Not really, most libertarians would agree actually. The point is that banning aborting through means of coercion is a violation of rights.That doesn’t mean to say that communities, and I hope they would, will outlaw abortion with the use of social ostracism once we remove the state. All it means is that violence will no longer be a means to an end.
And people may violate property rights, exactly what IP does, whether or not you like it. It doesn’t mean that it is legitimate.
You’re framing this incorrectly. IP enforcement is a violaton of rights, the fact is that coercion to some extent must be used to uphold IP rights, just like it must be used to enforce claims to any type of property. If I violate your property in anyway I must pay compensation. The point is, IP, like stolen property is not legitimate property. Now granted, those who wish to may find other ways to protect their “intellectual property”, some people may voluntarily choose to recgonise it, but that’s about as far it goes.
The free market must be based upon sound property rights, IP has no place in a free society.
You’re getting it backwards – The real question is : are people who believe in IP willing to kill people who don’t believe in IP in order to ‘enforce’ IP ?
My point is that not everyone is going to agree with you. It doesnt matter whether you think have the greatest arguement in the world some people will not agree. If it was so obvious then everyone would agree already. The point that the OP was making was that many anarchists are as stubborn about how every problem will be solved in a free society as statists are defending the state. If you think the free market will define IP as not property, then what is the problem? Your issue is that people will disagree with you and define IP as property and you want to prohibit that. The real question is in your free society what do you do to the people that think IP is property and take action to protect what they see as their property?
If the answer is nothing then it doesn’t matter whether IP is property or not property from a practical perspective. The market will determine the extent to which IP is protected or not.
For example, you write a piece of music and take some action to prevent people from using it without your permission. I have no problem with this and you want to prohibit it. I am prepared to accept what the market decides in this situation regarding people protecting their idea of property and you are not.
The only reason people have those rights in the United States (and elsewhere) is due to the fact that the government grants them those rights temporarily! Without the government granting this, they would not have those rights. If you are trying to say that people have natural rights over IP (which does not flow with the standard theory of natural rights and ownership), then explain how… because you have yet to do this. This leads me to believe that you either do not understand IP or that you do not have an argument for your stance, yet simply “feel” that that is how things should be.
I know this forum is anti-contracts, but certainly I can use user agreements to protect IP. What you are saying is the the free market can invent no mechanism to protect IP. If IP has no value outside of governement protection then it won’t be protected if the idea does ahve value then the market will find a way of protecting it.
Once, you have ruled out all violence as an option your freedom will last about 2 seconds. If you think the threat of ostracism will prevent robbing and murder your dreaming.
If I write a piece of music I have the right to decide who I give that piece of music to. If we make an agreement about when that person is allowed to play that music how does this violate your rights? And what are you going to do to stop me from doing it?
Bro, you’re not telling me anything I didn’t know here…
O Rly?
I crush my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentations of their women. - Conan
I don’t have to do anything. If they come after me with a cork screw to drill their ideas or songs out of my head, I will defend myself. The only way to enforce property rights is with violence. At the end of the day, I can prove that IP is not property.
In order for them to have to gain permission, you would have to own it.
Again, you fail to make the case that IP is property, or your definition of what property is. You just continue to make subjective arguments, based on the premise that IP might be property, and you are ok with that.
How can you contract somebody not to put words or notes of music in a certain order? You seem to assume the words on the paper are the same things as the word in themself. They’re not.
How does one own a series of music notes? Tom Petty would be rich if he truly “owned” those chord progressions and took legal action against those who later claimed “ownership” of any one of those simple progressions.
Edit: I should specify that you can take the basic logic of this notion and apply it in a greater sense as well, to the point that you now have an entire Tom Petty song.
You have the right to decide who to give the music to. You do not have the right to control their usage of it once you have relinquished it to them. If you trade me a pencil, can you tell me what I can write with it? Can you tell me that I can’t trade it for something else? To destroy it? Or is it my property?
Until you develop a consistent concept of what property is, and you should because all rights derive from property rights, then you won’t be able to make a sound argument. Again, like the FRB thread, you will try to construct dozens of hypothetical scenarios, looking for an exception to prove your rule.
The truth doesn’t have to be that evasive or complicated.
Okay, well I think you’re partly right and, of course, partly wrong. In this case, I don’t believe it will be IP that will be protected in any free society, rather it will be that labor to make a so-called IP that will be protected. Consider how one could capitalize on smarts in software design, and then consider the fact that it’s a very rare commodity in the market even today, even with patents, copyrights, and no compete clauses. In some ways, the removal of traditional mechanisms to “bottle up” intelligence in services and design would be beneficial as it would allow those with the smarts to call for a higher price. Granted, it won’t be the sort of price that can make them billionaires overnight much like a patent can, but it will still make the market viable, and possibly more viable for new blood, than what we have today which is more or less a lawyer’s game.
Also, in other private societies, it can still be played out much like it is today, but it would always end at the contractual ‘border’ of that society. So, if you think such societies couldn’t exist consistently, I’d like to hear your cases, otherwise I think you’re writing off the private law equivalents with much hand waving (and no proof).
People would have the possibility to recognise IP rights, people would have other ways of keeping their secrets undiscovered, but IP violates property rights when violence is used in an attempt to make enforce them.
Here’s another way to consider things: would you find it wrong for me to copy your piece of music, note for note, at my own expense with my own instruments, and use it for a movie I am working on, since the song is now a product of my labor? If that is not okay, then why not? (People cannot own musical notes, after all… so why does it matter if my notes happen to sync with yours?) If it is okay, then how is that any different than going to the effort of making a hard copy of your music for a friend? I could invest time with my own instruments and give the copy to a friend, or I could invest money into a computer and give a copy to a friend. Likewise, I could invest my time with my own instruments and copy the song for a movie.
The point I’m trying to show is that IP just works differently than tangible property.
I’m not going to argue against that as I don’t believe a violent enforcement would work any way you consider it. Hell, today it doesn’t work in a monopolistic “public law” context, so there you go. I think IP as it’s touted today is getting its ass kicked even without us pulling out the intellectual heavy weaponry.
You and I sign a contract that if I give you the piece of music that you will not do all of the things you listed above. Contracts can limit your behaviour. I say you and I can have a contract like this and no one is having their rights violated. You say I am violating your rights despite the fact that you voluntarily agreed to the contract. Now it may be that IP is so difficult to police with contracts that it is not viable but that doesn’t make me trying to protect my music an inherent violation of your rights.
People will make efforts to protect things they think have value and to profit from what they view is the fruit of their labor. I do not think contracts or any other mechanism that attempts to do this between two voluntary participants is a violation of your rights.
In the above example the contract has nothing to do with you so how can your rights be violated?
You’ve failed to address another thing that I have mentioned: can a person own musical notes, regardless of what series they happen to appear in? If not, then you cannot make a valid contract concerning this. This could only occur if a single person had a monopoly over the use of musical notes, or if a government granted an exception to this so that a person could temporarily own various musical notes. Even when government grants this privilege, it is still a touchy and occasionally subjective subject within the courtroom.
Edit: even if you disagree with me, I feel the need to ask: do you at least understand where I am coming from (because I do understand where you are coming from, particularly as a professional visual artist and a professional musician)?
Even if you sign a contract, IP theoretically protects the idea, not just its production.
How do you prove that Bill’s brother Chris didn’t invent Microsoft Windows completely on his own just because Bill owns a copy? How can Bill enforce Chris not looking at his computer screen? Should Chris have to sign a waiver to live with Bill? Should Bill have made everyone he knows and everyone he will know sign a NDA? Or should he never be allowed to have anyone look at his desktop, or to discuss his computing or his computer?
It not only becomes unworkable, it becomes unenforceable without government edicts. Even contractual agreements will be difficult to enforce.
The biggest issue with government IP law is that it forces a contract on everyone, without consent. Not just the end user, but the producer as well.