club set up a meeting in Washington devoted to multimedia, the Internet, and information technology. As a member, I gave a talk praising the Moscow pirate CD market, Gorbushka, right at the same time Bill Gates on a visit to Moscow was hinting to Chernomyrdin that it was time to close Gorbushka down. Chernomyrdin promised to do just that, but didn't do anything, probably because he knew it was pointless. And I wonder if we even need to do anything.

In my talk three years ago, I used the following example. A disc with the Encyclopedia Britannica cost 200 pounds in the UK, $300 in the US, but only 35 rubles at Gorbushka, the same as a cheap bottle of vodka. When I go to visit my friends in the States, I don't take vodka anymore. I bring pirate copies of the Britannica and they love it. When the price difference between official and pirate discs is so great, you can't help but smell a rat.

Though my position was rather provocative, a number of authoritative individuals agreed. In the end, of course, Gorbushka won. A year ago, the Encyclopedia Britannica became public domain. You can consult it online, but its publishers haven't gone out of business. As an important cultural phenomenon, it should be, and now is, accessible to all. I think that all textbooks and all major works of art should be available for public use.

Things get trickier with inventions and technical innovations. Patents and licensing have become increasingly important in business. Patents are written in such a way that they are really only useful for establishing who the inventor is. People are usually much more interested in licensing agreements than patents. Large corporations spend a significant amount of energy controlling technical information and licensing products, as this is where their commercial interest lies.

-Nonetheless, patents, licenses, and other kinds of author's rights are regulated by international law.

-I think that the Internet will change the shape of current laws. It's no longer possible to protect information completely. If you put it online, you have published it.

How authors, scientists, and artists should be paid for their work is a different issue. The old "read it and pay for it" is a thing of the past. We will have to come up with a new way of remunerating these individuals, perhaps by means of public funds instead profit from direct sales.

Information should be accessible to everyone. Especially if this information relates to public education, culture, or science. Reducing this access is infringing on people's basic human rights. Public libraries and most museums are free. It's not about the money. It's about principles.

The poor have no access to the Internet and are deprived of information, which makes them more likely to fall into even deeper poverty. Everyone should have access to the Internet. We need to consider the issue in precisely this way. Corporations should get their money from some other source, not from users.

-This sounds like the Soviet ideas about free education...

-Actually, these ideas have been put into practice around the world, most noticeably in Europe. Tuition covers only about 5-10% of the actual costs of training a specialist. It would wrong be in principle to overemphasize the commercial approach. Higher education should be open to all who are worthy of it. When we see major differences in access to information, we need to think about how to make information available to all under equal conditions.

-But why should we think about the Internet in this way? Information on the Net isn't very organized. People can put whatever they want online, even information that has little value or contradicts our culture and morals. Many think that the Net is simply an expanding global garbage heap. On the other hand, there are others who believe that in the long run the Net, as a database of human knowledge, has the potential to raise our intellectual productivity.

-I think that the truth lies somewhere in between. In any library, half of the books go unread. Garbage heaps are nothing new. How to structure and direct information has become one of the main problem with the Internet. Because the cost of space is very low.

The great Russian psychologist Leotyev put it well. He noted back in 1965 that information overload harms the soul. Information overload is one of the most profound problems confronting our systems of knowledge today. What information is important, and what isn't? How should we choose? Right now we are relying on intuition. Intuition acts as a kind of intellectual filter, the magic of the human mind. But will the Internet ever rise to this level?

Just as human consciousness is part of what it means to be a homo sapien, the collective consciousness is the essential part of human experience. The Internet could evolve into a embodiment of collective consciousness for humanity. The Internet is very young, as its incredible growth and expansion indicate. At first the Net was crucial for defense laboratories, then for scientific ones. Soon it turned into a communications network. Now the main developmental focus is on commerce. A huge exchange of information is taking place, leading to the elimination of middlemen. But can this self-organizing system result in something that resembles the human brain? This is still in question. We will only discover the answer when the Internet succeeds in giving a new quality to the human collective consciousness.