Bitcoin Forum

It had to be said.

F*ck SOPA

But stealing data that the author didn't intend you to have isn't free speech.

I don't agree with SOPA, but piracy is stupid too.

You can't steal data, you can only steal physical things. If I have a pattern or composition of matter that matches yours that's on my property, are you going to violate my property? Remember you still have your pattern and/or composition contained on your property. You're abusing the definition of piracy. You know, the kind where you're on the high seas, stealing gold, food, starting wars, etc.

Free speech is free speech, or it isn't free speech. We've been down this road before. You want a monopoly on certain types of speech. Let the flame war begin.

Let it be known however, that while you may have the law on your side, I have consistency of logic.

Bring it.

im with FredericBastiat, piracy should be legal.
and IP should not be allowed or enforced.

That's the only logical, consistent position.

Either your property rights are absolute, and only physical things can be property; or the concept of property is rightly arbitrary and subject to bureaucratic whims. I think it can be shown that any situation that doesn't fall into the former case falls into the latter.

I will agree piracy is not the same as theft; I think anyone here will agree sopa is a horrible idea. But that doesnt mean its even a remotely sane idea to abolish intellectual property all together.

why not?
its an absurd thing to have ownership of an idea, and actually to think of an idea as your property.

if you want to have ownership of idea/music/copiable KEEP IT TO YOURSELF IN YOUR HEAD.

So, you think, for instance writers should all get a day job and write books for free as a gift to society?
The same for patent laws; for sure they are widely abused now and something should be done about that, but the basic concept that you can protect what is potentially a life long investment in to some invention makes perfect sense to me. Who is going to spend billions developing new drugs if they cant be patented? The government?

Where did anybody get their ideas from? Everything you've ever learned or used, you gained from others or from the observation of physical deterministic matter present in nature. Every thing you've ever done has, and will always be, a derivative of the raw materials others used before you. Do they own you too because they composed it first? If that's the case, then whoever was the first proto-man capable of putting two thoughts together could subjugte the entire world to his whims because he was first to think it. Imagine...

Let me ask you this. If I spent a billion dollars engineering and developing artistic manure hills, should I force you to compensate me for my effort? You're talking price not principle. That will take you nowhere fast.

You can't have private property and not have private property at the same time. Physical property and Intellectual property are two incompatible concepts. Mere compositional similarity and mimicry is not theft. If you want to create some type of psuedo intellectual property equivalent, you would need to contract for it. Neither can you legally force a specific type of contract either, as that would violate the concept of mutual consent.

Let freedom reign. Pretty please???

Exactly this.  Without protection for people who create IP, there will be no "good" IP.  Music can only be created so well on a volunteer basis.  Movies produced on a shoestring budget (because no one pays for IP anymore) will look like movies produced on a shoestring budget.  No pharmaceutical companies will spend money on drug research, because the moment their "formula" was released into the wild, anyone could make it, and they'd effectively lose however many hundreds of millions spent on researching the drugs.  No companies will innovate with new products, because their competitors could simply steal the design and sell it for less.

If your goal is to kill all innovation and creative works on the planet, except that which is created in someone's garage or as their hobby, then sure, go ahead and abolish protection of IP.

Force me? no of course not. Whats that got to do with anything?
now you answer my question; who will be willing to invest billions of $'s on R&D to develop new medicine if anyone can just copy the formula after you've found some new miracle drug ?

Why should I respond to a non-sequitur? You're not talking principle you're talking price. It's not the same.

EDIT: Do you respect private property?

No it is a principle. Some work benefits society but requires a large investment. If there is no way to recover the investment because you dont own a damn thing after having successfully invested, and everyone can copy your work and reap the benefits,  those investments wont happen. How is that good for society?

Either you solve this with IP, or you let a government do the investment and publish the results free of IP. I dont see a third way.

Easy, everyone who benefits directly pays the R&D costs up front, kind of like how artists were patronized historically, except instead of one king backing an artist, all of their fans would. If you don't feel like patronizing an artist then don't, but then maybe they stop making that music that you like... same for medicines etc. If there is nobody willing to fund the research, then it doesn't get done. If that makes society as a whole poorer, then there is an automatic incentive for society to improve.

Am I obligated to work for, or benefit society? Am I obligated or responsible to others for their risk taking? And since when is government ever needed for assisting private investment? The government in that capacity is no different than a den of thieves. Do you believe in freedom of competition? Do you believe in a market of free people?

You've probably never conceived of what real freedom is really about, so you fall back on your government to do your thinking and living for you.

If you cant read, I cant help.  Welcome to my ignore list.

Seriously?

Do you have no clue of how businesses work?

If I am big pharma, and I want to research a new cure for cancer, then I do some cost-benefit analysis.  Something like this:

Cost to research:  $100M
Probability of coming up with a drug that works:  10%
Potential sale price per dose:  $1000
Potential total sales:  $1.5B

Risk-inclusive profit (loss).
$1.5B x (10%) - $100M = $50M

Now, if anyone else can copy the formula once the research is completed, then big pharma has to sell their drug for less to remain competitive.  Suddenly, the equation starts looking like this:

Potential sale price per dose:  $25
Potential total sales:  $37.5M

Risk-inclusive profit (loss).
$37.5M x (10%) - $100M = ($96.25M)

Suddenly, no one wants to do pharmaceutical research because it's going to lose them money, every time.

So who does research for new drugs if there is no profit to be made?  Taxpayers?  Or do you have something else in mind?

Kind of like how there are various campaigns to bring in donations towards cancer research?

Ok, I get it.  But it won't bring in enough money to pay for the current level of research being done.  Case in point - just look at some of the drugs with higher prices.  Some pills that people take cost $100/dose, and they have to take them daily.  It doesn't cost $100 to produce the pill, but that is simply the price to help recover the cost of the research that went along with it.  Therefore, if the research hadn't already been done, and everyone who is currently taking the pill instead had the option to donate $100/day towards research, I doubt the research would ever get done.  Is someone with some uncurable disease going to donate $3,000/month to an organization doing research for their problem, when there is no guarantee of a successful solution?  I seriously doubt it.  But, they'll probably be much more willing to pay for a for-sure solution that they can benefit from immediately.

Sorry, but the potential for corporate profits is still the best way to motivate teams of people into spending hundreds of millions of dollars on drug research.  Even people with life-threatening diseases will likely find better use of their money than sending it to a research agency that may or may not have a solution for them 10 years down the road.

Yes, of course I'm serious. I don't care if you make a profit or not. It isn't my business. It isn't my risk. It isn't my stuff. I'm not interested in getting involved in your bureaucracy. Leave me out of it. I'll do my stuff, you do yours. However, if I like what you do, I might compete with you in the market. I may very closely emulate what you do. That's what competition does: emulate, simulate, mimic, copy, and innovate etc. All of those things. It's my stuff, and I should be able to make it do and appear exactly how I want.

Your example is tainted. You don't have a free market, so I don't know if those numbers actually mean anything. For all I know it might cost $100 dollars to make drugs. Who cares? Again, stick to the principles. If your principle logically violates another principle, maybe you should be more introspective.

If you're ok with no new drugs being developed, well, I can't argue against that.  Me, I rather like corporations spending billions of dollars on research so I can live healthier and longer.

IP is just another externality, and would be solved the same way libertarianism would solve any other externality: insurance. For a ridiculously simplified example, let's say a group of people have health insurance and also some disease. The insurance companies would rather not pay all these sick people, so they offer to buy insurance for all their customers on the open market. An entrepreneur pays to have the cure developed in secret, agrees to the offers in place by the various insurance companies, and then releases the cure for "free". The entrepreneur now makes massive profits, enough to pay off any loans for insurance trades and also the cost of development.

In effect, people are paying for their own cure, but a free market allows them to easily coordinate. You COULD try to be a free rider and hope everyone else buys insurance, but if no cure is developed you don't get any insurance payoff. This only works if transaction costs are low (Coase theorem), so IMHO libertarians should be working on projects to reduce them. The burden is on us to prove this is possible!

Ok, I can see that working.  And this assumes that the disease is something that wasn't known at the time of signing up for insurance, right?  What about the people who know they have the disease before signing up for insurance?  Or diseases that are with people from birth?  The insurers could just not accept them because it's a pre-existing condition, and the research would be slower or non-existent than it currently is in today's market.

How do you feel about corporations holding patents on genes everyone have? They didn't develop a new gene they just found one that already existed in nature but since their medicine targets that gene no one else can do research on it without licensing the rights to a naturally occurring protein. Intellectual property laws are tricky. How do you ensure people can profit from their ideas while making sure certain things belong to everyone? With the arts in seems that if the artists is good people will reward them. What we have now days is a system rigged to make a few big studio execs extremely wealthy while trying to short change the people that actually wrote, filmed, recorded, edited the product. With the internet the main barrier to entry is removed. You don't need a factory pumping out cassettes and CDs. You just need a website and a reputation for a good product and you can be successful without having to sign a contract with some faceless corporation hoping you get 2% of net. Some people are always going to want something for nothing. The problem is when you think of those people as lost sales. They weren't going to give you money no matter how cheap your product is. Focus on quality and what your fans want and you should be fine. You'll make money on tour and from selling merch. You know, actually working. The days of recording something once and expecting never have to lift a finger again are over. The internet is a great level playing field if you know how to use it.

There are a number of articles out there presenting powerful arguments as to how the concept of "intellectual property" actually stifles innovations. (I may dig some of my favorites up if anyone actually cares to view them, and time permitting.) The two biggest objections people first think of to eliminating IP are movies and drugs. But with drugs, most of the cost is actually artificially inflated via the government. And as far as movies, well, I don't know that I'd call most of what Hollywood puts out "innovative."

But beyond that is the principle, which is far more important than one or two industries. Is it right to punish people for copying something that the designer allowed them to see? If the answer is no, but we do it anyway because "society benefits," then I would just agree to disagree... many wrongs can be committed in the cause of benefiting society. (If the answer is supposedly "yes", regardless of the societal benefit/detriment, then I think there might be some trouble defending that view.)

My view: following the logical, consistently correct course of action always ultimately leads to mankind's betterment as a whole, even if in the short term we can't fully see it.

The concept of ideas as property is inconsistent with the concept of physical property which we have absolute rights to. And since I find the concept of arbitrary property rights, as determined by some authority, to be rather disturbing, I choose to accept that the concept of ideas as property is inherently flawed, and ultimately a detriment for mankind.

The bottom line is that the government's war on piracy will be about as successful as its war on drugs. Once government gets involved, it's bound to make more problems than it solves. SOPA, for example, will eventually be used for far more sinister purposes than just fighting piracy.

Although I don't approve of piracy personally, I also don't believe that anyone has the moral right to force me to pay (taxes) to support police that protect their property - no matter if it's intellectual or physical or whatever. Rather, it is every property owner's duty to pay the cost of defending ownership, NOT the non-owners of that property. If it was, that would be slavery!

This is one more reason I like Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is my property not because of some complex philosophy, not because government says it is so, not because goons will come attack you if you take it, but because *you don't have my private key*.

If Microsoft can stop people from pirating Windows good for them, if they can't that's their problem. But that's Anarchy, and anarchy is where technology is slowly taking us - get used to it.

It's the arbitrary nature of it that really started breaking down my defenses on this (yes, I used to be vehemently pro-IP.) Most people in today's society would argue for a time limit on an artist holding a claim to their music/imagery/etc. But how long? And for that matter... why a limit at all? If I dig a bit of gold out of the ground, I and my descendents can bequeath it down the family line for centuries. Why not IP? Questions like that arose when I started trying to logically attack the premises of the anti-IP crowd, and forced me to conclude that, at the very least, ideas are in a completely different category than physical property.

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said I'm ok with no new drugs being developed. I just said it's your business what you do with your stuff (physical, not ethereal). Me knowing how you did it and then acting based on that knowledge, should not be punished. That's a violation of speech, a violation of property rights and a violation of my person (you may imprison me if we disagree, merely for disagreement sake).

I'll respect your opinion if you respect mine. Me knowing something about you and yours and then doing something about it is not tantamount to theft and piracy. It isn't proportional punishment.

Gene patents are really silly.

The barrier to entry for music production being broken down is really true.  You don't need more than a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and software to make an album that really sounds pretty good.  Add a couple of grand, and you're almost at the same level as professional, and the big bucks are only spent on mixing it all down properly.

But that said, what about people who just like to record music at home, then sell it on the internet.  Do they just take donations?  Or forget about making any money from music at all?  FWIW, I'm one of those people.  Terrified of playing any sort of music in front of people, but many people love listening to it, so I record it, and sell albums online.  In your scenario, with no IP, I would have no way to make any money off of my music.


I enjoy the average Hollywood blockbuster, myself.  I'm not sure why there's always so much hate piled on them.  I enjoy them a heck of a lot better than most low-budget films with poor quality acting and cheesy special effects.  I would surely miss the caliper of Hollywood movies and TV shows were IP protection to go to the wayside.

I'd like to hear more about how most of the cost of drugs is because of the government.  And even if the government is the cause of 90% of the cost of drugs, that 10% is still going to be billions of dollars that someone has to pay, or the research isn't going to get done.

But your views of not having IP protection would directly result in a lack of innovation in the drug and pharmaceutical world.  How else am I supposed to take that besides you supporting a lack of innovation in the medical world?

Oh, insurance companies will accept people with pre-existing conditions... They just dredge it up when it's time to pay because modern insurance companies BOTH assess coverage AND take the financial risk.

In theory, even people with pre-existing conditions should be able to buy insurance against having it in the future. I will now employ the standard excuse of blaming the state for regulating insurance to death.  ;D

IP laws do stifle innovation.  see http://goo.gl/L3LYi

and of course, it isn't theft... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Copyrights, trademarks and patents are not in any way ownership of the idea. Like ownership, these different laws grant you a monopoly on certain rights, but it is quite distinct from ownership.

Because I don't want to go rifling through a bunch of random biased websites, can you concisely tell me why IP laws stifle innovation?

I don't think innovation would go away. People adjust their behavior and their tactics based on the prevailing market in which their environed. If everybody was free to emulate their neighbor, a lot more people would be trying things and spending a lot less time trying to set traps for the competition to fall into.

There would likely be more tinkering, adjusting, inventing and incremental innovation as opposed to worrying about being sued because some yahoo half a continent away who happenstanced upon a concept before you and decided to get governments "blessing" to prevent and exclude all others from it's use now has you dead to rights. Now you're in violation with the law, and you may not even know it.

The same IP laws can be used to "harm" others too. What if I invented a cancer cure pill and I were able to patent it (legal exclusion and proscription)? Let's also suppose that it's relatively easy to replicate. I just happened to figure it out and you didn't. So I decide instead of making a bazillion dollars once, I decide I enjoy watching people suffering and dying before their time. There's always a flipside to every coin.

Why would people try to innovate if they can't make money off of it?  Anyone with an invention would just keep it to themselves or a big company would just rip off their idea and put it on store shelves before they were even halfway to market with it.  People would be much less likely to innovate if their ideas wouldn't be protected.  In fact, I would expect to see a lot more fakes, ripoffs, and copycats than anything.  They're easy to make, and easy to make money off of.  We don't see a lot of them right now because law protects the rights of the company with the "real" product.  Can you imagine how many iPhone-like phones would come out that looked and acted exactly like the normal iPhone, but had less functionality?  Maybe lower battery life, or a slower processor?  But the average consumer wouldn't notice, so the copy-caters would make money, while Apple gets a ruined reputation from mistakes made in the copycat products.  Yeah, sounds lovely.

Patent research is something that any inventor puts time into before going into production, or even heavily investing in creating a new product.  It's not hard to do (the patent database is publicly available), and it ensures you don't run into such a situation where someone across the continent invented the same thing you already did.

As far as I know, that sort of situation hasn't arisen (where medicine has not been created after research proved a success), so I don't know why you are using it as an example.

So let's call it out for what it really is. It's primarily a legal censorship tool. It is a monopoly on specific production, distribution and sales; which when enforced against others, results in the expropriation of the property of the "infringer". IP isn't ownership of an idea since it is physically impossible to "own" due to it being a theoretical concept.

IP is indirect ownership of the property of legal infringers whose property composition resembles that of the monopoly holder. Crazy twisted in my opinion.

There was another thread equal to this one that's almost 100 pages long that already covers what we're just getting started into. I'm sure we can all dispense with the formalities, read that, and move on.

If you're going to have private property rights then they will conflict with the logic of intellectual property. They are incompatible concepts. Any amount of argumentation about the justification of the benefits to society don't make the idea any more logical, consistent or relevant, and they certainly don't level the playing field any. In fact, they do the opposite.

If it isn't logically consistent, somebody's going to get burned. It will always happen. History is riddled with people who can't seem to make the connection between the yours, mine and ours concept. You muddle that up, and society and your precious investments will all eventually go down the drain. The system has already been gamed. Special privileges given for special persons backed by a powerful political structure is always going to result in a mixed bag.

I just ask that everybody respect everybody else's person and property. Not real difficult to comprehend. Let's not turn it into rocket science.

Nice way of avoiding a response.

I have no problem with respecting everyone else's person and property.

- I do have a problem with someone else selling a product that is exactly the same as mine.
- I do have a problem with someone else selling a product that looks exactly the same as mine, and under my brand name, but has reduced functionality, thus ruining my brand.
- I do have a problem with pharmaceutical companies not being able to recover the costs of medical research through 14-year monopolies provided by patents, thus severely limiting the amount of medical research done in the first place.
- I do have a problem with movies and music not having protection, as it will mean a lower quality and selection of movies and music will be available to watch.
- I do have a problem with companies not wanting to innovate because their ideas would be stolen by competitors.

I don't really care about your theoretical conflict of private property rights and intellectual property rights.  They are incompatible, yes, but I am fine with the current compromise between the two.

I don't really see how the rest of what you said is even relevant to this discussion without specific examples.

Maybe we should all take a philosophy 101 class and then come back and have this discussion.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of them myself. But I have noticed lately things seem to be getting a bit... derivative. I joke with my friends about how "apparently U.S. culture peaked in the 1980s" based on what Hollywood keeps running with.



Full disclosure: I'm not a doctor, and don't work in the industry. My info comes from what I've read and heard.

My take is that the bulk of drug "development spending" comes from two things: mandatory FDA payments to the U.S. govn't, and regulations on the drug manufacturers.

The regulations should be easy to see. Even if you believe industries should be government-regulated, a look at the regulations in the drug industry should raise an eyebrow or two. Many seem to be there for the sole purpose of squashing newcomers to the market (who would force costs lower via competition.) It reminds me of how certain simple medical utensils could be made at lower cost, but due to the fact they have to be "medical grade" (which often doesn't mean much) regardless of the actual product use, you wind up with $200 bottles of aspirin and other nonsense.

The FDA approval payments aren't as often discussed. It seems that drug companies need to pay huge sums of money to the FDA to get a drug approved. Which sounds reasonable, until you examine how little the FDA actually does to check the drug out themselves. Again, an example from another governmental arena: in many states, you have to get your car "approved" for driving once a year. You can pay ridiculous sums of money, and in exchange for the "service" to society a bureaucrat walks out and essentially looks under the hood and kicks the tires. Apparently the FDA does the equivalent, if not less.

Some of the pro-IP arguments remind me of anti-deflation arguments.

Q)Why would people spend money if it would be worth more later? Bla bla bla, some long academic argument.
----A) Because they want or need something.

Q)Why would someone develop a drug for a disease with out IP laws?
----A) Because they like finding out stuff or don't like seeing people suffering (especially themselves and family).

I do medical research. I understand how little we know about biology at the organism level, and would never take an "experimental drug" unless I was completely desperate. On the other hand, the current culture of medical science encourages publishing reports of positive results over negative. Most biologists, even the honest ones, do not appropriately analyze their data. This is a cultural problem. Most don't even know how or have the time to learn how to do this, they just do what has been done before (faulty or not). The people working for the FDA come from the same culture. Profit motive is no substitute for intrinsic motivation (the drive for the "truth"), neither is publish or perish. I don't know the right way to encourage proper science at a large scale but the current way is very inefficient and encourages subtle, even subconscious, manipulation of the results. The FDA's expensive requirements are an ad hoc solution to this problem, but likely not the best one possible.

Curious; those objecting to IP rights, I assume you also object to trademarks? So it would be okay for any company to sell their hardware branded as "apple"? I could sell any drink as "coca cola", in identically looking bottles ? I could sell fake medical drugs under the same name as the real one, in the same box, even though they just contain calcium tablets?

Know your dealer.

I see. Thats a very practical solution. How do you get to know the dealer? How does he get to know his dealer?

The same way it happens now, experience and trust all the way down the supply chain, plus personally knowing people with tools/knowledge to verify. If upstream someone is protected by law (e.g. corporate personhood or they have powerful friends) it breaks down.

So do you personally know someone with tools/knowledge to verify medical drugs? Because I dont. And I do like being able to buy them in any pharmacy in any city I happen to travel to. Not only do I like that, my life actually depends on it.

Its bad enough its already a remote possibility today, even if completely illegal and with huge sanctions; it being completely legal as well as incredibly lucrative for some pharmacist to sell me lethal fake drugs, or some dealer to sell the pharmacists fakes, is not something I would look forward to. It doesnt take a lot of thinking to see this will happen often. After all, why wouldnt a pharmacist, particularly one thats about to retire or sell his pharmacy make a little fortune for a few months by selling fakes? So what if he gets caught; its legal.

Mind you, this is just drugs. It applies to anything, from aircraft spare parts to financial products.

The same way it works now... Think about it. Why do you trust the strange pharmacist in a strange city? What happens under the current system when a rouge pharmacist starts selling drugs he isn't licensed to sell (or substitutes or whatever)?

The answer to the last one is he gets his comeuppance once people figure out what he is doing.

What if he only does it to strangers, who will come intervene to stop this creepy small town murderer?

I don't mean to seem so confident. Really I'm just playing devil's advocate. It is a complete gray area that requires discussion though.

And yes, I would be able to verify drugs with the proper tools.

Because the penalties for producing and selling fake drugs are huge. He has little to no incentive to sell fakes, when he has a choice between makes a good living selling the real stuff, or living his life in jail selling fakes. He also has no competitive pressure from other pharmacies selling cheap fakes. Thats why I generally trust them. Here. I would never buy my drugs in Somalia though.

So you prefer the current system because it includes the threat of jail time rather than the libertarian threat of ??? (honestly I don't know what comes after lawsuit for a professional con artist).

Go to walgreens and you will find personal drug tests for pretty cheap. These are ELISAs.

----
In general:
There are some variations on this theme... the main point is a rabbit or whatever is made allergic to the drug then the antibodies it produces are harvested from blood. One subset of these antibodies are then stuck to either some strip of paper material or the bottom a plastic dish. Then a second antibody to the drug (or drug bound to antibody) is added which is attached to some colored molecule. If both stick in the same place the test is positive as made evident by the color localizing in one place.
----

When the FDA tests batches they likely use these as their first screen. Once developed they can be produced and sold for very cheap. If you want further verification you need access to a GC/MS (gas chromatography followed by mass spectrometry). These machines have many uses and are used by private non-science organizations for e.g. testing soil for contamination before someone sells land. The ELISA kit you can carry with you. If paranoid, for further verification you could have your local pharmacist order some drug from where you are headed beforehand and test it using the GC/MS. There would also likely be a pharmacist's society to which each individual pharmacist is registered and liable. If government impediments to purchase of these kits are removed, this should protect you just as well as , if not better than, the current system.

The libertarian threat of nothing. People here are arguing all IP should be abolished, so counterfeiting would no longer exist or be a crime.  It would become a perfectly legal profession. Yes, I prefer the system where counterfeiting is a crime.

I'll let someone else answer that one. I assume aggression would be allowed in the name of self defense.

When you're on the hammer forum, everything looks like a nail. Maybe smart property would help solve the counterfeiting problem? At the top of the supply chain, the product is signed by a manufacturer with good reviews. At every hand-off, the goods are signed off to the new owner. When you go to buy your product at the store, you scan an RFID tag or bar/QR code to verify its legitimacy and lawful ownership by the store. At the moment of purchase, the good is signed over to you.

"Hey! My phone just detected that something in my cart went through an untrusted channel! Here it is, this shampoo was sold to an anonymous recipient a year ago. And [opens it] it smells like cheese!"

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property

Counterfeiting should not be a crime (it is both non-violent and does not involve the physical property of others). However, if you promise -as in contract- to deliver a product originating from another manufacturer, and you deliver a "fake" or "copy", then you would be in breach of contract and could be "punished" (put in your flavor of restitution here).

Generally, fraud is a separate issue from IP. If you buy a bottle of aspirin, but take it home and find it contains antacids, then that's fraud, and should incur consequences, at the very least a lawsuit.

Someone who goes out of their way to convince someone they're buying a product from someone they're not falls into the same category, although the line is more blurry. Again, judges, juries and local standards should be able to hash that out.

But a company that sells knockoff Rolex watches ("Rolls-X"?) Or one that sells "Cola-Coke" that is far inferior to Coca-Cola? That sort of stuff happens all over the world already today, including in the US, and most seem to handle it fine. That's not a problem.

But it doesn't matter if you ruin one company's reputation by selling an inferior product under their brand name?

Your theory of how the world should work just sounds more and more screwed up the more I listen to it.  I can't imagine any modern world actually functioning with the sort of ruleset you propose.

That said, I'm going to move on from this thread now.

@SgtSpike


Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven created great pieces without copyright. 

and the book I linked earlier (http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm) gives historic examples of copyrights and patents being used as weapons to attack competition like Watt with his steam engine patent.

Define "ruined" reputation. What kind of legal restitution would you want that would improve your reputation? People will think what they will think, and say what they will say. At what point do you get to point the proverbial gun in their face and say "or else"? Physically punishing someone because of the form of speech they use is violating that right to freedom of speech. What forms of speech should be regulated and punished, and why?

This is a speech issue were talking about here. When does one's ability to express himself fall into the category of violence, or theft?

I'm not necessarily suggesting a ruleset. I'm merely pointing out that responding with violence against a form of speech might be a bit excessive. Should we not concern ourselves with proportional punishment issues, say in a worse case scenario "eye for an eye" (i.e. you don't punish petty theft with death).

They were for the most part, paid by
... governments.

That's a good point. It might be more efficient to just *gasp* fund the arts directly by governments. Yes, there is a subjective element and there would be some rent-seeking corruption, but at least it would allow us free speech while still providing enough intellectual goodies.

Well, presuming there would be some art that would just be considered too objectionable to be funded by the public, I would think this would tend to politicize art.

Probably. It's certainly not perfect, but I'd rather be forced to pay for terrible offensive garbage than not be allowed to spread something beautiful and brilliant.

Ive said it all along; the only feasible way to abolish property rights is by massively expanding the government to take over  these kind of things that are in society interest, but not profitable without IP protection. that goes for all kinds of R&D, music, arts etc.

You die hard libertarians really want the government to do that?

I'm a left-libertarian. I don't object to taxes on public resources (land, air pollution permits, etc) to pay for public goods.

An important question for any social theory to ask itself:

Would this have allowed Star Trek to exist?

Anyway, I think most good art is produced before the artist gets big. The best artists will make it as a hobby because they enjoy doing it. As an example of extravagant art, I wonder if amon tobin has this protected as IP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU8v_zZV5GM&feature=related

Absolutely. Gene patents might be useful in enforcing the widespread genetic discrimination. We can't just allow the Julian Bashirs of the world to have "superior ambition", can we?

I don't even understand how people who have no idea what they're being told can decide the fate of something so many use.
It's ridiculous.

Government funded art= Free speech? Or did I misunderstand?

Lack of IP = free speech
Government funding to the arts would provide a public good WITHOUT stripping away an essential human right.

depends on how it's funded. some say that taxes is an act of stripping away essential human right, you know?

We are allowed to say whatever we want, but the government is allowed to decide who can listen - EG porn restrictions.

I know that some people say that, but people say lots of crazy nonsense and I'm glad you haven't bought into it. Some taxes, like sales taxes, are wrong. Taxes against aggression are justified.