Maybe a better, more comprehensible title, would have been “fuck IP”.
Wojciech Gamrot, “The type individuation problem,” Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia, vol. XVI, fasc. 4 (2021); DOI: https://doi.org/10.19195/1895-8001.16.4.3 [pdf]
Abstract: Lockean justifications of intellectual property postulate the appropriation of immaterial entities, in various contexts called types, patterns, designs, or technologies. It is widely believed that the ownership of such entities gives the owner a right to control their physical embodiments and prohibit imitation. For the prohibition to be meaningful, a condition identifying forbidden objects must be formulated. It must cover not only objects which are identical to some original artifact or its exact, ideal description, but also those which are only similar. This requires systematic answers to three questions: (1) which material structures and which of their subsets should be compared? (2) which of their characteristics should be compared? (3) how to combine these characteristics into a decision rule for token identification? There is no underlying empirical reality that could be independently consulted by individuals in order to incontestably answer these questions. Meanwhile constant evolution in technology and arts requires addressing them repeatedly. Consequently, intellectual property regimes must rely on political institutions incessantly dictating the scope of prohibition, and hence they cannot originate or exist in a prelegal state of nature.
This is the first in a sub-series of the White Pill essays. They will examine some of the State’s obvious (and not-so-obvious) vulnerabilities.
Like any bully, the State can be formidable. But it has numerous Achilles Heels. These are attributes or outcomes that are pressure points…weak links in the State apparatus. This makes every one of them a solid White Pill.
Most of them will be familiar to freedom advocates, but one in particular (Intellectual Property) merits special attention. It will be the entire focus of this installment; upcoming essays will cover the White Pills of other State Achilles Heels.
Various IP advocates sometimes argue IP is an even purer or stronger form of property than property rights in material resources, because with those, you just find them and they already exist, and you come to own them by adding some of your own labor or transformation to them (this is also similar to the criticism of property rights in land by moronic Georgists),1 but with ideas, they come purely from the intellect so are 100% the product of the creator.
In the end, this “IP is more important/justified than others types of property rights” is the end result of Lockean Creationism—the deeply confused and flawed idea that property rights come from creation. Once you accept that, then it seems to follow that if you create a poem or invention, you own that too. But then, you realize that perpetual patent and copyright terms would be a problem, so you arbitrarily limit these “rights.” It’s a mess. And it highlights why we need to demolish and bury Lockean/Libertarian Creationism.
But for some examples I’ve collected (I will add more over time as I stumble across them): [continue reading…]
An amazingly perceptive work for something written so long ago. For example, here is Walker skewering and anticipating the practice of Monsanto and others with their ridiculous seed patents:
Profit is gain by monopoly. What Spencer seeks from copyright is gain; and he wishes to be protected against others doing the same acts as himself and his assigns. But equal liberty permits him to do merely such acts as he can do without interfering with the equal liberty of others. Since Spencer remains at liberty to copy, we do not invade his liberty by copying. He, however, wishes to be the sole copyist or to sell the privilege as regards his compositions. But thus he would mingle a certain amount of labor with natural elements which he did not create, and that universally. He would exercise ownership and receive pay where he knows not. Like one who discovers and first cultivates a new variety of wheat and lays claim to a share of the increase of all fields where it is sown, he is a monopolist.
I grant that it is allowable for Mr. Yarros and others to voluntarily submit to such royalties, but suppose that one who has bought a bushel of the new wheat, grown more, and so far paid the demand of the discoverer from his crop, sells the rest. The burden of proof in the question of ethics is, I think, decidedly on the other side, on a claim that royalty attaches to the culture by any hands and intelligence.
And here he eviscerates the ridiculous “bundle of rights”/contract argument for IP, which Rothbard himself later advanced:1
If one can sell his liberty to copy his writings, can he not sell his liberty to build a second house after the pattern of the first? Can he not sell his liberty to follow a trade? Can he not bargain for a conjugal privilege that he will not have other conjugal relations? And if one of these transactions receives the social sanction, why not the others?
If, however, I have an inalienable right to rebuild according to my own plans have I not a right to engage others to help me? And have not others a right to do for themselves on their own land what they have a right to do for me for hire on my land? Let the answers be given by reference directly to liberty,—to the maximum of equal liberty, may I say? If, then, the inquiry via the corollary seems to some persons to show an infringement upon a gain which has an appearance of being a proprietary result, it will be well for them to examine all the factors, to discover where there has been a false principle admitted. In these articles I have anticipated this position. Perhaps I need only add now that it is not incumbent upon society to guarantee the individual a certain gain for his labor. Equal liberty being admitted, he must be content with whatever gain follows.
Abstract: Although Michel Chevalier was an influential economist during the second half of the nineteenth century, and is well-known as an architect of the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty, his work in economics has been largely forgotten. In particular, Chevalier is notable for being one of the only French liberals opposed to patents. Unfortunately, his original and compelling critique of the patent system has been neglected. This paper rediscovers Chevalier’s arguments against patents, shows why they are still relevant today, and explains why they have been mostly ignored by historians of economic thought.
You may be familiar with the role of proprietary automobile diagnostic software in enforcing a repair cartel of the Big Auto manufacturers, dealership mechanics, and auto repair chains and big garages that can afford to license the software. By using closed software that makes it impossible for an independent party to access it, or open it up and modify it, the effect is to lock low-cost, independent mechanics (“shade tree mechanics”) out of a major share of repair work. Similarly, closed, proprietary software in electronic voting machines makes the process of counting votes completely non-transparent so that voters and independent investigators have no way to verify whether the machines have been hacked — a repeated concern in election years ever since the internal emails of the Diebold company were leaked in 2004. But at least you don’t depend on such software to keep your heart beating. Well, actually you do — as Cory Doctorow points out, pacemakers also run on proprietary software (“Pacemakers and Piracy: The Unintended Consequences of the DMCA for Medical Implants,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 19). [continue reading…]
Catholics and libertarians make strange bedfellows. They sharply disagree on many issues. However, when it comes to intellectual property rights, they are surprisingly congruent, albeit for different reasons. The present paper traces out the agreement on patents between these two very different philosophies.
“Long before medicines entered the monopoly debate, many countries were hesitant to accept the general Anglo-American concept of “owning ideas.” A debate over the legitimacy and value of monopolies as awards for invention was a tempest across Europe throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The Netherlands proudly maintained what it called a “free trade in inventions” until 1912. During this long argument, the fiercest denunciations of intellectual property were found not in left-wing journals but in the pages of The Economist, whose editors advocated for the abolishment of the English patent system. The magazine asserted in 1850 that for inventors to “establish a right of property in their inventions,” they first would have “to give up all the knowledge and assistance they have derived from the knowledge and inventions of others . . . That is impossible, and the impossibility shows that their minds and their inventions are, in fact, parts of the great mental whole of society, and that they have no right of property in their inventions.”
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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