JJ, would it be “illegal” (morally unjust) to sign away your right to non-aggression? If so, then contracts suddenly become enforceable.
Wheylous,
Morality is simply a personal preference.
I mean “legal morality” or “legal ethics.” As in we agree it’s immoral to violate NAP. I don’t mean something like “don’t do drugs.”
That would be like today’s non disclosure clauses in employment contracts. Trade contracts rarely have such clauses, if they started to have limitations on trade in the contract. Competition could just sell the same product without the clause. In certain circumstances goods already come with a contract or a license agreement. But they have problems enforcing those, even with a government.
But they have problems enforcing those, even with a government.
At which point someone jumps on you and tells you that indeed the free market is always more efficient than a government.
I think Eugene meant things like books, music, etc.
What exactly is he saying ?
That the latest pop band is going to make a consumer sign a contract before purchasing their product? These days some organisations do not even require a signature of a contract. I recently entered a 24 month isp contract and have not accepted any contract. I received a letter with 3 pages of terms and conditions that i did not have to sign. Which is very much similar to the sort of license agreement that you often have to accept for software or that you find inside a box of a product.
The only interest that people would have with entering in to a contract for IP is if they were going to be paid for doing so or if they wanted something that they could not get else where without the IP.
IP contracts between a seller and a buyer are unlikely to occur because in most cases the buyer could just give the product to a third party who is not liable for the contract. I guess they could put in the contract that you can not give the product to a third party and if you do they are liable under the contract. But that becomes even more difficult to enforce.
Did you read the article? (You can also listen to it here.) If you want to be logical and consistent, you can’t contract in terms of “promises” or “expectations”…only in property. “Signing away” your right to not be aggressed against would basically boil down to “promising” not to defend yourself or allow any agents to defend you. Should you suddenly decide to change your mind and defend yourself when someone initiates force on you, the only way they could enforce the contract of you simply allowing the aggression to go on would be to force you to sit still. So for one thing, you have this circular logic problem where the act of enforcing the contract (as a remedy to your breaching the contract) is the same as carrying on as if the contract were being honored. So what’s the point of the contract?
But even considering your contract were in some other kind of promise…Rothbard uses the example of marriage. To force someone into wedlock simply because they said they would (but now have changed their mind) would amount to slavery.
And even as far as contracting yourself into slavery, again, it doesn’t work:
The basic reason is that the only valid transfer of title of ownership in the free society is the case where the property is, in fact and in the nature of man, alienable by man. All physical property owned by a person is alienable, i.e., in natural fact it can be given or transferred to the ownership and control of another party. I can give away or sell to another person my shoes, my house, my car, my money, etc. But there are certain vital things which, in natural fact and in the nature of man, are inalienable, i.e., they cannot in fact be alienated, even voluntarily.
Specifically, a person cannot alienate his will, more particularly his control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own mind and body. Each man has control over his own will and person, and he is, if you wish, “stuck” with that inherent and inalienable ownership. Since his will and control over his own person are inalienable, then so also are his rights to control that person and will. That is the ground for the famous position of the Declaration of Independence that man’s natural rights are inalienable; that is, they cannot be surrendered, even if the person wishes to do so.
Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts
Interesting. Are ancaps against prisons then?
It would simply be incorrect to directly answer that question with a “yes” or a “no”…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Law and order and the use of violence
I would assume there would be some sort of penalty specified in the contract. If not, well, that’s just silly.
I couldn’t agree more. I presented the short list simply to answer your question.
I really do wish people would stop using the blanket term IP and start referring to copyright, trademarks and patents individually. I don’t often agree with Richard Stallman, but he is dead on when he writes, “[Copyright, trademark and patent laws] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues.”
A solid agument for or against copyright will almost certainly not apply to trademark.
What difference does it make if ideas/patterns are not actually property? People who are anti-IP are not “anti-copyright” and just have their terms ambigiously wrong. The concept of “intellectual property” is illegitimate, therefore any sort of laws protecting “intellectual property” are illegitimate. It doesn’t matter what they are called or what specific ideas/patterns they protect.
Read Against Intellectual Property (it’s quite short). And yes, he means all IP…every kind.
I did not mean that every time you buy something you sign a non discloure agreement, not at all. What I meant, is that those people who believe copyrights should be respected, will sign such contract. It will not be signed everytime one purchases a book or an album. It will be a general contract.
Intellectual property is only a priori illegitimate if you accept Rothbardian natural rights, or natural rights to private property. If someone doesn’t accept their legitimacy, then claiming IP is illegitimate is a meaningless statement.
It’d be like telling a socialist that the USSR is an example of socialism. They’ll simply endlessly, fallaciously claim it’s really just a different kind of capitalism, not real socialism.
Not that I think it matters but I disagree.
From the perspective of the person who chooses not follow any of those laws, they are all the same because they are all reduced logically to restrictions of what you can do with your own property.
Not exactly. The notion that ideas/patterns are property proves itself to be illogical and fallaciously reasoned, as there are simply no good arguments for it. “You either limit these rights in scope or time arbitrarily, or you extent them to infinity, choking off rights in real things and forcing life and commerce to a screeching halt.” It literally makes no sense. If a cave man saw another cave man fashion a bunch of leaves into a cushion to rest his head, does the first man owe compensation to the second if he does the same thing? What about if he fashions a spear? Or a shelter? Anyone who sees what he has done and uses their own resources to do the same thing must pay him some kind of fee?
It’s utter nonsense.
They’ll simply endlessly, fallaciously claim it’s really just a different kind of capitalism, not real socialism.
I’ve heard this before. What’s the argument that the USSR was indeed socialist, then?
It’s brilliant, as one would expect from Kinsella.
Do note that there isn’t much of an attack on trade secrets, at all, and that he correctly calls trademark violation fraud.
Also note though that he is logically consistent and maintains that it is the customer who is defrauded…not the original business the other company is pretending to be…which in turn means (as he points out) it is the customer who has a right to sue for fraud…not some business that can sue for “trademark violation.”
And as far as trade secrets go, all that is is not telling people your idea. Anyone who wants to make that a crime needs to be committed.
Exactly. This is why I stressed the differences between the different IP laws, especially in response to the OP. Trade secrets could certainly be handled with contracts, as the OP suggests. Trademark violations are generally violations of contracts already, though not in a way the law currently recognises. Patents and copyrights have nothing to do with contracts.
If you really want a copyright law-like thing you can create contracts which create property interests, thereby creating the power to enforce them on people who have signed them.