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Intellectual property laws are incompatible with Libertarian philosophy. If you're not a Libertarian, the first part of this argument will do little to persuade you since you must first accept the two foundational beliefs of Libertarianism, the non-aggression principle and the legitimate assignment of property rights. Just a reminder of what these two beliefs entail:

1. The non-aggression principle is the position that violence cannot be used against property you don't own unless in self-defense of your own property.

2. The legitimate assignment of property rights is the position that everyone owns themselves, unowned property that they homestead and any property that is obtained through voluntary title transfers, valid contracts, gifts, gambling, etc.

Holding these two principles, it logically follows that intellectual property is illegitimate. If I own ink and paper, I get to do whatever I want with it as long as it doesn't violate your property rights or the non-aggression principle. That includes copying a novel you wrote, word for word and selling it, either with proper attribution or with no attribution at all. False attribution would be an act of fraud which invalidates a contract but that is a wrong committed towards the buyer, not the original author.

Some people might object that using my ink and paper to copy a novel is theft of your novel and therefore does violate someone's property rights. This mistaken assumption that one can own ideas stems from the belief that a person necessarily owns the product of his or her labor. That is false. If I own some wood and you steal it to make a chair, you don't own the chair. I own the chair and you owe me for damages to my wood. The only way labor brings about ownership is when mixing labor with unowned resources, land, things found in nature, etc. You can pen a novel, but you must already own the ink and paper. A cake pan can only be used by one person at a time. A cake recipe can be used by many people at the same time. Ideas, such as cake recipes, aren't scarce and therefore are not subject to property rights.

Telling me what I can and cannot do with my ink and paper, which is scarce, is claiming ownership of my property, which is theft because it wasn't done voluntarily but rather through the threat of violence or imprisonment.

Anyone that says this is all well and good but wishes to abandon Libertarianism for special cases where it would benefit every individual has a burden of proof. While it seems obvious that without intellectual property laws, people would be harmed through the loss of created work, what goes unnoticed are the people that are currently harmed by the very laws meant to protect others. There are cases of people wanting to make derivative works but cannot do so or will not do so for fear of legal repercussions. Such examples include books written from different points of view, such as the slaves from Gone With The Wind, video games that have been abandoned or not developed often enough, such as Chrono Trigger and Lemmings, music such as covers of Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga songs, and so on. We know that people will be harmed if intellectual property laws are repealed just as we know people are currently harmed by their very existence. The only question for those that want to abandon Libertarianism is, which outweighs which? Nobody can give a definitive answer and therefore it's irresponsible to support such laws, even on non-Libertarian utilitarian grounds, which aren't proven to be beneficial to more individuals than they are harmful.

That guy from the free state project presented an argument that went something like this:

Everything is just information. Even physical matter is information encoded in a certain way. Therefore, if physical matter can be property then so can information.

Though experiment: Imagine you can upload your mind into a computer simulation, Matrix-style. Then some day, a hacker/troll creates a copy of you, without your knowledge or consent, and uploads it into a different simulation, where that version of you gets locked into a prison cell.  The first version would never know about this.

Does this constitute a violation of property rights? If yes, of what version of you? Of all versions? Just the version in the second simulation? Just the meatspace version?

Of course you could argue that whoever owns the computer hardware owns the information on it, but imagine that the hardware is a cloud of self replicating robots owned by nobody.

Hm, that's interesting, I'll have to think about that for a while. My first impression is that it would be the digital equivalent of kidnapping.

My turn. :)

Imagine you can create exact copies of physical objects as easily as we can copy information. Am I violating your property rights by making an exact copy of your car? How about making a copy of a car on the lot at a dealership? Does it seem like anyone attempting to operate a business with the model of selling something so easily copyable is a fool?

Do we need a gazillion intellectual arguments to prove your point?

Why not go with entrepreneurship to prove your point?

One could start a profitable slave trade business. Would that make such a business moral?

Don't care. I am making money off of my IP-less empire.

No need for weird sci-fi examples to discuss this point.

I produce electricity, which is immaterial, at the cost of my resources. Are you legitimate to plug your stuff on my power cable without my consent? According, to the "Libertarian" ideal, you wouldn't be stealing my power cable, only the energy it conducts. We can all see this is going to end bad.


This isn't a valid point. You can't bring is a purely pragmatic point into a fundamental discussion. The point isn't who is harmed the most, the point is "Is the product of my mind my property".

Electrons are physical. Mass and energy are equivalent. Your argument fails.

You're going after the energy that is loaded in those electrons...


Keep this serious please.

Energy is physical. Basic science isn't serious enough for you?

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm (http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm)
That's a good book on the topic. You can buy the print version (http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521879280/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I32EL0PP7I5BA6&colid=3B8X6GC7WECRZ) if you want. It has lots of good examples explaining how IP harms us and why we're better off with out it. I got into it about two years ago and it definitely affected my beliefs, to say the least.

I should add that the author suggests government subsidy (instead of patent rights which are another type of subsidy) as a model for pharmaceutic research, which I now disagree with. I still think patents are bad though.

Right, so radio waves are physical?

How do you argue against IP if you stand by that point anyways? If all forms are of either energy, matter, or both, and that energy and matter are equivalent, then intellect is as much of a property as anything else.

Perhaps you have to reject or at least redefine property then in order to reconcile the issue.

Naturally, if a group of people is affected by some illness and there is no cure, it is possible they'll pool their resources to fund the research of such a cure. The question is, how many of these people will participate in the funding, knowing that they could get the cure for free once it is discovered.

Something of that magnitude at least, indeed.

Yes. Don't take my word for it. Look it up.


Am I sucking energy from your brain like some sort of psychic vampire? No. I get energy from the food I eat. I'm not sure what you're driving at.

Simple. You own a piece of wood. You shape it into a chair and it stills belongs to you. The only thing you applied upon it is work.

I own my brain. I formulate a design with it. By your standards, it belongs to me.

It is your part to provide documentation on that...

A design in your brain is simply a configuration of neurons in your brain. You own your neurons and your brain. I own my neurons and my brain therefore I can put them into any configuration I want even if it's functionally identical to yours. If I was extracting your gray matter with a cerebral bore then you'd have a grievance. As things stand, you're trying to control what I can and cannot do with my own brain. >:(

People will contribute to the best of their ability. Plenty of researchers use funds that come from voluntary, non-refundable contributions already.

First of all, I'm not trying to control anything. Your stance that IP defenders will resort to force is oblivious to the concept that IP and non aggression are perfectly compatible. If you don't respect IP, I simply stop considering such endeavor as profitable and will naturally reduce my output of such content to strict necessary levels.

Also, in this argument, I am not trying to control what you can do or not do with your brain, since you couldn't do it without my brain coming up with it first.

The point about the chair is that modification of shape does not nullify property. The design is an energy pattern in my head. Since energy is matter, then I own this energy. The fact that it is out in the public doesn't mean you can just take it. If I leave my bike next to a wall, would you take it? According to your very own point, that matter and energy are but the same, then an original energy pattern, where ever it stands, belongs to the designer.

If you don't know that electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental physical forces found in nature then...  :-\

Yet, if every member of the group helped instead of hoping to get the cure for free, the research would go faster.

You own the energy, not the pattern. Also, once you release energy back into the environment it becomes unowned abandoned property. Do you think you can leave your bike on my property forever and I shouldn't be able to claim it?

That is not what I asked of you. I asked you to document me on how the application of an electric field with a magnetic field producing a electromagnetic force normal to the plane of those two fields consists in matter. There is a clear difference between fundamental and quantum physics.

You come up with these as we go, don't you? And still, according to your rules, I can own that environment.


Who said I'd leave it in your property? And even if it was, your only right is to remove my property from yours, not to bestow it upon yourself. Or else, are you going to claim what is mine simply because you touched it?

Helping the effort should be voluntary though. Intellectual property is non-voluntary because even if you procure a product through your own labor, you don't actually own it because you're bound to whatever IP restrictions the rights-holder attached to it. Anyway, most members of healthy, IP-free societies will voluntarily contribute, according to the best of their abilities, to beneficial causes. The thought of a few slackers not contributing to a good cause seems less harmful than lucky creators using government force to ransom good ideas that are otherwise free to share.

Most people call it real estate, but sure. Yes you can own real estate. So can I and I do.


I claim that if you abandon property, it becomes unowned and I can claim it. Leaving your bike on my lawn overnight probably isn't abandoning it but leaving it there for year definitely is. I can't draw an exact time distinction between the two but there certainly is a difference.

The way the government handles IP doesn't make IP bad, only the government. The same could be said about regular property.


Without knowledge of my intent, you are simply being violent. As I said, the only thing you can rightfully do, is to remove my property from yours. Or else, what if the cumulated time I left my bike on the curb amounts to a year, can you just pick it up and call it yours?

Nevertheless, this has drifted from the original point, on which I simply give up trying to prove my point. Good night to you, sir.

Good night.

Intellectual property requires governmental enforcement of some kind to exist.

Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation.

Electromagnetic radiation is very physical indeed. 

Anyone who ever got a sunburn will agree. 


Let's get back to your stealing electricity analogy.

The only way for someone to tap into your electricity cable is to physically interact with it and to modify its physical properties (in this case the current flowing through it) without your consent.  Ergo, property rights violation.

What if someone obtains the contents of a book you have written, by photographing it with a telescope while you are reading it in your garden? This time there is no property violation because the physical properties of your book have not been modified without your consent. It's still exactly the same book. You could argue that the light bouncing off the book has been captured without your consent, but that light (and the information contained therein) stops being your property once it leaves your land.  It was your responsibility to ensure that doesn't happen if you want to keep the information secret.


 

Yes, you may claim that the "waves in your brain" or whatever are the result of your work done with your property (body) and therefore belongs to you. It's a weird claim but philosophically speaking it seems ok.
But if in the use of your property you cause consequences to my property, you have no right whatsoever to claim that my property now belongs to you.
For ex., if in the use of your legitimate creation you produce sound waves - which could still be considered yours - that hit my brain or my recorder, you're causing a (positive) externality to my property. Unless we had some sort of contract, that doesn't give you any right over what's mine.

The closest way you could voluntarily simulate IP is by using contracts. But for someone to be submitted to a contract he must have had agreed on it, and that's is the greatest problem with IP. If person A produces something and releases it to person B under some contractual rules, but B ignores such rules and passes such content to person C, person A has no recourse against C, only against B.

Calling a thief someone that downloads movies or music via p2p is plain calumny.

Einstein's famous equation E=mc² describes the equivalence between energy and mass. Quantum physics is not involved.

If you push something so that it goes faster, the energy from your push increases the mass of the object by the amount indicated by E=mc². This is quite a small amount, so we don't notice it in day-to-day life, but it is readily measurable.

In the same way, a battery gets slightly heavier when you charge it up, and slightly lighter when you discharge it. This is due to the extra energy in the charged battery causing chemical changes that result in matter that has a higher energy state (and is therefore more massive according to E=mc²). Freaky, huh?

How convenient to forget about the second property of matter...

goatpig, I think you should give in on this point. First of all, it seems rather tangential to the discussion, second... you're either wrong or this argument is meaningless.


Common != rigorous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter#Protons.2C_neutrons_and_electrons_definition

I'm still waiting for him to mention the holographic principle. Anyways, the distinction isn't between physical and nonphysical but rather concrete and abstract. You can't own abstract objects only concrete objects.

Bitcoin2cash, well said in the first post. I do artwork as my trade and understanding why IP isn't property was hard for me to accept for a long time, but I think if you want to be free, you have to give up that one rule you think benefits you. Though now I realize it doesn't benefit me to have a violent gang "protecting" my IP. They only really protect the big corporate interests.

Really insightful post on the subject (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6010.msg105792#msg105792).

Goatpig's trolling about energy and matter is a distraction - a strawman - that is beside the point.  Ip-freedom advocates aren't at all arguing about energy vs matter, but instead question the restriction on duplication of patterns that were obtained without coercion.

I went through the same thing. I'm a software developer by trade. Piracy hurts my bottom line since I'm selling my software directly to customers. I went into the debate trying reconcile my desire for intellectual property laws with my views on Libertarianism but I couldn't do it while remaining consistent. C'est la vie.

Same here...I was always (initially by default) not entirely opposed to IP, especially since I had worked as a musician/programmer/engineer/teacher/researcher (all industries that currently rely on IP), until I actually worked at an unnamed computer engineering corporation where I was exposed to the reality of the patent system (since I had to review all the gory details of a bunch of patents related to my work), at which point I started to question the whole concept.  Naturally I searched google to help understand, and it really only took a couple pages of reading Against Intellectual Property (pdf: mises.org/books/against.pdf (http://mises.org/books/against.pdf) which is an argument based primarily on libertarian ethics) and Against Intellectual Monopoly (pdf: micheleboldrin.com/research/aim/anew.all.pdf (http://micheleboldrin.com/research/aim/anew.all.pdf) which is a utilitarian argument so you don't have to be a libertarian in order to follow) for me to become consistently anti-IP.  On a side note, Stephan Kinsella's writings also exposed me to the whole Mises and Rothbardian tradition, which led me to fully-embrace anarcho-capitalism.

I went the other way. I began to see politicians, landlords, employers, and the like taking advantage of honest workers just like how I previously only saw IP rights-holders doing. And so I so I abandoned (American) libertarianism for anarchism.

Well, as I've said before, your definition of anarchism differs greatly from mine.

But those traditions aren't necessarily opposed.  I used to label myself an "anarcho-capitalist" until I was exposed to the Mutualist and "Left-Libertarian" thought of folks like Roderick Long of The Austro-Athenian Empire (http://aaeblog.com/ (http://aaeblog.com/)) and Kevin Carson of The Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org (http://c4ss.org)).  I have since stopped bothering with labels, although I sortof like the ring of "free-market anti-capitalist".  But fundamentally, I don't see how the "American"-libertarian tradition of the non-aggression principle and homesteading principle are necessarily supportive of landlordism and bossism, since it ultimately depends on what action and time is considered to be sufficient for homesteading and abandonment of property.  For example, even the most hard-core anarcho-capitalist will admit that if you leave you home abandoned for a long enough time, that it will eventually be considered abandoned and thus homestead-able by new parties or the current renters. While I don't agree with the full-fledged socialists that immediately once you leave your door or otherwise relinquish control of your property that some random person can then break in and occupy your home, I do feel it is important to recognize that a robust libertarian legal system should recognize that property rights aren't perpetual.  And by robust, I mean that the anarchist society doesn't revert back into a form of statism run by powerful businesses or a collusion of private owners.  Indeed, as Roderick long has argued, The State is simply an absentee owner, just a very very large one.  The other set of insights that I have learned from the "Left-Libertarian" tradition is to recognize that most forms of economic and social oppression are indeed due to state laws.  For instance, the fact that most people live in homes owned by large banks is largely the result of the special privilege that The State (namely the Federal Reserve) gives to large banks, leading to an unfair economic advantage.  And the limited-liability protections of incorporation.  And of course IP laws that provide private businesses owners with all sorts of advantages which leads to powerful corporations controlling all important creative works, inventions, ideas, etc of society.

Emphasis mine. Very insightful, applauded.

The developer's costs are opportunity costs where he/she could be doing something else instead of writing the software. Remove their ability to recoup their initial investment in the software, and you simply won't have anyone writing commercial software anymore. Developers must have some assurance that their ability to capture income from the software is still intact, or they won't bother. Given that many open source projects are actually funded by commercial hardware/software companies, this would also be detrimental to all software development.