Have you never heard of data mining? It's a branch of computer science.

Property rights aren't based on materialism. Property rights are based on the fact that certain things are rivalrous. As I've explained several times already, property rights arise because certain things can only be controlled by one or a few people at a time thereby causing the need to exclude others. If I have a cooking spoon and I want to use it at the same time that you do, we have a problem. How do we settle it? Well, that's why we have property rights. The only question left to decide is how are property rights assigned, flip a coin, whoever is stronger, etc. What sets Libertarianism apart is the rules on the assignment of property rights. We believe in homesteading which means that the first user has a better claim than any latecomers. If you are a latecomer with respect to me and you argue that you have a better claim then there's nothing stopping yet another latecomer from making the same argument against you. Therefore, the prior-later distinction is presupposed by anyone claiming they own property otherwise you would let anyone come along and take it.


This is demonstrably false. If you steal my marble and make a statue of it, you don't own the statue. You owe me for damages to my marble. You own your body which means you control what labor it does but you don't necessarily control the products of that labor. You have to own the raw materials to also own the product.


Why is your intellectual work a part of you?

If you look at how slavery ended in Europe, it was done peacefully. As more and more people saw that slavery was immoral, eventually there was critical mass to make the change. I see anarchism happening over generations as old ideologies die out and Libertarianism becomes more and more popular. Once we have enough people, we withdraw our consent from the state and defend ourselves against any aggression, which hopefully won't come, just as with abolition in Europe.

Also, don't make the mistake of saying "anarchism is a great idea but it won't work" since imagine hearing something like "freeing the slaves is a good idea but it won't work". Even if that were true, it doesn't matter, slavery is immoral and we don't acquiesce just because it's impractical.


Thank you very much, kind sir!

No, YOU are claiming that physical property should be considered as legitimate property.[/quote]

Even you will admit that physical property should be considered legitimate. If you disagree then please tell me where you live so I can collect your things. However, since you aren't claiming IP as legitimate then this discussion is over since there's nothing for me to argue against. 


That's just one long assertion. Why should you own the ideas that you think up?


Why does anyone owe your intellectual work protection?

I think a better one is excludability because it gets at the heart of the matter and is covered quite a bit in Libertarian literature.

I can try to help you out if you still need it.

No, that just means that energy and time are scarce. If energy and time weren't scarce we could copy the same information infinitely.

Whoever makes a claim has the burden of proof. You're claiming that intellectual property should be considered as legitimate property. Are you not? If so, where's your argument for that? All I see you doing is loudly declaring that you should be able to make money by owning information. Why?


Why is it relevant that you are conflating two things? Because it's fallacious reasoning, that's why. What about that is confusing to you?

Also, you keep skipping over my previous posts and claiming I haven't answered you. Please make sure you read everything before making such claims. The forum software notifies you if new replies have been posted while you were typing so you really have no excuse.

That's probably not true but even if there were an infinite number of atoms in the universe, an atom of gold on Earth is worth more than two atoms of gold in another galaxy. Practical availability is key. Plus there's the whole problem with needing these atoms to be in a certain configuration, namely a hand, arm or whatever to replace my body, rather than just a lump of matter on a table. If you chop my arm off and give me the equivalent amount of atoms by mass, I'm afraid that's not good enough.

No, the question is, why should patterns by regarded as property? The burden of proof is on you as well. You can't keep demanding that we prove you wrong while refusing to prove yourself right.

I did also answer your question here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256.msg78334#msg78334 but you failed to respond.


You're conflating the life of a person with their body. Even if I live forever I still only have one body so it's a scarce resource. Therefore, your argument fails.

My sarcasm detector is broken so I might be missing the joke but just in case you're serious, I've added my bitcoin address to my signature.  


I've had this question asked a few times and I always find it an extremely uncomfortable topic. First of all, I think that all self-defense should be carried out by persons against other persons. I also think that self-defense should be limited to imminent threats. Therefore, attacking the state fails on both counts since you aren't defending yourself from any particular person and also you aren't under an imminent threat. However, if you were to refuse to pay your taxes and refuse to be evicted from your home then, even though you would likely most either be killed or captured, you would be justified in resisting.


Capitalists don't force people to work. Nature takes care of that.

If you were the only person on the planet, you would have to either farm, hunt, fish or forage. You would have to either work or starve. Simply adding a few billion people to the equation doesn't change anything. They don't owe you a living. You still must either work or starve. If I offer you a job then I'm just adding to your opportunities. I'm not forcing you to work. You have to do that anyways.

I'm a software developer. I've made over a million dollars in the last three years by selling my software online. When I originally started to question the legitimacy of intellectual property, I was biased in favor of it. I was wishful in thinking that a case could be made for it. Unfortunately, I couldn't accomplish that. I had to follow reason wherever it took me and the conclusion was, intellectual property is partial theft of tangible property. If I own a piece of paper, I get to control it, that's what ownership is. To make a claim against what I can or cannot do with my piece of paper is to assert partial ownership over it, which is theft. I do have an incentive to maximize my profits, i.e. I wish intellectual property was legitimate, but not at the cost of sacrificing my ethics. Maybe now you can drop the ad hominems against intellectual property opponents by insinuating that we are all thieves trying to justify our actions, as if that somehow affected to truth of our arguments.

The real question is, why do I owe you anything other than to not physically harm you and your property unless in self-defense, or coerce you? Do I also owe it to you to not hurt your feelings?

It's coercion.


When people die their are atoms abandoned and become unowned. As soon as my body goes from a lump of matter to "me", I am in possession of my body. My parents are still latecomers, even if late means only a split second later.



Information isn't property because it isn't scare or rivalrous. If you have a car and I take that car from you then I've deprived you that car. If I make an exact copy of that car then you can still drive the car. The only reason why we have property rights is because when disputes arise and we need some objective way of deciding who owns what. If anyone could have as much of anything they wanted, a mansion, a yacht, a space ship, a house on mars, whatever, it wouldn't make any sense to have property rights. I could never deprive you of those things because they are unlimited.


See above. Anyways, I've successfully shown that mixing your labor with something doesn't make it yours. If you steal my marble and make a statue, you don't own the statue. You owe me for damages to my marble. If you disagree then you can give me a counterexample where mixing your labor with something thereby makes it yours but simply claiming it as yours won't do. Of course, trying to offer a novel you wrote as an example would only beg the question since that's the issue we're arguing over.

Because murder is a form of aggression and copying information isn't.


I have the best claim to my body. Everyone else is a latecomer with respect to me and my body.


No, I'm not. I'm denying that it's a form of property. If you write in a book you own, you still own the book and the writings, the physical copy itself, not the information contained therein.

Murder is covered under the non-aggression principle. There are no contracts needed for that.


There are only two legitimate ways to obtain property, by claiming unowned property or by buying it from the current owner. A person that receives stolen property from a third party has done neither so they don't legitimately own it.


The argument against stolen property applies to slavery. I own myself and therefore only I can legitimately sell myself into slavery, which I see no problem with. If someone wants to sell theirself into slavery, have at it.


Let's recap, shall we. You think that you own something because you mix your labor with it. I said that's false and I provided an example illustrating why. Then you said (I think) that you can mix your labor with a book and thereby own the book. No, either you already owned the book and writing in it is just doing whatever you want with your property or someone else owns the book and you just defaced their property. Writing in a book has nothing to do with owning the book. Of course, what exactly that has to do with owning what's written in the book is beyond me but it sounds like question-begging thus far.

It's a shame that the name is going to lead people into thinking it's somehow related to or modeled after the free state project. I hope nobody has any regrets after donating and then seeing what kind of ideology this guy is pushing.

A person binds themselves to the terms of a contract voluntarily. That isn't the case with intellectual property. Even if you make everyone you sell a CD to sign a contract that says "I will not redistribute the contents of this CD", you still haven't recreated intellectual property because there is nothing stopping a third party that didn't sign that contract from doing so. A contract is binding because it's voluntarily agreed to. You can't automatically bind third parties which is why intellectual property isn't legitimate.


That's because you've been deluded into thinking that you own the products of your work. That's false though. If you steal from me a slab of marble and then chisel a statue out of it, do you own the statue now? No, the statue is mine and I also claim that you've destroyed my slab of marble and owe me for damages. Once you empty your head of that delusion, you will stop feeling entitled to own an idea just because you thought it up.

It's funny that you make a claim and then say it's not enough to do that but one must also provide an argument while simultaneously failing to do exactly that. Piracy is coercion how? It's not because I'm not initiating violence or making threats on your property. That's the argument.


You're not making any sense. Making a threat doesn't require that you are currently causing me physical harm, it's the promise of FUTURE physical harm. That's what a threat is. Please take your time and try to make more coherent responses. This is bordering on absurd.

So even though they aren't citizens you're going to govern them by denying the right to own guns? Again, how is this any different from the USA where I'm born into a system and then forced to bend to the will of others?


Murder, rape, assault and theft are violence. Threats are coercion. It's nonsense to group them together with piracy which is neither.


Again, threats are coercion, a form of aggression, which is what I'm against. Your argument fails.


See above.