Well, if you hack into my computer and copy the program, you’re violating my property rights and I can persecute you.
If I sell you software, and I have a brain in my head, I will get you to sign a contract where you give up your right to copy and distribute it. If you do so anyway, you’re breaking a contract, and I can persecute you however was stipulated in the contract.
Actually, I don’t think network violations constitute violations of property rights. By connecting your computer to a public network (such as the internet) you are implicitly agreeing that any access to the machine is a permitted access. That you meant for the machine only to be accessed by yourself, as identified by your password, does not constitute a publicly visible property boundary. If you don’t have a secure operating system, or don’t keep your OS updated to the latest definitions or use an easily-guessed password, a hacker can gain access to your machine and the fact he has access is only indicative of your own failure to properly secure the machine against uses you did not want it to be put to. Otherwise, the courts would have to start reading people’s minds regarding their “intent” in accessing a system. For example, if I’m banned from mises.org Forums but the forum software is insecure and is easily bypassed and I still gain access to the forums, the mises.org administration might sue me at court claiming I “hacked” into their system. But this is absurd, I didn’t “hack” into anything, I simply connected to the server despite the “intent” of the mises.org admins to ban me. Either a system can be accessed or it cannot. If it’s accessible, then you are taking on the risk that someone you don’t want to access your system, may just do it. If you don’t want the risk of someone unauthorized connecting to your system, then simply take it off the public network (the computer security term for this is maintaining an “air gap”). If it is not connected to a public network, then someone must violate your property rights in order to access it, that is, they must physically enter the property in which your computer is stored and access it without your permission, which would constitute an unlawful invasion and destruction of your property (any alteration of the state of the computer’s memory - even by turning it on - would constitute “property destruction” since there is no way to distinguish between a mere alteration and destruction).
Clayton -
P.S. It’s “prosecute” not “persecute” 
IMO, it is faulty to equate IP “theft” with other types of theft, because IP theft does not deprive the victim of his property.
Everyone might agree that X is theft but if it costs too much to enforce it there’s no point.
Any crime against the poor is unprofitable to enforce by definition. Crimes against the rich have customers willing to pay for enforcement by definition.
What you really need is some social darwinism to round out your hypothesis.
Any crime against the poor is unprofitable to enforce by definition.
you must have ‘poor’ definitions. who eats at macdonalds , millionaires or …?
Actually, I don’t think network violations constitute violations of property rights. By connecting your computer to a public network (such as the internet) you are implicitly agreeing that any access to the machine is a permitted access.
I don’t see how making something availiable to the public gives them a right to use it. It is like saying that if I leave my car with the keys in the igntion it is not theft if someone takes it. Granted the insurance company will probably not compensate you, but it is still theft.
Hacking is a property violation. It is not like readin the newspaper over my shoulder, it involves actual physical use and alterations of my property (spinning drives, sending electrical impulses thry my cables and processors and so forth). The physical damage itself from one intrusion has barley any value at all (a few cents of electricity and ware and tare on mechanical parts perhaps), but since it is a violation I should also be able to get some compensation for extrapolated damages that is linked to it like the disruption of my busniess the leaked information may cause.
Using the same reasoning that if I steal your car so you can’t get to work I don’t only have to pay for the car I also have to pay for a lost days of income and some other troubles it caused you.
The information that you actually send out of your computer though has no protection unless there are contracts between you and whoever you send it to (and past) that specifies how they should handle it. ISPs would probably have such contracts if it wasn’t already regulated in law, and similar contracts with eachother. Also you can solve the possibliy of people snooping traffic legally with technological solutions rather easily.
So none of this is unique to IP, which would seem to confirm my original idea that the IP debate doesn’t matter.
In principle no, but in practice it is very different. And the justice system have to make practical consideration about which and how to enforce the principles.
SHUT UP
I don’t know how different it will be in practice. Like we discussed, one of the major complications of contract enforcement of IP is the potential damages to third parties. This problem is also inherent in all forms of self defense.
Particularly for like, the major IP, such as trade secrets and patents. Media has millions of direct consumers who are all difficult to PROSECUTE THANK YOU CLAYTON, as opposed to patents, which are consumed only by specialized and open companies. Although it would be cool to see if the market developes shadow corporations to try and stay out of the public eye
I wonder if shadow corporations already exist :!
/sigh. Its like everyone who argues against anarcho capitalists thinks we haven’t already thought of their obvious objections. Are we stupid? Don’t you think we know you’re going to cry about the poorest of the poor? National defense? Regulation? Do you think we are such hacks that we don’t have any intelligent responses after all these years? Before you critisize ancapism again, THINK. Even if you don’t agree with us, we have a rebuttal to whatever third grade logic is moving through your head. So whatever you say, make it as sophisticated and complete as possible. Otherwise you’re just trolling.
@hkarnoldson: David Friedman discusses the problem facing private property absolutism by noting that there is a spectrum of interference that is smooth and continuous. On the one hand, he points out that you need lights in your house at night time to see what you’re doing and we would consider it a violation of your property rights if your neighbor tried to snuff out your lights, even if the lights are visible from your neighbors property. Yet if you set up a 1 Megawatt laser and started shining it around on his property (even if it didn’t alter the property), we would likely consider the neighbor to have a right to interfere to protect himself and his property from unwanted intrusion by the laser beam.
Rothbard uses the criterion that a property invasion must be “material”, probably to exclude the situation of someone claiming that a pornographic billboard (for example) on their neighbor’s property is a violation of his property rights because its reflected light particles “invade” his property, that is, the billboard is visible from his property. But the intensity of the light matters, which means that it’s not a simple criterion, it is a matter of degree, so I think Rothbard falls short on this one.
When you connect your computer to a public network, you are making an electrical connection (even if it is wireless, it’s still mediated through the EM spectrum) between your equipment and the network equipment. All accesses to your machine are performed by the nearest piece of network equipment to which you are connected, most likely a network switch. The hacker, Hank, who is remotely connecting to your machine is only using the connection to the network which you’ve established in a way that you did not intend it to be used. You should easily be able to see the problem with this… your intentions are subjective. Electrical networks are more like billboards that reflect photons than laser beams that are high-energy concentrations of directed photons. If you buy a piece of property intending that no one in the vicinity of your property erect a pornographic billboard, that “intention” does not constitute a property right, it is just a personal expectation. If Hank accesses your computer equipment over a network in a way that you did not intend it to be accessed, what property boundaries has he crossed? Where has he committed coercion or fraud? He’s like the irritating perv who erects an objectionable billboard in that he is violating your personal expectations but his accesses do not constitute property invasion.
Clayton -
Isnt this too strong, it goes other ways too.
The hacker, Hank, who is remotely connecting to your machine is only using the connection to the network which you’ve established in a way that you did not intend it to be used. >>
The squatter s. who is sitting on your couch had only used the connection to the street-network (‘door’) which you’ve established in a way that you did not intend it to be used
?
Define collectivist vs. individualist as black and white and not a hell of a lot of a gray. There’s a challenge.
If the foundations of contracts are themselves ideas on structure, binding agreement and whatsoever rituals(as we agree),
whose to say endorsing a particular format of agreement isn’t an extension of self-ownership, ney, idea ownership(logical conclusion)?
You can’t prove that it isn’t. It’s a voluntary cartelization of customs and culture norms.
IP is a subset of contraction (my assertion). Therefore IP exists.
You can’t prove that it isn’t. It’s a voluntary cartelization of customs and culture norms.
Are you saying that I agreed to IP laws?
IP is a subset of contraction. Therefore IP exists.
Legal positivism existing doesn’t justify it.
I’m asserting that you don’t agree to IP laws because this is not pure anarchy.
If you take out the state, the legal system, whatever arbitrators beside the original individuals, in a hypothetical scenario and have two sovereign individuals competing in the market and one comes up with an idea, that idea-originator wants to, in effect, cartelize that idea for maximum self-pleasure (profit, recognition, etc.).
No, but its lack of existence wouldn’t justify theft of profit-potential innovation.
This rhetorical trash is what every single IP argument here without exception consists. Obviously, the regular theory of property already encompasses all that exists. No addition is possible. You can only modify the original. It’s as simple as that. Case closed.
I’m asserting that you don’t agree to IP laws because this is not pure anarchy.
If you take out the state, the legal system, whatever arbitrators beside the original individuals, in a hypothetical scenario and have two sovereign individuals competing in the market and one comes up with an idea, that idea-originator wants to, in effect, cartelize that idea for maximum self-pleasure (profit, recognition, etc.).
I see what you are saying. The problem is that there can be an agreement for B to not copy A’s work, but A has no contract with the disinterested 3rd party, C, to not copy the work.
No, but its lack of existence wouldn’t justify theft of profit-potential innovation.
Copying isn’t theft. Your idea, or book, or CD remains intact when C copies it. Your idea is only a “good” insomuch as another desires it. You can only direct, contractually, the actions of those you decide to share the idea with, not 3rd parties.
Profit potential belongs (if it is even possible to own) to everyone because everyone has the potential to realize profit.
If copying isn’t theft, then how come copying and piracy hurt sales of commercialized intellectual property?
I want this racket to exist, because I came up with the idea!
Marketplace competition is theft?
If all men were created equal, then sure.