Data doesn't deserve rights, individual human beings do.
This isn't about the ability to resell something that you bought and paid for. It's about exploiting the efforts of others for personal gain.
> If I make a table and sell it I don't get to control whether the buyer sells it to someone else or lets someone else look at it and make their own identical table.
The first half of that sentence is true, the second half is not so cut and dry.
If the design of the table is your invention, which is to say that you identified and solved problems intrinsic with that table design, you provided the artistic and aesthetic creativity that went into its look, you prototyped it, maybe you built small scale versions before moving on to the full thing, you poured years of your time, effort and money into bringing it into existence - you can apply for a patent in order to protect your investment and your creation.
If we're not talking about a table but instead an artistic creation, that's when copyright applies.
I'm a magician, and magic has an interesting history with respects to IP law. Back in the vaudeville days, stage illusionists would commonly protect their illusions through patents. And the business was cut-throat. Magicians would steal from others like crazy. Also a patent only protects a mechanical invention for a period of time. So if one magician did the exact same trick but using a different method, there is no infringement on a patent. Teller, from Penn & Teller, took what was at the time an uncommon position with respects to his works. He observed that his "inventions" were more appropriately considered theatrical works and sought to protect them under copyright law instead of patent law. For decades this was only theoretical until someone started selling a method for one of his tricks. It's worth noting that the method was different from Teller's method, but the routine, the trick, the structure was the same. Teller sued him for copyright infringement and won.
You are free to disagree with me that ideas ARE real (we can measure their effects on the physical world) and that anyone that wants to profit from the intellectual and laborious efforts of another without consent or due compensation to the creator is a parasite and a mooch. But that's the world-view that I subscribe to.
This isn't about the ability to resell something that you bought and paid for. It's about exploiting the efforts of others for personal gain.
> If I make a table and sell it I don't get to control whether the buyer sells it to someone else or lets someone else look at it and make their own identical table.
The first half of that sentence is true, the second half is not so cut and dry.
If the design of the table is your invention, which is to say that you identified and solved problems intrinsic with that table design, you provided the artistic and aesthetic creativity that went into its look, you prototyped it, maybe you built small scale versions before moving on to the full thing, you poured years of your time, effort and money into bringing it into existence - you can apply for a patent in order to protect your investment and your creation.
If we're not talking about a table but instead an artistic creation, that's when copyright applies.
I'm a magician, and magic has an interesting history with respects to IP law. Back in the vaudeville days, stage illusionists would commonly protect their illusions through patents. And the business was cut-throat. Magicians would steal from others like crazy. Also a patent only protects a mechanical invention for a period of time. So if one magician did the exact same trick but using a different method, there is no infringement on a patent. Teller, from Penn & Teller, took what was at the time an uncommon position with respects to his works. He observed that his "inventions" were more appropriately considered theatrical works and sought to protect them under copyright law instead of patent law. For decades this was only theoretical until someone started selling a method for one of his tricks. It's worth noting that the method was different from Teller's method, but the routine, the trick, the structure was the same. Teller sued him for copyright infringement and won.
You are free to disagree with me that ideas ARE real (we can measure their effects on the physical world) and that anyone that wants to profit from the intellectual and laborious efforts of another without consent or due compensation to the creator is a parasite and a mooch. But that's the world-view that I subscribe to.