Intellectual Property - In All Fairness!

[Hawker]

Fred you have already made clear that if you have to choose between innovative research and your freedom to copy other people's work, you will choose your freedom.  Your pseudo-logic that laws that contradict one another is also your opinion.  The right to security on your own property is contradicted by eminent domain.  Does that mean people should no longer be allowed own their own homes?  Of course not.

You have to accept there are other positions and you don't have the right to impose yours on other people.

[1714168216]

1714168216

[1714168216]

1714168216

[1714168216]

1714168216

[1714168216]

1714168216

[ALPHA.]

You have to accept there are other positions and you don't have the right to impose yours on other people.

I'm glad we agree.

[FredericBastiat]

You have to accept there are other positions and you don't have the right to impose yours on other people.

I'm glad we agree.

Ditto. Looks like Hawker's actually getting somewhere. Maybe he should look up the definition of impose.

[FredericBastiat]

Fred you have already made clear that if you have to choose between innovative research and your freedom to copy other people's work, you will choose your freedom.  Your pseudo-logic that laws that contradict one another is also your opinion.  The right to security on your own property is contradicted by eminent domain.  Does that mean people should no longer be allowed own their own homes?  Of course not.

You have to accept there are other positions and you don't have the right to impose yours on other people.

Am I to assume there is no such thing as logic then? If logic is opinion, then just about anything could be construed as opinion (excepting actual physics). Can we not agree, based on the basic rules of logic, that your logic is fallible?

And yes the right to security on one's own property is contradicted by eminent domain which is why it is capricious and should be done away with. Duh.

[Hawker]

Fred you have already made clear that if you have to choose between innovative research and your freedom to copy other people's work, you will choose your freedom.  Your pseudo-logic that laws that contradict one another is also your opinion.  The right to security on your own property is contradicted by eminent domain.  Does that mean people should no longer be allowed own their own homes?  Of course not.

You have to accept there are other positions and you don't have the right to impose yours on other people.

Am I to assume there is no such thing as logic then? If logic is opinion, then just about anything could be construed as opinion (excepting actual physics). Can we not agree, based on the basic rules of logic, that your logic is fallible?

And yes the right to security on one's own property is contradicted by eminent domain which is why it is capricious and should be done away with. Duh.

You seem to have the delusion that rights are written in the stars and that all humans do is discover and enforce them.  I see that rights are human creations.  All rights are created by human law and limited by concepts such as prevention of cruelty to animals and eminent domain as part of the same legal structure.  To call that a contradiction is to fail to understand what a right is.  The problem is not logic - its your acting on a false premise and thus using faulty logic.

[FredericBastiat]

You seem to have the delusion that rights are written in the stars and that all humans do is discover and enforce them.  I see that rights are human creations.  All rights are created by human law and limited by concepts such as prevention of cruelty to animals and eminent domain as part of the same legal structure.  To call that a contradiction is to fail to understand what a right is.  The problem is not logic - its your acting on a false premise and thus using faulty logic.

No not written in the stars nor anywhere else for that matter, at least not from the perspective of what is, as opposed to what ought to be. All I'm saying is your logic is broken. Laws can be anything, of course. But if you want to make them consistent and logical, you wouldn't say half the things you do.

A right is an is/ought construction. Using logic helps make sense of what is vs. what ought to be. No logic, makes for a big mess because one rule violates another to the advantage of one person over another. Creating advantages and disadvantages creates classes of persons, and the longer you have one class with greater privilege and authority over another, you will eventually produce monolithic power concentrated into the hands of the few. This is what most (if not all) governments do that don't protect the rights of the individual.

Power is a great temptation when wielded by the few against the many in an involuntarily way (monopoly privileges). I like the freedom of choice to do what one wants with oneself and one's things as long as it doesn't interfere with the supremacy of others to do the same with theirs. Why is that such a bad thing? Freedom is a bad thing? Let me think about this for a moment... I don't get you Hawker. I really don't.

[Hawker]

You seem to have the delusion that rights are written in the stars and that all humans do is discover and enforce them.  I see that rights are human creations.  All rights are created by human law and limited by concepts such as prevention of cruelty to animals and eminent domain as part of the same legal structure.  To call that a contradiction is to fail to understand what a right is.  The problem is not logic - its your acting on a false premise and thus using faulty logic.

No not written in the stars nor anywhere else for that matter, at least not from the perspective of what is, as opposed to what ought to be. All I'm saying is your logic is broken. Laws can be anything, of course. But if you want to make them consistent and logical, you wouldn't say half the things you do.

A right is an is/ought construction. Using logic helps make sense of what is vs. what ought to be. No logic, makes for a big mess because one rule violates another to the advantage of one person over another. Creating advantages and disadvantages creates classes of persons, and the longer you have one class with greater privilege and authority over another, you will eventually produce monolithic power concentrated into the hands of the few. This is what most (if not all) governments do that don't protect the rights of the individual.

Power is a great temptation when wielded by the few against the many in an involuntarily way (monopoly privileges). I like the freedom of choice to do what one wants with oneself and one's things as long as it doesn't interfere with the supremacy of others to do the same with theirs. Why is that such a bad thing? Freedom is a bad thing? Let me think about this for a moment... I don't get you Hawker. I really don't.

If you want to go with is/ought, you need to provide some justification why people ought to take a lower standard of living as a result of losing the benefits of IP law.  You are free.  Being told you can't take other people's property is not an infringement on your freedom.  Nor is being told that you can't profit from patented inventions without a license.  The sad thing is that you think you need to be able to copy other people's work in order to get by.  Just take a stab at making something of your own and selling it - you may be surprised how easy it is.

[FredericBastiat]

If you want to go with is/ought, you need to provide some justification why people ought to take a lower standard of living as a result of losing the benefits of IP law.  You are free.  Being told you can't take other people's property is not an infringement on your freedom.  Nor is being told that you can't profit from patented inventions without a license.  The sad thing is that you think you need to be able to copy other people's work in order to get by.  Just take a stab at making something of your own and selling it - you may be surprised how easy it is.

Making something of my own by using the knowledge that I've obtained requires the knowledge of my forebears, the shoulders they have stood upon, and those that came before them, ad infinitum. It is impossible to create something without having relied upon someone else for that knowledge. And if not from them, then from your own observations of nature. You can't own an observation, or a law of physics, or any intangible (idea or concept). You can't control an intangible without effecting the physical and tangible to do it, and if that tangible object doesn't belong to you, it belongs to somebody else.

You can't divorce the idea or pattern from the physical matter to which it is attached without destroying the concept of divisible and easily observable material boundaries by which physical ownership is defined; as all things ownable, are physical. Attempting to own a pattern or composition is tantamount to surreptitiously acquiring property not in your possession. Intellectual property has no physical boundaries like ordinary physical property does.

IP enforcement is nothing more than the right to commit theft and censorship, and in the extreme, bodily imprisonment. That is the end result every time. You are merely giving the right to some people to control the property and speech of others and thus ultimately their person, because of the composition and patterns of physical material matter resembling yours. Last I checked that's called slavery. Clandestine and indirect slavery, but slavery nonetheless.

If you have information and I have the same information, it is not theft. I have not taken something of yours because I merely know about it, or because I imprint it's pattern onto objects in my possession. I can only take a physical thing. There is nothing to take if it's not physical.

[Hawker]

If you want to go with is/ought, you need to provide some justification why people ought to take a lower standard of living as a result of losing the benefits of IP law.  You are free.  Being told you can't take other people's property is not an infringement on your freedom.  Nor is being told that you can't profit from patented inventions without a license.  The sad thing is that you think you need to be able to copy other people's work in order to get by.  Just take a stab at making something of your own and selling it - you may be surprised how easy it is.

Making something of my own by using the knowledge that I've obtained requires the knowledge of my forebears, the shoulders they have stood upon, and those that came before them, ad infinitum. It is impossible to create something without having relied upon someone else for that knowledge. And if not from them, then from your own observations of nature. You can't own an observation, or a law of physics, or any intangible (idea or concept). You can't control an intangible without effecting the physical and tangible to do it, and if that tangible object doesn't belong to you, it belongs to somebody else.
...snip...

Research is expensive and IP laws aim to encourage it to continue as fast as possible.  A 20 year patent is nothing compared to centuries of utility if the research is successful. The point is that if the research is going to cost millions and if we want that research done as quickly as possible, we have to offer a way for the investor to get his money back, don't we?

[chickenado]

Sorry - still wrong in logic.  I can sue someone who takes my car and I can sue someone who resells my software.  Being able to protect my IP does not prevent me protecting my car. It simply means that if you want to sell products like mine, hire some staff and write your own.  

Someone could copyright the pattern of tire threads in your car and then prevent you from selling it.  Assuming that the tire threads were "unowned" when you bought the car.

Thus they are infringing on your physical property rights. They have been allowed to homestead property that was previously homesteaded by you (let's just say for the sake of argument that you built the car yourself). 

You give an example of how people exercising their rights doesn't contradict the simultaneous validity of IP and PP(physical property).

But exercising rights is not the same as having rights. Rights grant you a maximum scope of action. Whether you chose to exploit that maximum is up to you. In practice people rarely do.  That's why contradictory rights can often work so-so in practice and give an appearance of of being consistent.

Simultaneous validity IP and PP creates a legal mess. It is always up to the subjective whim of some judge or politician to decide which right comes first, and which one is to be violated.  It opens up the door to corruption and to a situation where some humans are more equal than others.
 

Still baffled as to how you can say that the alternative, where you wait for someone else to hire staff and create a product, then take their work and sell it for your profit, is not aggression.  

I might consider it immoral, depending on the circumstances, but it's not aggression.

as I said before,

Morality != Justice

[Hawker]

Sorry - still wrong in logic.  I can sue someone who takes my car and I can sue someone who resells my software.  Being able to protect my IP does not prevent me protecting my car. It simply means that if you want to sell products like mine, hire some staff and write your own.  

Someone could copyright the pattern of tire threads in your car and then prevent you from selling it.  Assuming that the tire threads were "unowned" when you bought the car.

Thus they are infringing on your physical property rights. They have been allowed to homestead property that was previously homesteaded by you (let's just say for the sake of argument that you built the car yourself).  

You give an example of how people exercising their rights doesn't contradict the simultaneous validity of IP and PP(physical property).

But exercising rights is not the same as having rights. Rights grant you a maximum scope of action. Whether you chose to exploit that maximum is up to you. In practice people rarely do.  That's why contradictory rights can often work so-so in practice and give an appearance of of being consistent.

Simultaneous validity IP and PP creates a legal mess. It is always up to the subjective whim of some judge or politician to decide which right comes first, and which one is to be violated.  It opens up the door to corruption and to a situation where some humans are more equal than others.
 

Still baffled as to how you can say that the alternative, where you wait for someone else to hire staff and create a product, then take their work and sell it for your profit, is not aggression.  

I might consider it immoral, depending on the circumstances, but it's not aggression.

as I said before,

Morality != Justice

You know, your whole thing about IP rights and PP rights creating a legal mess would be great if the present system wasn't working so well.  We live in an age of unprecedented innovation and its all happening in countries with strong protection for intellectual property rights.  You may argue that is a co-incidence but you can't argue that the system is a mess.  The present system is working great - if you want to replace it, the onus is on you to come up with something that works even better.

[chickenado]

Um - actually you are insisting that you are entitled to take the product of other people's labour without their consent.

I find it useful not to think in terms of labor but capital.

Labor is just the act of transforming and mixing the capital that you own, to form new capital.

You can only own capital.  You cannot own labor because labor is an action and not a thing.


Hawker, when you pay your computer programmers to make a product, do you really think it is a product of their labor?

Really? Do they start from scratch and write it in machine code?

No, presumably they use a higher level language such as C++. Well, C++ is information capital that was created by somebody else.  Do you pay the people who made C++?  C++ itself was created from previous capital. C++ was written in assembly language. Do you pay the people who wrote assembly language?

Presumably your programmers use libraries. Presumably they use design patterns.  Presumably they use concepts like recursion that were invented by other people.   They make liberal use of information capital that is not owned by you, without compensating the creators.

What percentage of the final product is really a result of your own effort rather than the effort of others?

You claim exclusive ownership over information capital the same way you claim exclusive ownership over you car.  I will respect that the day you grant others exclusive ownership of information capital, ie the day you write all your software in machine code and use different programming methods from the ones taught at universities.

[deuxmill]

Um - actually you are insisting that you are entitled to take the product of other people's labour without their consent.

I find it useful not to think in terms of labor but capital.

Labor is just the act of transforming and mixing the capital that you own, to form new capital.

You can only own capital.  You cannot own labor because labor is an action and not a thing.


Hawker, when you pay your computer programmers to make a product, do you really think it is a product of their labor?

Really? Do they start from scratch and write it in machine code?

No, presumably they use a higher level language such as C++. Well, C++ is information capital that was created by somebody else.  Do you pay the people who made C++?  C++ itself was created from previous capital. C++ was written in assembly language. Do you pay the people who wrote assembly language?

Presumably your programmers use libraries. Presumably they use design patterns.  Presumably they use concepts like recursion that were invented by other people.   They make liberal use of information capital that is not owned by you, without compensating the creators.

What percentage of the final product is really a result of your own effort rather than the effort of others?

You claim exclusive ownership over information capital the same way you claim exclusive ownership over you car.  I will respect that the day you grant others exclusive ownership of information capital, ie the day you write all your software in machine code and use different programming methods from the ones taught at universities.

Bro' you can't win whatever logical argument you bring.
It's like arguing with priests that god doesn't exist. You can't win. You can't win not because you aren't smart enough but because he will loose all his power if you do.

In the end it's only fiction like all the laws . and you are capable to not believe it . Just be cautious .

There will always be fanatic believers that scream blasphemy and will want to burn you on the stake , when your beliefs don't agree with theirs.

There is no god , no state , no law , no IP , just people that believe in their existence and people that profit from their beliefs.

[chickenado]

You know, your whole thing about IP rights and PP rights creating a legal mess would be great if the present system wasn't working so well.  

Working well for whom?

Patent law is such a byzantine mess that high tech companies have taken it as a given that they will always be breaking some patent or another.  They don't even bother to comply with the law anymore, and instead adopt a reactive strategy. It's all about damage control and not good faith.  Patent disputes are usually settled in private and rarely taken to court. Nobody, not even the judges, have a clue where the limits of patentability lie.  This is likely to result in court battles that drag on for years.

A system where most parties are criminals by default, where rules are not clearly defined, where bullies and gamers are favored over honest people, sounds like a broken system to me.

Of course IP works extremely well for some people.

You know, the Chinese high speed rail network also works very well indeed.  It gives millions of Chinese people unprecedented mobility and has resulted in some positive economic effects, no doubt.

But to build that network, the rights of a minority were trampled upon.  People had their rightful property taken away by force.  You are probably going to say that this is ok because "society has decided" (double speak for "alpha male has decided") that the rail network is more valuable than the rights of those people.

This is where we differ. I am not a utilitarian like you. The most magnificent high speed rail network in the world cannot be justified if it violates the rights of just ONE human being. Evil cannot be quantified. Everybody is equal under the law. No exceptions.

Imagine if you are that guy in China who spent his whole life building his dream house and then it was demolished against his will because the rail line is "good for society".

The difference between you and me is that you have the arrogance to decide for that guy how much the house was worth to him.   I believe that only HE can know that.

[Hawker]

chickenado - your philosophy is all well and good if you think poverty is tolerable.  Most people don't think that way.  Intellectual property and eminent domain are indeed pointless if you don't care about poverty.  But as I said, most people don't think that way...poverty is something we want to alleviate.

[chickenado]

chickenado - your philosophy is all well and good if you think poverty is tolerable.  

Define poverty.

My cat is worth more to me than almost any amount of money in the world. If someone took away my cat and gave me $1M in compensation, I would still consider myself a poorer person than before.

A system based on voluntary exchange is guaranteed to maximize the total utility in society.

A voluntary exchange between two people can only take place if it makes BOTH parties better off.  

A non-voluntary exchange (such as eminent domain) always makes at least one party worse off  (from their subjective perspective).

A system based on non-voluntary exchange is not guaranteed to maximize the total utility in society.



In practice, railways would probably still be built in a world without eminent domain (this is a huge topic that I won't go into here).

In practice, people would still create information goods in a world without IP.  There are other ways to make money from information  than forced monopolies.

Information goods are a type of public good in that they are characterized by nonexcludability and non-rivalrous consumption, once the creator has chosen to divulge them.

A much discussed example of a public good are lighthouses. The interesting thing about lighthouses is that they used to be built by private entrepreneurs, and run profitably, even before government started running them.

How did lighthouse operators deal with the free riders? They didn't. They just accepted that a certain amount of freeridership would be unavoidable, and that with the right business model, profits could be made nontheless.

Actually, free riders plague all value creation, not just information goods.  When a carmaker sells me a car, there is nothing the carmaker can do to prevent me from lending the car to my mother on weekends, thus causing her not to buy her own car.

[chickenado]

A good example would be slavery. I know you don't like the analogy, but it works well.

The day that it will be possible to create full copies of people, including the momentary state of their synapses, IP will literally amount to slavery.

This scenario may be a "fantasy world" case against IP, but it certainly is a future possibility and it doesn't violate any known laws of our universe.

Rights should be universal. They should hold for all humans independent of place and time, present, past of future.

[Rassah]

A good example would be slavery. I know you don't like the analogy, but it works well.

The day that it will be possible to create full copies of people, including the momentary state of their synapses, IP will literally amount to slavery.

This scenario may be a "fantasy world" case against IP, but it certainly is a future possibility and it doesn't violate any known laws of our universe.

Rights should be universal. They should hold for all humans independent of place and time, present, past of future.

This is almost exactly the point I brought up earlier in this thread, when we were discussing rights, and I was pointing out how their ideas will hit a major snag as soon as we create self-aware artificial intelligence (which will likely be fairly soon).

[Hawker]

chickenado - your philosophy is all well and good if you think poverty is tolerable.  

Define poverty.

...snip...

There is no point.  We have elections where people get to vote on policies and you will notice that no-one who stands for a reduced rate of economic growth wins.  Any policy that ignores the economic impact of changes to IP law or eminent domain is never going to be a winner.

[chickenado]

We have elections where people get to vote on policies and you will notice that no-one who stands for a reduced rate of economic growth wins.

Really? How come then, that parties with "tax-the-rich" policies often win elections? "Tax-the-rich" is more proven to reduce economic growth than abolition of IP. Voters are often aware of this, but to them reduced social inequality is more valuable than increased personal material wealth.

Here is a quote from Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty:

quite deliberately and expressly, political parties have sacrificed the immediate material welfare of their members in order to prevent, or at least somewhat to retard, the complete industrialization of the country. A more agricultural Switzerland, though poorer, such is the dominant wish of the Swiss people today.

Any policy that ignores the economic impact of changes to IP law or eminent domain is never going to be a winner.

a) Nobody knows what the economic impact will be.

b) This argument is not about the legitimacy of democratic government.

c) see articles:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2006/NH/2006-11-08-initiatives_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/pirate-party-germany-berlin-election