That’s the point I have been trying to make.
You and I have had our differences, but that comment earned you a bro hug.
Also, I like your new avatar. Yellow is a good color for bald white people.
Stranger: “There you have the slippery slope of rivalry-based libertarianism: your property rights are eroded until you can’t even enjoy the privacy of your own home.”
Hunh? Just close your curtains.
The best indicator of running out of arguments is when “statists” makes an appearance. What on earth does the state have to do with anything in this discussion? I thought Stranger was pushing the envelope when he started calling you communists but, man, you keep ticking all the boxes towards it. Are you really saying that without the state’s protection property (information or otherwise) couldn’t possibly exist?
If a man in China mixes labor with a pattern that someone mixed labor with in the US, and its the same pattern ( praxeologically it cannot be, but I will play along with the pro IP crowd for a minute) then you’re telling me this Chinese man has stolen a pattern the American homesteaded first?
The difference between objects and patterns is, they aren’t rival. Everyone in the world can “homestead” an idea like language, and there is no conflict. Everyone cannot homestead a single book, or a 1,000 or a billion books without conflict.
I don’t think you understood what I meant by the labor theory of ideas.
But that would violate Strangers’ right to make you avert your eyes!
z1235: “The best indicator of running out of arguments is when “statists” makes an appearance. What on earth does the state have to do with anything in this discussion?”
The IP laws you guys OPPOSE ABOLISHING ARE STATE LAWS. HELLOOOOO
There are boundary problems in information property just as there are in physical property. Plenty of latter have been debated in this forum. The likelihood of a Chinese man creating a 10GB sequence within informational proximity of the movie “Avatar” is smaller than the possibility of me literally walking through you (as allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics). I expounded on this in my replies in the “Information as Property” thread.
Pray tell, where are physical property laws written and who is their enforcer?
z1235: “There are boundary problems in information property just as there are in physical property. Plenty of latter have been debated in this forum. The likelihood of a Chinese man creating a 10GB sequence within informational proximity of the movie “Avatar” is smaller than the possibility of me literally walking through you (as allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics).”
So waht? you are presupposing here that copying information and using it–what we call “learning”–is a bad thing. IT’s not.
z1234: "Pray tell, where are physical property laws written and who is their enforcer? "
this very question is statist and positivist: written? why does it have to be “written” to be a law? Are you aware that property law operates without, and precedes, the state? Like, say, roads and education. Are you aware that IP law is a creature of the state and cannot and would not exist without legislation? You know one of the first ones, in England–it was 1623 or so Guess what it was called: THE STATUTE OF MONOPOLIES. Statists used to be honest. We used to have a Department of War. Now it’s Defense. Etc. Now STATE GRANTED MONOPOLIES are called “intellectual property.” IT’s all propaganda and PR to dull the minds of the somatic citizenry. Apparently it’s worked.
The IP laws you guys OPPOSE ABOLISHING ARE STATE LAWS. HELLOOOOO
Libertarianism is not about abolishing all things the state has taken over.
this very question is statist and positivist: written? why does it have to be “written” to be a law? Are you aware that property law operates without, and precedes, the state? Like, say, roads and education. Are you aware that IP law is a creature of the state and cannot and would not exist without legislation?
The Internet is also a creature of the state, but that does not mean that it could not, and won’t, exist without it.
Stranger: “Libertarianism is not about abolishing all things the state has taken over.”
IP law is not some private institution the state took over. It is something new and evil the state created–just like Social Security and taxation and the federal reserve.
He might think that businesses could enforce his “IP” laws in a “free society”, just like you think that businesses could enforce your physical property laws in a “free society”. I don’t think that the question of whether ideas, information, or whatever are objectively “scarce” is particularly important, past defining your terms and being clear about what you are talking about. I think that it would easily be possible to be pro-“IP”, but still understand that it makes no sense to talk about conflicts apart from fighting over something in the physical world. We just need to figure out whether it would be expedient or not to put these “IP” laws into practice.
But I think that the biggest problem with the pro-“IP” position is that it sets up arbitrary boundaries between “ownable” ideas and non-“ownable” ideas, which tend to match the same arbitrary boundaries which we see that the state enforces in our society. I think that the pro-“IP” position is just an other failure to get out of the “statist paradigm”, as some people have put it.
If somebody starts selling oil someplace and making a profit, the pro-“IP” people at least around here of course won’t tell us that we should make laws in order to bar other people from moving in and destroying their profit. They would know that people moving in like that is just how the market works. If we were to try to do that, we would just be messing with the correction of the allocation of resources going on in that situation. Nobody here would disagree with that sort of reasoning, whether or not they are pro-“IP”.
But they use the same reasoning in order to come to their pro-“IP” conclusions. If somebody starts putting certain marks down on a bunch of pieces of paper, binds them, and starts selling them and making a profit, they think that we should in this situation make laws in order to bar other people from moving in and destroying their profit.
But what is the difference? I don’t see how they could draw the line between the ideas which they think people should be able to “own”, such as what to print on a piece of paper, what grooves to put on a CD, what buttons to push on a machine, and so on, and the ideas which they think people shouldn’t be able to “own”, such as where to sell oil, what price to set for what you are selling, what industry to go into, and so on.
This just really isn’t true.
Clayton -
This isn’t about likelihoods. And why does it have to be Avatar? If you really believe patterns are property, then language, or a mathematical formula, or a sequence of notes played in music would be sufficient examples. Are you willing to argue that someone in in Africa who sings a similar sequence of notes as someone in Japan is committing an IP violation?
If you really believe what you have written, then you would be arguing that. And I am pretty sure you can see how obviously ridiculous that is.
But they use the same reasoning in order to come to their pro-“IP” conclusions. If somebody starts putting certain marks down on a bunch of pieces of paper, binds them, and starts selling them and making a profit, they think that we should in this situation make laws in order to bar other people from moving in and destroying their profit.
IP is not about protecting profit. In all likelihood, what you write on a bunch of pieces of paper is worthless. IP is about protecting exclusivity. What you write on pieces of paper is your own, and you alone is to decide what will happen from it.
Property is the right to exclude. If you cannot exclude someone from your computer networks or exclude someone from recording what goes on inside your house, then you do not own anything at all.
I already copyrighted binary ‘0’ and ‘1’ and all combinations thereof of any length.
Clayton -
But your example was someone next door, who could clearly see in your open window.
You’re not talking about the right to exclude, you’re claiming control over their person (where they look) and their property (what they do with their own recording equipment).
That’s where your strange version of IP falls apart. You end up with property rights conflicts when you try to enforce this arbitrary notion of one man, one idea when ideas are not rivalrous or scarce. Any property rights doctrine which leads to property rights violations (like the state itself) is contradictory and in conflict with logic.
No one is claiming you are not a sovereign in your own home. What we are saying is that your sovereignty in your home, can’t also extend to my home without undermining the notion of private property ownership used as a justification to extend in the first place.
You’re not talking about the right to exclude, you’re claiming control over their person (where they look) and their property (what they do with their own recording equipment).
Yes I am claiming this control - they are excluded from using these on my property. It doesn’t matter that they own them - this only gives them the right, reciprocally, to exclude me from using them.
It appears that anti-IPists have severe deficiencies in other areas of property rights.