I love the LVMI for the most part, have learned a lot from it and have even donated to it. My one area of disagreement with it is with regards to the concept of intellectual property rights. I certainly agree that that out current copyright, trademark and patent laws are unjust in many ways. This is nothing inherent with IP in my view but the fact that these properties are “protected” by government. We should not expect government to protect intellectual property any better than it delivers medicine. Did Mises himself write about this? What were his views if any? What are your views? Is this something LVMI scholars generally agree on or is there a great deal of disagreement on this issue?
So long as the government maintains a monopoly on the protection of property, we should expect it to protect intellectual property as well.
That doesn’t mean the government is efficient at protecting property, or that it has the proper incentive to do so. But intellectual property is no different from any other form of property in that aspect.
Stranger, I agree with you. Some of the articles I have read on Mises.org seem to oppose the concept of IP entirely however. This is the one and only area where I seem to part company with most of the scholars who presently write for the LVMI.
It’s an evolving process. But suffice to say, those who are in favor of IP are being intellectually spanked left, right, up, down, and inside out. The case against IP has already been demonstrably made along Austrian Economics principles; now it’s just a matter of the ideas of that demonstration being generally absorbed.
But here’s my latest contribution against the possibility of validly contracting non-copying:
The point is you can’t make contracts on property that you don’t own. Music mixed with public domain word lyrics can’t be validly contracted. Neither can music that copies common blues chord progressions. You can certainly sell whatever music you make that is represented on actual physical property. You just can’t make a contract preventing copying when you don’t completely exclusively own the ideas that are mixed with your production. And note that a contract is a COPY of the idea of a contract, certainly not invented and created by the latest person to write a contract.
There is no “chain of voluntary contract extending back to the point of origin”. Merely by trading you are COPYING the idea of trade first created by someone else. And that’s the point, all creative production is BUNDLING COPIES of ideas created by others. And that is not exclusively ownable by someone. It would be absolutely absurd for someone to pretend they are selling you a physical cd disc along with the exclusive rights to use of the English language. There are no exclusive rights to use of the English language. Anyone who mixes their creative content with use of the English language is voiding their claim of exclusive creative production. Therefore, contracts made upon mixed ideas not exclusively created are invalid. You are attempting to sell not just your portion of exclusively created content but also trying to sell the COPIED mixed portion of non-exclusively created content along with it. Not only is it a hypocritical stance arguing against copying whilst simultaneously copying, but it’s as absurd as attempting to sell someone exclusive rights to breath air.
It’s not just “building upon”, it’s COPYING the idea foundations. You cannot validly contract thought control. Minds and property are irrevocably shaped and influenced by the expression of ideas. You can’t yell in a public square whilst demanding others shut their ears until they pay you. Yet that’s exactly what copyright is attempting to enforce.
Contract itself is far less valid than most people believe, but that’s a different topic. You mix your labor of breathing with the air, but you don’t therefore own the air. And nor can you validly contract with someone to not breath air, or not copy your breathing of air. It’s by its nature not capable of exclusive ownership, and therefore not capable of valid contract. However, you can certainly put air in a scuba tank and sell a scuba tank of air, and validly contract to receive a scuba tank of air. Just as you can validly put ideas on a physical piece of property, such as a concert performance on exclusive private property, or a music recording on physical cd. However, you can never validly contract the non-copying of any ideas. Even if you could, the second person to contract the non-copying of any ideas would be COPYING the first person who invented that contract. And that would be a violation of free trade resulting in the abject poverty of completely isolated non-trading individuals.
But usually creative artists are full of massively inflated egos, and they are conveniently deaf, blind, and dumb to the innumerable ways in which they have copied the ideas of others. And clearly their production benefits from copying the ideas of others. And clearly all who copy benefit from copying. And clearly there is always more to copy then an individual person can truly uniquely produce, thus meaning wealth increases exponentially from unlimited copying for absolutely every person. It’s an epistemological impossibility to not copy others (even the idea of exclusively owned pieces of property are copies of other exclusively owned pieces of property); therefore, contracts against copying are invalid.
By this same logic “Cement mixed with public domain sand can’t be validly contracted.”
Should I not be permited to have ownership over my driveway?
EDIT:
This is an ad hominim if I have ever read one! And inaccurate as well. I frequent a coffee shop across the street from an art school and have met enough artists to know they DO know the origins of the ideas they copy. They STUDY the origins of the ideas they copy. This does not make it any less “their work” when they do so long as they ad something new to the picture (so to speak.)
Yes, that means you cannot create a valid contract against others using ALL the sand which exists, even though they are many uses of sand which copy the idea of use of sand.
It’s really not an ad hominim. The vast majority of creative artists do indeed have inflated egos and are deaf, blind, and dumb in so far to the extent as they fail to recognize the innumerable ways in which they are copying the ideas of others.
That’s right that STUDYING and LEARNING occurs precisely by the methodology of COPYING. But they copy ideas created by others into their work. They BUNDLE ideas created by others into their work. That makes their property claims as invalid as planting a tree on my property casting a shadow on my neighbor’s property makes my neighbor’s property thus mine. Adding something new is BUNDLING the creative ideas of others, is making invalid claims upon the ideas created by others.
The idea that intellectual property exists is as absurd as the idea that it should be totally abolished.
Apparently you have not met very many artists. Or, perhaps you have met a great many artist wannabees.
Not my point. If I dredge sand from the ocean floor and mix it with my cement can it be validly contracted?
There are three important questions to consider in this. 1. Is the original artist dead. 2. Did the original artist will or sell his or her ideas to another person who is still alive? 3. Is the secondary work a true “substitute” or competitor of the original work? For example: Andy Warhol’s painting of a Campbell’s soup can is not going to serve as a substitute or competitor of a true can of Campbell’s soup. No reasonable person is going to mistakenly purchase one of his paintings thinking that it will contain soup and sate his appetite. Likewise, Marcel Duchamp’s famous Mona Lisa parody is not likely to be confused with the real McCoy. However, a skilled artist who drew an Xmen lookalike comic book with the same characters and same basic setting might well be confused for the real McCoy. It also might serve as a substitute for the real thing.
I was thinking about this today as I was listening to the King Biscuit Flower Hour on the XM.
If ever someone wanted to do a study on the perils and pitfalls of copyright there’s a good place to start.
From what I can recall, King Biscuit owns the rights to the physical recording in their possession but the rights to the ‘performance’ is owned by either 1) the artist, 2) the artist’s label, 3) the venue or 4) King Biscuit. It all depends on the terms of the contracts between the artists, their label and the venue where it was performed and as one can imagine there is a lot of contention between the first three on who gets the money if King Biscuit sells a copy to the public.
I’m sure I’ve left someone out who also has ownership claims but this is all off the top of my head.
I think all King Biscuit ever wanted to do was release it all into the public domain so everyone could enjoy the performances but now they release what they can for free or for fee and the rest gets to stay locked up in their vaults for, what is it now, life + 70 years or some such insanity.
All I have to say about all this is that it’s a very good thing that there are a lot of really, really good bands that let archive.org distribute legal fan recordings of their live performances. I haven’t actually bought a CD in years since the RIAA members decided it’s a good business model to sue their customers, directly benefit from the P2P networks while simultaneously trying to shut them down and root people’s boxen yet I have a 30gig iPod that’s full to the brim with live legal music.
Gonna have to clear out some space for some audio books/podcasts that the fine folks at mises.org have generously provided for us eventually…
As I said in my first post in this thread, I agree that there are a great many injustices in the way that IP laws are enforced at the moment. But the fact that there are problems in the enforcement of traffic laws does not mean that we should eliminate the concept of roads. It simply means they should be privatized.
Of course. Nobody else owned or created that sand. But if you dredge sand from the ocean floor and mix it with cement you will be COPYING the ideas of others.
None of those questions are important or material. All the artistic works are bundling ideas created by others into their work; even the dead artists did this bundling. When people trade in a free market do they bundle the property of others into their trades? No, because if they randomly made unmerited claims over the property of others that would result in violence. And you can’t will you neighbor’s house to your decendants.
I think you are once again missing my point. All physical property, if you go back far enough into the sands of time, belonged to no single human being. This is why I brought up the point of dredging sand from the ocean. It is when a person combines natural resources with effort or ingenuity (or sometimes homesteading) that one creates property. Humans may one day be homesteading on Mars. It is true that there are a great many ideas in the “public domain” and some people choose to release their works into the creative commons. I have no issue with people who choose to make their works for the creative commons any more than I have an issue with a baker who donates the product of his physical labor to a homeless shelter. Neither act negates the concept of property - physical or intellectual. When an artist combines ideas that already exist with his or her own ideas and ingenuity a new work is created. A new separate and distinct idea is born. Many writers have borrowed liberally from Shakespeare, the Bible, mythology and other sources. Some have even titled their works after lines from these works. However, these new works are the property of those writers because they have added their own effort to the literary cannon. When J.K. Rowling writes her novels she isn’t just regurgitating old European mythology but creating NEW mythology of her own. She is forging a new sword from old public domain steel.
Mises and Rothbard did not address the subject much. The current anti-IP movement is young.
I agree with it very strongly on several grounds.
Austrian:
Austrians ask “Will this policy have the desired effect?” IP was created to improve access to works of art and new technologies, and reward creaters. It has failed miserably in both regards. And since the creation of the internet its failure has been laughable.
Libertarian:
People who do not respect copyrights are not violent. Invading the property of a person who downloads a song from the internet from a willing provider violates the NAP. IP would require passive(non-violent) enforcement. However, Industry attempts at this, like copy-protected CDs, have been failing miserably. So they have been resorting increasely to government violence.
Natural Rights:
Ideas are non-scarce goods, the only way an IP law can work is controlling what people can do with their own labor and property. This violates self ownership.
I should explain this because it might be confusing.
Stealing REAL property is a violent crime, even when done through stealth. Labor is a required component of real property. By stealing property you are not just claiming ownership of nature, but also the labor itself. Its a form of retroactive slavery. But by copying a piece of art I am not depriving any person of their copy, so I am not seperating any person from their own labor.
If you believe copying a piece of art is a crime(I certianly don’t), it is a non-violent crime; more akin to a thought crime than a property dispute.
And just like the artists, copiers combine natural resources with their effort or ingenuity creating their own property, just the same as different people dredging sand from the ocean to mix with cement copy the ideas of each other but still create their own unique property.
And when a copier combines ideas that already exist with his or her own ideas and ingenuity on his or her own copy a new work is created on their own private physical property. This new work is commonly called a “copy”.
That’s just false. Innumerable older ideas are bundled into the artistic work. And my recognition of bundled ideas created by others in all creative artistic content works is an epistemological breakthrough in the analysis of the “intellectual property” debate.
You cannot legitimately trespass on the property of others, add your effort to their property, such as painting their fence, or writing about wizards flying on broomsticks, and then call that your property. Your outlook is an epistemological contradiction.
I can think of half a dozen artists just off the top of my head that not only recognized the ‘bundling’ concept but built their whole artistic career around it.
Picasso was a notorious ‘intellectual property’ thief.
Railing against copyright has been going on in the art world long before it entered the general public dialog, artists have intentionally violated copyright as an artistic statement for the exact reason that you cite – that ‘innumerable older ideas are bundled into the artistic work.’
‘In art, one has to kill one’s father’ doesn’t literally advocate patricide…
I’ve posted this before, I’ll post it again. It is necessary to understand the anti-IP position.
I’ve been thinking that IP goes perhaps into the same category as the free-rider problem. The ideas ones presents to the public stand the risk of being used without giving the ‘original thinker’ any profit. What becomes important is that by using someoneelses idea you don’t make him worse off. This could be done by f.ex. stealing technological know-how to produce something in case no one has presented it publicly yet.
I remember that a while ago there was a daily article about the positive effects of the free-rider problem but I couldn’t currently find it. But I think that the problems of IP could easily be taccled the same way, just let the market decide whether someone wants to present his ideas or not.
Could be this one, Solving the “Problem” of Free Riding.
Thanks much for that link! Actually, I’m become convinced that you have every useful link imaginable stored somewhere on your computer.
To everyone else, there’s another link within the PDF that Inquisitor posted that contains a much smaller write-up by Kinsella on IP (if you don’t want to go through the 54 pages of the PDF). You can find it here: