I am interested in gathering opinions on the following issue.
Suppose, person A has illegitimately acquired (say, stolen) a unit of capital C, which legitimately belongs to person B. After that, he used C in his production process to output consumer goods D and some other capital E. Now, person B demands to return to him C, D, and E (plus compensation for lost time and business opportunity, as well as wear and tear of C; I don’t care about these much). What is your judgement?
What if A already traded E to some other person X, who used E to produce Y and Z? How far will you satisfy B’s claims to products of C?
And why does B have claims to products of C exactly?
Last time I had this situation discussed, the advocate of B claimed products of C because they could not be produced without C. My response was that there are always more than one factor in any production, and confiscation of products might be a bit unjust. The counterargument was that it’s the problem of A who has to suffer only because of his crime.
Then B should also have responsibility for any losses caused by investing capital C, which would be absurd. Employing capital (stolen or not) involves risk. A consistent property theory would either have B exposed to whatever outcome (gain or loss) was created by employment of his stolen capital or not. I propose the latter, as he was not the one employing/investing it.
Let me clarify: A was not taking any entreprenerial risk: C was not “invested”, but just used in a very predictable process to produce D and E (let’s say, from his own materials M). Of course, there remains risk of not being able to trade D and E to cover the cost of M, but I think this is not relevant to the claim on D and E (and potentially, Y and Z).
C is a specific capital (like a machine or a farm animal), not a bag of gold coins.
Nothing is certain. The machine could have broken or the farm animal could have gotten hurt while performing these “predictable” activities. I propose that B is owed only C and NOT “C plus whatever outcomes A’s activities produced by employing C”.
The only thing taken from B was C, so that’s what B shall receive. B can seek further compensation, but trying to get what was produced by C is a bit out of the way, and probably will not hold up in court.
Let’s say A acquired a high quality screen printer, and for a week printed out 500 shirts to sell. The labor and designs are all the work of A, not B, and let’s say A already sold half the shirts. In what way is B entitled to the profits and products produced from C when B may have had no knowledge of such acts, only that C was missing?
Disclosure: I used this scenario to demonstrate to my opponents flaws in copyright law.
The plan was to get them acknowledge that B’s claims to products of C are laughable, and then substitute: A - copyright holder, B - pirate, C - media (e.g., DVD), M - empty disc, E - a copy of C, Y and Z - copies of E.
I was frustrated by my opponents failing to see any problem with B claiming E, Y, and Z.