Pardon me, but I don’t see how EULA and patent laws got anything to do with each other?
I can’t seem to find your post where you laid out your theory of property. Would you please re-post it, re-write it, or guide me to where I can find it… Thank you.
It’s a few pages back, but I have already advanced the discussion beyond IP is not unique, with uniqueness being a defining characteristic of any parcel of property. If ideas are unique, then they can’t be stolen. If they are not unique, then they cannot be owned. It can’t be had both ways.
Microsoft can only require an EULA on their product because they have a patent on the product in the first place. If they did not have a monopoly on the product, no one would enter into an EULA with them.
Not directed at you SpideyNW, just tacked onto the end of this thread.
There was an earlier charge that I am a socialist of the mind, or a communist or a marxist or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not “anti-IP”. IP as most people understand it, is a nonsense concept just like the social contract. Or democracy. Or that all men are equal.
I’m very interested in understanding the truth. I see no advantage in holding onto something that makes me feel good, but is false.
I’ve been a musician. I’ve got relatives who are musicians who make more noise with their MySpace pages than they do on people’s iPods because they won’t release their music for people to hear it. They keep holding out this hope that they will get a record deal, and that back catalog of demos is a treasure trove, completely oblivious to the fact that if no one ever notices them, they will never get the record deal.
That said, no one should reveal their ideas on any terms they do not agree to. If you have the cure for AIDs but demand $100 billion for it, then I’m cool with that. You are under no obligation to share it at any price which you do not agree to. You’re not obliged to share it at all. But you don’t own the idea, because if there is a problem, and demand for a solution, someone somewhere is going to try to solve it. And it is very likely someone will succeed with an idea similar to yours or even different, but either way, your hidden idea could find itself valueless when someone else releases a competing solution at any cost.
This is the natural market incentive for people to share and capitalize on ideas quickly. It encourages thinking, and acting on those thoughts because ideas can become less profitable the more ubiquitous they become.
The problem with IP is that it has really distorted not just how people make money, but has created the notion that the only way to create ideas is through monopoly protectionism, that people will stop thinking and solving problems without IP. Which is not an Austrian position on why man acts. Dare I say, it’s not even a Randian position on why man acts.
These conversations are moot, because just like drug prohibition, IP monopoly loses teeth all of the time. The digital age has taken ideas outside of the control of states. Even if global laws were enacted, there is too much entropy to filter and control all of the knowledge freely flowing, regardless of law. And it is increasing.
In small business, you learn to fight the battles you can win, and avoid the battle fields you cannot survive. IP is a losing battle for small business. As friends of mine discovered when they patented a lawn and garden product, after you pay for the patent process, you might not have any capital left over to hire lawyers to defend your patent. The patent certificate looks pretty, but it is meaningless without the teeth to enforce it. Which is why many small businesses either forgo the process altogether, or they “steal” someone else’s idea. There is a prominent Michigan billionaire who it is claimed took advantage of patents that the owners couldn’t afford to defend in order to build his own empire, and then patented his own processes to protect his success.
We’re in a never ending fight against the state as it social engineers successive generations of people to demand socialism, worship political command, to hate the market, to practice anti-intellectualism, and to respond only to the basest stimuli of violence, greed, jealousy and sex. IP is an important battleground for liberty. Not just because ideologically it is ideal at this moment in time, but because we can prove a great many state crimes and paradoxes through it.
Think it over.
I would also this to the list of candidate posts for “End of Thread” status.
+1 on the comment regarding reactionary acceptance to monopolistic protectionism.
Ironically, as Kinsella has noted, IP seems to be the only area where I don’t have to do much defensive maneuvering in arguments with Statist citizens, regarding ideas of the libertarian, anarchist, & austrian school variety.
I suppose the internet has made many, to some extent, infoanarchists [:O]
Thanks Nitro but I just meant I was adding it to the end of the thread.
If there is more to discuss, by all means it should carry on.
I thought this thread was getting too long (and going back through all the pages of posts was driving me crazy), and was covering a lot of different areas of IP - so I made another called “On the Ownership of Ideas” in order to further discussion of idea ownership within a natural rights framework.
Closing this one then.