Against Monopoly referred me to The Misunderstood Idea of Copyright by Karl-Erik Tallmo. As ever when i read about copyright by non economists (and some economists) I get frustrated. Todays frustration is about the idea of modularity in language (and thinking, and culture) and the inefficiency of privatizing modular public goods.

Let me (start to) explain....

The first text you see after you click on Tallmo's page is:

This text may not be re-published, printed or copied without the author's permission.
Copyright © Karl-Erik Tallmo

What does "this" refer to? We all understand that it probably means something like "the text that follows", but let's take it at its literal meaning, a  self referential meaning?  Karl wrote this sentence "This text may not be re-published, printed or copied without the author's permission"  in an html file . But so did I.  I Googled the sentence   and had over 100,000 hits. Of course not all are clones of my sentence or Karl's sentence - ie I'm sure there are many "derivative works" that reshuffle the words , adding or omitting other words, to write the "same" idea but just "express" it a slightly  different way. Perhaps what I wrote and what karl wrote is really a derivative work from those other sources? But any way you cut the cake  this sentence has been used, written down, said, thought, recorded , thousands of times by thousands of individuals in the past and will be so used in the future. So who is "copying" who? My answer - no one is copying anyone else despite the near identity in what they assert. Whose permission does Karl have to seek, do I have to seek? Or does anyone/everyone EveryMan and EveryWoman who writes, thinks, speaks, records  this sentence have to seek permission from everyone else who writes, thinks, speaks, records this sentence...in an infinte , and completely non-operational - regress? My answer - no permissions need be sought.

The fact is Karl , I don't need your permission (nor do you need mine, nor does anyone else need anyone else's permission) to rewrite this sentence, to publish it in their blog or anywhere else, to print it in any form, etc.... Every letter in this sentence (every black black dot on a white piece of paper when printed or an electrical charge on a screen when being viewed or modulated into a sound wave when being spoken) is in the public domain. There is no originating author whose permission needs to be sought for any of the 20 odd characters from the (an) alphabet and related  grammatical symbols (including spaces)  or for  the 13 words in the sentence we are examining. I can find an "origin" for any and possibly every such sentence in the sense of a person who writes speaks records etc, but I don't need to, and I probably couldn't, find one unique originator that precedes in time - or thought -  every other originator and to whom any later originator owes obeiscance in the sense of needing to ask for permission....current understandings of copyright not withstanding.

So there is definitely one complete sentence on Karl's page which is exempt from the permissions and ownership claim that Karl asserts.

It's not "your" (private good) land Karl that other's "have to" (under some threat of violence or harm against them)  keep off.

What about the next phrase: "the misunderstood idea of copyright"? Hmm,  lets try an ill-formed syllogism:

• copyright is an idea,
• some ideas are misunderstood,
• therefore copyright  is misunderstood.

In order to think about  and discuss   my thinking about the truth or falsity of this claim with others, ie  the idea or notion  of copyright being misunderstood , this assertion - copyright is an idea - , that syllogism (incorrect as it may be), the question - is copyright misunderstood? , the suggestion - that copyright is perhaps a misunderstood idea,..... I churn the words and semi-associated concepts out, rearrange them, permute them, organise them into logical forms , sometimes in my head, sometimes on a piece of paper, sometimes on my computer. The fact that you (and thousands of others) have taken these five words:

1. the
2. misunderstood
3. idea
4. of
5. copyright

and wrote then down in your blog, html file , scrap of paper or...(and used structures like phrases and sentences and syllogisms, themselves modular components  abstracted from particular placeholder content) gives neither you, nor they, nor me  any exclusive ownership claim to these words in any and all their permutations . [In spite of the institutional fact of a completely unenforceable and inefficient legislation (itself expressed in public domain letters words sentences phrases)  that says yes you , indeed anyone, has an (exclusive) and monopolistic claim to whatever you write down say record etc and others have to ask your permision to "copy" it in the sense of themselves writing recording saying that "same" thing.]

Which part of this phrase "the misunderstood idea of copyright" is yours Karl? and which part of the phrase "the misunderstood idea of copyright" is mine? and which part belongs to anyone else who ever thought or said or wortoe or signed these words? El Zippo. None. Zero. No matter how often you assert it as yours.

I suggest that every sentence in the article Karl wrote, and indeed every sentence in almost anything that anyone else wrote or writes or speaks or records, can be analyzed this way. Broken down into its constituent parts, ie modular pieces,  99.9% of evrything ever written has been and will be used by somebody else. So if no piece "belongs" to anyone person exclusively, then every one of those pieces can be isolated, expressed, used, printed, reprinted..and reassembled...through structures that thesmelevs are modular components, waiting for placeholders to fill  them in, where the placeholders are more modular components (phrases, words) of yet other modular components, letters, marks,  etc) all arranged by and through logical structures like syllogisms that are also modular components. Publicly accessible modularity rules OK.
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You really think that it's the "whole" thing together tha is "yours", the "authors"? Well Imagine a separation between the "author" and the person doing the expressing, a writer, a stenographer, a text from speeech recognizing machine. Take a template like the following "algorithm for a Logical argument".  A 12 sentence paragraph has a modular form:  Proposition 1; Proposition 2; Proposition 3; proposition 4'...proposition 12. Draw an arrtifical dividing line.  Now the first 10 are antecedents, the second 10 are consequents. Even numbered propositions explicate the odd numbered propsitions preceding them. Of course any paragraph could have a similar logical fomr, perhaps with 2 raher than 1  explanatory propositions for every positive proposition: I received a ticket for a bungy jump for my birthday. (explain bungy jump, explain birthday...). But when it came time to use it I chickened out. (explain "use" explain chickening out"). I asked for a refund (explain ask, refund). I received a Teddy Bear in exchange (explain Teddy Bear , exchange ).   Do you see what I mean here? the paragraph, the arrangement of propositions in a form : assert X, explain components of X, repeat several times, draw conclusion, is nothing new under the sun. Neither you nor any other "author" owns this template for an argument ...its been around for Yonks (a lon g time) - its a modular sturcture that nobody can (yet) exclude others for using ("copying" and "using" aren't distingusihable here) .

Having isolated that structure I ask again...Is that structure yours? No? Are any of the component sentences yours? No. So what exactly is yours that i have to ask permission about. Which sentence is "original" to Karl? Yes he is the author in the sense of the originating person wrting down, typing in, recording from speech recognition software , whatever; but yes too every one of the letters, words, phrases, and quite possibly entire sentences is and has been used by others, (and also the templates for arguments usualy found in a pargaraph at a time and thru a set of paragraphs ) . Indeed there is hardly anything new in what Karl writes at all. Of course ditto for everyone else. We, all of us writers, are reproducers...we just don't (and probably couldn't) acknowledge our sources, nor our sources sources, nor our sources sources sources.....even if we bother to look for them...and we certainly wouldn't waste our time asking our sources sources sources for their (sources) permissions .

Put more generally, the notion of n originating author is a red herring. We are all scribes Ok I exaggerate - in 99.8% of what we think and express we're superb imitators ("pirates"?) of structure and of content . Always have been, always will be.

Let me put this another way. Are propositions in the language of mathematics copyrightable? Does anyone treat them sa copyrightable? Whenever an economist wites : imagine a utility function Ui(x1,x2...) for n consumers with budge stes p.xi=m blah blah amd writes down his her optimization or equilibrium model, neither the deductive form nor the individual propositions are exclusively owned by anyone else. No one needs anyone else's permission to write down such equations and sets of derivations. Daily I read equations in professional journals of the form f(x1,x2,x3,,,,)=y. SOme people take derivatives of these equations to find other sets of equations, some people integrate these equations. There are some very general rules for maniplating general kinds of equations, like "take the first derivative with respect to a variable". No owns these rules though hundreds of textbooks on calculus exist that use them and thousands mor eprofessional papers and undergatuate essays and MA and PhD theses; no one "owns"(=exclusively owns)  x^2-1=4 and I'm not "copying" anyone else when I write it down and use it in my work or to set a homework problem or whatever.

Now back to the phrase "the misunderstood idea of copyright": What I am doing when I "use" [think, express]  these five words as INPUT is the same as what you are doing when you use these five words as INPUT - bu that doesn't make these (public good) inputs yours, nor mine, even though  the OUTPUT you produce in your html file and the OUTPUT I produce on my scrap of paper "looks" and or "means" the same to an educated reader  as the (public good) INPUTS accessed in some other form. I can and do use these words, and modular forms of persuasive arguments, them without your permission and you used them without my permission, or anybody else's permission. Until I read your article I never actually had heard of you, nor your argument, nor your use of these 5 words in that phrase. The "fact" that you expresed these five words doesn't make them individually or in combination yours at all in the sense that I have to aks you for permission to use them. 

Of course, you can get a legislator (for a price) to "grant you" a monopoly on a public good INPUT, and all the coercive power of the State to enforce that exclsuive monopolistic grant. That was the whole point of Bastiat's famous Candlemaker's Petition .

an AFterthought:

As for Karl's idea that you need to have a modern copyright law to be "able" to make your written work available for free, that is  rubbish. The enforcement of a promise by me to make what I have written available for free comes through the ease of reproduction by my competitors in the production process , not through a law sanctioning use of coercive police power to chase down anyone making money from repackaging what I have made available for free- cut and paste in todays' world. The fact that someone cuts and pastes, then publishes in some form, eg in a book, then charges for that book...and others actually pay for that book when they could cut and paste the same text of mine for free (as I did with the material from Bastiat)   needs no copyright (monopoly privelege) for its enforcement. Check out the myriad ways that Boldrin and Levine's book Against Intellectual Monopoly or Larry Lessig's Free Culture is published distributed used etc - anyone free to do anything they like with it, including comercialize it in parts or in other forms or.....You don't need copyright law for that (although you might like such intellectual monopoly to chase down competitors and top them from doing what they do best).

This is, to me, an important point. Competition and ease of entry exit provides the means of enforcement for selling at or around marginal cost. I run an ice cream shop. I love giving away ice creams for free to kids, to adults, to anyone. I don't have a monopoly on the idea of giving away ice creams to people. Others can enter and exit this ice cream industry very cheaply, and charge for their ice creams. MAybe they even buy their ice cream in cones off of me-- or more likely smart entrepreneurial kids who accept gifts from em and resell to others (who am i to say they shouldn't prefer cash in hand from reselling than the free ice creams i give them?) --repackage them and sell them for $3. But they won't stay in business long if their ice creams are "identical" to mine. I don't "need" to have an enfoceable monopoly right against them to give my stuff away. How do I prevent them from charging $3 for the same ice cream I give awya for nothing?  I don't. I can't. But I don't have to. They'll only sell ice creams for $3 when I am selling the "same" product if there is some added characetristic that others pay for. I only give ice cream  free to kids, not adults (as if the line is clear - think of alcohol sales prohibitions); to prevent arbitrage between the discriminatory markets I set up I might find the coercive power of the state useful  if i don't have to pay for the hired thugs to enforce the anti competitive activities I undertake in suppressing (child) competiton. But ice cream cones are not too durable and a melted ice cream cone in a kids grubby hands delivered to an adult 5 minutes after i scoop it out on a hot summers day....well, i don't really expect much competition!. Now consider something more durable, eg   Boldrin and Levine's book. I download the pdfs for my students. I create audio recordings from the pdfs for some of my Asian students who do not have english as their first language. Maybe some of them listen to the audio and retranslate it for themsleves in a voice recording? I annotate copies for myself and my  grad students. And I buy my own copy at Amazon for a reasonable price because books are more protable and durable  (for me)  when I travel and am away from my computer to use Adobe Acrobat to make my margin notes in. B&L don't "need" copyright law for any of these activites to take place. Low reproduction costs and high litigation costs  mean the "law" is simply irrelevant. (Breaking  up the collusive collective RMIA type entities who economize on enforcement costs by acting collectively through the apparatus of the State would go a long way to making copyright legislation simply irrelevant - ie rasing the litigation cost to any "complainant")