As a socialist who babbles constantly about the exponential returns (both monetary and political) of increased capital, I find myself in a state of horrified fascination with the idea of a company literally trying to own all possible creative capital, as Quentis Corporation is currently trying to do. Quentis is attempting to use distributed computing to generate and copyright all possible combinations of text, graphics, and music. I'm going to proceed with a thought experiment based on a world where this is actually feasible, which it is (for various reasons) absolutely not. The technology doesn't exist, copyright law doesn't work that way, and despite their claims of progress, Quentis can only reasonably be a scam or a parody.
Despite all the reasons Quentis can't succeed in what they claim to be their goal, the fact that they or their investors would try to speaks volumes to the environment we live in. Clearly, businesses and wealthy investors merely see human capital as an unfortunate expense standing between them and maximized profit margins. There's a terrifying possibility, with the rise of automation and the exponential growth of computing power, that the economy will swing drastically in favor of physical (or digital) capital over the next few centuries. While I don't believe we'll ever reach 100% automation, the idea that someone's trying to replace even artists and musicians with machines is proof that corporations likely would employ 100% automation if they could.
Now, the unfortunate reality is that more ridiculous ideas have been entertained and upheld in court. Despite the fact that US and many other nations intellectual property laws require some minimum level of human creativity to justify copyrights, the people involved in Quentis are not the type of people who mess around. Quentis undoubtedly has lots of high profile investors with big bankrolls and powerful lawyers, and people like that can get away with a lot. I do believe Quentis is pushing the boundary a bit too much for our current political climate to handle, but it draws attention to the attitude of big business people, who believe that their money makes them above everyone else. While I am a fervent supporter of intellectual property laws, this is a sign that we may need to modify our approach to IP.
Given all this, I am glad I can confidently say that this isn't the end of art or artists, and that Quentis won't nearly accomplish what it is trying to do. Fifteen years ago, the popular cartoon Futurama joked about Quentis' premise, claiming that in the year 3001, "the only names not yet trademarked are 'Popplers' and 'Zittzers'." This is of course, absurd, since there are an uncountably infinite number of conceivable names, even if you restrict the idea to only pronounceable names. However, Quentis claims it can effectively do just that, by using n-grams and other algorithms to create all possible meaningful texts under 400 words, and it wants to try similar methods with images and music. Anything over that length will have to take excerpts, and Quentis will presumably try to profit off of that, too. Even this basic approach won't work; just getting the English text alone would require tens of googols worth of permutations. Creating "every possible image" would be a beast unto itself. The most likely goal to achieve is to copyright all musical riffs (since there are really only 13 recognized pitches, and US courts are willing to protect relatively short segments).
Regardless of how this works out in the courts, there will always be workarounds. Writers may make up new words, or vary their sentence structure in a way we've never thought of before. Or, since there is a statute of limitations beyond which works enter the public domain, this may just have the inadvertent effect of ending intellectual property laws altogether. There's actually something poetic about that: intellectual property trolls becoming so pervasive as to destroy the very system that allows them to thrive.
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