Property is theft?

Economics Political Theory
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41

How do you qualify the time period that ideas or patterns are protected as property, versus when they become “public”?

Intellectual property, just like any property, is a legal construct. So, laws.

IP is just a legal privilege granted to the originators of ideas, like ownership through homesteading is a legal privilege granted to certain kinds of users of land, or inheritance is a legal privilege granted to dead people.

Legal positivism at its finest! There is a rational basis for libertarian property rights, whereas I’ve yet to see an IP advocate venture a response to this one (of several) necessary justifications of IP “rights”.

42

So in Ancapistan, I own a house. I die. My children get the house.

I “own” an idea. I die. My children get that “idea”…wait… how can it be transfered?

P.S. I believe it is possible to make valid IP laws, but they wouldn’t be sound (if I am not mistaken about logic).

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I “own” an idea. I die. My children get that “idea”…wait… how can it be transfered?

It isn’t about “owning an idea” for the IP creationists really. It’s about owning rights to any tangible object created based on their idea or pattern, again within some arbitrary guidelines of similarity.

P.S. I believe it is possible to make valid IP laws, but they wouldn’t be sound (if I am not mistaken about logic).

It would open up book/CD buyers to enormous liability to at all be sucessful in “protecting profits”. Nobody would agree to the ridiculous types of contracts required to simulate IP law legitimately.

44

ravochol:

but copying something for resale is depriving the original creator of the ability to sell what they’ve created, which is depriving them of income they could legitimately expect

Selling anything “deprives” everyone else’s ability to sell what they’ve created/produced. Every selling a good in exchange for money is competing against every other seller. This is not an argument for IP.

45

The usual economic argument for IP is that it enables Pareto-improving transactions to take place. Say I’m thinking of making a movie. I can either:

  1. Not make the movie at all.
  2. Make the movie, and prevent you from watching it.
  3. Make the movie, and let you watch it (if you want to).

If your preferences are monotonic, then, according to your utility function, U(3) > U(2) = U(1) (assuming you don’t hate the movie). Therefore, there is some positive price p such that you would rather pay me p to let you watch the movie, than pay nothing and have me not make the movie at all.

On the other hand, since making the movie requires time, money, and effort, there is some price P such that:

  • I would rather make the movie and get paid P, than not make the movie and get paid nothing.
  • I would rather not make the movie and get paid nothing, than make the movie and get paid less than P.

If the sum of p over all consumers is greater than P, then it is Pareto-improving for me to make the movie – but only if I am able to charge all consumers for the privilege of watching the movie. Hence the necessity of IP etc.

In order for this argument to work, it must be the case that U(2) = U(1) for the consumer. In other words, my ability to restrict you from using the intellectual property must extend only until someone else would have been able to independently reproduce it. Since there’s no way of knowing a priori that the independent producer would not have released the IP into the public domain for free, this duration is the longest that the IP can last before we are no longer sure that it will be a Pareto-improvement.

(It may be objected that there’s no way we can know what would have happened in any hypothetical case, but still, we generally have to answer such questions anyway; e.g., “Would the plaintiff have been injured if the defendant had not done X?”)

I really think that this is the only kind of utilitarianism worth considering, since any other requires interpersonal utility comparisons (a notion of “objective value”). As soon as we start proposing that some should be harmed at the expense of others, then the need arises for a non-utilitarian justification (argumentation ethics etc.). However, once you’ve shown that a particular course of action is a Pareto-improvment, then that’s enough to convince everyone to do it voluntarily, and that’s the end of that. In this case, this corresponds to an assurance contract to release the work into the public domain (“Street Performer Protocol”) – all the existing consumer surplus is available, with no need for IP enforcement at all.

“But what about the unborn consumer surplus?” you might ask.

If you save an orphan’s life, are they enslaved to you forever?

46

This is not an argument for IP.

Nor is it an argument against it.

47

There is a rational basis for libertarian property rights, whereas I’ve yet to see an IP advocate venture a response to this one (of several) necessary justifications of IP “rights”.

What?

Legal positivism is a school of thought in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. The principal claims of modern legal positivism are that:

  • There is no inherent or necessary connection between the validity conditions of law and ethics or morality.
  • Laws are rules made, whether deliberately or unintentionally, by human beings

which point precisely do you dispute?

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Says who?

49

Nor is it an argument against it.

The burden of proof is on you, as someone (at least for the sake of this discussion) who wishes to use violence on another, to justify their action.

What?

What what?

which point precisely do you dispute?

The first is clearly wrong. Yes, various strains of legal positivism are usually accompanied by a profound ignorance of economics and a hefty dose of moral relativism.

The second is just a cheap swipe at the naive/traditional conception of iura naturale and is irrelevant to my position. That a law exists, sui generis, in no way grounds that legally issued norm rationally.

50

If your preferences are monotonic

Aren’t they always monotonic? Even when the preference is expressed in negative terms of dislike, I prefer more not falling into a sewer than less not falling into a sewer.

(assuming you don’t hate the movie)

You can’t assume this for all people though I see what you are saying.

If the sum of p over all consumers is greater than P, then it is Pareto-improving for me to make the movie – but only if I am able to charge all consumers for the privilege of watching the movie. Hence the necessity of IP etc.

I’m thinking the problem with this is you are too one-sided in the analysis or not looking at the whole picture. A potential movie watcher still “pays” some amount q to pirate a movie, whether that is the minimal effort to click some download link or in addition burn it to DVD. I can’t really spend the time right now to elucidate the problem with your argument but it still seems wrong to me. Maybe some economist more easily recognizes it. It seems like you are saying that I have a right to violate all other rules of property because I polled people that they would pay $500 million for Blade 3 to be produced. A historical example of where your rule would have enhanced anything would be helpful as well.

Can you state clearly and briefly what qualifies X time period as the duration of intellectual property “rights”?

There’s a further problem, given you actually explain the interpersonal utility comparison and that a law is pareto-superior, as to whether a law is just or not.

51
  • There is no inherent or necessary connection between the validity conditions of law and ethics or morality

what is clearly wrong about this? all this says to me is that law is not necessarily ethical. Law is not inherently ethical; it can either be in line with ethics or opposed to ethics. Whether connected to ethics or unconnected to ethics, law still originates property - even simple brute force is a law or sorts, the law of the strongest.

That the law effectively defines what is property seems to me to be self-evident.

There can be unjust definition of property in law, but all legal systems define property and all property claims are basically meaningless unless backed by either law or arms. To recognize what law does is not the same as claiming that what the law does is in all cases just, but in both just and unjust property systems, property is defined by written law, social custom (unwritten law), or simple force. Laws and property claims do not float down from heaven, but are social creations of humans.

52

People make laws, groundbreaking stuff. I’m not arguing this point you grabbed from wikipedia or something, although it is wrong. What I’m saying is that you seem to not be familiar with either Austrian law or the breadth of the doctrine of legal positivism. Here’s a more typical explanation. Tell me your issues with it:

A school of JURISPRUDENCE whose advocates believe that the only legitimate sources of law are those written rules, regulations, and principles that have been expressly enacted, adopted, or recognized by a governmental entity or political institution, including administrative, executive, legislative, and judicial bodies.

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A school of JURISPRUDENCE whose advocates believe that the only legitimate sources of law are those written rules, regulations, and principles that have been expressly enacted, adopted, or recognized by a governmental entity or political institution, including administrative, executive, legislative, and judicial bodies.

Well, I wouldn’t agree with that, but I would say it if “legitimate” were replaced with “somewhat reliably or predictably enforcable.”

You’re right, I don’t know what “Austrian law” is, I assume you don’t mean the law of the Austrian state; you mean the opinions of economists of the Austrian as regards to law? Could you be more specifc?

PTTP: When is everything else constant?
54

I suppose it’s conceivable that offering someone a choice can make them worse off (e.g., if I have to make a choice, then I’ll be tormented with regret about what I didn’t choose), but, if preferences are what is revealed through choice, then it’s impossible to have non-monotonic preferences, since you can’t choose not to choose. (IOW: Yes, I was hedging.)

If you got those poll results, then you would have already found people willing to give you $500 million to make the movie, so IP isn’t necessary. I just wonder how to deal with the consumer surplus of people who haven’t been born yet. (Hardly anyone advocates perpetual IP, even those who generally favor it, so maybe there’s more to this.)

Sorry, don’t know any off the top of my head.

The time period is the amount of time it would have taken for someone else to independently develop the idea/invention/whatever. For example, for cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology, this period might be quite short.

Let’s say that we have a rule and we’re trying to figure out if it’s just. There are three possible scenarios:

  1. The rule is always binding on everybody.
  2. The rule is binding on some people and times, but not others.
  3. The rule is never binding on anybody.

Now suppose we believe Kant’s categorical imperative (this is controversial, but let’s treat it as a black-box for now). Then we can exclude #2 by its form alone.

If the rule is, say, “Don’t murder,” then #3 can be excluded because it is logically impossible as defined (if I murder you, you can’t murder me). This leaves #1 as the only option. (You’re probably familiar with this argument.) On the other hand, if the rule is “Don’t eat mushrooms on Thursdays,” then #3 is not automatically excluded, and there’s no reason why #1 should be preferable to #3, so this is not proven as a just rule.

But what if the rule we’re considering is such that – given the basic axioms without which argumentation is impossible – it is provably impossible for someone to prefer #3 to #1? That would then leave #1 as the only option. Would that suffice as a justification for the rule?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really have any strong beliefs on this issue, so I’d appreciate any other points to consider.