Arguing with Objectivists over copyright

Miscellaneous General
1

What is the best way to debate copyright with an Objectivist?

My position has been for a very long time that copyright draws arbitary distinctions, is practically unenforceable except for the very wealthy (cartelizing artists under media companies in the process) turning scientists into artists and artists into mystical intellectuals that believe they have created something immortal and valuable to mankind, because the royalties keep flowing in decades after the actual work has been completed.

The Misesian ‘materialist’ view is very new to me, and novel in that it doesn’t (as I understand it) try to refute copyright based on its negative outcomes, but on the grounds that it violates property rights i.e. I am not stealing from you if I make my model train look exactly like yours, because you still have you model train. I have not yet tried this approach.

Has anyone had any experiences they could share when arguing with objectivists on this topic? Would you consider that Ayn Rand was a lifetime recipient of government largess?

Also, does anyone else feel that the Objectivist technique of saying “Check your premise..” feels like a diversion from the debate, and a switch into a medical gaze, as if to say “What traumatic event prompted me to have such an irrational point of view?” Surely it should not matter why I argue something, it almost ad hominem.

2

Well, I think you should push for anarchy, get that from the objectivists and then explain that property rights arise in anarchy for their utility not philosophy.

So property rights obviously have a lot of utility and will arise on the free market of law, but only insofar as it is worthwhile to do so. As you pointed out, its not cost effective to enforce IP most of the time.

I would just let moral differences slide with Objectivists… this is an argument you can afford to lose since you’re hanging onto anarchy. Its also why i never use the calculation argument against socialists because once I have anarchy that’s game set and match. I could care less what crazy ideas they have about what to do with their freedom.

3

Don’t Bother. Yelling at a poster of Atlas Shrugged on the wall achieves the same effect in lesser time.

4

I laughed.

5

Here is Stephan Kinsella on Objectivists and IP: http://www.stephankinsella.com/2009/11/21/kinsella-ip-interview-on-the-peter-mac-show/

6

The first step would obviously be to read Ayn Rand’s essay on Intellectual Property in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

7

More-or-less-Objectivist here. Yeah, Rand got a bit nutty about that.

How to argue it? Ask how it actually steals from the person, considering that they still have everything they had before, and secondly, how it could be enforced without government imposed searches, censorship, and force?

On the check your premises thing: That just refers to dealing with a contradiction actually. I don’t see why the person used that line. I don’t really see any contradictions with either laissez or anarcho-capitalism as far as not enforcing copyright goes.

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

That is true. If a contradiction did truly exist, then logic would be invalid.

8

Ah, I see!! The particular objectivist I know seems to be using the ‘check your premises’ statement incorrectly.

For example, I would say something like “I don’t like copyright because of the personal experience” to which the reply would be something like “Check your premises, you may not like copyright ..” and then raise doubts on my judgment. Most annoying debate technique I have ever experienced.

Recently I took the position that copyright can exist, but should not be enforceable except in cases of liable or slander. That is, if someone else claims originality of your work, they could be brought to suit, but not if they hold a copy of the work and make not claims about being the creator of it.

9

As long as they aren’t selling it as the original, I see no reason. If they were selling it as the original, then thats fraud, but thats a different matter. Who’s rights are violated just by somebody making a silly lie? If they were, the internet would be the most criminal place on earth.

10

Lies can ruin reputations, “He who would take from me my good name..”, but I was talking more of an interim measure, before copyright becomes unenforced completely, and eventually repealed. [:)]

The scenario is this: I have written a number of booklets for the nonprofit where I work, and have been trying to convince management to allow them to be put on a website. They are guides for people who are renting.

Management are concerned they will be printed and used by real estate agents. I just want the knowledge out (that’s why they were written!) but they do not want our efforts being put to use by ‘for profit’ real estates (against our charter) and also because they change frequently with the law and real estates distributing them might hand out old copies - we’d get the blame etc. etc.

The compromise I tried to reach is to have them on the site, but not to be used for commercial purposes. If we find somebody distributing it attributed to their name, we can take action. An insane waste of time and resources on our part IMHO.

That said, I am leaving this job in a little under two weeks, completely disillusioned.

11

Reputations? Sure, they can. But if you live in a society so irrational that they believe tabloids over evidence, then your pretty much fucked as far as reputation goes anyhoo.

Unfortunately…

Them taking the info and using it for profit? I don’t see how that possibility justifies copyright. How can you justifiably monopolize ideas?

12

I think no one here actually understand the issue. I stopped arguing on another thread, because the authors have a materialistic rather than subjective idea of goods-character.

Ideas are not property! Of course not. Ideas are often common knowledge.

Property is non-common knowledge.

If someone copies the design of model trains, the question is: was the model train sold with a contract that no-one will copy it? If yes, then anyone who obtains the model train at that price and anyone afterwards who obtains it from that person, preserves the contract.

If the train was simply sold without the contract, chances are the authors would demand a higher-price, because the original design is valuable to them. In order to voluntarily obtain it from them, if it isn’t obtainable anywhere else, you must pay that price or forego the thing.

Of course, you can build your own train set if they haven’t sold their train set under contract or without contract. However, if you got the idea for the same design by looking at a train which was obtained under contract at the lower price, you cannot copy it.

There is no special property distinctions. It just a question of the conditions under which items were voluntarily obtained. The debate began with Menger vs Bohm-Bawerk concerning interest: is temporal disposal of goods a separate good from the actual material.

Bohm-Bawerk couldn’t accept that the sum of interest payments could exceed the price of the good itself. His error was that he ignored that interest payment are not a lump sum, but a series of smaller sums paid at any one time moment. Since there can be preference for series of payments over lump sum, or lump sum over series of smaller payments, both are goods.

Both are enforced by contracts, just as anything else. Government is not required to enforce IP, since IP is nothing but a provision of contracts to grant lower price than price of full disclosing.

That means both objectivists and anti-IP are both mistaken positions.

What is property? It is NOT theft. It is something I prefer, and can refuse to give. Nothing more, nothing less.

13

You are indeed correct over the validity of a do-not-copy clause, although I question how easy that would be to enforce, and would that make it a crime if two people independently came to the same conclusion?

14

I totally agree with you! You can’t!

The organization where I work has a ‘not-for-profit’ charter, that prohibits our works being for profit. Somehow ‘giving them away’ translates into ‘for profit’ if there is any chance whatsoever that it will be used for profit. This is a failure of management though, not a matter of principle.

It maddens me to think that so much time and effort goes into producing this stuff when nobody benefits from it, except the people that get to control its artificial scarcity (invariably not the creators of the original work!)

15

– the same as any other argument against the state.

In essence, you tell the IP-apologist that you have no problem with copyright laws provided that:

  1. none of your money is extorted to finance the enforcement of that law

  2. you are free to use mortal force to defend yourself against anybody who steps onto your property to enforce copyright law

The point being: there is nothing inherently wrong with copyright law so long as everybody who agrees with it is free to leave the jurisdiction which imposes copyright law.

I think we sometimes make the mistake of getting bogged down into arguing over irrelevent details. For instance, you can argument that intellectual property is not really property and the objectivists will argue that it is property. That distinction does not really matter.

Just treat copyright as you would treat farting or pornography. You have every right to forbid pornography and farting on your property. However, nobody has a right to forbid you from farting or engaging in pornography on your own property. With reference to copyright, you are free to form business alliances with other property owners (alliances which might include agreements to ostracize non-members or people who violate the terms, for instance) who agree with your stance on farting, pornography and copyright.

16

[:)]

17

I don’t mean to derail this thread, but I agree with and want to strongly stress this sentiment. I feel like I could legitimately consider myself an Objectivist based on its tenets, but Objectivism has been strongly associated with Rand-worship, something which I do not possess. Ayn Rand was a great thinker, author, and woman in her own right, but she was not infallible, and I thoroughly believe that a case for voluntaryism could be made based on Objectivist ethics. In other words, Randians need to “check their premises” (especially ironic since Objectivism acknowledges that individuals are not infallible).

Why is Ayn Rand wrong?
18

Indeed. It would help the Objectivists as a whole if they stopped thinking so much about people and more about ideas. Unfortunately, the idea of those ideas being the property of Rand was what made the connection I think. Given, she deserves credit in many places, but the discussion can go on without mention of her name.

19

Check out posts of “Bala” on Mises blog threads–he (she?) is a quasi-Objectivist who was pro-IP and changed his mind a few months back, now is on our side. I asked him to check in here.

Also check out Jeff Tucker’s recent article about Rand and other matters here http://mises.org/daily/3864

I’ve tried.. but it’s hard. if you tell them look, patents require legislation–artifical law, the just say, well, sometimes legislation is needed.

20

One of the contradictions that actually led me to anarchocapitalism was part of Objectivism. With natural rights, everybody has the same rights. What an individual has the right to do, so does a group of any kind. Therefore, one person cannot claim their government to be the only legal government. Private security companies, common law, law-via-property, all follow from the idea of everybody having equal rights. A limited government is actually a contradiction in the, although I dislike saying this, “orthodox” objectivist theory.