Is duplication possible? You mentioned earlier that exact replications are impossible. So, taking a pic of your copyrighted work with my iPhone is not duplication, correct? Thus, my selling of that pic of your work is not a violation of your copyright, correct?
no. if you throw your tomatoes at me, and fall into my stew. i do not violate your tomato rights. you should not have sent your tomatoes into my stew. just as you should not have sent out ‘your’ ‘information’ via lightwaves to my eye or lense.
and explain again why you don’t object to the media copy onto my brain media, only media that is outside of my brain cavity?
We are not arguing about the physics of light, but about actions. Economics is about human action, not physics. I will not make any further replies concerning the physics of light as they are irrelevant.
You could argue that you are not a murderer because you couldn’t stop a bullet from entering someone’s head, but your action was still firing at the man.
this has nothing to do with our discussion. it is not analogous to anything i said or anything you said. its just an example of something silly. i have not said anything silly.
fine, abstract away from light as the transmission mechanism by which your information imposes itself on my property and me. ( i am of course my own property anyway…)
Stranger is technically correct when saying that information is scarce. If it were not, as he says, there would be no demand for the transmission of said information. However, copyright intentionally promotes scarcity and higher prices. The issue of scarcity is not the basis of property in my mind - it is who has the most just claim to determine how something is used when its use is necessarily excludes others.
The use of the information, however, is not mutually exclusive. As many people can use it as there are copies. One person’s selling transmission of the information does not prevent anyone else from doing the same, it only weakens the earlier transmitters’ market positions.
you sell me a CD of your exquisite and unique song writing and musical instrument playing, you transfer title of it to me in exchange for the title to what was my 10$ on the condition that I do not make a copy CD. I similarly transfer title to you of 10$ in exchange for the title over the cd on the condition that i do not make a copy.
some time later, i make a copy of the cd.
obviously our original contract is not consummated according to all necessary conditionals. good news is that the CD has been treated with great care as has the 10$, neither have suffered wear and tear, and therefore justice may be done by my returning the CD to you and you returning my 10$ to me if you wish it, or by us simply contenting ourselves with the new arrangement and forgiving the other in lieu of the properties we have gained.
if you object, “but you listened to the cd and ‘enjoyed it’”. then i say that "‘you held my cash’ and satiated your ‘demand for money’ ". just as the 10$ has not degraded neither has the CD. so neither needs pay compensation. no such performance bond had been agreed.
if we had bartered chair for table, on condition that no prayer ever be said in the room with the table, and then a prayer should be said. we would find ourselves in analogous situation to above. forgiveness of the break of the condition (status quo) , or return of ‘unexchanged’ items (state of affairs pre exchange)
All your arguments are analogies to clearly legal contracts and property rights. The problem is we are not comparing apples to apples. Bank notes being counterfeited is clearly not the same thing as reproducing a copyrighted work.
In any case…
Inflation is not wrong simply because the note issuer makes non-reproduction part of the terms of use. It is fraud. Notes are claims to property. Counterfeit notes are assertions of ownership of goods over which the counterfeiter does not have. It should be legal to copy a bank note; however, to present such a copy as an authentic title to property in the market is fraud.
Strictly following your argument, mining gold should be made illegal because it can cause inflation of the money supply. Your thoughts?
You are blatantly advocating that people can have property claims to market positions. Let’s say I decide to use every cent of my money to buy up raw meat, and I let it spoil. Meat prices are driven up, and the productivity of surrounding restaurants and groceries are undermined. Have I violated property rights?! Of course not. Your argumentation is not based upon property rights but utility. That’s not necessarily bad, but it’s your burden to frame rules that clearly produce a net social benefit.
You are advocating both LTV and ownership of the market value of an intangible concept - beliefs that exist inside the minds of others. You really can’t argue otherwise.
We have already admitted that consumption of information is non-refundable. The buyer cannot exchange his will, and his memory is inalienable from his will. His promise to not redistribute can be terminated by him at any moment. Thus, the copyright contract is not a contract in Rothbard’s eyes. It is an exchange of money and a promise not to redistribute on the part of the buyer, and an exchange of a medium or transmission of information by the seller. One could even conclude that the transmission of information was a service, not an exchange.
Intellectual property cannot survive on the basis of contract. It must be a property right equivalent to property rights in tangible goods.
I think Rothbard was naive in his support of copyright. He never specifies how a pattern can be appropriated, only the medium it is inscribed upon. Sure, someone has property rights in that medium - if someone deleted the information without authorization, they should be held liable for property damages. But to suggest that the information itself can be owned, and that any tangible property that assumes the pattern immediately becomes partially owned by the originator of that information is a giant leap.
A terrible analogy. A more correct analogy to IP would be this.
I manufacture mugs. I sell you a mug. The purchase agreement stipulates that you are only permitted to drink beer out of this mug. Now when you go home with your new mug you drink water from it instead. (Ignoring the fact of how impossible it would be to enforce such a contract)
Lets say instead of drinking water from your new mug with the purchasing agreement you decide to build your own. Lets say this MUG has a big M on it, as a brand name. Lets continue to say you have the manufacturing capabilities to clone it in it’s entirety, including the M, inside the comfort of your . I clone the mug and continue to drink beer from the original satisfying my purchase agreement, but drink water from the clone.
The IP Advocates state that I should never had made the clone, and that the clone follows from the original purchase agreement of the original mug, even though I built the second one from my own resources, time, and labor.
Others have pointed this out. It’s ironic because he claims that Anti-IP advocates are communist.
At any rate this discussion will never progress so long as Stranger continues the circular pattern of repeating fallacy numbers. I’m not sure it’s worth your time investment folks. The first few pages should be demonstration enough.
This shock term is to no avail with people who have read Menger, who argued that, regarding non-economic goods like air, we are all “natural communists”. And the nature of already-created bits of information is such that for the user of the bits of information, “even if all other members of society completely meet their requirements for these goods, more than sufficient quantities will still remain for him to satisfy his needs.” (Menger, Principles of Economics) Therefore they qualify as Mengerian non-economic goods.