I cant resist on this one… please tell me these facts. The computer industry was founded upon open-source technology. This business model can absolutely work. But the big hitters in the industry (MS, Apple, Dell, HP, etc) use IP extensively to spread computers to everyone. Without the commercialization of computers, which I argue wouldnt have happened without MS and their OS which was protected by IP laws, we wouldnt have the world we do today. If DOS and Windows had been open sourced, it would have been a SNAFU of thousands of proprietary parts and systems. And no mass acceptance and use of PCs.
I’m happy to know you are a Rand-ish Minarchist because that will save me a lot of time arguing.
I think you need to check your premises. This one is particularly fallacious. [;)]
This thread wasn’t meant to be about a single issue like IP. It’s about how free markets might address issues without force, considering the dynamics of the free market instead of the government solutions we’re used to. But it seems like IP is the hot topic, so I’ll explain more about what I mean.
I’m saying for the sake of argument, let’s assume that IP isn’t property in a free market. The courts don’t recognize it and no one violently enforces it. I’ll keep calling it IP just because the terminology is familiar, but we can call it IW (Intellectual Work), IC (Intellectual Creation), or whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how the market might handle it despite there being no violent organization to do so.
What’s central to the whole topic is contracts. I’ll define a contract as a voluntary exchange in which terms are freely agreed upon by all parties involved. Let’s take a simple example. Assume that the court system won’t recognize the possession of a nuclear weapon as an initiation of force. In other words, it’s “legal” to own one. But does that make it impossible to prevent people from having them, without using violence? I would argue no, but “prevent” isn’t really the right word. It seems to suggest force. The better word might be “incentivize”. Let’s say my neighbor is selling his home. I offer my neighbor $1,000 to include a clause in his real estate contract in which the buyer agrees that he won’t have any nuclear weapons on the property. If my neighbor thinks that this clause will only reduce the market value of his property by $500, he’ll take my offer because he’ll make more money. It also enables him to reduce the selling price; a nice incentive for buyers who don’t mind the restriction. None of this involves violence, only voluntary contracts, and everybody gets what they want.
So in many ways, it doesn’t matter whether or not the courts will recognize intellectual works as property. It only matters that voluntary contracts are enforced. If the free market doesn’t enforce voluntary contracts, then count me out.
We can debate the effectiveness of various methods of protecting IP all day long, but because you can’t imagine ways in which the free market might protect intellectual works doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It’s hauntingly similar to the arguments statists use about anarchy. “But how will we provide for national defense?! It’s impossible to exclude non-payers!” The market will find a way. And if you don’t think protecting intellectual work is something the free market would want to do, consider this…
You spend a year developing a piece of software. Aside from your time and energy, you’ve invested $100,000 of your own money. You release your software, completely unprotected, selling at a price of $100. Within an hour, someone has lifted all of your marketing material and is now selling your software for $5. What do you think your return on investment will be? Would you do it all over again? What do you think the market for software would look like under such conditions?
Its a scheme to create guaranteed profits(though in a mild form), but no such thing exists in a free market so obviously it had to be created by fiat,
“I predict that, if anarcho-capitalist institutions appeared in this country tomorrow, heroin would be legal in New York and illegal in most other places.”
What’s surprising to me are the number of people who think that without copyright and patent, nothing will be produced or invented.
I had one gentleman tell me that “Hollywood Epics” are so important that he’s all in favor of copyright to make sure they continue to be produced. I guess he never saw Waterworld
Indeed, those who have needs will pay to have them fulfilled. As RedHat has found, selling service works. The great works of art prior to government granted monopolies were created by sponsorship or just the need of the artist to create. Looking at YouTube I’d say that that need to produce and sponsorship continue to exist.
Suing your customers doesn’t do much good, either.
Let’s look at the Law Merchant. A legal code that existed without a state to create it or enforce it.
Were contracts enforced under the Law Merchant? Yes, because that was the purpose of having it in the first place. Those who ascribed to it abided its rules, and everyone got along. Disputes were handled internal to the agreement, and those things that occurred outside of contracts made under those rules were dealt with by those who entered into those other agreements.
In the argument about an-archy vs. pan-archy, the important thing is to overcome the ingrained bias that living under pan-archy has created in our atitudes. Everything that an-archy encompases has been done before. We live under an-archy the vast majority of the time, we conduct our daily business an-archicly simply because we have free will.
Don’t go looking for another -archy to determine how an-archy should work. Look around you right now and see how an-archy works.
First, realize this is a voluntary action. The author did this. They chose to do it, for watever reason. It’s done. Bemoaning about “making back ones investment” is just wishing for horses.
What you describe is exactly what CentOS does. Don’t look to what might maybe happen at some point under a new an-archy archy. Look at what happens right now.
So what’s your Linux distribution? RedHat or Debian? (yes, I know there are others, I use them as the prime examples of “pay” vs. “volunteer”)
You miss the point, it could be that you find out a way to convert water into gold. So what? It doesn’t stop me thinking that at the exact same time, nor does it stop everybody else. It could well be that everybody comes up with that idea at the same time. The idea exists purely in your head, and as you don’t own the minds or everybody else in society you can’t stop them from using their minds to come to the same conclusion as you have, simply because you thought of it first.
Essentially what you’re saying is this, if everybody holds their breath in a certain place, the air becomes scarce. By breathing in first you have somehow homesteaded the air.
And? Your idea about how to change water into gold didn’t suddenly allow the water to turn into gold. There was an existing objective relationship between the two that allowed that. You merely found that out. Whereas when I mix my labour with the soil, whereas there was no previous link with my labour and the soil now there is.
And yet it’s not a legitimate contract.
Giles, in the situation Max set up, its a perfectly legitimate contract. If I willingly sign a piece of paper selling myself into slavery, is it suddenly illegitimate because you dont beleive people can be owned? You’re thereby claiming ownership of my life by saying I have no right to sell it. If people are willing to sign a contract to not use IP in a certain way, it is perfectly legitimate. Any contract willingly entered is legitimate, even if it doesnt agree with your viewpoint.
The problem I see here is that everyone is using scientific ideas to argue this. IP shouldnt exist to scientific ideas, because as you say there’s a pre-existing connection there. Yet despite the english language existing, the book I write is my original thought. It did not pre-exist. Ditto with software. Why shouldnt I own it? You’re arguing that in a place consisting of masses of ozone and hydrogen, if I develope a machine that turns them into oxygen and water, thus providing the means of life, I have no ownership of the machine, because I merely found it first? I doubt many people would have come up with it. My brain power was scarce, and the market rewards scarcity.
Other than blindly claiming we’re wrong, no one has yet explained how in this society where you dont own the products of your own mind anyone would want to invent. Saying we made the ‘choice’ to invest money into developing some software or w/e doesnt mean anything other than it will never happen again. Prove that the logical assertation that you’re stifiling innovation is incorrerect. This sounds like a stone age waiting to happen. Its the exact same disincentive that socialism holds. Great men and great inventions are punished for being great, by having their ideas stolen from them without means of compensation. This thread has come suprisingly close to forcing me to equate pure anarchism to a massive looting machine.
I see a couple issues that seem to be the undercurrent here.
A labour-time-capital theory of value fallacy. “I put X in, so I should be able to get X out”. Rothbard iirc has a good talk where he talks about a guy who designs and builds something in isolation, spending a lot of resources, only to find that it’s already been invented, improved and mass produced.
Whatever you spend in a commercial project, is only what someone will pay you for it. Not what you invested. This is market theory 101, knowing how prices are set.
Another issue is the notion of property. What can and cannot be owned. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent idea of what property is or any differentiation from labour. Kinsella makes this point in the video I linked up thread. Your labour is not property. You are your own property. The result of your labour is property. But the act of doing, is not something that can be owned.
And lastly contracts. There seems to be this notion that whatever can be put in a contract, makes it valid. Of course this is not true, and it’s statist-type behaviour to believe so. That an edict supercedes reality. That with enough edicts, everything can be ordered. That when issuing edicts to enforce an agenda, market demand can be ignored. If the law, economic policy etc are contracts, implemented as edicts (by fiat, without negotiation or consent) then this is the essence of the calculation issue. And ties back into issue one in this post.
Slave contracts aren’t legitimate. The will is inalienable. Read Rothbard on this. I can’t sell myself into slavery because it’s impossible for another to own my body, simple as that. I can agree with everything he says and therefore the contract is useless anyway. But the moment I disagree by merely disagreeing I prove that I am a self owner.
How can one sign a contract if one doesn’t own their own body? It’s that simple. I’m not claiming ownership of your body, the very opposite, I’m saying that to claim such a thing is not possible.
Of course it did, for all you know those very words may have been written centuries ago. Moreover the words exist independantly of being written on the paper. To go further for you to exclude third parties would be a claim to ownership of the words.
It seems to be the case that you’re conflating designing a machine with putting your labour into producing it, the two are very different. For me to make a machine I’m using scarce materials to make a machine. My link is objective. The same can’t be said with ideas.
Because aside from anything else utilitarian arguments aren’t relevant.
Nobody is being punished, as opposed to your system whereby everybody else is punished on the dubious claim that the patenter is the first person to think of such things.
What a blatant strawman.
This is as empty as saying that I can live in your house and tear down walls because I want to. The contract I sign to rent your room disallows this, no? But is that not superceding my right to control my own body? Any voluntary exchange is just, because its voluntary. If I want to pay one million dollars for a USB cable, its my choice despite reality saying its stupid. A contract voluntarily entered is legal, period. It’s not an edict, its a mutual exchange. You’re equating voluntary contracts to ignoring market demand. I’d say that you’re ignoring the market’s demand to protect the rights of creators.
As for Kinsella’s point, its very poorly made unfortunately. You (or at least libertarians/anarchists in general) make the argument that taxation is illegal in part because the government is claiming ownership of our labor, and taking a portion of it. I’m aware of the coersion aspect as well obviously, but ownership of our labor is still part of the issue. If I dont own my actions, why should I be paid to work at all? That time and effort isnt mine to sell!
I am not comming a theory of value fallacy. I’m not saying there should be guaranteed profits. I’m saying that I own my mind and its creations, and that includes the right to try and sell them for a profit.
The blind hero-worship of anything said by Rothbard or Mises bothers me as well. They’re men. They’re fallable. Saying ‘but rothbard proved’ means nothing. Newton proved gravity, right up until Einstein proved him wrong. Hell, maybe someday relativity will be proven wrong.
Regardless, arguing the basis of my stance doesnt refute my question. Even if you manage to prove me wrong, it doesnt remove my claim that logically, there is no reason for someone to let their ideas out of their head in your society so long as a place such as the US, Hong Kong, etc exist. I’d rather have some of my profit stolen from me than my mind.
Then everything which is scare should be rewarded. Every person is unique, so every person should be rewarded? It’s not logical.
It also presumes that your brain power deserves a reward regardless of what you are thinking about. That is also not logical.
One, I never blindly claimed you were wrong. I’ve asked you what your definition of property was. You haven’t answered.
Why would anyone want to invent? Why do people paint? Or make up ditties to sing in the shower? Why did some guy come up with the wheel? Forging. Optics. Astronomy. Chemistry. Medicine.
If you really have to ask these questions…
A self-referential argument is not an argument. You are claiming ownership of me by saying I cannot sell myself into slavery. You are limiting my action, actions which would have no adverse effect upon you. Thus, you are enslaving me, ‘forcing’ me to be free.
Your argument = socialism:
Socialism) The rich are only one person, with a dubious claim to wealth stolen from the masses. Anyone could have built that industrial empire. They owe their wealth to the people.
You) The inventor is only one person, his rights are not violated by stealing his creation and giving it to society. Its a dubious claim anyway, anyone could have come up with the idea. They owe their creation to the people.
How do I misrepresent your position? You clearly state that the product of my mind is not my property. You are looting my mind. It may be a controversial position to you, but not a misrepresentation of your ideas. An opinion that draws a different conclusion from your viewpoint isnt a strawman, its a different opinion.
Very well. You don’t own your house. Its merely a collection of atoms set together a certain way. A house just like it may have existed somewhere within the multiverse. The timber exists seperate from the house as a whole. See, I equate products of my mind to be tangible, and thus equal to the timber. My mind is just as scarce a resource as the timber and nails. You may not agree, but you will never change my mind. If the entire argument comes down to this point, which I believe it does, we should simply all move on because the 5% of our views that differ are meaningless when we still have to fight the battle against the world as it exists today.
JParker, I don’t know how to respond to this. You’re all over the place, and not being logically consistent or specific.
I’m trying to make it a point to bow out of conversations where one side refuses to reveal their own premises.
CurtHowland,
My example of the hypothetical software venture was posed as a mental exercise, not to say what people should or shouldn’t do, or that anyone owes anyone anything in that situation. I’m asking you to look at the industry as a whole and what you think might happen if a company like Adobe left a program like Photoshop wide open. It’s interesting you suggest “Look at what happens right now”. I am, are you? Can you tell me about the profitability of commercial software vs. open source right now? To be clear, I’m not knocking open source, I think it’s great actually. But as a business model, commercial software is greatly outperforming open source on the whole. It’s not even close. If you want to debate this, please provide hard numbers for the industry, not just a few companies. You can argue that this is because commercial software is protected by government law, but then I would ask you what’s stopping the open source community from competing? There are certainly no laws forcing people to pay for Photoshop instead of using Gimp for free, but which has been more profitable? I’m sure you can come up with examples of successful open source software, but I’m not debating that. I’m saying explore the profit motive in the industry and what that incentivizes people to do.
I’ll try and go through a few thoughts I’ve had over the last day in regard to various concerns that have been brought up.
I am illustrator. I illustrate without thinking anything of copyright laws. I am also a musician. I write and record (alone or with friends in the form of a band), without ever having worried about copyright laws. If somebody ripped my music off, I wouldn’t really be too worried–if I can redo a Radiohead song in such a way that it sounds superior to the original, and people want to pay for my version, why should they be stopped? Likewise, if a Radiohead turned one of my songs into something much more incredible, I would certainly find it hard to sue them over it, and I think most people would agree–people tend to sue over things like this due to greed, rather than genuine anguish regarding the “theft” of their product (which this is not).
Say a first-time author with no reputation seeks to make a deal with a publisher. Perhaps he makes the deal with the wrong publisher (his own fault to begin with), and the book is not marketed well, and therefore profit is low. Perhaps I will “steal” his book after happening upon this rare gem at the library and take it to a far more competent publisher with my name attached in order to bring myself a high amount of income without contributing any labor or creativity to the project. However, the original author can easily go to the more competent publisher with proof that he wrote the original book, and the competent publisher will terminate the contract as soon as it is possible (this contract would be written in favor of the publisher, particularly since I would be a no-name author), and the publisher will pick up the original author and republish the book under his name. Why? Because they have now gained a competent author who can later bring them more money-making works, which the “thief” obviously would not be able to do. This entire scenario would assume that the secondary publisher remained ignorant of the original work, which is possible assuming there were book title and chapter title changes.
Furthermore, as a musician, I am aware of the fact that the music industry is a harsh business. High-level income cannot be obtained unless one is of the “superstar” status. The best way to get there would be to start putting your music out as quickly as you record it for as little as you can afford to, in my opinion. My personal preference is free download with the option to donate via pay pal, or distributing music live on burned CDs with a mandatory 1$ fee for the CD, and extra “donation” at the discretion of the consumer for what they feel the music is worth. Without a reputation, people tend to doubt the quality of recording of a band they are unfamiliar with, but are generally willing to through down one dollar, and a few more if they enjoyed the performance. A few more dollars on top of that one dollar is as much as you would make, max, if you were to sell a CD at a set price of ten dollars, and then factor in production costs of a full and complete CD with artwork and packaging. It is a very expensive ordeal. Since this is the digital age, many people are willing to throw a whole six or seven dollars for a burned CD, since it will be transferred to a digital medium immediately–thus, the author makes more money, the customer saves more money, and the author makes money off of customers who would have otherwise not purchased the CD had it not been so cheap and donation-based. People who simply pay one dollar and move on are at least getting your music out there, since those that listen to it through those who purchase it for the minimum amount may pay more for it later.
Like this scenario, if somebody came along and “stole” your work and managed to market the music to a record label and get signed by playing your music live, it would be simple to prove that you were the original author, and the label would then seek to sign you since they could expect more from you in the future.
We have also already seen a few examples of how software companies can remain successful despite the issue of piracy.
These are just a few examples that I have thought of, and I think they all show how the market will more than likely overcome in the end. If anybody would like to challenge my creativity or the creativity of others with hypothetical scenarios that are more bothersome than the ones I’ve mentioned, then by all means. I understand that the concerns of creator are of utmost importance for some here, and it is because of the creator’s well being that most people push against the fact that IP does not seem to be property. Perhaps if we can solve some of these fundamental concerns, logic can be fully given into.
I don’t think anyone has suggested that you don’t own the machine, or the book. Only that you don’t own someone else’s machine or book.
And here we have the “free rider” problem all over again.
I submit that, without the government monopoly grants of copyright and patent, inventors and authors will find a way to profit. If they don’t find a way to do so, then they will be amateur inventors and writers.
Or, if you build such a machine, you could sell it and build another. If someone else finds a way to build and sell them cheaper, go build something else.
Dickens wrote his books not as whole novels, but as serial chapters in a magazine. The magazine publishers paid for the work at the time, because they sold copies at the time. The “great works of Dickens” got written, everyone made a profit, and there was no need for copyright because the publisher relied on “first to market” and “reputation” to make the sale.
Same for Shakespeare, and Michaelangelo. People make lots of money performing the works of Mozart, without any copyright on Mozart what so ever.
I am reminded again of what I wrote a couple entries earlier: Do not look for some new -archy to try to determine what an-archy would be. Look around and see how an-archy already works.
To make money. To earn a profit by providing people with a convenience or luxury they otherwise wouldnt have had. Or to provide the same convenience or luxury value to themselves.
Who made you the arbiter that determines which things that are scarce merit reward in a free market? I thought the market determined this.
I claimed no right to reward, only the right to own my brain power. If my ideas are worthless to the market, I lose money. But they’re still mine. It’s illogical to argue that I own my body, and the physical end result of my mind’s creation, but not the step in between. Why?
True, I’m sorry I asserted such. Take your definition of physical property, and add on original industrial design, writings, and art. If I had a perfect answer I would have given it long ago, and I’m sure you’ll find a thousand holes in my hastily created definition. My contention is the market would create the definition, but your claims that none of these can constitute property is logically fallicious.
I think the primary problem people have is that the accepted descriptions of physical property cannot be applied to the arts. So, either a new logical progression of thought must be established that includes these, or one must submit to the dominate view, which would mean that the arts are not property.
Just because the dominate view settles the arts as non-property does not mean that mankind has yet to discover a logical progression for the definition of property that makes more sense than the one previous and includes the arts as well. I can’t think of anything really, but that doesn’t mean that such a thing does not exist… all we need is an.. idea [:P]