From the Mises blog; archived comments below. See also KOL190 | On Life without Patents and Copyright: Or, But Who Would Pick the Cotton? (PFS 2015)
Two Types of Abolitionism: IP and Chattel Slavery
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| Assisting in the liberation of human property was a Federal crime. | Unauthorized sharing of “Intellectual Property” is a Federal crime. |
“Redefining Property: Lessons from American History” is a great article on QuestionCopyright.org showing striking similarities in the arguments made by both advocates of slavery, and of IP, against slavery and IP abolitionists, respectively. For example, advocates of both slavery and IP argued (a) that it’s blessed by the Constitution; (b) that these are “property rights,” being violated by the underground railroad/piracy; (c) punishment for both “crimes” (helping runaway slaves, pirating IP) became increasingly severe; (d) and both types of abolitionists were called extremists (and the related view that any “reform” should be moderate and gradual instead of principled, radical, and instant); and other similarities. And as the article points out, there are other similarities: namely, that slavery enslaves people, while IP enslaves thinkers.
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| Jack Valenti: “We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.” [1] | E. N. Elliott: “(W)itness…the existence of the ‘underground railroad,’ and of a party in the North organized for the express purpose of robbing the citizens of the Southern States of their property….” [2] |
(h/t Rob Wicks)
February 15, 2011 at 9:10 am
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Why… to demand the abolition of the private owning slaves would be communist! /sarcasm
February 15, 2011 at 9:19 am
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La fuite en avant for Stephan Kinsella. Just after being exposed for his shameless defamation of true economists, he continues with more of his fallacious defamation.
February 15, 2011 at 9:57 am
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What has been exposed is that you run away from debates.
February 15, 2011 at 10:04 am
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You have a very low standard for the term “defamation”. Disagreement is not defamation.
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Accusing IP creators of enslaving people is defamation.
February 15, 2011 at 7:49 pm
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So what if it is?
February 16, 2011 at 12:26 am
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… or, more accurately, it would be.
Breaking out the strawmen early on this one, eh?
February 15, 2011 at 10:03 am
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I’m sorry, but comparing the abolition of slavery with the abolition of copyright is bordering on offensive. Treating a human as property is not the same as treating an idea as property.
Whatever your arguments might be for removal of IP; this is not a good one.
What next? Hitler believed in copyrights therefore they’re bad?
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“What next? Hitler believed in copyrights therefore they’re bad?”
Wow. So much for thinking detailed thoughts on detailed topics, huh?
I found the analogy between human slavery and IP very interesting, especially because both people were claiming “their” way of life was being threatened. What about that is taboo?
I don’t understand why there are certain topics which some (obviously, you) think are so sacred as to be beyond commentary or analogy. Human slavery was a tyrannical tragedy of epic proportions. To decide it is not useful for lessons in other areas doesn’t enhance our chances of repeating such tyranny; it limits it.
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That last sentence should have said:
“To decide it is not useful for lessons in other areas doesn’t limit our chances of repeating such tyranny; it enhances it.”
February 15, 2011 at 10:47 am
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“I don’t understand why there are certain topics which some (obviously, you) think are so sacred as to be beyond commentary or analogy. ”
I understand it: as I pointed out in The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism, “When the holes in their weak arguments are exposed, they escalate and call us IP socialists or communists — even though the idea that people who mentally “labor” “deserve” a “reward” for their labor is itself Marxian …. Their escalating rhetoric is driven by a desperation arising from the growing awareness that they have lost. It resembles a bit the way the state keeps increasing IP protection — copyright terms always lengthening, the West twisting the arms of emerging economies to “strengthen” IP protection and the coming ACTA … — in the face of a growing, unstoppable wave of piracy and torrenting. We are seeing the thrashings of a dying institution and a dying idea.”
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The dying taking place here is the death of the capitalist system perpetrated by the state, and the theft of property counterfeiters engage in is no different from the theft perpetrated against the industries that are deserting America and leaving economic devastation behind them.
The reality is that the economics of intellectual communism only make sense if there is a communist-democratic state to protect pirates and counterfeiters. Under anarcho-capitalism, it is economically impossible for counterfeiters to obtain protection and it is economically impossible for any other system but intellectual property to become law.
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It’s not an ad hominem. It’s an analogy. There are similarities. As the article points out, IP partially enslaves thinkers. This is not exaggeration or metaphor. See my post The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files for numerous examples of how copyright law, say, has resulted in literal censorship and even control of how others use their own bodies–slavery.
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That you cannot use your body with my property is not slavery. If it were so, it would be impossible to object to rape, as it would be control over how others use their body.
In a world where no limits can be imposed on how you use your body, rape must be legal.
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“In a world where no limits can be imposed on how you use your body, rape must be legal.”
That’s a great case against someone advocating no property rights. Here it is a straw man.
“That you cannot use your body with my property is not slavery.”
No one ever contested that. The other side of this issue is that *ideas aren’t property*, and so your statement here is totally off topic (unless, of course, you would like to supply a theory of property rights that includes IP).
Also, I think this illustrates very nicely the confusion I so often hear in a defense of IP. The only reason A is allowed to stop B from trespassing on A is because the initiation of aggression is non-cooperative behavior, it is forceful and therefore not argumentative. Coercion and argumentation (not necessary through verbal language) are the only options for interactions among actors. Thus, a forceful act of A to stop B from trespassing is necessary to re-establish cooperative, i.e. argumentative, interaction. Until someone stops the aggressor there can be no cooperation but coercion. This is the only reason why force is justifiable to stop initiation of force. It is the necessary act to re-establish cooperation after non-cooperation is initiated.
Intellectual property fails this test. When a person plays a song or releases a recording or invents a machine and other people acquire these things without trespassing on (physical) property, those other people using that information cannot be conceived of as non-cooperative behavior. Everyone is still able to deal cooperatively, that is argumentatively, with each other because the integrity of their physical property, which is necessary for being able to argue, is in tact. No compromise of this cooperative behavior could possibly come about by breaking an IP law.
Rather, cooperation is compromised when IP law is enforced. When the person who hears a song and plays it himself, only to be arrested for breaking an IP law, this is when the initiation of aggression happens and non-cooperative action begins. It is course non-cooperative to force a person to never play a song he has heard, and this does nothing to re-establish cooperation because cooperation was never compromised (keep in mind cooperation absolutely does not mean you are happy with what everyone else does… insisting that would be the pinnacle of non-cooperation).
The substitution of argumentation for coercion happens at the enforcement of IP law, not at the breaking of it. This is the confusion I see all the time. Property rights exist because they lay out the necessary conditions for cooperation (argumentation) to happen, and IP laws work against this. I have noticed that many proponents of IP also fail to understand why reputation and value cannot possibly have property rights, and I would think it is for the same reason, and they all lead to the same conclusion: to decide what is justifiable behavior, everyone must be asked first what they think (for example, can you copyright 7 notes or 8 notes?). Putting aside how unfeasible that would be, the act of asking for permission could never be justified in this way and so it is logically impossible.
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You are committing an error by claiming that counterfeiters do not trespass on physical property. They must (as in, it is physically impossible for them not to) trespass on the media carrying the “idea” in order to counterfeit it. They do not have ownership of this media and never will unless the full copyrights are sold to them by the producer.
Intellectual communism, at its foundations, refuses to accept this as true, but it is a physical fact admitted by the actions of market participants. Since it is undoubtedly true even to them, intellectual communists such as Stephan Kinsella unleash an arsenal of fallacies to confuse the issue, such as accusing IP producers of slavery! (A claim so ridiculous and shameful it should have him immediately expelled from the faculty of the Mises Institute.)
Of course, such an approach is a double-edged blade, and we can easily show how Stephan Kinsella can be an advocate of rape if his fallacies are followed to their logical end point.
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“You are committing an error by claiming that counterfeiters do not trespass on physical property.”
Counterfeiting is a form of fraud, and fraud is accounted for in this theory of property rights. If I tell you that this good performs a certain function when it does not and I know it does not, and you perform a trade with me on the condition that what I say is true, then the trade never actually happens because the conditions are not met.
In fact, it is this theory of property rights that lays out exactly what is fraud and what is not.
For example, if you tell me the piece of paper you have is redeemable at a certain bank for a certain amount of gold, and I say, “Okay then I’ll trade you this TV for that piece of paper, on the condition that you are not lying about its value”. If we make the exchange and you are lying, then the condition is not met, you are the one violating the terms, and thus you are stealing my TV because you have it even though I never traded it to you. This would carry the same weight as if you swiped the TV when I wasn’t looking.
If you give me a piece of paper, lying about how it can be exchanged at a bank, as a gift to me, then I have no case against you. I didn’t trade any of my property away on the condition that you are not lying, and so you did not commit fraud. It would not be fraudulent to hand someone a counterfeited piece of paper and tell him it is real. It would be fraudulent to tell someone it is real and then have him trade some of his property away for that piece of paper.
“They must (as in, it is physically impossible for them not to) trespass on the media carrying the “idea” in order to counterfeit it.”
As I have explained, counterfeiting as fraud has nothing to do with ideas but with people making conditional exchanges of physical property and then breaking those conditions (a basic contract, if you will). Again, if you simply give someone some counterfeit money you have not defrauded them, and your interpretation seems to miss that entirely.
“Intellectual communism”
I find it hard to take you seriously when you throw out pejorative buzz words that better characterize your own position than the opposing one (though I’d be willing to admit that neither of us are communists).
Playing this game we could, as this article seems to illustrate, call abolitionists “communists” because they are, according to proponents of slavery, against private property.
“refuses to accept this as true”
No we refuted it. Refutation is different from refusal. You seem to have a nasty tendency to hide behind some list of “fallacies” you printed somewhere, which represents no more than a stubborn refusal to advance the argument forward (that is, to reply to our arguments instead of to either previous ones or ones you provided for yourself, i.e. straw men).
“but it is a physical fact admitted by the actions of market participants”
Is this all you have to say to this effect, because it isn’t very convincing.
“such as accusing IP producers of slavery”
Dude, you should be embarrassed that this is what you got out of this article! Sheesh, this is like me pointing out that Obama’s (and especially Krugman’s) economic policies are hardly different from Hitler’s, and getting a response of, “So what Obama wants to exterminate Jews?”
No one ever said IP producers are guilty of slavery (you are more than free to try and find an example, good luck). This isn’t even about IP producers, but about the enforcement of IP, which is not done by IP producers. Also, it was not even suggested that the enforcers of IP are guilty of slavery, it has only been pointed out that the arguments used by supporters of IP were also used by supporters of slavery. That’s it.
This just completely missed the mark and I can only imagine that you said this because it is a sensational smear against your intellectual adversaries. It is hardly a notch above screaming, “IP Communists!!”
“A claim so ridiculous and shameful it should have him immediately expelled from the faculty of the Mises Institute.”
I’m guessing the faculty has comprehension skills and didn’t pull such a ludicrous meaning out of this article.
“we can easily show how Stephan Kinsella can be an advocate of rape”
You totally failed to do that. I explained the error you used there.
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“You totally failed to do that. I explained the error you used there.”
Well I thought I did but I actually didn’t.
Your error is in thinking in black and white. Either your restriction on property rights or no restriction what-so-ever.
In other words, by Kinsella arguing that private property rights are incompatible with IP rights, and hence through his support of private property he must reject IP, what Kinsella has miraculously done is thrown out private property as well.
You are totally backwards on this. Rejecting IP does not lead one to a “no property rights at all, people can do whatever” conclusion. Rather, accepting IP leads one to a “no property rights, people can do whatever” conclusion because if IP were taken seriously everyone would be guilty of violating it because everyone uses ideas that were first used by other people, and so any act would be justified because everyone is a criminal.
So, no, Kinsella doesn’t support rape, you do, because the rape victim is a criminal anyways and has no rights.
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I disavow patent law to the same extent that Rothbard did, when he demonstrated that copyright is a much more solid system to defend inventions (the invention being the media for the idea).
Your lawyering skills are floundering Mr. Kinsella, you are usually much better at inventing clever fallacies.
February 16, 2011 at 12:24 am
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“Playing this game we could, as this article seems to illustrate, call abolitionists “communists” because they are, according to proponents of slavery, against private property.”
Good post, sweatervest
The abolitionists where truly just communists! How could they want to take slaves from their rightful owners? I guess, Stranger would have been a perfect slaver.
February 15, 2011 at 3:37 pm
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Exactly, Onus.
Ironically, I have argued that opposing all forms of IP rights is tantamount to supporting a form of slavery, as both hold that production for external economies is acceptable. Of course no one would choose to be a slave voluntarily, and so would naturally prefer to spend their time doing something else; i.e. produce for internal economies.
Slaves would free themselves if they could, and eventually they were. Since property rights are a human device, it is possible to hold property to be something, and later abolish it.
No one is saying that IP could not be abolished. The question is whether that is preferable.
February 15, 2011 at 3:58 pm
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“and so would naturally prefer to spend their time doing something else; i.e. produce for internal economies”
You’ve stretched this phrase so far beyond its original meaning that you’ve lost sight of what you are actually saying. Here’s the reality of what you are pretending to describe —
There are business practices that are currently built around the Imaginary Property regime imposed by our all-knowing Ministry of Love. These practices would probably have to change, should this monopoly-protectionism to come to an ignominious end. In the absence of IP, there are certain business models that, being wholly dependent on IP protectionism, would no longer be viable.
Cry me a river.
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Phinn,
There are life forms that are currently built around the imaginary property regime that air is in the public domain. The practices associated with breathing would probably have to change, should the protectionism of the public domain of air come to an ignominious end. In the absence of air, there are certain life forms that, being wholly dependent on breathing, will no longer be viable.
Cry me a river. Especially if you are one of the affected life forms.
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You just violated my “property” rights in the words I used. Pay up, buddy, or you’ll soon get to know the “human device” known as SWAT teams and jail cells. $10,000 ought to do it. For now.
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You would have to prove it was a derivative work, but I would defend as a parady, and I would win. Sorry, no SWAT for you!
February 15, 2011 at 6:49 pm
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There are life forms that are currently built around the imaginary property regime that air is in the public domain. The practices associated with breathing would probably have to change, should the protectionism of the public domain of air come to an ignominious end. In the absence of air, there are certain life forms that, being wholly dependent on breathing, will no longer be viable.
Air isn’t scarce, and doesn’t require any artificial efforts to keep it that way. The default state is plentiful, even in the middle of nowhere.
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“You would have to prove it was a derivative work”
Yes, and a “derivative work” is defined as whatever it needs to mean in order to exclude examples that IP advocates agree would be ridiculous.
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comparing the abolition of slavery with the abolition of copyright is bordering on offensive. Treating a human as property is not the same as treating an idea as property.
I don’t think it’s equating slavery with IP, rather the arguments of their respective proponents, and the way business models based on them are resistant to change.
February 15, 2011 at 10:44 am
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I’m sorry, but comparing the abolition of slavery with the abolition of copyright is bordering on offensive.
The analogy is a good one. If the regime decides that you have violated copyright and if you ignore or resist their attempts to confiscate your property (in vastly greater proportion to the supposed cost of the crime), they will treat you exactly the same as a fugitive slave. They will track you down anywhere in the USA, arrest you at gunpoint, shooting you if you resist, put you in a cage and if you are insufficiently cooperative they will shackle you and torture you with solitary confinement. It may become even worse than slavery, if the copyright treaties permit the extradition or international prosecution of suspected violators. In the 1800s even slaves were not molested if they made it to Canada.
Treating a human as property is not the same as treating an idea as property.
They are treating your thoughts (intellect) as their property, which amounts to slavery. And as stated above, they will physically imprison and confiscate the property of anyone whom they deem to have violated their thought crimes. If that isn’t slavery then what is? Is it only slavery if you’re forced to pick cotton?
Not only the for-profit purveyors of copied materials are threatened but even the poorest students and grandmothers who may be tracked down using their internet addresses are threatened with severe fines (to the tune of hundreds of dollars for “stealing” each song worth no more than one dollar). And of course any of these poor people who decline to be fined will be hauled away to prison and shot dead if they resist. In fact the poorer one is, the more likely to be robbed, enslaved or killed in the name of copyright law, because they lack both the knowledge to evade detection and the financial resources to defend themselves.
What next? Hitler believed in copyrights therefore they’re bad?
Hitler is also a very apt analogy for copyright law. The Nazis never hesitated to physically attack any individual or group who declined to cooperate the “greater good” as their government defined it. The imposition of copyright law is no more moral than anything that Hitler did, merely because the government which enforces the law was elected by popular vote.
If you want to consider copyright law as an issue to be determined by popular consent, then consider the fact that the vast majority of citizens commit offenses under the copyright laws nearly every day (when recording TV shows, photocopying recipes, copying music from CDs onto their MP3 players). Obviously they do not support copyright law. Is the imposition by government of a law which the people clearly do not support, backed by brutal fines, imprisonment and even torture and death, less tyrannical than anything that Hitler did?
February 15, 2011 at 12:27 pm
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A closer kin to human slavery is human taxation, which in perhaps its earliest manifestation was known as tribute–the requirement of regular payments of compensation by conquered people to their conquerors. Thus taxation was devised as an alternative to killing or enslaving conquered people because it was more productive of the fruits of those other people’s labor. Of course IP could not exist in the absence of the state and its enslaving taxation, so your analogy is all the more compelling for that reason.
February 15, 2011 at 6:15 pm
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Interesting. I did not know this history. I learn something new every day. Thanks.
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That is incorrect, taxation is the result of a king monopolizing justice, and hence being able to unilaterally determine what he is to be paid for this justice.
A conquering tribe may be able to steal from the conquered, but it does not follow that a tribal lord can tax his fellow tribesmen.
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“That is incorrect, taxation is the result of a king monopolizing justice, and hence being able to unilaterally determine what he is to be paid for this justice.”
You skipped the very important step of the king being able to compel people to pay for justice at all, which is what taxation is. In other words, the king conquered subjects and offered them an alternative to death or slavery.
“A conquering tribe may be able to steal from the conquered, but it does not follow that a tribal lord can tax his fellow tribesmen.”
Where does this categorical difference come from? Just like with the “citizenry”, if enough of the tribesmen believe that the tribal lord is owed by all the tribesmen, then a dissenting tribesman would suffer the same fate as a tax evading citizen.
February 15, 2011 at 12:28 pm
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You hoo (to those criticizing Kinsella) We all already know that copyright is not the same as slavery. It’s the poor justifications and reasoning they use that’s the same, get it. But even if it was a comparison, it’s a fair one. Copyright has shown itself to be a perfect example of the slippery slope argument. But even if it wasn’t, there are still plenty of examples of where IP is hideously evil. ie. Like how pharmaceutical companies sued African nations in the world court to block the import of generic AIDS drugs from India. Like the role patents played in banning DDT, which by some estimates has caused 50 million malaria deaths. Maybe not copyrights, but comparing patents to crimes against humanity is totally fair on any level.
Even if you believe that something like copyright is free market. This is a perfect example demonstrating that mainstream reasoning on the matter is outright stupid.
February 15, 2011 at 12:54 pm
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@Onus. There is nothing offensive about how Nina Paley presented the argument. Forcible government always bears some resemblance to slavery. Indeed, it might well be argued that chattel slavery is simply an extremely abusive form of government, and each plantation was essentially a tiny patch of despotism within the borders of the USA. I myself have compared any number of statist outrages to various aspects of slavery. Being a black man from the south with a strong family background and a fair amount of knowledge about both slavery and its aftermath, I usually don’t get much grief about it, but the perception would naturally be different if a white person did what I do. That’s why, I imagine, Paley mentioned both the similarities and the differences.
February 15, 2011 at 3:50 pm
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Another black Libertarian who uses Linux? High-five!
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Robert,
With all due respect to a black man from the south, you are pretty confused about the issues here.
All property carries enforcement privileges against others who violate those privileges. The outrages you have against slavery are not a function of government support for it, it is a function of the vesting of property rights in other humans. Like all logical fallacies, if the premise is wrong the conclusion is wrong.
The premise was that humans can be the property of other humans. Once that premise is accepted, all the other “outrages” are simply an enforcement of those property rights. The means of that enforcement is irrelevant to the central legitimacy of the premise.
It is wrong to define humans as property, not because such property rights are enforceable, but because to do so violates a higher principle, that all [humans] are created equal, and have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This conflict was resolved at the time by refusing to recognize African slaves as human. Obviously that was wrong, and explains why we now generally believe the premise of humans as property cannot stand.
The fact that ridiculous arguments were made at the time by today’s standards, is completely irrelevant to the IP argument unless it can be shown that particular arguments being made about slavery are analogous to arguments in the IP debate.
The analogy for IP opponents is that just like slavery, the premise concerning what can be property is wrong; IP as property cannot stand. Why? Is IP the bondage of human being by other human beings? To be against the concept of slaves as property is in no way analogous to “original works” as property. One premise certainly does not prove the other, and whether one or the other or both are enforced by government is completely irrelevant to the issue, unless of course what you are really saying is that all government existence is a “statist outrage”. You wouldn’t be the first. SK has said, “We have IP becasuse we have the state”.
The concept that IP carries property rights is a long way from dead, despite SK’s declaration of victory. Last I looked one can still enforce rights in IP.
February 15, 2011 at 4:28 pm
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My offer stands – put IP in a basket and show it to me. Don’t show me paper, ink, binding, glue, or leather. Don’t show me a CD. Don’t show me a DVD. Don’t play vibrations of air molecules. Show me an indisputable material called IP, in it’s physical manifestation, that cannot be confused with the materials it’s presented on or the means in which it’s transmitted. Demonstrate to me how it can be taken from someone else so they can no longer use it. Demonstrate to me how it can be damaged in such a way that it cannot be used in its intended purpose. Show me what IP looks like and you’ll have a rational argument. Until then, don’t belittle people.
Just count yourself lucky that you can’t, because if you can, I’ll homestead it and shut down your ability to speak, live, or even move without paying me hefty royalties.
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Wildberry,
Without government support for slavery, it is simple crime. With government enforcement for IP, it is simple crime. It would be criminal for someone to kidnap me and force me to pick cotton, unless we are using state definitions of crime, correct? Would it not be similarly criminal to take a person’s computer simply because he has information on it and did not pay someone to be able have a copy of it? Also, just as you rightly say that slavery violates the higher principle that all humans are created equal, does intellectual property not violate the higher principle that human beings have the right to configure their justly-acquired property in any configuration they find pleasing?
Certainly, IP is not as oppressive as slavery, and Paley did not attempt to claim that it is. However, forcing a man to avoid using the contents of his own mind (such as with a song he has heard, or a formula he has either learned or developed himself) to perform certain tasks with his own property is still a type of oppression. Things can be similar without evoking the same emotions. I would not claim that slavery and IP evoke the same emotions. A star and a marble do not conjure the same sense of wonder within many people, yet they both have gravitational fields. Making an analogy between them does not diminish the star nor does it magnify the marble.
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@Robert Wicks February 15, 2011 at 7:23 pm
“It would be criminal for someone to kidnap me and force me to pick cotton, unless we are using state definitions of crime, correct?”
Not sure what you mean here. What you describe is kidnapping by most any definition.
Slavery is state sanctioned kidnapping, meaning the kidnapped slave does not have a cause of action against the kidnapper.
“Would it not be similarly criminal to take a person’s computer simply because he has information on it and did not pay someone to be able have a copy of it?”
It would be a criminal act to take someone’s computer for nearly any reason. If the computer is used to commit another crime or civil offense, that act would be punished or damages would be imposed.
So the question is whether it is an offense to copy someone else’s work. I gather you think not.
“does intellectual property not violate the higher principle that human beings have the right to configure their justly-acquired property in any configuration they find pleasing?”
Not really. Just because you “justly-acquire” some property does not entitle you to do with it as you please without limits. Those limits exist at the margins of the rights of others. So you are back to where we started; Is using your property in a particular way a violation of another’s rights? If so, there is a legitimate basis to limit your rights to that particular use.
“However, forcing a man to avoid using the contents of his own mind (such as with a song he has heard, or a formula he has either learned or developed himself) to perform certain tasks with his own property is still a type of oppression.”
First, if IP laws operated as you say, I would agree that it is wrong. I hope you are not bothered by the fact that they do not. There is no restriction in IP laws on the use of one’s mind, or in recalling a song he has heard, even singing it to himself or his friends and family. Formulas are explicitly excluded from an form of IP protection, except perhaps for some esoteric applications in the context of software/hardware technologies.
“Making an analogy between them does not diminish the star nor does it magnify the marble.”
I like analogies. They are a valuable tool in gaining understanding. They can help distinguish things by pointing to similarities and differences between them. Some people object to them because they are “vague”. Vagueness causes me no real problem, because you can always polish the meaning of things you say to other people and what they say to you and reduce the vagueness. I find it a shallow objection that is used to attempt to derail a discussion about a difficult topic. If there is vagueness about a thing, talking it over often helps. What’s wrong with that? Anyway, I think the analogy here fails.
The analogy being offered here is that slavery was rationalized in ways that appear patently false today. By implication, justification for IP is equally patently false, and if you don’t think so, you should think of yourself as the type of person who once supported slavery. Throw in the hated State for good measure, and anyone who believes in IP rights should feel ashamed.
Sorry, that dog don’t hunt with me.
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There is no restriction in IP laws on the use of one’s mind, or in recalling a song he has heard, even singing it to himself or his friends and family
Yeah, the legislation merely dictates that you can’t get paid for it! You own your body (for now), which includes your voice, and the neurons that encode the pattern of notes, but if you try to trade an act of your OWN BODY for something, given willingly by someone who owns that thing, on a voluntary, mutually-agreed basis, the State will swarm in on you like locusts.
Which amply shows what Imaginary Property legislation is ACTUALLY concerned with — like all statist monopoly privileges, it’s all about protecting market share.
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“Like all logical fallacies, if the premise is wrong the conclusion is wrong.”
That is not a logical fallacy. There are valid arguments with wrong premises and right conclusions.
What you are suggesting here is that if something is ever argued poorly or starting from false premises, whatever the conclusion is it must be false. As a dramatic example of the error here, consider the (obviously) false premise of “A and not A” (a contradiction). Every proposition imaginable follows as a valid conclusion from this premise and so that would lead you to conclude that every proposition is false, because they are all conclusions of an argument that begins with false premises!
And maybe this explains what is going on here! From what I can tell, many of the IP advocates seem to think that if they find a potential hole in the anti-IP side (I don’t think they have but let’s assume they have) that is conclusive reasoning that IP is legitimate! Hence the complete non-existence of a property rights theory to incorporate IP, with only a (poor) attack on the property rights theory that excludes IP.
February 16, 2011 at 1:56 am
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This conflict was resolved at the time by refusing to recognize African slaves as human.
What are you talking about? Do you mean the “slaves count for 3/5s” rule in the Constitution? You know that’s an anti-slavery measure, right? If the abolitionists had had their way, slaves wouldn’t have counted at all! Counting slaves for the purpose of apportioning votes gives more power to the slave owners — it’s not like the slaves got to cast those votes!
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I am simply saying that to resolve “All men are created…”, and not have that apply to slaves, it was necessary to consider slaves somthing other than “All men”, i.e. non-human.
That was a contradiction of principle which eventaully fell, as it had to.
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J. Murray,
Put your checking account in a basket and show it to me. Don’t show me paper, ink, binding, glue, or leather. Don’t show me a CD. Don’t show me a DVD. Don’t play vibrations of air molecules.
You don’t believe checking accounts exist?
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They do exist because I can demonstrate that your use of mine impedes my use of it because the cash is no longer on account. The money cannot be simultaneously used by two or more individuals (hence why I’m also an opponent of fractional reserve banking) without making the resources unusable by the originator. I can obtain physical representation of that account that fits the requirements – can be rendered unusable by the existing owner via theft or damage. The same cannot be said for IP.
Another way to say it is my bank account follows the Laws of Conservation. My account may be converted and changed, but it cannot be created out of thin air (it also cannot be truly destroyed, just altered in a way that is counter to my desired ends as the owner, rendering it unusable to me). IP can be created and replicated out of thin air, thus violating basic physical laws of the universe thus not being real property but imaginary.
Insert quarter, try again.
Or can you demonstrate to me that IP follows the same Laws of Conservation that matter, energy, motion, etc, do?
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J. Murray,
No one else can use it because it is your property. If everyone else could use it, you would not have exclusive economic interest in it. It is not because the particular numbers in a particular ledger are scarce, it is that they are made scarce by vesting property rights to your specific account number. That is just another way of saying that your checking account is your property, and you have exclusive rights to it. Also, you can’t counterfeit money by copying your own numbers into your account, or copying them into another account.
You are simply describing the way property works. It works that way because humans designed it to work that way. Therefore, property is a human device.
Even slaves can be called property if we decided to do it. Our common objection is why it doesn’t exist today. It violates our contemporary ethics because we hold that a superior principle of liberty trumps it.
Laws of conservation includes the conservation of energy. Energy is only tangible when it operates on physical matter. Anyway, no one is saying that IP is subject to these laws in any but the most metaphysical ways. Can you demonstrate that an idea follows these laws in the way you mean? Then why would say that original works, which are of the NATURE of ideas, should? We need only agree to treat something like property for it to be done. It is a human device.
Like many here, you are simply choosing to define property in such a way that it excludes certain phenomena, like original works of authorship. You do that in order to arrive at a desired outcome, much like a scientist who fudges the data to make it reach the “right” conclusion.
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I think your use of a checking account as property is a poor analogy.
Your property is the money that you have deposited into the bank. You own the money; a “checking account” is merely an abstract construct meant to denote that you have property on deposit at the bank.
For example, let’s take the following list of things currently in my living room: TV set, DVD player, couch, Roku, chair, copy of Human Action, and Tivo. Do I own “the list”? Or do I own each of those things on the list?
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The problem here is that the list of things that your checking account refers to is fiat money, hence it is a purely virtual good. Fiat money is a legal monopoly on a money supply.
If IP communism were valid, then the legal monopoly on printing fiat money would be abolished, and your checking account would instantly become worthless, having either the same amount of money or an unlimited amount (the result would be the same). The money market would be destroyed and no one would be any better off from it.
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“IP communism”
For the love of god please read Marx before you re-interpret his theory of property and present it as anti-Marxian.
“then the legal monopoly on printing fiat money would be abolished, and your checking account would instantly become worthless, having either the same amount of money or an unlimited amount (the result would be the same). The money market would be destroyed and no one would be any better off from it.”
Oh, wait, you think a monopoly on the money supply is a good thing!? I think it is deliciously ironic, in only that way a statist (perhaps one in denial) can provide, to say that “no one would be any better off” when they are actually not denied a choice in what to do!!
Yes, the advocates of monopoly (=government) will eventually admit that they in fact know what people want better than those people themselves do, and that’s why they should not have choices and rather there needs to be only one provider: the one deemed best by the dictator.
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GoldBacon,
Are you sure? Is your money actually “there”, physically? Or is it simply a promise by the bank to turn those numbers in your account into cash on demand.
It is the uniform promise to pay that gives value to your checking account and permits you to use it as a money substitute.
If you wrote this list on a piece of paper, along with “I hereby grant free and clear title to the things on this list to Wildberry” and signed it, what would that list have become?
You would have just created a security interest in your things. You have created property out of thin air. I can take that promise, which was intangible just before you wrote it on the paper, and exercise my new exclusive economic rights and sell it, give it away etc., without every actually seeing the goods you have conveyed. I have no idea if they exist. My only evidence is this contract.
You can do this because you owned the physical items, but you created a property interest in them by fixing an intangible promise on a piece of paper. Property of all kinds are a human device. Property may be an actual thing, or a security interest in a thing. One is a tangible, physical thing, and the other is an intangible promise. The paper is not the promise. It is the promise that is enforceable. The paper is simply EVIDENCE of the promise.
A story that I author is intangible, because it comes out of my head, using things (knowledge, experience, words, ideas, time/space relationships, descriptions of characters, dialogue, etc.) that I specifically choose to express. The evidence of that intangible work is the FIXATION upon a tangible medium. It is not the paper that is the property, but the story.
February 15, 2011 at 9:07 pm
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Can you define property for me? An intangible promise is property?
If I copy a pdf online what exactly am I stealing? If it is a monetary reward, is it stealing when I lend my books or give them away to my friends?
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>>Are you sure? Is your money actually “there”, physically? Or is it simply a promise by the bank to turn those numbers in your account into cash on demand.
Remarkably, you are hitting on a very important topic within Austrian Economics. The debate between full demand-on-deposit vs. fractional reserve banking is pretty fascinating.
If you have time, definitely check out Jesus Huerta de Soto’s brilliant work Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles for a seriously in-depth analysis of this situation.
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Tyrone,
Why “remarkably”?I read his book in two days. I couldn’t put it down.
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The possibility of it not being there isn’t relevant to the conversation, that falls under the discussion of fraud. The account is but a record of what was deposited. Deleting it or altering it doesn’t destroy the ownership of the base asset deposited. It only masks the ownership chain. The ownership remains, the record is what was changed.
Property must fall under the base conservation rules of the universe. Without this concept intact, the concept ceases being property and becomes fantasy. Basic societal rubes cannot be formed around fantasy. It’s the same concept behind many libertarian rejection of laws like slander and the opposition to fractional reserve banking. They’re entirely based in fantasy. IP is fantasy. It doesn’t exist. Harry potter doesnt exist. An invention doesn’t exist. The paper may be manipulated to talk about a British wizard and metal may be formed to fit the description of the invention. But that’s what IP is attempting to do, hold ownership over an abstract description that dies not have form of any kind. It can’t be stolen or altered because it does not exist. And law and policy cannot be forked around that which does not exist.
There is no iPhone, there is only an organization of silicon, glass, titanium, and other materials that fit an abstract description.
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@J. Murray February 16, 2011 at 12:11 pm
“The account is but a record of what was deposited. Deleting it or altering it doesn’t destroy the ownership of the base asset deposited. It only masks the ownership chain. The ownership remains, the record is what was changed.”Are you sure this holds up? You can only own what you can prove you own (non-violent) or defend by any other means (violent).
If the record you have that proves that you own $100 in the bank account suddenly goes missing, how will you prove you own it? In this sense, it is the record that is important, because if you have the record, you can claim and defend your ownership of the $100.
You may hold up the bank with a mask and a gun because you “know” $100 in there belongs to you, but how do you think that would really play out?
Just like green paper is a money substitute, the record that you own money is a substitute. Without the green paper or the record, you are SOL.“It’s the same concept behind many libertarian rejection of laws like slander and the opposition to fractional reserve banking. They’re entirely based in fantasy. IP is fantasy.”
Your use of the concept “fantasy” is interesting. What does that mean? Are you saying that a fantasy is not “something”? Then why do we have a word for it? We interpret “fantasy” a meaning something to do with creation that is not limited by the tangible world. Until we fix our fantasy in some tangible form, it cannot be communicated to others, but the fact that it can must mean there was “something” there to communicate.
“Harry potter doesnt exist.”
He sure made a ton of doe for somebody. Nice fantasy!
“But that’s what IP is attempting to do, hold ownership over an abstract description that dies not have form of any kind.”
I think you are trying to say that the intangible can only exist in the form of some tangible thing, and the tangible thing is all that there is?
Mises wrote about this and Tucker quoted him recently. I can’t recall verbatim but he was talking about the intangible thoughts that precede action, and he said something like, just because they are intangible, they are not phantoms. They are real and affect the world in very specific ways. They are the process of rationalization, for example, that precedes human action. You can only see the action, but it is obvious that that action did not come from nowhere. If you want to know what it is, look at the actions. If you see a production process, that process started as a plan, which is intangible but not a phantom. It exists.
When humans act, their “fantasies” take form. The form cannot exist without the prior existence of rational thought. Just because these thoughts manifest Harry Potter does not make them any less real than the plans to build a forge that can be used to produce a sword.
“It can’t be stolen or altered because it does not exist. And law and policy cannot be forked around that which does not exist.”
Well, you can’t take my “fantasies” directly from my brain. But if I express my fantasies in the form of a story, you can copy that story from the original. If you did that on a scale of production that resulted in very good copies that could not be distinguished from the originals, I would call that counterfeiting. By simply incurring the costs of duplication, you are obtaining the benefit of someone else’s capital investment for a very low cost, just like printing a suitcase of $100 bills for the cost of some paper and ink and spending them like you earned them.
What is the difference in the context of IP or any other form of production?
“There is no iPhone, there is only an organization of silicon, glass, titanium, and other materials that fit an abstract description.”
Case in point. If I put a pile of silicon, class, titanium and other materials on the table, would you be able to produce an iPhone? At any cost, much less $300?
I know you have heard of “I am Pencil”, but did you see the video floating around here, I think it was a TED presentation, called “I am Toaster”? If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. If it is easy (photocopying), that doesn’t make it inherently different. That just makes it a candidate for counterfeiting.
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Why all pro-IP people still assert these kind of analogies when they were refused many times?
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I don’t know, why do so many people laugh when I tell them “taxing is stealing”?
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Taxation is voluntary!! Didn’t you get the memo, brah?
February 16, 2011 at 8:50 pm
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I think the word you want is ‘refuted’, not refused. I would deny they were adequately refuted.
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Checking accounts arise by express agreement. They are not property, except by metaphor. They are just contractual claims to be paid an amount of money in the future according to certain terms and conditions, and as such are justified by the promise and/or agreement, not by property principles, which are (where valid) applicable to everyone regardless of agreement.
There is no such thing as intangible property, other than that which is built upon agreements, promises, contracts and the like, the rights to which can then be transferred around from person to person as though they were property, although they do not originate in any way comparable to rights in tangible property.
Tangible property is a normative principle arising from a conflict of incompatible uses (sometimes called scarcity, sometimes called rivalry), which is not possible with regard to infinitely replicable patterns.
Perhaps contractual rights (like checking accounts) can be thought of as originating in physical property — i.e., the property rights one has in oneself. Since a man owns himself, he can therefore promise to pay someone X amount of money in the future. Using force to compel performance of that promise is justified, because he had the right to alienate that sum of money from his person by choice. But Imaginary Property doesn’t purport to operate that way, either.
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Phinn,
“They are not property, except by metaphor.”What does this mean? They ARE property by metaphor, or that are not really property, they just act like it?
“There is no such thing as intangible property, other than that which is built upon agreements, promises, contracts and the like, the rights to which can then be transferred around from person to person as though they were property, although they do not originate in any way comparable to rights in tangible property.”
See how hard you work just to avoid actually calling it property? It walks like a duck, talks like a duck, but its really a zepbra?
Property that can arise by contract can be encoded by law. The difference is jsut as you say; laws are universally applicable and do not depend on privity in contract.
“Tangible property is a normative principle arising from a conflict of incompatible uses (sometimes called scarcity, sometimes called rivalry), which is not possible with regard to infinitely replicable patterns.”
Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the tangible, (except contracts, checking accounts, securities, etc. etc. etc.), so IP cannot be property.
“Since a man owns himself, he can therefore promise to pay someone X amount of money in the future. Using force to compel performance of that promise is justified, because he had the right to alienate that sum of money from his person by choice. But Imaginary Property doesn’t purport to operate that way, either.”
A promise to pay creates a property interest in the promisee, which can be sold, assigned, or borrowed against as collaterial. i.e. it is PROPERTY. Therefore it operates EXACTLY like other property. There even a concept of tresspas, it is called “interference with contract”. See???
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>>Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the tangible, (except contracts, checking accounts, securities, etc. etc. etc.), so IP cannot be property.
Wrong. The assumption is that property rights are derived from scarcity. In the realm of ideas and thoughts, there is no scarcity. Hence, there is no legitimate intellectual property that can arise in a free-market. QED
Any attempts at intellectual property would have to be artificially maintained by a coercive monopoly on violence, viz., a government.
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Tyrone Dell,
Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the SCARCE, (except contracts, checking accounts, securities, etc. etc. etc.), so IP cannot be property.
If I copy one contract exactly, do I get twice as much stuff?
If I make a copy of my bank statement, do I have two bank accounts?Why not? I didn’t change the scarcity of the originals?
Ideas are not scarce. What is an idea? “Idea” is an idea. Anyone can use the word any way they wish. Ideas are specifically not protectable by patents or copyrights. Yet original works of authorship are.Does that mean that stories are not simply ideas? Does that mean that a story while having something in common with ideas, are not one and the same thing? A mere interpretation of the same phenomena, (whatever that means)?
If you are a sword maker and you use free oxygen in your furnace, does that mean the sword you produce is free to all takers? I mean, oxygen is free, so how can you claim property rights in the products of your own means of production? Because oxygen comes from the public domain, then everything you produce with oxygen must be free! Yea!!! To each according to their need!! Utopia!
Stories are scarce. If you don’t think so, try to write one. Make it a short one, say 100 pages. But if you use any letters, words, ideas, facts, or knowledge, you must make it a gift to all of humankind. Wonderful…
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“Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the SCARCE”
Scarcity means rivalry, that is there exists conflicting uses of a good (one person’s use of a good at a given time implies no one else is using it at that time). The only reason why property rights exist at all is because of this kind of scarcity. After all, if there was no rivalry there would be no conflict, no disagreement, and no need to establish at all what is “justified” and what is not.
Perhaps what the anti-IP side has failed to illuminate enough is that when we say “there are no property rights in non-scarce (non-rivalrous) goods like ideas” we don’t mean “there shouldn’t be” but rather “there are not”. Nobody is actually concerned with property rights in ideas, which are simply inconceivable. The point is that when people think they are “protecting their ideas” it has nothing to do with the idea but with other *scarce* goods, like bodies, recording devices or productive plants.
People do not have a choice to place property rights in non-scarce goods. There simply is no conceivable form of “rights” in such goods. Some IP supporters have openly admitted this and, I guess, asked “so what?” I guess the best answer to that is, “Well all that property IP grants people rights to, is property whose rights were already granted to someone else through the homesteading principle. It can either be homesteading or IP, not both, and if you give up homesteading you give up your body.”
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Very well put sweatervest,
based on my current experience however, IP confusists will however continue to avoid confronting this issue at all costs.
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Sweatervest,
“People do not have a choice to place property rights in non-scarce goods.”
Your error is equivocation. If I agree that property rights are only legitimate for scarce goods, that does not mean that I can equate the non-scarcity of “ideas” with the scarcity of “original works of authorship”. That is like equivocating “words” with “information”, or the letter “a” with “word”.
Do you deny that such works are scarce goods, requiring capital and a means of production?
Furthermore, do you deny that a producer who owns the means of production has a property right in the products thus produced?
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http://academy.mises.org/courses/logic/
You are quite possibly one of the worst cases of sloppy, confused thinking that I have ever come across on the Internet. Congratulations.
P.S. – No, this isn’t an ad hominem.
P.P.S. – Nobody except you ever assumed their conclusion. You are assuming your conclusion that Intellectual Property really is property. You have yet to prove it. See [1] and [2] for more information regarding how to prove propositions.
P.P.P.S. – I highly recommend the book An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning by Peter J. Eccles. It’ll help you straighten and streamline your thinking so we don’t have to put up with your dull tirades for much longer.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_proof
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_system-
Wrong, Tyrone, because very few people bother to think! And, if you read my earlier contribution, you’ll see my justification for a form of IP.
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Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the SCARCE, (except contracts, checking accounts, securities, etc. etc. etc.), so IP cannot be property.
Those things are scarce. If I go to a bank and set up a checking account but never get any paperwork at all from them, how do I challenge in court to prove that I have a checking account with them if they just stick the money in their pocket and act like they’ve never seen me before? You think the property is in the promise but good luck with that in court. I’ve never heard of someone claiming a promise was property.
“If I copy one contract exactly, do I get twice as much stuff?
If I make a copy of my bank statement, do I have two bank accounts?No, you just have created a duplicate of the contract and the bank statement. Do you think that copying a contract or a bank account should be protected by IP law?
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Wildberry,
Again, you just assume your conclusion; property is limited to the SCARCE, … , so IP cannot be property.
If this wasn’t true, then it would be trivial to refute it, like I said already on multiple occasions, by showing an example of an action that involves a non-scarce good but does not involve a scarce good. So where’s the refutation?
If on the other hand, such an example is not known of, the claim becomes a falsifiable but not yet falsified proposition. I.e. a proper theory from the point of view of a falsificationist.
February 17, 2011 at 11:52 am
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Dan, Tyrone, sweatervest, Peter
I’m going to state in advance that admitting this doesn’t mean that there is necssarily any case whatsoever to IP, just in the interests of getting a straight answer. Because, frankly, I’m genuinely curious at whether you are all unable to grasp this, unwilling to grasp it, or simply think this question is irrelevant. (My personal view is Kinsella has brainwashed you all into a weird combo of the second and third).
Let’s agree that action only ever uses tangible stuff. Do you agree that the suitability of some goods, which are being used as means for some end, depends on their scarcity?
If you don’t want to answer that directly for some reason, to expand – do you agree, for example, that in a society where gold coins were the only money, if some alchemist produced gold from sand, then gold would immediately, that day, become unsuitable for use as money.
Yes or no would be sufficient.
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The use of a good is heavily dictated on how scarce it is. If an alchemist did, in fact, find a way to produce gold out of sand, then gold’s valuable use would rapidly expand. Gold is an incredible anti-oxidizer for example. Utilizing gold coating on metal framing in cars, buildings, and other uses of iron and steel would dramatically reduce rusting and improve the lifespan of the structure. Gold also makes a good conductor because of how well it transmits electrons and because of how soft it is, gold would quickly replace copper as the material of choice for electric wiring in homes, buildings, and high tension lines.
As for the increasing amount of gold on the money supply, gold would end up being supplanted by something less likely to be produced in such high numbers to function as money.
And there would be nothing wrong with the above. Gold has valuable industrial uses that aren’t readily explored because of the metal’s scarcity. Money is, in the grand scheme of things, one of the least important uses of physical goods. Replacing gold with some other commodity that has similar produtctive uselessness as gold does now wouldn’t negatively harm the system whatsoever. Pricing would just refluctuate around the new unit of measurement and it’s new relative scarcity.
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“Gold is an incredible anti-oxidizer for example. Utilizing gold coating on metal framing in cars, buildings, and other uses of iron and steel would dramatically reduce rusting and improve the lifespan of the structure. Gold also makes a good conductor because of how well it transmits electrons and because of how soft it is, gold would quickly replace copper as the material of choice for electric wiring in homes, buildings, and high tension lines.”
You’re winding me up right? What has this got to do with the point at hand? I’m convinced you don’t even read some of the posts you respond to.
I asked a very specific question. You didn’t answer it. Or, if you did, it was lost in your seemingly uncontrollable desire to take this as an opportunity to lecture everyone on points that are utterly irrelevant.
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Hi Kid Salami,
I’m going to state in advance that admitting this doesn’t mean that there is necssarily any case whatsoever to IP, just in the interests of getting a straight answer.
Even if that was, I would have no problem with that. I didn’t say there is no case whatsoever for IP, but that the theories as they are presented by IP proponents are, well, you know, crap. That does not mean that they can’t fix it.
Do you agree that the suitability of some goods, which are being used as means for some end, depends on their scarcity?
Yes. Scarcity influences the opportunity costs of actions, so it’s kind of obvious. Of course, there are other factors that influence usability too, for example the scarcity of substitutes.
in a society where gold coins were the only money, if some alchemist produced gold from sand, then gold would immediately, that day, become unsuitable for use as money.
Ceteris paribus, I agree. I have actually been hypothesising if non-commodity market-produced money (like bitcoin) would replace commodity money if we had replicators (like in Star Trek). But I suppose that’s getting too far ahead of the debate.
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“Yes. Scarcity influences the opportunity costs of actions, so it’s kind of obvious.”
Ok.
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“Yes. Scarcity influences the opportunity costs of actions, so it’s kind of obvious.”
Ok.
“Of course, there are other factors that influence usability too, for example the scarcity of substitutes.”
What, exactly, do you mean by this?
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Kid Salami,
What, exactly, do you mean by this?
Strictly speaking, it does not have to do directly with your question, so please accept my apologies. My intention was not to divert attention, but to point out that the sentence is an implication rather than equivalence (the implication does not work the other way around).
February 15, 2011 at 7:05 pm
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Wildberry, you are hopelessly confused. You said all you needed to say when you argued that slavery is justified if enough people think it is.
This is what you reallyean by “human device” — that any unprincipled nonsense can stand if we only believe it makes sense.
Morality must be founded on principle, or it is merely a lie — an instrument of oppression. There is nothing more effective in subjugating humans than false assertions of morality.
You are a hypocrite every single time you trot out the “human device” line. You assert moral principle by merely making a claim of property, but then contradict yourself by arguing that moral rules can be whatever “we” want them to be.
No, they can’t. If they can be whatever we want them to be, they are not a matter of principle. In which case, it’s only your opinion that you’ve asserted, which is worth nothing.
Slavery can’t be both ethical and unethical, depending on who is announcing the human device du jour. Either the principle is that it’s wrong, or that it’s not.
“Human device” is a euphemism for “preference.”. I don’t give a fig what your preferences are. If instead you are going to claim to know what is right and just for all humanity, then you are required to elucidate the universal moral principle at work. You haven’t and you can’t.
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@ Phinn February 15, 2011 at 7:05 pm
“You said all you needed to say when you argued that slavery is justified if enough people think it is.”
Now don’t get all righteous on me, Phinn! What I said was: “Even slaves can be called property if we decided to do it. Our common objection is why it doesn’t exist today. It violates our contemporary ethics because we hold that a superior principle of liberty trumps it.”
We did (historically speaking) decide to do it, and then we decided not to do it. It is wrong not because the concept of property is “wrong”, but because attributing property rights in other humans is wrong. Both were decisions made by people and enforced on other people. That is the way property works, no? It worked the same during and after slavery, yes? I’m talking about property rights, not slavery. I think you jumped the gun, but I’ll give you another chance.
“This is what you reallyean by “human device” — that any unprincipled nonsense can stand if we only believe it makes sense.”
Is this not the case? So what do we really believe? That’s what matters. Beliefs have a way of manifesting themselves in society, don’t you think? The trick is to believe in good and right stuff, right? It hasn’t always been that easy.“Morality must be founded on principle, or it is merely a lie — an instrument of oppression. There is nothing more effective in subjugating humans than false assertions of morality.”
Not sure what you’re getting at here, but it sounds really righteous. Morality is simply a measure of how we conduct ourselves compared to toe prevailing principles of ethics. Getting the ethics right is the history of human struggle. Are we still talking about the ethics of recognizing property rights in the intangible works of authorship?
“You are a hypocrite every single time you trot out the “human device” line. You assert moral principle by merely making a claim of property, but then contradict yourself by arguing that moral rules can be whatever “we” want them to be.”
As distastefully as it may be, that is exactly what morals are. Not YOUR morals, or MY morals, but morals in general. Ubangi cannibals may have a different code of ethics than me, but they still operate within a code of ethics. They still judge each other as committing moral and immoral acts. That’s what human societies do. Our society has its own morals, and they are based on the principles we hold. Are we still talking about IP?
“No, they can’t. If they can be whatever we want them to be, they are not a matter of principle. In which case, it’s only your opinion that you’ve asserted, which is worth nothing.”
I like to think my opinion is not worth nothing, but you have cast your vote, so I’ll have to live with that. Another opinion I have is that you and I probably share many ethical principles, but you want to generalize that I’m a slave monger, or that I have no principles, or whatever, just because we disagree on the principles of the ethics of property relative to IP. Let’s dial it back a few notches, eh?
“Slavery can’t be both ethical and unethical, depending on who is announcing the human device du jour. Either the principle is that it’s wrong, or that it’s not”
Just to be clear, I am certain that my code of ethics calls slavery unethical. It is wrong because it violates the golden rule, among other things. We no doubt agree about that. But in the end it is just an opinion, but one backed up by some strong principles and sound logic. That one is a settled issue, in my mind. But even today, not everyone and not everywhere do humans act morally based on our principles. We should keep after it. Are we still talking about IP?
“Human device” is a euphemism for “preference.”
It is. We can be said to prefer one code of ethics over another. Take any two people, say Phinn and Wildberry, and line their principles up. Some of them will align, like on slavery, and others will not, like IP. That doesn’t make you a bad person, Phinn. You’ll eventually catch on.
“I don’t give a fig what your preferences are.”
No kidding?
“If instead you are going to claim to know what is right and just for all humanity, then you are required to elucidate the universal moral principle at work. You haven’t and you can’t.”
Well, I didn’t presume to be the second coming, so your challenge is a little above my pay grade. However, if we are still talking about IP, I am saying that you and others who oppose the very concept of IP are inconsistent and/or dishonest in your analysis of property rights, what they are and where they come from. You have adopted a single standard test that you try to apply universally across all of creation, and when you encounter inconsistencies, you just define them away and act like you have discovered some kind of moral high ground.
Let your conclusions rest a minute, and you can see that there’s plenty of room around here for differing viewpoints. At the moment, you reside in an ethical position that is not very universal. Your world view is at odds with most of humanity. Certainly you are at odds with the prevailing system of ethics, morality and laws. So I would say you have a tall hill to climb before the rest of us can see your light. Be patient with us.
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You have adopted a single standard test that you try to apply universally across all of creation …
So has everyone who has ever uttered any phrase along the lines of “You should …”
That’s what all normative assertions pretend to be — an assertion of universal application. Otherwise, it’s really nothing more than an assertion of “I’d prefer it if you did …” Which is fine, I guess, but means nothing in terms of ethics, or certainly carries no more weight than anyone else’s expression of preference. People often try to avoid that obvious insignificance by pretending their preferences are assertions of universal principle.
You want to pretend that your normative assertions are both a “human device” (and thus vary from tribe to tribe, person to person, time to time and culture to culture) and a declaration of universal principle.
Let your conclusions rest a minute, and you can see that there’s plenty of room around here for differing viewpoints.
They’re not viewpoints. They’re assertions of principle. To the extent they differ, either one is right and one is wrong, or both are wrong. Inconsistent assertions of universal principle cannot both be right.
Your self-contradiction and hypocrisy is childish and patently silly.
Your world view is at odds with most of humanity.
So? That makes people right? Popularity?
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“So? That makes people right? Popularity?”
I’ve been very surprised at how many people I’ve talked to conceive of ethics as some sort of prior agreement to be reached by as many people as possible on what the rules should be.
My response is, “If that ever happened there’d be no need for ethics”.
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Some people are VERY uncomfortable with the idea of universality in ethics. But ethics IS universality. That’s what it is. That’s what it claims to be. Otherwise, it’s just your preference against my preference, and for me, my preference wins every time. Same for you, I suspect.
These people are uncomfortable for two main reasons, in my experience:
A. They’re morally corrupt. They deny universality of principle because they are on the wrong side of universal principles, the way that bank robbers deny that they robbed a bank. Corrupt people love to confuse, obfuscate and change rules. The really smart ones become politicians.
B. They are moral relativists, like Wildberry. This denial of universality is clearly a psychological defense mechanism. I have never met someone who exhibits such a trait who did not grow up with an abusive, domineering parent. This abuse invariably takes a very distinctive form — a specific kind of dogmatic, doctrinal domination. The parent imposes some set of irrational beliefs on the child, which the child (being more rational) rejects, but is not allowed to express his rational argument. The child who grows up with a parent who put him in that kind of mental prison finds only one escape — he retreats into the belief that all doctrinal assertions are relative! Meaningless! It’s all a game! There is no universal truth!
People who reflexively balk at universality and ethical certainty, and work so hard to deny universality in matters of ethics, might as well hang a sign on their chests that say, “I had an irrational, overbearing, dogmatic parent.”
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“I have never met someone who exhibits such a trait who did not grow up with an abusive, domineering parent.”
What about twelve solid years of state “schooling”?
It was there that I was conditioned into moral relativism. In that situation I think the chance of having an oppressive parent becomes the guarantee of having an oppressive teacher (by “teacher” I of course mean a prison guard charged with the duty of brainwashing), and what better way to abandon one’s sense of right and wrong to have to deal with maniacal classroom managers every day? Especially when the highest priority of all teachers (not personally but as described by the job) is to relentlessly crush any deviation from the dull conformity that is so praised in schools (if only because it makes running a school that much easier).
I actually reached a conclusion very similar to yours here. My school administration was particularly keen on constructing arbitrary, shifting and blatantly silly “demerit” systems punishable by detention, and this made it nearly impossible to have respect for any system of rules (if only they knew what part they hard in pushing me towards anarchism!). In particular, I remember that “disrespect to an authority figure” was a more serious offense than “skipping class” or “driving recklessly on campus”. By witnessing this it was only expected, I think, that I decided that all systems of rules are totally arbitrary and only satisfy the whims of those writing the rules.
Of course when you start pretending that you know universally valid things about the world (like, I don’t know, 2 + 2 = 4) you often find people who accuse you of being an “ego maniac” that doesn’t want to acknowledge his own fallibility. The irony is that the one claiming to be infallible is the one claiming there is no truth and thus I can say whatever I want and no one can tell me I’m wrong! Maybe this plays into the whole relativism resulting from oppressive “rulers” in one’s life.
I actually believe that all discrepancies in scientific theories, not just limited to ones in a political context, come ultimately from a disagreement in one’s theory of knowledge, i.e. epistemology. From what I have noticed the people with whom I agree most consistently are the ones that share my rationalist epistemology. The ones who disagree are usually empiricists or historicists.
This intellectual property issue cannot avoid become highly philosophical and as long as there is disagreement over epistemology there will be disagreement over what is property and what is not.
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What about twelve solid years of state “schooling”?
Sure! But school is really just a proxy for parents. The emotional trauma to the child arises from the fact that the parents sub-contract the abuse out to these strangers. They tolerate it, support it, promote it.
Whenever irrational moral certainty is used as a weapon against you (particularly when you are in the dependent state of childhood), the common reaction is to learn to reject moral certainty. That’s the only defense that’s available, sometimes.
Of course, the problem all along was never the moral certainty, but the irrationality — the problem was the moral error of the people who engaged in this systematic abuse (parents, teachers, etc.).
Moral certainty, in and of itself, is nothing to be afraid of. But I can see why some people develop an allergic reaction to it. In fact, it can be quite healthy, in the long run, but it can be frightening. It is an often overwhelming prospect to consider the fact that you were systematically abused for the first 20 years of your life by people who claimed to love you, and that it was all for your own good.
When moral certainty reveals that this treatment was monstrous, it tends to make Thanksgiving dinners somewhat awkward. It’s often easier to be a moral relativist than to face the burden of emotional trauma, or to call evil by its proper name.
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I’ll try once again, though many of the contestants here seem set in their ways.
I stand for Common Intellectual property. I am a minarchist, not an anarchist. I think that the roads, and public spaces not privately owned, should be owned and run by local democratic counties or shires. As owners of the commons, they can licence what goes on in the Common property. This is what copyright and patents could become- licences to use and advertise over common property. If I claim a patent for something I might call The Binary Button, something to replace ordinary buttons, I would be able to advertise on radio and TV, and the counties would use my product. Nothing would stop you developing your own version, and relying on word of mouth to get your version publicity. nobody would interfere with your private property in any way!
I think of this as a middle way between the two arguments, as neither anarchy nor centralism seem like good alternatives.-
You should check out Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed.
1. http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe4.html
2. http://mises.org/store/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-P240.aspx
3. http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297822961&sr=8-1-
None of that will prove that Anarchy will work!
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It may be true that there will always be a coercive government, just as it may be true that there will always be murder. But advocating for some state violence (as you do as a “minarchist”) is no more justified than advocating for some murder.
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However, advocating that property-owners have rights, as I do for local counties, is entirely consistent with libertarianism! I also believe that counties should be at least democratic, though I would prefer that all citizens have a time-share role in local government (for one month of the year, you and 1/12th of all people who chose to be citizens would have the right to pass or repeal any and all laws, which would only affect the non-private properties within the county).
I reject your claim that I advocate violence! Just as any property-owner can (or should be able to) control what happens on and within his/her owned properties. This is never called violence if the wishes of owners are enforced. February 16, 2011 at 5:21 am
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Some murder is a good thing. Like preventive killing of people who are about to kill you or steal from you or your family. Here it is not a vengeance or a punishment, but a prevention. That is when trespasser is retreating, or is subdued, then killing him would be a bad murder, similar to that of shooting random people in the streets.
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“Some murder is a good thing.”
Yes, responding to violence with violence is not unjustified. Only initiation of violence is unjustified.
The state is definitely an initiator of violence, and so if you lend some support to the state you are not just saying “some violence is okay”, you are saying “some initiation of violence is okay”, which is no less than a complete compromise of ethics.
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“None of that will prove that Anarchy will work!”
Nothing you can say or cite would prove that anarchy will not work (as in work far better than governments).
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Not true! Somalia is an anarchy, and nobody seems to want to move to this new anarchic paradise! I think a government would improve the place, as in, people would be happy to move there! (And wouldn’t that be the ultimate proof that a society is successful?)
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That is hillarious! This is why John Stewart is so popular. Nothing makes a point better than humor. Well done!
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Somalia isn’t anarchy. It’s groups competing to be government, also known as war. The problem with Somalia is there is way too much government that it can’t function at all.
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A few facts:
1. Somalia is a sh*ithole because of 25 years of hard-core Marxism.
2. Ever since the State there collapsed, quality of life there improved in virtually every measurable statistic, especially things like infant mortality.
3. The great prize for the warlords that continue to plague the people there is to be recognized as the Kingpin Warlord by the Kingpin of All Kingpin Warlords — the US government. Without that incentive, fewer Somali children would be dead.
Economics is about understanding cause and effect. You don’t seem to do that.
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Watch this video by Ben Powell titled “Statless in Somalia”: http://fee.org/media/video/stateless-in-somalia/
February 15, 2011 at 7:30 pm
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Contract is not property, it is an agreement or claim by one individual on another to perform (or not perform) some said act. A “written contract” is merely this agreement put on paper and thus embodies the agreement between person A and person B. Its a physical way of showing that such and such agreement was made. It is a form of law, not something which is own-able by any person.
Also to the claim that these claims can be sold as a contract and thus property is not correct either. If I made a contract that guaranteed you will get an orange, then by that agreed contract you should get that orange. However, if you do not, then you were frauded out of your orange and thus had your money stolen from you. The claim is merely an agreement, it is not actual property. To put another way, let’s say I give you100 dollars to fix my bathroom and you don’t. Then you committed fraud against me as it wasn’t your yes that I wanted, but my bathroom to be fixed. No “written” contract was made, but it is obvious I did not pay for your agreement, I paid for your services. The last example I can think of is paying someone to keep their mouth shut. What I am actually paying for is the person not to talk (a service), not his agreement to keep silent. If he breaks that agreement, then he has committed fraud against me. Contracts, whether written or not, are thus not property.
The issue with IP is that no such contract was made between the copier and the clement of the IP law. When I buy a book, I have no signature telling the person that I will agree not to copy the content of this book and post it on the Internet. If IP laws were truly valid, then such acts as letting someone borrow the book should be illegal as it is no different r from the basic premises embodied in all IP arguments. The reasoning is that people will not buy the said book if I let someone else see it for free. However, that person did not pay for the privilege in the first place and thus “stole” the money which should have gone to the author according to pro-IP ideas.
Same goes with music. If I pay for a copy of music, but I let other people hear it and even give away the CD, then I should technically be in violation of IP laws as stated by those who believe in IP. Its not the CD I gave the person, but the content which he or she should have paid for. Other people who listen to the music are getting a “free” show as well and should also be, under your justification, the confines of IP. This can go on and on.
As for a checking account, those digits are not the physical money, but a claim on the physical paper money. The reason it is forgery form me to add those digits to my account is simply i am lying about how much real money I have in the account and I am thus stealing from others pile of money. This is why Fractional reserve and fiat banking is unethical since the bank hands out false claims on other people’s money. Once again, a claim is a matter of law not a form of property.
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@Michael Richards February 15, 2011 at 7:30 pm
I don’t have time to explain in detail, but your concept of contracts is limited.
Whereas a contract may be for any number of things, it is basically a promise for a promise to do or abstain for doing some act.
A contract that promises performance, say to transfer a bushel of oranges in two weeks, becomes a security interest in a futures contract for a bushel of oranges, and can be traded as property without every taking possession of actual oranges.
There are the tangible oranges, and the intangible security interest. Both are actually property, literally. You can describe a distinction between oranges and a security interest in them, but they are both property in every sense.
This common sense concept of property is rejected by many here who believe that property can ONLY be in scarce goods, and only tangible goods are scarce. By this logic they would have to conclude that the security interest is something other than property.
I say, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
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“Whereas a contract may be for any number of things, it is basically a promise for a promise to do or abstain for doing some act.”
This is too vague. A contract is a bi-directional conditional exchange of property. A grants use of A’s property to B on certain conditions, one of which being that B grant A use of some of B’s property, and B does the same. Thus a violation of the conditions by either party constitutes a trespass on the exchanged property of the other party, which is a mere extension of both party’s already existing rights in their property.
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A contract that promises performance, say to transfer a bushel of oranges in two weeks, becomes a security interest in a futures contract for a bushel of oranges, and can be traded as property without every taking possession of actual oranges.
That’s not true. If I promise to give you a bushel of oranges in two weeks, I’m only promising to give you a bushel of oranges, not whoever holds the paper on which the agreement is written. You can sell that paper to someone else if you like, but I’m still giving the oranges to you! Of course we can agree to make it a “pay to bearer” arrangement, but that’s not implicit.
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Peter,
What you are saying is not factually correct.A contract can be freely assigned. So if I have a contract that gives me a security interest in organges that don’t exist yet, and I sell this contract to someone else for a discount, they have a perfectly legal right to show up and collect organges and you would have to pay the bearer of the contract, as long as you had notice from the one you originally contracted with of the assignment.
That’s the way it works (contract law 101). So I am trading on intangible property, which is a promise to deliver organges at some time in the future. That promise is intangible, (except for the fact that it is “fixed” on a piece of paper) and only becomes tangible (i.e. translated directly into actual oranges) at harvest time.
Oh, and it doesn’t have to be expressed to be assignable, although you can prevent assignment in the original contract, but you have to know what you are doing to make it stick.
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Wildberry,
A contract can be freely assigned. So if I have a contract that gives me a security interest in organges that don’t exist yet, and I sell this contract to someone else for a discount, they have a perfectly legal right to show up and collect organges and you would have to pay the bearer of the contract, as long as you had notice from the one you originally contracted with of the assignment.
it is a rare occasion that I agree with you. What Peter (the other one) presented is false. Futhremore, what you say makes sense! I have trouble believing it.
So I am trading on intangible property, which is a promise to deliver organges at some time in the future.
This is a non-sequitur.
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A contract is not valid unless both parties discuss, are given opportunities to offer amendments, negotiate, and then sign the document. The so-called “IP holder” did not sign a contract with me guaranteeing that I, the purchaser, would not use the product in a way otherwise specified. Contracts are not implied by actions.
Common law states there are six requirements to be a valid contract:
1. An agreement which usually consists of an offer and an acceptance of that offer.
2. The agreement must have consideration which is something bargained for and given in exchange for a promise.
3. The parties must have the capacity, or legal ability to contract.
4. The contract must be based on the genuine assent of each party, that is, both parties must be agreeable to the terms of the contract.
5. The subject matter of the contract must be legal. An agreement to break the law would be illegal, for example.
6. Some contracts must be in proper form. Even though courts will enforce an oral contract, some categories of contracts must be in writing to be legal.Now, let me buy a hypothetical Metallica CD and go down that list to see if IP is a valid contract.
1. The CD was offered for sale by the store. This does not qualify as an offer and acceptance with Metallica because they are not offering me the product to accept, I’m dealing with the retailer.
2. This doesn’t happen. Lars Ulrich isn’t sitting in a room with me, or on a phone, hashing out the contractual details. If anything, a retail CD or digital download fails to provide a contract at all, attempting to rely on a “This is Copyrighted” sticker or some such thing. This test has failed as the bargaining phase with Metallica or an authorized representative with legal powers does not enter into negotiations, or even provide the opportunity to do so.
3. The retailer does not have legal capacity to enter into a contract on behalf of Metallica, or they’d be able to do things like take out mortgages against them. This fails the test.
4. I’m certainly not agreeable to IP protections, but that doesn’t stop the retailer selling me the product. This aspect fails.
5. This one actually fits, that’s 1 of 5 so far.
6. There isn’t a written contract at all, just some implied IP warning, thus #6 fails the test.
Another consideration is that common law blocks parties entering into contract with minors, the mentally handicapped, or any other condition that may make one party unfit to contract (disease, dementia, etc). Thus, any so-called IP protection is immediately rendered null and void for any of the aforementioned individuals, even if the IP regime does find a way to satisfy all 6 requirements of a contract. This means a child can copy music, books, and software to his heart’s content as he is not bound by any contractual matters.
Basically, it’s practically impossible to create a form of IP that works within the bounds of contract law.
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@J. Murray February 16, 2011 at 8:36 pm
“Basically, it’s practically impossible to create a form of IP that works within the bounds of contract law.”Are you really sure about that?
Offer: “Here is my book. You can read it and give it or loan it to someone else, but you but you cannot make a copy. For that limited use, the price is $1.
Acceptance: “OK. Here’s your Dollar.”
Consideration: $1 in exchange for limited rights of use.
We are both competent and it is not illegal or unconscionable.
It is not subject to the statute of frauds so verbal is OK, but for evidentiary purposes, we put it down in writing and both sign it.
We have just made a valid contract for IP.
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Wildberry,
you are yet again confusing the situation by deliberatly using vague language.
J. Murray’s argument was that a situation where if people X and Y enter into a contract, it does not mean that there is a contract between a third party, A (author), and Y. It is the existence of contract between A and Y that he is referring to, however you are referring to a contract that X and Y may have. The deceptive tactics of your logic-mangling are tiresome. You have yet to provide a coherent claim in the first place.
Furthermore, calling the contract between X and Y “IP” is at best redundant, because there is no way of distingiushing it from any other type of contract. The current law (which you like so very much to point to as a deus ex machina) also does not define any of the aspects of IP (e.g. Copyright, Patent, and so on) this way.
Just like in all the other crap you post, your “argument” boils down to the explanation that A does not like what X and Y are doing, and therefore they are violating is rights. You yourself however admitted that not liking something is insufficient to determine that a rights violation occurred.
Your insistence on the usage of misleading statements is regrettable. You should be a professional demagogue.
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But you didn’t make that offer to me. Sure, you may be able to pull that off, but don’t expect to sell any more than a single book a day in that manner. You could try to demand a retailer do the same, but do you really think Borders or Amazon would sit down and has out a legally binding contract at every point of sale for each and every single book, movie, or album sold? Good luck with that and get used to poverty. Further, where is the legally sound contract? If it does get copied, its your word vs mine without that hard document backing up the sale. Got the space to store thousands of 10 page contracts? You’ll need one for each and every customer. Will you ban sales to anyone that isn’t a mentally sound adult?
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As i see it, IP is a tripartite contract between a ‘right holder’, the consumer and a state whereas the state promises to make people pay for access to information and people to comply with the states rules in return for IP’s creators supposed incentive to create/disclose information. You say you didn’t sign any contracts? Well, that’s state for you, it can do that. Why? Because it can.
It is obvious that IP is not a property from the mere fact that it is (thanks god, still) limited in time as well as invalid under certain circumstances (think fair use), and often limited in space (think patents). This, and the utterly arbitrary values of the constraints prove it is not property.
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“IP is a tripartite contract between a ‘right holder’, the consumer and a state”
This is all fine and good for people who all agree that they want to conform to IP laws. The issue, of course, comes up when there enters someone who does not want to conform to IP laws, and thus never signs anything and, according to IP proponents, is still liable to be punished if he breaks those laws.
Similarly, I don’t need to sign a contract with all violent criminals in which they agree I can force them off my property if they trespass on it. I reserve the right to do that because it is my property. This would extend to IP as well, if only IP was actually property, but it isn’t.
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@sweatervest February 16, 2011 at 11:13 am
“The issue, of course, comes up when there enters someone who does not want to conform to IP laws, and thus never signs anything and, according to IP proponents, is still liable to be punished if he breaks those laws.”Well, trespass doesn’t require a contract, nor does any other tort. That is because a tort violated a property right, so you arrive right back where you started; whether IP rights are legitimate property rights. You make the point in your next sentence:
“Similarly, I don’t need to sign a contract with all violent criminals in which they agree I can force them off my property if they trespass on it. I reserve the right to do that because it is my property.”
Then:
“This would extend to IP as well, if only IP was actually property, but it isn’t.”
This is called assuming your conclusion. The question remains, why not?
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The problem with this statement becomes obvious in a moment “A contract that promises performance, say to transfer a bushel of oranges in two weeks, becomes a security interest in a futures contract for a bushel of oranges, and can be traded as property without every taking possession of actual oranges.”
The person is not buying the contract or agreement. What he is buying is the oranges that will arrive in two weeks. By purchasing the said contract, one is indirectly buying the oranges. This works in the same way that money is used as a form of indirect exchange in the economic system. However, if the person does not give me the oranges in two weeks, then he has, in effect stole my money. Now if someone transfers the oranges by giving me the receipt. He did not transfer the ownership of a promise (which is an abstract item). What he did give me was the oranges. Like I said, we buy the physical items of the contract, not the contract itself.
Here is another example. Let’s say I make a promise to give you an orange in one week if you give me an apple today. Now no written contract is made between you and me. Now you go to another person (without informing me) that you will sell your promised orange to him for a potato now and all he has to do is pick it up from me. Now I had no idea this transfer took place and I don’t give him the orange cause I think he is trying to scam me. Now if your “promise” was truly sold to the individual, then this transfer should have gone off without a hitch. The person isn’t paying for the promise of an orange, but the orange itself.
Also, you failed to explain how come it is, that since the IP laws are justified not for the physical item but the information, that allowing some one to borrow a book or listen to a CD is somehow not theft under your definition. If A is A (sorry couldn’t help putting the Rand statement) then allowing someone access to that information for free is opposed to your notion of IP and should be considered theft.
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@Michael Richards February 16, 2011 at 11:26 am
“By purchasing the said contract, one is indirectly buying the oranges.”Yes. To be more accurate, he is paying for the right to possess some identified oranges in two weeks. That is not the same as having actual oranges right now, so the price is likely to be adjusted up or down on the basis of perceived risks, which like the oranges, is an intangible. He is buying a right, not oranges.
“This works in the same way that money is used as a form of indirect exchange in the economic system. However, if the person does not give me the oranges in two weeks, then he has, in effect stole my money.”
Well, he has violated your rights to his performance. He has failed to perform. Under contract law, you might be entitled to an expectation damages. For example, if you had already sold these oranges for a profit, and you couldn’t get your profit because you don’t have the oranges, then your damages are your expected profits, not the money you paid for the right to possess oranges.
I can’t follow your next paragraph, so let’s move on.
“Here is another example.”
This is an assignment of the orange contract in exchange for a potato. It’s a valid transaction and you must pay up if you received notice of the assignment. That’s how you know if you’re getting scammed. In your facts, you weren’t notified and so you will deliver the orange to the original party to the contract, and potato guy will have to sue him for breach of warranty.
No, it didn’t go off without a hitch because the assignment was botched. It’s otherwise a completely valid transaction, and is still enforceable to arrive at the correct outcome under the contract theories I described.
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IP is much more like a tort, because the inforcement of infringement does not depend on privity in contract. If there was a contract, then you would also have a cause of action under contract law.
the state does not have a direct cause of action except in criminal cases, and neither torts or contracts are criminal. that means the cause of action is with the injured party; the copyright holder is the plaintiff and the infringing party is the defendant, (or petitioner and respondent in CA civil cases).
February 15, 2011 at 8:26 pm
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With all due respect I found that it is indeed instructive AND “fascinating [the] “short” comments [made] by science fiction author Neil Gaiman on how he came to realize that there was nothing wrong with people copying his books”.
And that he is DOING the “how” because he gets the why AND that is productive and profitable! Without making people do what they don’t wanna do….
He has taken a direct action and IS enjoying the direct results of that action. He is taking a *direct alternative.
http://blog.mises.org/15647/gaiman-on-copyright-piracy-and-the-web/#comments
Gaimen comes to mind most especially in the following…
*In a prior week’s TLE, (Number 592, October 17, 2010) Paul Bonneau made interesting points to IPR proponents without getting into the “we have copies—you still have your original” issue. He puts the burden of property protection where it belongs—on the one who claims ownership.
Whether intentional or not, he [Bonneau] uses good Harry Browne-like points…. HB saw rights as a trap, and group traps such as government trap… and HB’s answer is to take direct action to get desired results that don’t involve changing, controlling, convincing others–including IPR proponents. (Controlling others is a form of dependence on others.)
Freedom from the treadmill: Do what you want to do. But recognize that there are many things you want to do and you can’t have them all. So establish priorities in your values and stick to the ones at the top. (Innovation is at the top for me but apparently not for Disney.) When you have to give up the lesser values (such as policing others and forsaking the profits of innovation), don’t waste your time bemoaning the loss of what could have been obtained only by giving up something more valuable (which is what Disney, Watt, Whitey, Wright brothers ended up doing.)
In fact HB called this the great milk robbery—leaving one’s milk out on the porch and finding it stolen, there is a risk someone will steal it…. so? Put it somewhere else or continue to leave it alone and write off the cost of the robbery because you have more productive uses of your time than catching milk thieves—productive uses such as innovating!
The Great Milk Robbery
To illustrate this, let’s suppose that I walk out to my front porch one morning, expecting to pick up my milk. But lo and behold, I find that it’s been stolen. What do I do next?
I can bitterly feel that the thief had no right to steal from me. But would that get my milk back? (rights trap)
I could stand on the front porch and deliver an eloquent speech, cursing the disgraceful fact that there are thieves in the world. But what would that get me—aside from a few angry neighbors?
To say that there are thieves in the world is only to repeat what I’ve known all along. To say that it’s disgraceful is to say that if I were God, I’d have made the world differently. But since I’m not God, that point is irrelevant, too.(I would call this the relevance trap)
To say that I would never steal someone’s milk is to acknowledge that I’m different from many of the people in the world and that I have my own way of trying to achieve happiness. But why should I expect someone else to use my way? (identity trap)
Direct alternative / self rule:
The only area of interest is that which I control. I’ve decided to risk theft by having the milk bottles left on the front porch. And I can decide to continue that risk or have the milk handled in some other way.If I concentrate on the thief’s immorality or on my rights, I’m probably leaving myself vulnerable to another theft. But if I use what I control to make new arrangements, I can see to it that the theft isn’t repeated—and that should be my major concern.
And I can think about that while I’m pouring water on my Wheaties.
Ideas from Harry Browne’s “How I Found Freedom In an UNFree World”
Anthony Shelley is “Living On Freedom Road In an UnFree World”
Excerpted from
http://dennisleewilson.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=481.0
IPR proponents don’t need our agreement to protect their property
« Reply #1 on: 2010-October-31 08:08:37 PM »http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle593-20101031-04.html
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 593, October 31, 2010
The Great Milk Robbery
by Anthony Shelley
AnthonyShelley@Yahoo.com
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise February 15, 2011 at 11:59 pm
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Actually there are two forms of slavery are compatible with Libertarianism: prison slavery and debt slavery. Since Libertarians believe in “self-ownership” then people can trade their bodies to others. Hence when you commit a crime you’ve created a debt to society and forfeit your body and its output to others until the debt is repaid. Similarly with debt slavery since your body is property it can be accepted as collateral so if you can’t voluntarily pay off your debt your body is claimed and you get put to work or sold to others until you can pay off debt (if ever). In the case of American slavery – if (note: IF) it could be shown that the African slave traders couldn’t just kidnap ordinary people, primarily because they feared private revenge attacks from extended family members and instead merely rounded up vicious criminals and those hopelessly in debt (i.e. both whom village members wouldn’t miss) then no great crimes were committed.
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“prison slavery and debt slavery.”
I see your point, though I hesitate to call those things “slavery”, which merely begs the question of what slavery really is anyways. Is it simply controlling other’s bodies, or is it specifically unjustified control of other’s bodies? Because there is one, and only one, way to give up rights to your body, and that is to use it to violate the rights of others.
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We can eliminate imprisonment if we have insurance firms and life insurance payouts, or so I have heard some libertarians claim. As for choosing to sell yourself, we already have marriage! Problems solved!
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Selling yourself isn’t slavery. You can sell what you own, and you own yourself, thus you can sell yourself.
February 16, 2011 at 9:40 pm
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None of that is consistent with Rothbard’s writings on property… that does not mean it is wrong but it does mean that slavery is not necessarily consistent with libertarianism.
Rothbard held (and I agree) that your ownership of yourself is inalienable, because it is impossible for someone to actually substitute their will for your own. I can contract to provide services but I always have the right to withdraw from that contract. If the contract specifies that I owe monetary compensation for breaking it then that is fine, but I can NOT be compelled to take any actions that I choose not to take. Any contract that confers ownership of another person is thus invalid, because the “will” (substitute spirit, consciousness, soul, whatever floats you boat) and the body are inalienable, and it is not logically possible to own somebody’s will).
Similarly with debt slavery, I would not be able to unilaterally discharge debts through bankruptcy in a libertarian system, but owing a property debt would not entitle another person to my body for reasons listed above. Maybe my creditor could garnish my wages in perpetuity (or at least until I had paid the debt) but they could never force me to take a certain job or perform certain acts.
The issue of slavery was definitely a big problem for me when I was starting to come around to libertarianism, once I read Rothbard’s stance on it I dropped my objections.
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Why should we have to eliminate imprisonment?
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I don’t say we have to, but I do think that we could eliminate imprisonment.
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Wildberry, thank you. As they say, if you only reach one other person, your effort wasn’t totally wasted, though you might want to keep your day job.
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A third type of fair slavery is war slavery. If invaders lose out to the defenders then the defenders can enslave the invaders until they rebuild and replace all they destroyed.
February 16, 2011 at 9:58 pm
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I love IP debates here. Always lots of heated comments. Why don’t IP haters understand the difference between an abstract idea and a concrete thing? Of course an abstract idea isn’t anyone’s property, but a concrete thing is. If a man writes a story it belongs to him, no one else. He may choose to share it any way he wants, either freely or for a price – his choice. If he wants a price for it you have no right to take it without paying. If a man has an idea for a story and never writes it, tough luck to him. If I have a brand name called Walmart it is stealing for someone else to use it. If I have an idea for a brand name called Walmart and am not using it, tough luck for me if someone else beats me to the punch. The IP laws need to be rational, not destroyed. Use it or lose it.
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A cd is a concrete thing. A piece of paper is a concrete thing. A cd can belong to someone. A piece of paper can belong to someone. Saying that a story can belong to someone is a completely different animal.
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>>If a man writes a story it belongs to him
How? Why?
You are using the same fallacy that Wildberry is using, namely, you are assuming your conclusion of intellectual property. More explicitly, you are trying to prove the legitimacy that ideas are property — you need to start off with some assumptions and arrive at the conclusion “… and therefore the idea belongs to him.” You have not done this, infact you have assumed the very conclusion you are trying to conclude!
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How? Why?
Because the story would not exist if you did not agree to his terms. It is similar to argumentation ethics – if you do not accept private property, you cannot exist to argue otherwise.
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Stranger,
I already asked you to addres this construct:
If X performs action A, and Y performs action B causally related to action A, and X does not like that, then Y is violating X’s rights.
Because that’s the abstract form of your argument.
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It is non-sense.
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Yes, I agree, you’re talking nonsense, and whenever it is exposed, you cowardly run away.
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What are the boundaries of IP? Where your IP ends and becomes public knowledge? Can someone own an alphabet? That’s a problem for IP proponents to solve, but they don’t even try to do that.
For example, RTB wrote a story on a paper, he says it belongs to him. Well, sure it does, because he owns the paper and everything that is “on it” so to speak. But if he releases it for sale, and I buy it, what if I change one letter in that story. Would it become mine? What is the exact amount of letters that needs to be change so that I could be able to “own” a story? What a hell is concrete thing? A book is just random letters written on a paper. What if I write very very short book, it consists of only one word. Can I then FORCE everyone not to use my word?
Anyone? Anyone?
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An IP-proponent might argue like this: If you invented/discovered this new word and wrote it down on paper, then yes you are legitimate in using force to prevent everyone else on the planet from using that word (despite the fact that other people using this new word does not prohibit you, the creator, from also using this new word simultaneously). Furthermore, some IP-proponents might even go as far as to say that you are also justified in using force to prevent everyone else on the planet from using entirely new words derived from that new word of yours.
This thought experiment is but one that highlights the ridiculousness of Intellectual Property. The sad fact of the matter is that they are still suck to the flawed Labor Theory of Value. They cry loudly “but he worked, intellectually, so hard to create that new word!” — as if the value had come from the intellectual’s labor (it doesn’t). The Subjective Theory of Value is a central pillar in Austrian Economics, and without a full understanding of it and its implications, I don’t believe that IP-proponents will ever truly figure out the core reasons why we object to IP so ferociously.
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Tyrone:
If my arguments and IP laws operated anything like you describe here, I would be the first to object. The facts is, they do not. Ask Kinsella to explain it to you.
“This thought experiment is but one that highlights the ridiculousness of Intellectual Property.”
Therefore you accomplish nothing with your straw man.
“as if the value had come from the intellectual’s labor (it doesn’t).”
Labor is a component of all production, but it is not the basis from which property rights arise in IP. It is you who is imposing this theory on what I’ve said.
So if that is the reason you object, rethink your objection.
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Wildberry’s examples of valid forms of “Intangible property” like checking accounts, promissory notes and security interests in oranges do not help to justify IP. Commercial paper and IP are not remotely comparable.
For starters, commercial paper is not actually property. They’re all merely various kinds of contracts. No one here disputes the validity of contracts, for the simple reason that they are justified by universal self-ownership.
Second, one’s contractual rights as to commercial paper can be treated AS THOUGH ithey were physical property because they function like physical property in one crucial way — they’re rivalrous! The right to assert a contract claim can be sold, but then the seller loses it. It cannot be infinitely replicated and yet have no effect on the original. The buyer’s use is rivalrous with the seller’s use.
Only rivalrous things can be property.
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Phinn,
“Commercial paper and IP are not remotely comparable.”
Both are intangible goods. In that sense they can be compared and found to be similar.
My point is that contracts can define the property rights in an intangible good. That is one way that property rights in intangible goods can arise. I am going slowly with you. I think you believe that intangible goods cannot have the attributes of property because they are intangible and intangible means non-rivalous. Is that correct?
“They’re all merely various kinds of contracts. No one here disputes the validity of contracts, for the simple reason that they are justified by universal self-ownership.”
Think about that. If you accept the validity of contracts, then you presumably accept that the subject of a contract, the exchange of a promise for promise, usually involves goods. Goods are owned, and they cannot be legitimately exchanged for consideration unless the offerer has title to the property being exchanged, and the terms of exchange are accepted by the buyer.
These goods are conceptually represented by the concept of “property”. As we have agreed (I think), intangible goods are a valid subject of contracts, and therefore they are within the concept of “property”. They are a human device because humans are free to define the nature and operation of this property in the exchange, memorialized by a contract, within the limitations mentioned already; morality, illegality, incompetence, fraud, etc.
As an aside, contracts for slavery would be illegal because it is immoral and illegal, also on the basis of self-ownership principles.
If these goods were not “rivalous”, there would be no basis for exchange, and no purpose for devising a contract to specify the terms of that exchange. Therefore, intangible goods can be rivalrous, and can, even using your definition, be properly referred to as “property”.
“Rivalrous goods” simply means two or more parties wish to have them, and they can’t both have them at the same time. Is that correct? I presume in this definition you assume that acquiring rivalrous goods by immoral or illegal means makes the acquisition an aggression, is that right?
If stories were not rivalrous goods, why would you argue it is your right to produce them through copying over some other means; for example through exchange, in which you offer some consideration to the producer? If the producer has property rights in the product you wish to possess, an intangible good in the case of IP, aren’t you obligated to purchase an instance of it from the producer?
Therefore a story, as one form of IP, is an intangible good produced by an author, and you may only legitimately acquire it by dealing with the owner, or his agent. To conclude otherwise would require that by acquiring an instance of a story, you have become the story’s producer and its owner. This is clearly false. You are acquiring an instance of an intangible property; this is not equivalent to taking ownership of the intangible property itself. You are acquiring title to the instance, not to the intangible property and capital investment in the intangible property that contributed to its production. You do not acquire the means of production when you acquire a product. Do you agree?
If you claim that making copies means you are the producer of the copy, and therefore you have not taken the original, then we must ask whether the copy is causally related to the original. If that is proven, then your production would be the result of the input of capital goods which you did not own. Therefore the rightful owner would have a cause of action against you for appropriation of his property without compensation.
Under contract theory, such things might be made explicit. However, under tort theory, which does not require privity in a contract to be enforceable, the existence of a property right would be sufficient to have a cause of action. Why? Because of the concept of property rights accrues to the owner of the subject property, and the exclusive rights of use and control are violated by the act of copying. You are appropriating the means of production (the original) for your own benefit, (the copy).
To acquire these means of production in any other way than exchange with the producer is analogous to theft of another’s property. It is possible to acquire the intangible property rights, but the owner would have to explicitly and formerly consent, much exchanges of title in real estate.
To acquire “more” of it by simply duplicating an original story is to substitute something (copy) for something that otherwise would require capital to produce or acquire through a means of production. Therefore it is analogous to counterfeiting. This type of counterfeiting it is analogous to counterfeiting money, because it has a similar inflationary effect on the value of capital goods.In order to reach a different conclusion, you would have to claim that writing a story involves no capital investment by the author. You would have to claim that the author has no better claim to a story than you, a copier of it.
If that is what you claim, I would like to hear your argument.
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I’ll go slowly with you, too.
1. The “intangible good” that prompted this discussion was the example of a checking account, or a security interest in oranges. Let’s call this “commercial paper.”
2. Such an “intangible good” is not an example of property the way that physical oranges themselves are property.
3. For the sake of convenience (as opposed to a coherent theory of property), we can say that these “intangible goods” are LIKE rights of physical property in some ways.
4. To be more specific and accurate, commercial paper are actually contracts. They are elaborate, sophisticated contracts, but ultimately just contracts.
5. The subject of this kind of contract is that the parties to the contract agree to do (or not do) certain actions that they WOULD NOT otherwise be required to do (or not do). Like dance a jig, stand on their head, pay money, prance around in a pink dress, give up possession of oranges, etc. No one can justly be compelled to do these things, but the contract creates the right to use force that otherwise would not be just.
6. The “intangible good” in commercial paper is the CLAIM that the other party has the right to use FORCE to make the other party to perform according to the contract. The gist of the contractual right is that this force would be unjust, were it not for the contract. (See No. 5, above.) No one can justly force me to pay him $100, but if I sign a promissory note and fail to abide by my promise, the promissee can justly use force to get his $100. The contract gives away some of the 100% self-ownership that exists in the absence of the contract.
7. These contractual rights (which, by definition, are contrary to the default principles of justice that would apply in the absence of such contracts) are LIKE rights in physical property because, like rights in physical property, they are rivalrous.
8. As to physical property, “rivalrous” means that two people cannot use some physical matter in two incompatible ways at the same time. You cannot drive a car to work at the same time I drive it to the grocery store. You cannot eat an orange that I can also eat.
9. In the context of contractual rights like commercial paper, “rivalrous” means that no two people can enforce the same obligation. The contract (by definition) consists of a right to use force against someone that WOULD NOT EXIST but for the contract. (See No. 5, above). Therefore, when the holder of a promissory note sells it to a buyer, the seller LOSES it. He cannot replicate that note and compel the promissor to pay twice. The contractual obligation is treated as though it is a discrete thing — whatever the buyer acquires, the seller necessarily loses.
10. Therefore, the application of these contractual principles can be said to MIMIC the natural rivarousness that is inherent in the use of physical matter. That’s why intangible commercial paper rights are sometimes treated LIKE property rights, for convenience, by Anglo-American common law — because they can be said to exhibit the same characteristic of rivalrousness that rights in physical objects do.
11. IP doesn’t work this way at all. It is not based on the same principles of either physical property (i.e., rivalrousness) or contracts (which are based on self-ownership, which means that contracts are ultimately based on property rights in your physical body, which is also rivalrous).
12. Calling an IP right an “intangible good” doesn’t ispe dixit make it justified. Using an umbrella term like “intangible good” is not actually an argument. Using this term does not mean that IP rights are based on the same principles of ethics as either rights in physical goods (i.e., property) or commercial paper (i.e., fancy contractual rights). Although the “thing” that IP purports to protect is “intangible,” and hearing a story that you find entertaining is a “good,” it is not a sound argument to say that because commercial paper is a valid form of intangible good that can be treated LIKE it’s property, therefore everything that’s both intangible and good must also a valid form of property. That’s argument by adjective.
13. There is no interference of use of various copies of stories, because the story (the pattern of symbols, sounds, etc.) can be infinitely replicated without altering any instance of it in any way. You can read a book and not even KNOW if there are zero other copies in existence or 10 million.
14. Therefore, stories are not rivalrous because the use of any “instance” of a story in NO WAY interferes with the use of any other instance.
15. The only thing that copying interferes with the use of a story is with regard to the potential for any one holder of an instance of the pattern to SELL it at the price he would like to get in the market, since an increased supply of substitute goods tends to drive down prices.
16. To protect these desired prices, it was devised that a monopoly edict would be a good idea — some people would get a monopoly on the production and sale of all goods of a given type.
(All the stuff you said about “capital goods” is simply irrelevant.)
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@Phinn February 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm
1. The “intangible good” that prompted this discussion was the example of a checking account, or a security interest in oranges. Let’s call this “commercial paper.”Just to get off on the right foot, what prompted this was an assertion that intangible goods cannot be property, and therefore there can be no rights in them. I made up the orange scenario to illustrate my objection.
2. Such an “intangible good” is not an example of property the way that physical oranges themselves are property.
I beg to differ. “Property” is a word that is interpreted here to mean a good which can be owned, and thus entails exclusive rights to use and disposition. If IP were “property”, I would expect it to operate in the market in way that would be analogous to other property. Tangible and intangible goods both behave as property, as my example demonstrates.
3. For the sake of convenience (as opposed to a coherent theory of property), we can say that these “intangible goods” are LIKE rights of physical property in some ways.
I’m not sure what distinction you are making here. If something operates LIKE property, why not just call it property? Property rights enable cooperation and peace, which are convenient to the members of a society.
4. To be more specific and accurate, commercial paper are actually contracts. They are elaborate, sophisticated contracts, but ultimately just contracts.
Written contracts are a memorial of binding agreement reached by the parties to that contract. It is useful for evidentiary purposes, because in order to peacefully resolve disputes concerning the performance of the parties, someone must interpret the terms of the agreement. Written contracts are useful, but in some cases verbal contracts can be enforced. Anyway, the contracts have a subject, and the subject is property. Property interests are being exchanged, contracts are not. Don’t confuse the subject with the agreement, or property with contract.
5. The subject of this kind of contract is that the parties to the contract agree to do (or not do) certain actions that they WOULD NOT otherwise be required to do (or not do). Like dance a jig, stand on their head, pay money, prance around in a pink dress, give up possession of oranges, etc. No one can justly be compelled to do these things, but the contract creates the right to use force that otherwise would not be just.
You are saying that a valid contract is enforceable as to the performance of the parties. By force, you mean of course there are remedies for breach of the contract. (Just trying to keep this discussion orderly)
6. The “intangible good” in commercial paper is the CLAIM that the other party has the right to use FORCE to make the other party to perform according to the contract. The gist of the contractual right is that this force would be unjust, were it not for the contract. (See No. 5, above.) No one can justly force me to pay him $100, but if I sign a promissory note and fail to abide by my promise, the promissee can justly use force to get his $100. The contract gives away some of the 100% self-ownership that exists in the absence of the contract.
Aren’t you simply saying that someone who owns property, say a security interest in a future payment of $100, has the right to possess it under the terms of the contract? If I promise to pay you $100 later for $80 today, I’ve assigned by rights to that $100 to you. You have a security interest in $100 at some time certain in the future. Today, there is no $100, so IT can’t be property. It will be property when I acquire it somehow (legally) and give it to you when I agreed to. At that point, when I acquire it, we can say that the property ($100) CONSTRUCTIVELY belongs to you. When I give it to you, it ACTUALLY belongs to you.
7. These contractual rights (which, by definition, are contrary to the default principles of justice that would apply in the absence of such contracts) are LIKE rights in physical property because, like rights in physical property, they are rivalrous.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
8. As to physical property, “rivalrous” means that two people cannot use some physical matter in two incompatible ways at the same time. You cannot drive a car to work at the same time I drive it to the grocery store. You cannot eat an orange that I can also eat.
These are attributes of cars and oranges. As Tucker illustrated in his “Magic Bagel” fable, if you could somehow create an exact copy of an orange, two people could eat it at the same time. We don’t know how to make exact copies of oranges, but we do know how to make exact copies of IP. You have to be careful with your terms here.
If you think about it, a home mortgage and a Collateral Backed Security are both using the same payment streams from the mortgagee. Or perhaps a better example, fractional reserve banking allows many people to use the same “deposit” amounts. That doesn’t make your checking account worth less to YOU than the other 10 people who are also using the same pool of deposits. The way property rights work in the realm of the intangible does not follow directly the rules for goods which cannot be easily re-created, like land.
9. In the context of contractual rights like commercial paper, “rivalrous” means that no two people can enforce the same obligation. The contract (by definition) consists of a right to use force against someone that WOULD NOT EXIST but for the contract. (See No. 5, above). Therefore, when the holder of a promissory note sells it to a buyer, the seller LOSES it. He cannot replicate that note and compel the promissor to pay twice. The contractual obligation is treated as though it is a discrete thing — whatever the buyer acquires, the seller necessarily loses.
Now you are getting to the central point. You are taking the long way around to say something simple. Two people cannot claim exclusive ownership of the same property. By definition, property rights are exclusive.
Using this interpretation of property, IP rights are easily explained. Both you and the author cannot claim the same exclusive property rights in the same copy of a work. When you buy a book, you buy a copy of an original work. You do not buy the original work. Therefore all you can claim rights in is the instantiation (copy) of some property that belongs to another. That explains why your rights are more limited than the owners. You don’t own the good, the IP. You only own a copy. The fact that you can cheaply make another copy does not change these facts. If I “magically” made a copy of an orange and sold it to you, you would not also own the original orange, just the copy.
10. Therefore, the application of these contractual principles can be said to MIMIC the natural rivarousness that is inherent in the use of physical matter. That’s why intangible commercial paper rights are sometimes treated LIKE property rights, for convenience, by Anglo-American common law — because they can be said to exhibit the same characteristic of rivalrousness that rights in physical objects do.
With all due respect, what is the difference between property that MIMICs property, and actual property? You have it backwards; Anglo-American common law, as modified by statute, DEFINES property rights in ways that are distinguishable and enforceable. That is the purpose of the concept of property rights. That is why it is a human device. It doesn’t land here on earth hitchhiking on a comet. We invent them for a purpose that is as old as humans. It is a device aimed at facilitating a cooperative and peaceful society.
11. IP doesn’t work this way at all. It is not based on the same principles of either physical property (i.e., rivalrousness) or contracts (which are based on self-ownership, which means that contracts are ultimately based on property rights in your physical body, which is also rivalrous).
I haven’t elaborated on this much, but I think it would be possible to show that the act of producing an original work of authorship is DIRECTLY connected to one’s right in one’s physical body. Where the body goes, the mind will follow?
It looks to me that you have gone to elaborate means to avoid the obvious conclusion that there is no rational basis to deny that IP is a perfectly legitimate subject of property rights.
12. Calling an IP right an “intangible good” doesn’t ispe dixit make it justified. Using an umbrella term like “intangible good” is not actually an argument. Using this term does not mean that IP rights are based on the same principles of ethics as either rights in physical goods (i.e., property) or commercial paper (i.e., fancy contractual rights). Although the “thing” that IP purports to protect is “intangible,” and hearing a story that you find entertaining is a “good,” it is not a sound argument to say that because commercial paper is a valid form of intangible good that can be treated LIKE it’s property, therefore everything that’s both intangible and good must also a valid form of property. That’s argument by adjective.
If you ask me, the foregoing 1-11 is a pretty tightly reasoned argument for supporting the notion that there is nothing inherent in IP that excludes is classification as property.
By the same token, there is nothing that would prevent, in theory, something that is not considered property, like air, from becoming property and being owned by someone. Fortunately, we have a corollary concept, called the “public domain” that is like anti-property. Things in the public domain, like air, letters of the alphabet, historical facts, and pure ideas, are not property and cannot be owned. To establish property rights in these things would represent a social detriment, so we don’t to it. In fact, we protect the public domain from abuses.
13. There is no interference of use of various copies of stories, because the story (the pattern of symbols, sounds, etc.) can be infinitely replicated without altering any instance of it in any way. You can read a book and not even KNOW if there are zero other copies in existence or 10 million.
In light of the previous discussions above, does this still make sense to you? Stories can only be infinitely replicated because if you trace causality backwards in time, you find an original. Copies cannot exist without an original. It is the original property that is at issue. Once that is decided, then the rights in copies of the original are pretty straight forward. Your interpretation that I have to know there are other copies to acknowledge property rights in the original seems pretty weak as an argument against IP. What difference does it make how many copies there are? Is there some magic number that matters?
14. Therefore, stories are not rivalrous because the use of any “instance” of a story in NO WAY interferes with the use of any other instance.
Again, interference of one copy with another is not a criterion for determining property rights in the original. It is the original that is at issue, not the copies.
15. The only thing that copying interferes with the use of a story is with regard to the potential for any one holder of an instance of the pattern to SELL it at the price he would like to get in the market, since an increased supply of substitute goods tends to drive down prices.
Restated, the issue is what property rights does someone have in a copy of an original owned by someone else? If you have property rights, you can sell all you want, if not, you can’t. That’s how property works. Why do you insist on making a special rule for IP?
16. To protect these desired prices, it was devised that a monopoly edict would be a good idea — some people would get a monopoly on the production and sale of all goods of a given type.
All property represents a monopoly right of the owner to its exclusive use. Stop using the term as a pejorative. It is only a bad thing in the sense you mean it when control excludes all alternatives. You can still write your own story.
Here is an interesting fact that you don’t hear from SK. He very recently said that copyrights originated in censorship. What he is referring to, I think, is the state sanctioned monopoly in England held by the Stationer’s Company, a government-sanctioned printing monopoly which ended in 1695. This situation has NEVER existed in the US. Since 1710 in England, and 1790 in the US, copyrights specifically gave the rights to the Authors, not a trade guild and certainly not the State. It is always the AUTHOR who as a cause of action, and NEVER the state. (you can see this yourself in Eldred v. Ashcroft 537 US 186)
(All the stuff you said about “capital goods” is simply irrelevant.)
Not really, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t take issue with the concept of capital and production. It would be nice to hear you acknowledge that an original work or authorship must be produced by someone before you can copy it, and that production is not simply picking letters from the alphabet and putting them on a page.
Despite what Kinsella says, creation is one of the ways property rights arise. Other ways are capture, homesteading, and adverse possession. Creation requires capital.
February 17, 2011 at 6:44 pm
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Beautiful! Thank you!
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As someone who IS working on a new type of Button, I can add my bit here- one of the reasons i keep working on it is because of the hope of profits, which I hope to get by licencing my patent to a company which makes buttons. (Here in Australia we also have a show called ‘The New Inventors’, inspired by an older show, which acts as a showcase for new products and ideas- and which I might use to publicise my patent.) I am not sure if I would bother if we didn’t have patents, so i believe the world has more types of products because of this incentive scheme called Intellectual Property.
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I am not convinced that there is any benefit to be gained by continuing this discussion. There are two barriers to communication that I can see.
First, we seem to have some intractable discontinuities in our descriptions and understandings of literal, physical reality. I have been trying to say that there are two realms we have to consider: (a) physical reality and (b) human, normative interpretations of reality. Reality is not changeable. We can rearrange elements of reality, but we do not create anything. On the other side, there is abstraction, which is bound by words mostly, and it is in this realm where normative principles occur. Abstractions do not exist in reality, but only in the minds of men. (Maybe we can say they exist in reality in terms of neurological impulses, but that’s about it.) The point of intellectual pursuits and personal development is to better conform our minds to reality.
I do not see the point in trying to discuss the abstractions if we can’t even communicate effectively about reality. I say things like “interference with use,” and you don’t seem to understand what I mean. I mean it literally and physically, but you seem to want to go off on tangents about making copies of “IP” which you already describe as intangible (or at least the critical part of it that IP laws focus on). If we can’t get things straight with regard to objective reality, then trying to talk about the abstractions and normative principles is pointless.
Second, whenever people reach an impasse in an abstract conversation, in my experience this means that the people are not actually talking about what they purport to be talking about. The conversation is a proxy for some internal, emotional turmoil that is going unmentioned and unacknowledged. Since the real point of the conversation is something else, there is no possibility of resolving the literal subject matter, since the point of engaging in perpetual impasses is actually to maintain the impasse, to perpetuate the conflict, and thus satisfy whatever perverse psychological need is subconsciously motivating the participant(s).
I have had enough of that for one lifetime. This conversation is starting to sound like a debate with a surly teenager who wants to express his resentment at being told what to think, and uses a “debate” about abstractions (like religious doctrine or theology) as a proxy for asserting the intellectual independence that he was not allowed to have. That kind of conversation is destined to go nowhere, since abstract, religious discussions (having no grounding in reality) have no point of objective reference. They are debates about text and language, not empirical reality. They are sort of reminiscent of debates among science fiction fans about what part of a fantasy series is “canon” or not, or whether a light saber can hurt Superman. Those debates can never be resolved, which is the point of having them — the people participating in them do not want to ground anything they say in reality, only in text, abstraction, doctrine and self-referential fantasy, because they like to argue. It makes them feel good. Because these people have typically been subjected to doctrinal oppression (like growing up with religious schooling, fundamentalist parents, or other forms of dogma), they tend to exhibit very weaselly personalities — they learned how to duck, dodge, evade, and use the inherent ambiguities of language to constantly shift the terms of the “debate,” so that it will go on indefinitely.
In any event, I don’t feel like being a sounding board for your free-floating desire to argue.
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Instead of this all you could have just honestly said that you ran out of arguments.
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Your opinion will be given all the credence it deserves.
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Phinn,
This is the second time you have tried to focus on psychoanalyzing me. It is is indeed revealing. I suspect I’m at least twice your age, so being accused of acting like a teenager is pretty funny from over here.
At any rate, with all due respect, this is a voluntary army so do what you want. I will just leave you with this thought. Do you really think you can get a handle on “reality” without somehow interpreting it through your own experience? I mean, let’s not get all existential or anything, but it is an indication of something like religious fanaticism when someone insists they know what “reality” actually is.
We reach common understandings and then we act on the basis of that understanding. That is what enables us to function as an individual and and society. When we are young, we don’t understand too much. As we get older, we can make larger connections and our world view encompasses greater understanding. Then we die.
That’s the way it works. That is “reality”.
Whatever idea you have about what it “really” is, is just another interpretation. Rearranging elements of reality that we perceive or conceive is in fact an act of creation. It is not necessary that I manifest a hydrogen atom to create something. I am creating this response to you. It didn’t “exist” before I created it. That’s enough to get me there. You don’t need to be a Buddhist to get that. You just need to be honest with yourself and share that with others.
See you around the school yard.
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I suspect I’m at least twice your age
Not unless you’re 90. In any event, the psychological patterns I described tend to go on indefinitely until resolved. Personality traits developed in childhood and adolescence tend to be stable, and they inform a person’s philosophical outlook. I simply see no point in discussing the philosophy or ethics when the real motivator here is personal and psychological.
it is an indication of something like religious fanaticism when someone insists they know what “reality” actually is
So much for science, then.
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@ STRANGER (way back on this thread) said,”That is incorrect, taxation is the result of a king monopolizing justice, and hence being able to unilaterally determine what he is to be paid for this justice. A conquering tribe may be able to steal from the conquered, but it does not follow that a tribal lord can tax his fellow tribesmen.”
Stranger, what the heck are you talking about. Taxation is stealing! It has nothing whatsoever to do with justice or the cost of justice. When a conquering tribe plunders the vanquished routinely or repetitiously, that is taxation. Read the biblical stories of the Jews’ conquest of the Promised Land. God, speaking through Moses and Joshua, told them to drive all of the inhabitants out so as not to be tempted by their idolatry, but the Israelites, being human, could not resist the innate corrupting desire of all men to live of the fruits of others labor, so they let them stay and put the Canaanites to tribute.
The balance of your comment is gibberish. You should go back and apologize to GOLDBACON for intentionally trying to mislead him, or, if not intentional, for stating something you know nothing about as if you did. As for me, I accept your apology in advance for saying my comment, which was spot on, was incorrect. Better luck next time.
WILDBERRY said, “All property carries enforcement privileges against others who violate those privileges. The outrages you have against slavery are not a function of government support for it, it is a function of the vesting of property rights in other humans. Like all logical fallacies, if the premise is wrong the conclusion is wrong.”
I know that several others have tried to correct you illogical thinking on this score, and perhaps you have already been convinced of your error, but in case you haven’t I thought I’d try:
(Hypothetical premise) If government doesn’t making it a crime to escape slavery; (categorical premise) slaves will choose freedom; (indisputable conclusion) no government, no slavery. Ownership of slaves with property rights thereto is merely part of the elaborate structure of legal fictions and mumbojumbo devised by slaving statists to defend their indefensible behavior. IP is similar to slavery in that it too depends upon the State and its legal fictions.
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@Ned Netterville February 18, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, you may not see this comment:
“IP is similar to slavery in that it too depends upon the State and its legal fictions.”
I’m not sure about this.
IP and slavery are similar because both concepts involve property rights which are sanctioned by the state. As such, they are enforceable by the means made available by the state for the enforcement of one’s rights.
They are distinguishable because slavery is not a legitimate institution of property rights, because it violates a higher principle of one’s right to individual liberty. IP is legitimate property because it does not violate a higher ethical principle of individual liberty, which includes the right of an individual to own the property of his own production.
No one but the author has a better title to this property than him. Certainly a slave has a better title to himself than a slave owner. That is the key difference.
Now you may disagree, and hold that the public has a better title to an original work than the author, but I think that is impossible to hold while also holding onto a principle of private property rights and individual liberty.
In actual fact, copyright law is a compromise between these two positions. The property right of authors is limited in time and scope, and eventually reverts to the public domain. Once in the public domain it is there forever.
As to your argument:
“(Hypothetical premise) If government doesn’t making it a crime to escape slavery; (categorical premise) slaves will choose freedom; (indisputable conclusion) no government, no slavery.”
Your conclusion does not follow from your premises, which I believe are true. Without government, the application of force by slave owners might yet prevail. To whom would the slave appeal for freedom? In actual fact, the same government that granted protection of slavery later abolished it.
However, your premises are powerful economic principles, which can be restated as follows:
If a producer is not forced to produce for external economies, he will choose freedom (i.e. produce for internal economies, where output equals income).This brings us full circle to the slavery analogy; If slaves have a choice, they will not choose slavery. If authors have a choice, they will not produce for external economies.
Regards,
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