DD5,
For the sake of a consistency on your behalf, are you ready to support unlimited land/property rights, and criticize the system for granting the owner only a limited amount of time (during which land is left unused after homesteading) until the rest of us can just take it away?
What are you now trying to obfuscate in order to evade a very simple question?
DD5,
Not trying to obfuscate anything. I am merely being consistent in applying my analogy between information property/universe and physical property/universe. Your answer to my question will be my answer to you.
"If I copy your credit card number, for example, you still have yours, and I have a copy for myself. "
Copying is not the problem–unless you commit trespass in order to do it, which is likely. Or perhaps you breached a contract. But no, it’s the use of this information to gain access to physical property. As an example, suppose I have an electronic keypad lock on my house. If you learn my code, you can use that to get into my house. But the crime here is the entering of the house. Not the knowing of my code. Likewise, with my credit card numer you steal from the issuer, the store, or me–for example you are defrauding the seller when you pretend to be the actal holder of the card, and use this deception to take goods from him. This is a type of theft.
“If I copy the title for your house, for example, you still have yours, and I have a copy for myself.”
Title is just a word that means “ownership”. You can’t copy ownership. YOu seem to be equating ownership with a written piece of paper–the paper is just evidence for ownership or title.
"If I copy your $100 bill, for example, you still have yours, and I have a copy for myself. "
And wehn you spend it you defraud the guy you pass it on to.
[quote]
The pro-IP and anti-IP camps are using two different definitions for “scarce”. Whereas the pro-IP camp defines it as something like “non-limitless”, the anti-IP camp defines it as “rivalrous”. These different definitions cannot be reconciled. For the purpose of debate, one must be chosen over the other. Until that time, the two camps will talk past one another ad infinitum nauseamque.
However, I think the anti-IP camp (of which I’m admittedly a member) has the advantage because it doesn’t ignore rivalry. It takes into account both that 1) matter is finite, and 2) hence one use of a given collection of matter prevents any other use of it at the same time…[/quote ]
I will admit that I am not even sure what you mean by rivalry, or why it is relevant. If I am away on vacation, you can come enjoy a party at my house without conflicting with my vacation. In that sense, the house is not physically rivalrous. Yet I still have the right, from my property ownership of the house, to exclude you from it.
If property is simply defined as rivalry, then for example rape could not be considered a violation of property if you were not having sex at the moment.
The whole notion is absurd, and yet this absurdity underlies the whole intellectual communist program. It is no different from communists who propose that land that is owned but not actively farmed should be homesteadable at will.
You are writing this post for the same reasons anyone engages in any charitable or free endeavor. You would need to say more if such an action would serve your ends further.
And when you sell copies of my movie, you defraud me. Either we both get to do whatever we want with our own physical copies, without any ‘random’ limitations based on intangible concepts such as numbers or patterns, OR we try to figure out a way to avoid what we both think is fraudulent and/or unfair. Or we could always go to martial contest.
What would Mises do?
“And when you sell copies of my movie, you defraud me.”
Nonsense. To defraud someone you have to somehow use deception to gain access to their property in a way that the consent is not valid. If I give you a basket of rotten apples in exchange for your ham, then I am obtaining possession and use of the ham in a fraudulent way. It’s a type of theft of the ham since the consent you give me to take the ham is conditioned on my giving you genuine apples. since I knowingly am giving you bad apples, I know that I don’t really have the consent to take the ham (the consent is conditional) but I take it anyway. So I am using your property without your genuine consent.
Nothing like this happens if I sell a copy of your movie. Suppose my neighbor shows your movie on his projection TV which I can see from my house, through his open window. I film it. I sell this to a bunch of people on the Internet. I didn’t commit fraud or deception, or take any property from anyone by fraud–certainly not you.
Nothing like this happens if I sell a copy of your movie. Suppose my neighbor shows your movie on his projection TV which I can see from my house, through his open window. I film it. I sell this to a bunch of people on the Internet. I didn’t commit fraud or deception, or take any property from anyone by fraud–certainly not you.
You have violated the privacy of my house and thus caused me to be in violation of my agreement with the media provider. You are a criminal.
Nice to see you using satire.
No. I’m not asking you a philosophical question. I am asking you (as a praxeologist) if ideas are or are not property, and what definition you apply to come to that conclusion. I assumed you would answer this question precisely as it doesn’t require a value judgment, and seems completely within the realm of Mises’ analytical system.
…which is an action that you find objectionable? I’m glad we both see this as a problem. Please reply to the rest of my previous post.
I did reply to it. Your ham is an owned, scarce thing that you have the right to control. If I take it and consume it, say, you no longer have it.
This is not at all the situation when I sell a copy of your movie to a third party. To say that it is requires some tortured mental gymnastics interlaced with question-begging.
You did not. This is the part I was referring to:
“Either we both get to do whatever we want with our own physical copies, without any ‘random’ limitations based on intangible concepts such as numbers or patterns, OR we try to figure out a way to avoid what we both think is fraudulent and/or unfair. Or we could always go to martial contest. What would Mises do?”
I am sorry that you feel this way about property concepts different from yours. I could as easily say that the whole of your concept of property is nothing but question begging: “Property is whatever I say it is so I can validate my position.” Looks like it’s going to be another martial contest then. What else is new?
Feel free to hold onto your “owner, on his acre, with his two cows, six chickens, mixing labor with his row of tomatoes” exclusive property concept as the world that increasingly creates, exchanges, and subjectively values information as property (i.e. as means for resolving conflicting claims), runs you over like a freight train.
Z.
Maybe you should respond to this:
No. I’m not asking you a philosophical question. I am asking you (as a praxeologist) if ideas are or are not property, and what definition you apply to come to that conclusion. I assumed you would answer this question precisely as it doesn’t require a value judgment, and seems completely within the realm of Mises’ analytical system.
In reference to Mises again, property in good G makes possible the production of good F which is an input to good G. The traditional model of property, which is founded upon production and not rivalry, thus validates private property in G.
You enjoying a party at my house does not conflict with my vacation, but it does conflict with my intended use for my house while I’m away on vacation. Hence the house is still a scarce or rivalrous good. Does that help you understand what I mean?
One thing that doesn’t seem to have been brought up (but which Mr. Kinsella does bring up in Against Intellectual Property) is the fact that many IP-type arrangements can be satisfied, or at least approximated, through private contracts. However, since contracts cannot cover unknown third parties, this kind of situation is more limited than the statist IP law we live under today.
I was responding to the absurd idea that using non-free things to produce free things is contradictory and won’t happen. If I’m attacking a strawman here, please point that out (with explanation).
How do you define not using information anymore?
Aren’t all concepts question-begging? That is, aren’t they all subjective? Quoting Shakespeare: “What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“Property” can be defined however one wishes. Depending on one’s definition of “property”, along with other concepts, there are only certain logical propositions that can be derived. But reality doesn’t change. What’s the problem here?
If I understand correctly what you mean by “production”, then anything not produced by human hands or tools cannot be considered property, in your view. Since all things that are produced by human hands or tools must come from things that are not, this concept of property seems to be self-contradictory.
