It seems to me that if I write a book, I should profit by it, and should be protected (by copyright) against it being stolen by, say, a publisher with greater ability to distribute it. They could essentially take all the benefit of my work in this way. Or if I spend millions creating a new drug, shouldn’t I be protected (by patent) from someone else marketing a cheaper version (because they don’t have the research costs to make up), and thereby making all the profit from my work?
I have read a number of books from this site, and find them to be very reasonable and insightful, so I feel I must be missing some key point on this particular topic. Could someone enlighten me as to the core Austrian argument against IP?
Well, IP assumes property rights. However, property rights are rights over specific physical objects (a book: To Kill A Mockingbird). As they’re currently enforced, IP rights are rights over all physical objects of a given class (all books and information storage devices that are at any point fashioned into a form that expresses the same information as To Kill A Mockingbird). [This argument is paraphrased from Clayton’s recent post.]
Now what would be supported in the natural order absent the state is anyone’s guess, but it seems to me that such an odd concept as a claim on an entire class of objects would only enjoy minimal support, any.
You’re saying if you write “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I shortly after write “To forcefully Bring About the Death of the Sage Thrasher,” that I have not commited theft against you? What a fallacy.
I would love to be the rich man in that world who takes (not steals, remember) every scientist, artist, song-writer, and poet’s works to diseminate as my own through my much more vast distribution powers.
And Nir, how much does he want to profit? Whatever the market will pay for it… what kind of question was that?
His ability to be the sole seller of the idea as he was the first to formulate it. Whether or not the market pays for it, the question is if it is in someone else’s rights to take the work and sell it as their own.
I don’t know whether you are referring to attribution or just the general concept of property rights over ‘ideas’ ‘concepts’ ‘patterns’ and the like. If the latter since none of those things are rival they are not candidates for being property and granting artificial rights over them as if they were property creates a conflict of actually rival goods.
You may be a talentless copycat hack of a writer, but no you haven’t stolen anything from him.
I would love you to be that man, too! How much better off we would all be if someone had such vast distributive powers and the ability to more cheaply provide such a wide variety of goods and services to the consumer.
You are using a different definition of rivalrous than he is. In your definition, if I sell cars and you open a car factory, we are rivalrous and so one of us needs to stop selling cars. Nir’s definition simply means that the products are scarce, which itself is a fundamental property of physical stuff - if I am using this metal to make a car, you can’t be. Ownership of the metal to make and sell the cars is rivalrous. If I print “To Forcefully Bring About the Death of a Sage Thrasher” it in no way keeps you from printing any number of copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, or even any number of your own copies of “To Forcefully Bring About the Death of a Sage Thrasher”.
Pro-IP arguments basically boil down to protectionist attempts to guarantee profits for select producers. It just so happens that, in the IP case, the selection is made by being first in line.
“I would love you to be that man, too! How much better off we would all be if someone had such vast distributive powers and the ability to more cheaply provide such a wide variety of goods and services to the consumer.”
Why should I even become a scientist at all if the moment I tell my theory to someone with the ability to distribute it, they will take and sell it as their own leaving me a pennilless genius?
"You are using a different definition of rivalrou…"
No, what you are claiming I said would actually be if I said “I write a book, and you open a factory that makes books.” They are not related at all. But if I rewrite Human Action, call it my own, give Mises no credit, and make a profit off of it… that is out and out thievery of Mises right to own his own mind.
No one here is arguing for lying. Selling a physical copy of a book and saying “I came up with the ideas in here” are two different things. Last time I bought a book on Amazon, I wasn’t shocked to find out that the author wasn’t Mr. Amazon.
Note: I edited my above post a little bit while you were posting what I have quoted below.
Why should you become a car salesman if a guy across the street can become a better car salesman and leave you penniless?
Why you should become a scientist or car salesman is a subjective valuation that I cannot make for you. Your argument for IP is flawed utilitarianism. If you find being a scientist doesn’t provide enough profit (monetary or otherwise) for you, I recommend not becoming a scientist. Others will change their business model and continue to prosper in the field.
Your lack of entrepreneurial imagination in creating profitable business models without resorting to State-granted protectionist monopoly schemes is no reason for me to support IP.
No, it isn’t. It makes you a liar by claiming you wrote it. Perhaps guilty of fraud towards your buyers, but no thief of Mises’ mind. The hang up here seems to be in not differentiating between scarce goods and non-scarce goods.
why should anyone else take it and sell it when yet a further someone else will take it and sell it as their own leaving them penniless…?
If you wish to pursue science and wish monetary compensation you must seek a way of being paid to conduct science, it is an entrepreneurial challenge. Here is a favourite anecdote of mine. there was a man called William Sealy Gosset He developed statistical techniques advancing the discipline. The story is that he went to work for Guinness (brewery). Gosset would apply his statistical knowledge both in the brewery and on the farm—to the selection of the best yielding varieties of barley. Another researcher at Guinness had previously published a paper containing trade secrets of the Guinness brewery. To prevent further disclosure of confidential information, Guinness prohibited its employees from publishing any papers regardless of the contained information. This meant that Gosset was unable to publish his works under his own name. Gosset therefore used the pseudonym Student for his publications to avoid their detection by his employer. Thus his most famous achievement is now referred to as Student’s t-distribution, which might otherwise have been Gosset’s t-distribution.
There are two things of interest to me in this story. He developed technique as a paid employee of a company using knowledge to gain competitive advantage. He made knowledge public without monetary incentive to do so (actually was a risk)
I’m not selling copies of Human Action in this hypothetical. I am rewriting it in my own words (but the concepts are all exactly the same), giving it a new name, and selling it as my own, with no concession that Mises even HAD these ideas.
Lets say I write a history book. Then you research the same material I researched and write an identical history book (in different words, of course) without researching or citing my book. What should happen and why?
“Why should you become a car salesman if a guy across the street can become a better car salesman and leave you penniless?”
That is irrelevant. A better question would be, why invent the combustible engine if someone else can just invent it and take credit for it?
What if I am working on this theory, not telling anyone of it before I can get a distribution contract, and I go out to buy milk one day. As I am out my roommate copies all my notes and sells my theory as his own?
As I previously stated, I am less than an ameteur to this forums’ methods, explain to me the differece between scarce/non-scarce.
“I’m not selling copies of Human Action in this hypothetical. I am rewriting it in my own words (but the concepts are all exactly the same), giving it a new name, and selling it as my own, with no concession that Mises even HAD these ideas.”
While I certainly disagree that this would violate Mises’ so-called IP rights (since I agree with the anti-IP people here), I do wonder about fraud in a case like this.
If someone is producing books, claiming that the ideas or patterns are his own, when in fact they can be shown to be “stolen” from someone else, couldn’t that constitute fraud against anyone who purchased the book since it is deceptively packaged as new/independent idea/pattern during the sale? What’s the standard for fraud in a case like this?