While few argue against the moral and juridical institution of private property altogether, a much more discussed issue is that regarding intellectual property. A notable number of jurists, economists and philosophers, who would defend with no problem the right for individual to own concrete objects in the world exclusively, have nonetheless given little to no justification to legal devices such as copyright norms and patents. This paper will show how the question about intellectual property depends on the view one is willing to embrace about the nature of property and original appropriation.
Among the advocates of private property, Locke’s theory of original appropriation is held as the standard view. After brief exposition of this view and its possible flaws, we will employ Reinach’s insightful terminology for the nature of property to move on to a more Aristotelian-friendly position. In the second part of this work, by examining arguments for and against intellectual property, we will make clear how the standard view hardly offers good reasons to endorse copyright and patents, whereas the proposed alternative does.
“I explain why Intellectual Property rights are actually criminal monopoly grants and why copyrights and patents should be entirely abolished. I debunk every pro-IP argument ever and explain how we will see more technological and artistic development without copyrights and patents.”
Abstract: This dissertation sets out a Lockean law of restitution and enquires into some of the implications of this law. It firstly looks into the implications for property redistribution in a case study country – the contemporary UK. It secondly looks into the implications of the law for understanding exploitation in the contemporary UK and historical England until the early industrial era. According to Lockean justice, one owns one’s body and is entitled to fully own previously unowned natural resources one has laboured on. One is also able to transfer one’s property to whom one wishes. We are concerned with the problem of how to address holdings which did not arise in line with Lockean justice. We argue that previous attempts at addressing the problem, including those laid out by Nozick and Rothbard respectively, have been unsatisfactory. We set out a new way of approaching the problem, which we argue is more consistent with Lockean theory. We lay out a Lockean law of restitution inspired by the law of restitution found in the English legal tradition. After laying out the Lockean law of restitution, we look into some implications of the law. Using secondary historical and sociological sources, we argue that all property in the UK is unjustly held according to the Lockean law of restitution and should be redistributed in an egalitarian manner. We secondly argue that wage labour in the contemporary UK is exploitative in Lockean terms, and thirdly, that wage labour can reasonably be presumed to have always been exploitative in England historically. In light of our findings we outline the possibilities for a Lockean approach to property redistribution in the UK.
Intellectual Property is one of the most important concepts in the world of commerce today. But there are thinkers who seriously challenge the idea. They point out that ideas do not have the property of scarcity that is required for property to make sense: If I know that p, and I tell it to you, I don’t thereby cease to know it. True, and important. On the other hand, somebody has to think up knowledge – it doesn’t fall from the heavens on us all. The work of thinkers, especially when successful, is supremely important. Without them, we would have none of the things that make life so much better for all than it was for the cavemen. The question is, how are those extremely important people to make their livings if they are not credited with what amounts to ownership of those ideas? The essentials to the solution to this problem, I am sure, lie in the distinction between ideas in the head, and ideas in Plato’s heaven. Ideas in the abstract cannot be owned or patented: nobody can own the mathematical fact that every even number is the sum of two primes, but somebody can discover it, and at the time he or she does, his is the only head having that fact in his possession. That’s scarcity enough for him to charge for the discovery. But: ordinarily a property right excludes all others forever. And yet someone else might, a week or a year later, discover that same amazing thing – latches on, as it were, to the same Platonic form. Because property is individual, there is a serious question whether the newcomer is properly excluded by the first discoverer’s right. I argue not, with some further observations on patents and copyrights. [continue reading…]
The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) is dedicated to building public awareness of the manner in which so-called “intellectual property” (IP) laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. We are for property rights, free markets, competition, commerce, cooperation, and the voluntary sharing of knowledge, and oppose IP laws, which systematically impede or hamper innovation. IP law should be completely and immediately abolished.
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Interesting book by James O. Young, 
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