That’s your clueless and unfounded ‘opinion’. Now, what innovations did the protectionist microsoft mafia produce ?
That doesn’t matter, Steve.
When you say ‘steve’ are you alluding to steve jobs ? Well, let me tell you apple is even worse than microsoft. They sell overpriced trash for snobs. Hell, they invented the mp3 player ? …
Stranger, would you agree that “intellectual property” is the same as “idea property”? If so, then would you also agree that the letter A is an idea? As such, would you also agree that someone can own the letter A and extort money from everyone that uses it? Would you also mind explaining why “IP” ownership is limited by time unlike real property?
Yep, that article documents how jobs STOLE the ideas he used in ‘his’ products. Do you think that makes your case for IP ? Or maybe, if we were to follow your non-principles, jobs should be thrown in jail ?
I buy the dentist’s services because I value good dental health. I don’t buy good dental health. People buy a right to the means of accessing information, they don’t buy the information.
So you are wrong. For the third time.
The letter A is a convention, not information.
Copyrights are limited by time because they are regulated by government, which places limits on how people may own information, much like it places limits on other forms of property rights, limits that would be eliminated in a free market.
Jobs did not steal the ideas for the mouse and GUI since Xerox invited him to look at them.
False. He stole the ideas. He was invited to a place - he was not invited to copy anything. So I’m glad you agree that gates, jobs and other salesmen belong in jail.
Did I ask if it was information?
So you do not think there should be time limits on copyrights/patents? Do you think there would be copyrights or patents in a free market?
If IP was abolished, there wouldn’t be a billion different products with one good feature and crap in every other aspect.
A copyright is just an agreement between two parties to share information only under certain limitations. Of course it would exist in a free market, and it would be unlimited.
A patent is a monopoly on a certain activity (in fact in the mercantilist age monopolies on activities such as salt production were called patents). It would not be economical in a free market.
what about third parties that are not part of the agreement?
It is impossible for them to access the information without violation of the agreement.
So third parties could freely distribute it then right?
So I could patent walking?
And one of the parties could make a copy and leave it on a park bench. So how would the 3rd party be affected for freely distributing it? Sure, the contract would be breached, but if I sold thousands of copies, how am I going to determine who let the cat out of the bag?
Ah, the economic charlatans hand-waving and mumbling their pseudo-scientific opinions about ‘efficiency’. Lovely.
So, what can be seen is that monopoly makes some people rich and that protected industries are ‘profitable’. What can’t be seen is the damage caused by monopoly. Even if we were to stick to amoral utilitarianism the position of the protectionists can’t be justified.
Utilitarianism is useless in the end because there’s no way to compare the allegedly ‘good’ results created by monopoly with the unintended consequences of the monopoly, and decide which set of consequences ‘should’ be favored.
just to be clear, I think people could, if they wished, try all day to protect their IP through voluntary contracts, but I think it would just be far too expensive to try and protect that it would be ridiculous. You would have to hire agents to follow people around all the time or put some sort of tracking device in the data or something, I have no idea, but it would seem very very hard to try to enforce, EVEN IF the purchasers of the information were genuinely trying to keep their promises. But just one breach is all it would take for the data to be completely free and open. My guess is that most businesses would see it as a waste of time after a certain point.
I can also imagine that there are some/lots of kinds of information that are much more valuable to the people buying it if less people know about it, and therefore have an incentive themselves to keep the info as hush-hush as they possibly can.
So how would that work exactly? An author/producer/musician posts an ad/proposal in the newspaper soliciting funds for her project, and then sits and waits for enough charitable contributions to come in so she can start creating (writing the book)? You are proposing that IP creators be demoted to mere beggars (pleading for charity), just so you can have your “tangible property only” axiom unruffled?
Also, wouldn’t this anti-IP system converge into favoring propaganda content pushing the agenda of whoever (rich people; foundations; political parties; etc.) is willing to pay more for the creative talent of the “sitting” artist (who would have no other avenue of making income)? Something like Bill Gates having painters, directors, poets, novelists at his “Court” producing IP for his pleasure? How would that reality be preferable to an IP law world in which the MARKET values IP creations by deciding how much and what to pay for?
Z.