Then, as another already stated, don't open a door you cannot close. And don't refer to your oppositions' arguments as "silly" sans a counter-argument.
Saying that all restrictions on freedom are part of a slippery slope to slavery is "something"  Work calls so offline. There's a big difference in being capable of committing an act and the consequences related to that act. There is also a difference between freedom and slavery. Your actions define what side of that "line in the sand" you stand on. Don't confuse freedom and liberty with capability of action. We are all capable of treachery as much as we are acts of kindness. Likewise you are "free" to act upon those persons and things for which you have acquired specific consent to do so, and no more. Without consent, you have lawlessness, violence, and injury, and that eventually leads toward slavery and all the various shades of gray between. |
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Regarding the dog, I believe Fred said rights stop with people. Thus, to Fred, dogs are just property, like a pieces of furniture.
This is true, because otherwise, you and yours could possibly make a law which could say I couldn't cut my grass because it might possibly cause ecological damage to the environment. I invite you to not open a door you likely can't close. You're just asking for murder and mayhem. I care about the enviroment, I just care about human rights more. |
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When 90%+ of law results in some form of violence, voting has no meaning any more. It isn't representation any longer when I can vote to take, manipulate, or disburse thru whatever means available, property that isn't mine and give it to somebody else.
Voting to remove the element of "stealth-theft" of liberty and property is literally impossible when society is so engrossed and relies so heavily on it's application. My vote would be to take away all patent examiners jobs, patent lawyers, and IP laws, and in addition to that, would require a constitutional amendment. It will never happen.
As long as the majority thinks it's okay to redistribute wealth, or is ignorant on how that happens, the status quo will remain. Look how long slavery lasted. In fact, it still exists in small pockets of society all over the world.
Don't tell me governments have a solution to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They introduced the problem from the beginning. I have to overcome 300+ years of indoctrination. Au contraire, they retard it's progress.
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Your property is a legal construct, just like any other property. I have no interest at all in violating your property but you seem to have an unhealthy interest in violating mine.
And there you have it. We don't agree. Luckily we live in a democracy so you are free to lobby to get the law changed. The whole concept is that people who have honest disagreements also have a non-violent way to resolve the disagreement.
Yes, the definition of legal, property, and law are all ideological conceptual constructs. However, the basic idea behind any legal/law concept is that it should have no logical conflict with itself. Inconsistencies typically only benefit the more intelligent, powerful and manipulative at the expense of the ignorant and weak. Let's not make this a "might makes right" world, rather a world of equitable and logically consistent application of the rule of law. The definition of intellectual property conflicts with the definition of physical property and implementation of laws related thereto. I wish to solve that problem, not make 7+ million more problems of the same. Creating legal "land mines" aren't nice. They harm more than help. |
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Thats the question we are discussing. How do you balance the various wants and needs and what is the best option. In the case of movies, taking them away would be a far great act of oppression than restricting your right to profit from copying movies. So its an easy decision.
Cry me a river. Of course it will always be an easy decision by the oppressors. As long as they can oppress, they will, and the more power you give them, the more they will do it. There must always be a check in place, and that should be at the edge of my property. Poke holes in that boundary and property will eventually become meaningless and obfuscated. Either I, or others I employ, can defend and maintain my property as mine, or it will eventually become somebody else's. As far as I can tell, the patent and trademark system, lovingly called IP, is nothing more than a mine field just waiting for somebody to step into and blow themselves to kingdom come. IP law is nothing more than the ability (thru statutory assistance) to transfer physical property from one person to another due to the compositional characteristics the materials contain. So it's an easy decision. Stop it. |
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Fred as I said earlier, I think you'll find that most everything can be made into an argument for slavery or compared to genocide. For example, "First they came for the Jews...then they came for the owners of intellectual property...then they came for me..."
See how easy and how stupid that is? The error is comparing a trivial inconvenience with slavery. Compare like with like and a more intelligent dialogue is possible.
So how bad, how oppressive, how nasty, how unsustainable, and how ridiculous does it have to get, before we say enough is enough? I'm just waiting for somebody to patent breathing air. Mark my words, something like it will happen. |
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Videos are for people who think slowly. If the message is worthwhile, there will be a transcript. Here you go: http://daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Anarchy_and_Eff_Law/Anarchy_and_Eff_Law.htmlComparing being deprived of the right to profit from copying movies with the horrors of slavery is a childish appeal to emotion. At least you haven't compared it to being in a concentration camp but I'm sure you can find some minor inconvenience to compare it to.
Sorry, I can't help that your argument for copyright is also a valid argument for slavery. So true. Hawker doesn't realize that IP results in slavery, as does any other type of aggression initiated by the monopolist. All monopolies (backed by force) are a form of slavery. It can easily be proven. But, what Hawker wants us to concede on, is that just a little bit of slavery could benefit society. I tend to disagree with this theory because it is always a slippery slope in the wrong direction. Monopolists love the taste of power, and they loath having to work any harder than they have to. Giving them special rules and regulations allows them to supress the masses just enough that they don't notice too much, and when they do, it's hard to point the finger at "who dunnit". Actually we have a list of 7+ million patent holders, and an untold number of copyrights, who we can point the finger at, but nobody realizes that apparently. Then there are those that seek to fix the patent system, thinking it will improve the situation, when it just shifts the problem around to arrive at the same or similar position again. You can't fix slavery with different slavery. Consuming your own excrement with a pretty bow on top, doesn't make it any less "excrementty". What's more interesting about it is the fact that, the system does work to an extent, just like cotton pickers in the antebellum south. There was a vibrant trade in cotton. There were many that made huge fortunes. Patents and copyrights achieve the same effect in a more insidious fashion, because the "slave" doesn't know he's a slave until he "infringes", then he finds out how precarious his person and property really are. Then there are the side trades (patent and copyright lawyers) that would take a hit. Heaven forbid should they lose their "jobs". That would just be an unspeakable tragedy. It used to be the royals who we put up on a pedestal. It was them we could easily point a finger at and pursue. We could blame them for the unfair application of law and the inequity in trade and services and the manipulation of competition. There's a reason why we negotiate patents and copyrights with "royalties", as that's where the name came from. Instead of a few royal bloods out there suppressing the masses, now anybody with a few hundred dollars can ensnare anybody else. Doing a cost/benefit analysis for IP is the same kind analysis as cotton pickers did in the south 200+ years ago. Of course it benefits the masters to the detriment of the slave. Can you make money and produce wealth with slaves, or manipulate trade with reduced competition? Of course. Can you pick cotton another way? Apparently so. Get rid of slavery (all forms of it), and I bet you'll see a lot of interesting results. Probably better than what we have now. No doubt some things will wither and go away. Maybe that's the way it should be. That's life. Give freedom and liberty a chance. You might get a better world. |
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In the first 30 years or so of the United States, to pass on real estate owned to only one child was a will that was unenforceble. The idea was that, massive land grants to former agents of the British crown would be honored within the lifetime of the living owner, but the grants themselves were 'unearned' and thus the living owners didn't get to decide how the land was dispersed after their death. The idea of spreading it equally among heirs would prevent it from becoming a 'legacy' similar to a dukedom, and that the property would disperse to the society over a generation or two. It worked, and is the primary reason that decendents of colony governors don't own half of Vermont or Louisiana. They could have siezed the property outright under the same logic, but then they would be screwing over natural born decendents of the grantee who honestly had never done anything to deserve it.
Given what you said above (in bold): So what if the property (real estate/physical property) was transferred prior to death? Would not that contract be honored? Seems like borderline theft. I can potentially see how a contract could be null and void, and hence unenforceable, for a dead man. A contract is between 2 live individuals for it to be valid, but that would be one way to continue the yet-to-be-deceased's legacy. We must protect property rights, including the right to transfer said property. 1) Why should any government agency have any greater right to confer the property of the deceased to anybody else better than the deceased himself? 2) Why not just let whoever hasn't claimed it to homestead it? Wouldn't the heirs have a greater claim to the property than anybody else? 3) Why shouldn't wills, trusts or other types of bequeathing documents have any force and effect? 4) Does the person have to "deserve" something before he can receive it? Gifts fall into this category. |
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Whatever real, physical wealth that the artist was able to trade his information for during his lifetime can logically be willed to his heirs. Originally, the term for copyright protection was 15 years. I consider that to be a good compromise even in the modern world. Patents generally are still only 15 years, and society benefits both by the initial research paid for by the sick wealthy (and middle class with old school health coverage) and then all of society then benefits forevermore once the patent expires and generics can legally be marketed. It's not a libertarian ideal, and wouldn't function without the explicit force of government, but from a practical standpoint it's one of the last injustices of government that I would be inclined to worry about. It's logically inarguable that it's an injustice to deny the dying an effective medicine simply because s/he can't afford more than the cost of production, but in the grand scheme of injustices that result from government edicts, I can think of many greater and more widespread injustices.
Please answer the real estate/physical property transfer prior-to-death question. |
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You're caught in a mental loop. Information isn't property, and doesn't act like property in the absence of monopoly force. By definition, force or the threat of same distorts the free market, so it's no longer free. It is impossible for a free market in information to exist in the presence of IP monopoly laws. Can an artist contract for the exclusive rights of distribution? Sure, so long as he can maintain the "business secret" without it getting out. That's not impossible beyond his death, if he should choose to never release his art. If he releases it in any form, his fans owe the distribution company no loyalty.
Sorry I confused you. I never meant IP. There is no such physical property in knowledge. I meant physical property transferred prior to death. It was a continuation of the Vermont/Louisiana question. I give zero validity to IP. I'm not caught in any mental loop. You didn't follow your own thread (physical property). |
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And they have. In the first 30 years or so of the United States, to pass on real estate owned to only one child was a will that was unenforceble. The idea was that, massive land grants to former agents of the British crown would be honored within the lifetime of the living owner, but the grants themselves were 'unearned' and thus the living owners didn't get to decide how the land was dispersed after their death. The idea of spreading it equally among heirs would prevent it from becoming a 'legacy' similar to a dukedom, and that the property would disperse to the society over a generation or two. It worked, and is the primary reason that decendents of colony governors don't own half of Vermont or Louisiana. They could have siezed the property outright under the same logic, but then they would be screwing over natural born decendents of the grantee who honestly had never done anything to deserve it. It was a compromise, just like copyright law & fair use laws were intended to be a compromise between the desire to encourage cultural works and the needs of the society to have access to the cultural works that have shaped their societies. But IP laws no longer respect that compromise, and treat cultural works as literal "intelectual property".
So what if the property was transferred prior to death. Would not that contract be honored? I can potentially see how a contract could be null and void, and hence unenforceable, for a dead man. A contract is between 2 live individuals for it to be valid, but that would be one way to continue the deceased's legacy. We must protect property rights, including the right to transfer said property. |
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Maybe, maybe not. You're still arguing from the perspective that a particular business model has a right to exist, just because it presently does and is generally a net positive for society. Even if I were to accept the position that major motion picture production companies have a right to exist by continuing under the present copyright monopoly business model, (which I don't, and neither does the free market) it still wouldn't have any bearing on the legitimacy of the copyright laws themselves. Why doesn't Nina Paley have the right to profit from her life's work, just because some company bought the rights to a blues song from 1938 from the grandchild of a long dead artist? Even if information (such as the arrangement of notes and words to make a blues song) were the real 'intellectual property' of the singer/songwriter by reason of his work within his own lifetime (or 15 years, as was the original copyright term, plently long enough for movies, software and music), what right does the company (or even the grandchild) have to profit from the labors of the dead artist? He can't sell his mind, nor is it useful to anyone else if he could. The best arguement for copyright isn't that IP is actually property, but that a limited term legal monopoly on reproduction encourages the talented artists to produce more. The modern take on copyrights, that they can be sold like a tangible property, does nothing at all to encourage the further production of such art after the death of the artists involved; and thus can only be a net negative for society at large, preventing the lower classes from access to established popular culture in favor of the royalties of a surviving adult child or for the recording company.
Better be careful MoonShadow. Someone might say the same for inheritance on real estate of physical property acquired during the life of the deceased now transferred to the children or assigns. |
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But the likes of Titanic or Toy Story that take millions in up front costs would never get made.
So? If people aren't willing to pay to have those movies made, they shouldn't be made. You're saying "if everyone else won't pay for high budget movies, we should MAKE them pay, because my view of how the world should be is right, and theirs is wrong!" +1 Same could be said about any industry that is hampered or tied down with regulatory oversight. The question is always the same. If we can't force them to make it happen, how would it happen? Maybe it just shouldn't, period. We don't pick cotton using slaves anymore. Maybe if we're smart enough, we'll find another way. If not, who cares (except for our masters and monopolists). Same difference. |
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Exactly. So if you remove IP laws, you remove the incentive to make movies. There is no way for the movie maker to get paid.
Remember the antebellum south? I'll say it again, because the logic is approximate (reductio ad absurdum): "But good sir, how shall we pick the cotton...?" A little bit of slavery isn't any more justifiable that a lot of slavery. Go ahead and beat it up. I really don't care. |
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Let life be what it will be. Intervene to help, not to harm.
Again, thats just taking the easy, non-thinking route. On another thread, Hawker was vehemently denying Smallpox's right to life. I don't think huh? Right... Here's a thought; if any human, at whatever point in its development is potentially capable of acquiring self-awareness, sentience, consciousness or self-sufficiency, let it be; or if you're unwilling, convey that responsibility to someone else who is. Interrupting it, destroying it, abandoning it, evicting it, or altering it at the beginnings of life is tantamount to murder. Deal. |
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Um no it doesn't. Intellectual property is not based on anything physical or anything in short supply. Its based on protecting the investment of the people who pay for the work to be done. For example, a movie costs money to make and to market. IP law allows you to recover that money if people go to the movie theatre to watch it. Absent IP law, the movie theatre owner could get a free copy of your movie and you would lose your investment.
What you described is nothing more than monopoly privilege thru force. Everything requires effort... EVERYTHING! One type of effort should have no greater privilege or protection than any other. Doing so only creates an accumulation of wealth to those who best know how to manipulate others. Look at any fiat paper money system as your best worst example. You want to eliminate or diminsh competition. That's it. We all get to live with the consequences. As was well put further up in the thread, the masses suffer to enrich and benefit the few. |
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For the same reason we don't rescind land law. You can't take property of people on a whim. You have to make a logical case, get it voted through and then implement it. So far your issue is the lack of a logical case. I don't see what I gain in return for losing my income from from trademarks and copyrights.
Follow my logic then. GIVEN:Nobody is perfect. If no one is perfect, then people may make mistakes. If mistakes happen, some laws will be unjust. If some laws are unjust, those laws may cause harm. If some laws cause harm, we should rescind unjust laws. If we rescind unjust laws, fewer mistakes may occur. If there are less mistakes, there may be more justice. If there is more justice, there may be more perfection. We should strive for perfection. Given the above, apply that to IP law and reconcile it with private property law. |
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There hasn't been a US President outside of the Republican or Democratic parties since the 1800's. You can vote for Mickey Mouse if you want but it won't matter.
I might vote for Mickey, he might actually do less damage. But then again, maybe not. Ignorance is not bliss. |
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Again its a balance of harms thing. The good IP brings is more important than the loss of the ability of someone else to make free copies. Its not hard to choose the good option here. If you disagree, its not enough to point out that there is a price to be paid. You need to demonstrate that the price is too high or else its an easy decision to take the goodies that come from IP.
So why don't we rescind IP law and find out? With monopoly or without, a question for the ages? The only way to know is to try it. |
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Literally, not as attached as your are to your thumb If you were to attempt take it from me, you'd find out how attached it really is. I make no distinction whatsoever. Were not talking biologically attached, no doubt, but I could really care less. |
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