Don’t be depressed or scared. That is what the controllers want. Fear is only in your mind; it is there to be overcome.
Yay for positivity! I tried using some in another forum I visit, arguing that the corrupt political system can be beaten, but was assailed by ye olde poor liberal proletariat who decries both parties as the same yet repeatedly votes Democrat (note that they wouldn’t be hating on both parties if just Dems were in power).
Positivity can go a long way, so thanks for being another small flame in the seemingly-infinite darkness.
I should retract this, I really misspoke. I mean to say that you can only make a property claim to something that is actually property. I cannot say “I’ve invented the red square, hence, those who create objects with the red square pattern must pay me a royalty for the use of the pattern, which is my property.” The red square example does not differ in quality from any other IP claim. Intel Corp. tried to trademark the number 80,386 because they had a CPU which they called the “80386” or “386” for short. Trademarking a number is no less absurd than claiming intellectual property in all red squares. Anyone familiar with the binary nature of digital information understands that even a digital movie can be thought of as nothing more than a really big number. For example, some cypherpunk came up with a prime number that, when converted into ASCII code, encodes the DeCSS algorithm for decrypting DVDs. Since DeCSS software is “illegal”, this is an absurd example of an illegal prime number.
I think the best way to identify what’s wrong here is to note that an intellectual property claim is a claim to an entire class of physical objects. You’re not saying “this very physical object belongs to me and I may use it in this way.” Rather, you are saying that “all physical objects such that [insert some class property here] belong to me and are mine.” I cannot say “all titanium belongs to me” because I discovered the element titanium. Only that titanium which I put to use - that is, which I homestead from the earth or mold into a useful object or exchange for with someone else - is mine. All other titanium does not belong to me because I am not putting it to use, I do not have a higher claim to it than another. Similarly, all plastic-coated aluminum discs containing such-and-such pattern (say, the bits corresponding to a song I performed and recorded) do not belong to me. Only those plastic-coated aluminum discs which I am putting to use through homesteading or voluntary exchange are mine.
Information is inherently non-scarce. Reproduction technologies have lowered the costs of copying information to the point where this is painfully obvious. If you release information into the public domain (i.e. you allow it to be seen/heard/operated/etc. outside of your property and without an NDA in place), it is no longer yours. If you record a song, that recording is your property so long as it remains on your hard drive. As soon as you allow someone else to have a copy of it on their hard drive, it is no longer yours.
I haven’t thought this through, but a decent argument against IP would be to ask what about the memory patterns stored in someone’s brain when he listens to the music. It is in some way encoded. Can you prevent someone from humming a song to himself to amuse himself? Hmmmm…
Wheylous: Exactly. I was looking at the FBI warning on a DVD the other day… it prohibits “reverse engineering” of the DVD encoding technology. Now, I’m an engineer. In the very act of watching the DVD, I can formulate in my mind possible means for encoding the DVD data. Does that mean I’m breaking the law while watching the DVD?
Information is non-scarce. Government does not improve things by trying to create an artificial scarcity in information through IP laws.
LOL - that gave me another thought… I wonder how many of the Venus Project types believe in IP laws… information is exactly like their sci-fi world of super-abundance… anything can be replicated virtually for free… if they support IP laws, then I can’t see how they wouldn’t support laws that create artificial scarcity in their sci-fi superabundance world in order to “reward creativity.”
I’m not (yet?) a complete believer in anti-IP, possibly because I can’t explain libertarian’s hypocrisy in the following:
Why and how do we have property rights? Well, we simply have them, chap! They’re there and inherently present because we fashion stuff out of nature.
Intellectual Property? Rubbish. How can you protect something which is not physically disturbed?
My just-found idea of how to completely avoid the IP debate (I actually think it’s 100% brilliant and solves all IP debates ever):
I shall call it … Information Anarchy:
Assume anti-IP as a base. When someone publishes a book, he essentially says “look world, stuff!” Thus, he is exposing himself to copying.
Oh, no! He is being copied. What now?
Contracts! Whenever someone sells intellectual material, he includes a contract which emulates IP protection - by buying this book you agree to not copy, reproduce, yada yada, blah blah, etc. When you resell this to someone else you agree to also include this contract with the sale.
Bam! Problem solved through free market! The prosecution becomes essentially the same as in the current system. If someone is caught with an unlicensed copy of the property, they sue him. If he is at fault, he gets punished. If he just was never provided with the contract by the seller, the seller gets it, and so on back down the chain (to find the root of the contract violation).
I actually think this is completely justified and solves the problem perfectly.
Hmmm… though when I think about it, it only solves IP for books and music, but not for independent discovery of patents. But I guess you could argue that independent discovery is actually a valid way of creating the same service…
I didn’t say one is entitled to profits from intelectual work, I said that there is nothing wrong trying to profit from them as long as you respect other peoples’ properties.
This is wrong. Compare a blank sheet of paper and one containing Coke’s formula. You can be almost 100% sure that you will get millions of dollars more for the second one than for the first one. It is the intelectual work that is adding value to the second sheet of paper.
In any case, he’s still talking about trading for physical property (a piece of paper with specific black markings on it). If I read the Coke recipe over your shoulder, and then got another piece of paper and wrote the recipe on it from memory, would this be theft?
That’s not really the point. Replace Coke by gold and tell me if it is not the intellectual work that is adding value to the second sheet of paper.
If that is an actual question I’d recommend you read Kinsella’s excellent “Against Intellectual Property”. If it is not, I have already made myself clear in this very thread.
