My dad is 60 years old. He grew up without plumping. He has a highschool diploma. I taught him how to use a computer last year. It runs linux. surfing the web and doing email on those platforms is pretty easy. Installing the OS is even easier than installing windows, and my friends who don’t even know how to use torrents can do it.
Again, you miss the point. You do not need to teach someone to use a Mac or an iPhone. It comes with a very simple manual.
The fact that you didn’t even notice that it took yourself, a graduate in IT, to train someone using Linux, speaks volumes about your misunderstanding of consumer products.
Actually, you do if they don’t understand modern technology. If the most complex device they have ever used is a car, then they’ll probably need some help understanding how to operate a cell phone or computer. Some people need training to understand these things.
The argument over Linux is a strawman either way. Under IP communism the GPL would be invalid and none of the programmers would even bother investing their time in it, much less share any of their work. Not even open source software can exist under IP communism.
In my capitalist universe, most ideas sold measures success. I am confident in the markets ability to select among competing ideas based on their utility. Hence the reason I am happy.
“You do not need to teach someone to use a Mac or an iPhone.”
Are you serious? None of my friends need help understanding Ubuntu. My grandma needs help understanding her remote control, even if it comes with a manual.
However, none of this is relevant.
I’ve made money using open source software, and businesses have made money by my using open source software.
And there are loads of advantages with promoting access to the source.
I’ve made money using open source software, and businesses have made money by my using open source software.
Of course you did. You are a producer. Open source software is designed to make producers money. As I said before, it is not, never has been and cannot ever be, designed for the consumer.
In my capitalist universe, most ideas sold measures success. I am confident in the markets ability to select among competing ideas based on their utility. Hence the reason I am happy.
How do you define capitalism? I don’t see it in this statement.
Which part? The part about IP being privately owned by individual actors in the market? The part about decisions regarding the supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments of IP being made by private actors in the market rather than central planning by government? Or that I place greater utility on not being coerced to pay the enforcement costs of IP contracts by other private actors in the market?
Complements to the Creative Commons Capitalism Wiki:
Somewhere on this thread, Onar (I think) stated that all the anti-IP people are just greedy punks who want to get things for free and are trying to come up with jsutifications for it to not feel guilty or to excuse their immoral behavior (does anyone konw where this post was?).
Anyway this is blatantly untrue. There may be elements of truth to this with respect to the leftists and hippies, who oppose IP in part b/c they accept Onar’s view that IP is part of property rights and reject it because they are against property rights and capitalism. But they and IP libertarians like Onar all make the same mistake: they think IP is part of capitalism. It is not. The leftists are against IP for the wrong reason.
In my own case, I do not pirate; I am happy to buy the legitimate copy of music or movies from iTunes for example–the stupid media companies price it too high and delay it, thus leading to the temptation to engage in piracy. they are truly moronic. But in my case I was (and am) a practicing patent attorney. I assumed Rand was right about IP being part of capitalism, but I saw that her arguments were flawed. I tried for years to find a way to justify IP but kept hitting snags; finally I realized why. I expalin this in http://mises.org/daily/3863 . So do not accuse me of having bad motivations. this is dishonest and scurrilous of you. My position is sincere and came after a decade of thought on it and deep experience iwth the actual field of law.
Actually one could consider Apple as the grand example on how an IP-strong company wants most people to be consumer-only. Don’t get me wrong, Apple make great products that help people be creative, yet their iPhone and iPad platforms are almost entirely geared towards consume, not produce. Apple have rock solid control in this game and they are playing their cards well, just look at the number of patents they get approved.
Stranger is clueless with regards to software licensing, the license of the software have no direct correlation with the way it’s being developed or paid for. All open source software are paid for, in the same way as closed software, with the time anyone is devoting towards writing it.
nskinsella wrote the following post at Thu, Oct 21 2010 12:51 AM:
Actually it was I who pointed out the obvious outrage of the Amazon patent in this debate. But seriously? Is this what you are going to nail me on? That I have the ability to be critical of a system I am in favor of? Would you rather I react in the way that so many anti-IP people do: to defend obviously outrageous and insane consequences of abolishing IP? Example: we point out that no IP protection allows people to rob the author of his labor, e.g. by simply copying and distributing his work. The anti-IP people’s reaction? The author isn’t being robbed of anything! Piracy is morally perfectly ok! This is such an outlandishly unintelligent and shamefully vicious response that it makes you wonder whether you belong to the same species. Please point to similarly outrageous positions of the pro-IP people.
You may point to the unjustice of an inventor being blocked out by someone else’s patent who developed the invention in parallel, but we pro-IP people will agree with you that this is unjust. We do not pretend that the other inventor does not lose something which rightfully belongs to him in this case, and precisely therefore we are open to modifying the patent laws in a way that minimizes the problem. But this is the exception, and you cannot abolish normal morality for the exception because that would truly be an unjustice. So long as injustice is unavoidable, occasional exceptional injustice is preferable to normalized systemic injustice.
Also, note that we place certain limitations on IP such as an expiry date, freedom of fair use, a threshold for patentability etc. You critize us for being “arbitrary” when in reality we are concerned about the rights of ALL parties involved, not only the rights of the creator.
In short, it appears to me that most people who are against IP really just don’t like to pay for other people’s hard work and want to be able to parasite on them for free, and that they find it opportune to hide their gross immorality behind a thin veil of “principles” that allows them to invade other people’s lives. Will you find an abundance of pro-IP people with a similar motivation to violate other people? No.
You say that you are utilitarian and that this is not a moral debate, but I disagree. I think that most of you have chosen a utilitarian anti-IP stance motivated by your own morality to parasite on other people’s labor against their will. Since morality is the strongest force in the human psyche no amount of rational arguments for IP will move you, because rationality plays second fiddle to morality.
Live_Free_Or_Die wrote the following post at Thu, Oct 21 2010 2:54 PM:
“Sharing is caring”
Well, there’s some IP communism for ya. It is also interesting to note that the two “sharers” are children, since socialism is the morality of childhood.
You misunderstood his point. All producers are consumers and all consumers are producers. The person selling the iPad is a producer of the iPad and a consumer of cash, and the person buying the iPad is a producer of cash and a consumer of iPads.
Cash and iPads are goods. Both must be obtained in order for these transactions to complete. At the end of the day, much of the reasoning here fails a basic understanding of free market economics. And this is surprising from Stranger, who at one time was heroic in defense of the market. But methinks he is so invested in his IP position, that even if he realized he was incorrect, he is unable to admit it (he has never admitted an error here, ever).
Onar Åm wrote the following post at 10-20-2010 5:22 PM:
Even if we ignore the fact that some people eventually will come to be exposed to the work, even if they haven’t bought it, it is impossible to contain information. It will leak to the public eventually, from parents to children, cultural references, newspaper reviews etc. Therefore, ANY information that is not kept strictly secret is made available to the public. It may take some time, but eventually it sieves into the public domain, primarily from parents to children.
Yes, if it were practical then such an extensive diffusion of “Atlas Shrugged” into society in, say, only 10 years, would be grounds for cancelling the copyright well ahead of its expiration date. (Note: the author never fully loses ownership of the book. The author still has attribution rights, and her work may not be altered or distributed under a different name) In practice, however, the primary diffusion occurs from one generation to another, i.e. from parents/society to children. Let me give a very obvious example of this: reading and writing. Literacy is actually an invention (a very old one, but still a kind of technology). However, try to imagine what your life in a modern industrial society if your were not allowed to read and write. EVERYTHING, including the law(!), depends on literacy. Life would simply be impossible for you without reading and writing, because it has become so diffused into the culture and society that it is impossible to avoid. (In fact, the illiterate do in fact very often become criminals. No other parameter is a better predictor for criminal behavior than illiteracy.) You depend entirely on the ability to read and write for your survival and you cannot escape it. Suppose now that you were requested to pay royalties for using reading and writing. This would amount to structural violence. You would immediately recognize the parallel between this state and the serfs of the medieval times. Literacy is an extreme example to illustrate the point, but the principle is the same: diffusion of IP into the culture and society at large makes it inescapable and hence charging money for it becomes structural violence.
This is true, but it is also much cheaper to steal a product than to pay for it. Slavery can bring down the cost quite significantly too. As far as I am concerned that is a non-argument.
Absolutely not. Suppose you build a fence around your property. No problem, right? It’s just an excercise of your property rights. Well, suppose now that you own all the land around your neighbor and set up a fence, thereby effectively trapping him. Now there is a problem. Now, you are excercising FORCE. In a similar way, it is no problem with patents so long as the extent of its usage is small, but as it becomes more and more widespread and diffused throughout society it gradually grows into a fence that traps you. Such inexapability is called structural violence.
It IS a problem if you are FORCED to rent, because you have no way to avoid it.
With some luck I have nudged you in the direction of a greater understanding.
