My thoughts on IP and anti-IP tunnel vision

[liberty_student]

@Maxliberty

Yes, I understand for you what people are voluntarily doing in the marketplace is irrelevant, for me the market matters.

Of course it matters to you. You haven’t been able to make any arguments that aren’t logical fallacies.

@Maxliberty

By the common definition of the word unique, ideas can be unique. People have responded to your theory of property on numerous occassions you just refuse to acknowledge. We don’t agree. It is that simple. Your arguement is not convincing.

let’s say ideas can be unique. In which case, when someone else learns an idea, then it is a new idea because that instance of the idea is also unique.

Either way, property or not, the IP argument fails.

@Maxliberty

Contracting with people to limit their own actions is not impossible. people are in control over their own voluntary actions and can make contraacts that limit them.

Doublespeak. Re-read what I wrote.

@Maxliberty

Yes, and the protection of ideas and inventions for some companies is definitely profitable.

Utilitarianism. I can make profitability arguments for assassination, theft and slavery. Whoopity-doo!

@Maxliberty

Well, there will never be a free-market by your definition because you require universal agreement on your viewpoint.

No, just rational agreement. Honestly, it would be really funny to see you in a free market, running around trying to sell a book, but people have to sign a contract to read or buy it, and you can’t even tell them what it is about, because they might “steal your idea” or refuse to sign the contract.

IP is only possible with implicit, state enforced monopoly. Even then, it doesn’t work (as piracy shows), but an individual has little chance in a free market, competing against zero IP and free products, by demanding payment in advance for something of questionable quality and legal liability once absorbed.

@Maxliberty

Don’t worry about being rude gutless, because we are enemies as per your request.

We’re enemies because you’re not very smart, which is why you resort to name calling, strawmen and other logical fallacies. I argue with you like I would with any hardcore statist believer. I don’t expect to change your mind, just to use your lousy positions as a demonstrative tool for other readers.

[JackSkylark]

You are wrong, I’m not arguing examples (sometimes it’s nice to use one in order to better communitcate a point, but it’s not the basis of my argument), nor am I arguing on grounds of utilitarianism (in this way you are creating a strawman). I am arguing that contracts can include intangibles, but still require a burden of proof by the plaintiff.

You don’t understand scarcity, and claim it is just what could be rather than what is (you have constructed an imaginary world to support your argument that I find disturbingly similar to Marxian assumptions). You are, for some reason, unable to see a demand for ideas - claiming that the market price of 0, is somehow not purely related to supply (forgive me if this was someone else who said that). But since there is a demand for ideas, if the supply is not infinite (meaning, not everyone has full access to the idea) then there will be a price on the market (since they are valued). Because of this, it could be in the interest of a full owner of an idea, to sell conditional ownership of that same idea.

I directly challenge your definition of property, since you do not allow property of the mind (and in that case, of self). Theoretical arguments of IP must begin in the full ownership of self (which includes ownership of the mind), but this intellectual property can not extend beyond self (since everyone else owns theirselves as well). But, contracts are supreme and create a relative structure of property between individuals. Contracts are enforced after the passing of a burden of proof. But, this proof in the case of ideas - can and, in many times, must use the action of the defendant to determine the motive and mind.

If contracts related to the sale of ideas are a valid form of contract, then copyright is a legitimate function aimed towards the extension of IP beyond the mind.

“And of course, all of this presumes that customers are just dying to get into contracts and potentially compromising legal obligations just to use your product, when there are public domain products available to choose from.” - this is not the argument and, in fact, confuses the issue… If you want to argue that a public domain (gift) economy will be able to compete with a copyright, contract based business model, then you need to create a new thread, since this is obviously not the right place to discuss that aspect.

[liberty_student]

@JackSkylark

I’m not arguing examples

You did.

@JackSkylark

nor am I arguing on grounds of utilitarianism

You have.

@JackSkylark

I am arguing that contracts can include intangibles, but still require a burden of proof by the plaintiff.

I don’t care.

@JackSkylark

You don’t understand scarcity, and claim it is just what could be rather than what is

I see.

@JackSkylark

you have constructed an imaginary world to support your argument that I find disturbingly similar to Marxian assumptions

I am a fanatical anti-Marxist on these forums. This is funny because I’m not the one employing a LTV POV.

@JackSkylark

You are, for some reason, unable to see a demand for ideas

Say’s law says that supply creates demand. Not the other way around.

@JackSkylark

forgive me if this was someone else who said that

I don’t think I said that, but anyway…

@JackSkylark

But since there is a demand for ideas, if the supply is not infinite (meaning, not everyone has full access to the idea) then there will be a price on the market (since they are valued).

Property is not defined by value. This has already been addressed by NUK.

@JackSkylark

Because of this, it could be in the interest of a full owner of an idea, to sell conditional ownership of that same idea.

There is no such thing as a “full owner” of intangible non-property. Someone else could pick their nose, look up at the sky and have the same idea. It could come to him in a dream. He could bump his head and appear in the delirium. Ideas are not scarce. There is no such thing as a “full owner”.

@JackSkylark

I directly challenge your definition of property, since you do not allow property of the mind (and in that case, of self).

You don’t own your labour. And thus, you do not own your ideas. Kinsella has already addressed this. You own your body and mind, and can commit them to perform labour, but you don’t own that actual labour.

Your position is basically, I think X is property, since X doesn’t fit your definition of property, then your definition must be wrong.

The problem is, you’re refusing to question whether my definition is correct, and X is not property.

Continuing…

@JackSkylark

Theoretical arguments of IP must begin in the full ownership of self (which includes ownership of the mind), but this intellectual property can not extend beyond self (since everyone else owns theirselves as well).

Again, you have a lot of assumptions, but what are they based on?

@JackSkylark

But, contracts are supreme and create a relative structure of property between individuals. Contracts are enforced after the passing of a burden of proof.

I can get behind this. I really wish you would remove contracts from the discussion, because they are irrelevant since IP is not property.

@JackSkylark

But, this proof in the case of ideas - can and, in many times, must use the action of the defendant to determine the motive and mind.

…

@JackSkylark

If contracts related to the sale of ideas are a valid form of contract, then copyright is a legitimate function aimed towards the extension of IP beyond the mind.

…

@JackSkylark

“And of course, all of this presumes that customers are just dying to get into contracts and potentially compromising legal obligations just to use your product, when there are public domain products available to choose from.” - this is not the argument and, in fact, confuses the issue…

You’re right. The only argument here is not related to market need, what is fair, how contracts work, where will we get video games from, can JParker withhold the cure for aids from people because he thought of it and doesn’t want to share etc. All irrelevant. IP is not property because it is not unique. And if you insist it is unique, then no one can steal it, only copy it differently, which is the definition of learning. It’s a “new instance” of a unique idea. I don’t even believe that, but it is logically consistent and deals with the other side of the argument.

@JackSkylark

If you want to argue that a public domain (gift) economy will be able to compete with a copyright, contract based business model, then you need to create a new thread, since this is obviously not the right place to discuss that aspect.

I’m not one of the guys who keep bringing up utilitarianism and the market.

[Stolz25]

Just out of curiosity (and I know this relates to early on in the thread, I’m sorry), but say I discover the formula for Coke in my kitchen. Then I decide to sell it under the Coke-Cola brand name with their logo (since there is no way for them to protect it without IP law), would there be anything to deter this in the market?

I direct this at Liberty Student, but anyone feel free to chime in.

[JackSkylark]

I don’t own my mind (I’m not talking about the physical brain) if I can’t own ideas. I referenced this earlier, in my post about “scope of IP.”

Also, I have debated on utilitarian grounds earlier (especially when I brought Mises into the discussion) - but I am not anymore. I am also not creating examples just for the sake of example making. Neither are you, but you used then previously in this thread. We all use examples so as to communicate concepts.

I want to respond further, but am currently tied up, but I promise I will get back to it as soon as I can.

[Spideynw]

@JackSkylark

@Spideynw

And why would anyone ever do this?

What kind of question is this? People do this all the time, either in NDA’s or in end-user license agreements, they are contracts decided upon equally by both parties - and created, since the seller thinks it important.

End-user license agreements exist only because patent laws exist.

As to NDAs, I do not see how they would apply to copyright in a free society. People are not going to write fictional pieces of work or make music and attempt to contract with someone to buy it and tell them they cannot reveal it to anyone else.

[JParker]

@liberty student

You don’t own your labour.

Call ME a marxist… Kinsella, last I checked, is not infallable. And his argument is utterly unconvincing to me. Extend this argument that you dont own your labor. What then gives you any right to own the physical product of your labor? You dont own the product X you created with your labor because you dont own your labor!

[nirgrahamUK]

as LS has explain you are marxists in so far that you believe in LTV, to that extent Randians too are marxist.

you dont own the physical product of your labour if you are a wage earner. you just own the wages your capitalist employer promised you for your performing some behaviours under contract.

If you are a capitalist, and if you own materials and you perform some transforming behaviours on them, or hire people to transform them for you, you own the physical products since you owned the factors of production.

this is basic Misesian stuff here.

[JackSkylark]

I’m sorry, but claiming that any one of us has promoted a labor theory of value totaly misrepresents our argument and is a pure strawman tactic. No one has said that the labor I put into something invariably causes a consumer valuation derived from that labor, so your post does nothing to further anyone’s argument.

[nirgrahamUK]

perhaps you could rephrase jparks argument above to square with what you just wrote in your post jack

[meambobbo]

@JackSkylark

I’m sorry, but claiming that any one of us has promoted a labor theory of value totaly misrepresents our argument and is a pure strawman tactic. No one has said that the labor I put into something invariably causes a consumer valuation derived from that labor, so your post does nothing to further anyone’s argument.

Right - this is what I kept saying. Simply because you are essentially paying for someone’s labor does not mean there is a labor theory of value. The labor is valued through the market process, even if the market process is based upon artificial scarcity of the resulting informational good.

[nirgrahamUK]

dude, Demand for commodities is not demand for labour’. we get that form Mill,. thank you mill.

anyhow, the misesian point is that the labour you can perform can benefit you, because you contract things that you actually do own, your body etc. i.e. tangible things. it doesnt entail contracting things that you dont own, things that are intangible, like how you feel, your memory of how to do your job, your ‘labour’

we are not denying that there are intangible goods. we simply deny that these intangible are economic goods. and that they can be owned.

if you believe that you can own intangibles and that this means anything, and that this is necessary vital or important, not only are you mistaken, in not realising how life would function pretty well without insisting on these things, i .e. realise that man acts, and is dealing with tangible concerns.

even worse; you paint yourself absurd for choosing to believe in unuseful concepts, that are patently ridiculous.

if i believed in something that wasnt a benefit to me then thats not sooo bad.eg. if i believed that i protect myself from a carcrash by rubbing my belly as i leave the house then thats one thing, im just mistaken about how useful that action is. quite another if im doing an eleaborate belly slap that all the neighbours can laugh at me for doing.

consider me your internet neighbour.

[JackSkylark]

You haven’t understood a word anyone has said… and are making yourself look silly.

[nirgrahamUK]

i hear you, you said ideas are property. silly

[meambobbo]

@nirgrahamUK

dude, Demand for commodities is not demand for labour’.

without the labor, there is no informational good. without the monetary incentive, there is no labor.

intangibles can most certainly be economic goods. look at services.

so then there’s the argument that individuals should directly contract laborers to produce desired goods. well, that’s inefficient and generally why we have entrepreneurs. this was mises’s argument - the monopoly increases efficiency of production by allowing entrepreneurs to develop a finished product, which it can market to consumers.

[nirgrahamUK]

services can be described entirely by tangibles. hence that does not support your argument

[kiba]

@meambobbo

@nirgrahamUK

dude, Demand for commodities is not demand for labour’.

so then there’s the argument that individuals should directly contract laborers to produce desired goods. well, that’s inefficient and generally why we have entrepreneurs. this was mises’s argument - the monopoly increases efficiency of production by allowing entrepreneurs to develop a finished product, which it can market to consumers.

I considered myself an entrepeneur, thank you very much.

[liberty_student]

@JParker

Kinsella, last I checked, is not infallable.

Never said he was.

@JParker

And his argument is utterly unconvincing to me.

Oh really? Which part? What about his argument about not owning your labour do you not agree with?

[liberty_student]

@nirgrahamUK

this is basic Misesian stuff here.

The problem is, there are not Misesians in the discussion. I can take the socialist of the mind crap, that’s just funny because I spend most of my time here harassing anyone who even looks like they once had a socialist thought, but when people don’t even recognize that they are arguing for a LTV perspective, well…

Still no one has challenged my property definition, and since I figured out that even a refutation of my definition also eliminates IP as property, then it is what it is. As Max would say, “looks like I have won this argument”.

[liberty_student]

@Spideynw

End-user license agreements exist only because patent laws exist.

Indeed. Although some will try to argue that this is “the market” because it involves a “voluntary contract”. [8-)]

@Spideynw

People are not going to write fictional pieces of work or make music and attempt to contract with someone to buy it and tell them they cannot reveal it to anyone else.

Or that they can’t hear it first without signing a contract, a NDA just to decide if they want to buy it or not. No one in their right mind would take that risk, of signing a contract and taking on legal liability for an unknown. Oh sure, some daredevils might, but there is no way you could mass market a product by forcing every individual to sign an NDA.

Think about all of the restrictions, like insisting that people who buy music, not play it loud enough that others (who have no signed NDAs) can hear it. So you can forget wedding parties and dance clubs as places “for pay” music would be used.

LOL. Man, I don’t think anyone can make a utilitarian argument for IP. Even if I am totally wrong about it’s definition as property, it’s simply outrageous to insist you can sell something, and own it, and control it within yourself and others, all at once. Nuts.