One difference comes down to the fact that the car is actually property, and hence recoverable, whereas once the book sale contract has been breached, the exclusivity of the information transferred thereby cannot be recovered.
Yes it can. Just destroy all the counterfeit copies. The same happens with counterfeit paper money all the time.
Lilburne asked for this sort of language to be cleaned up. It’s not conducive to, or helpful in debate.
@Stranger, that goes for you with the IP Communist comments as well.
Communism is an economic doctrine, naziism is not. The label of communism is a response to the IP communists denouncing pro-IP economists as monopolists for two reasons. Firstly, traditionally communists have always denounced capitalists as monopolists and property as monopoly, and secondly, the economic doctrine of the anti-IP libertarian is common ownership of all information, hence communism.
To ask that communists stop being called communists is just political correctness imposed in open economic debates.
communism |ˈkämyəˌnizəm| (often Communism)
noun
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Hayek:
The difference between these and other kinds of property rights is this: while ownership of material goods guides the user of scarce means to their most important uses, in the case of immaterial goods such as literary productions and technological inventions the ability to produce them is also limited, yet once they have come into existence, they can be indefinitely multiplied and can be made scarce only by law in order to create an inducement to produce such ideas. Yet it is not obvious that such forced scarcity is the most effective way to stimulate the human creative process. I doubt whether there exists a single great work of literature which we would not possess had the author been unable to obtain an exclusive copyright for it; it seems to me that the case for copyright must rest almost entirely on the circumstance that such exceedingly useful works as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.
Similarly, recurrent re-examinations of the problem have not demonstrated that the obtainability of patents of invention actually enhances the flow of new technical knowledge rather than leading to wasteful concentration of research on problems whose solution in the near future can be foreseen and where, in consequence of the law, anyone who hits upon a solution a moment before the next gains the right to its exclusive use for a prolonged period.
I’m going to have to disagree with you ano that one. Say, for example my car is stolen. The thief then sells it to you for $5,000. It’s still my car. The thief had no legitimate claim to sell it to you. He sold you nothing. We are both victims, me of car theft, and you of fraud. Why should the fact that the thief swindled you out of your money keep me from recovering my property? Your calim is against the thief, not me. If you prevent me from recovering my property, after being shown proof of ownership, why should I refrain from using force?
It would still be an intitiation of force against me. I’d be an awfully big jerk not to give it back to you and then just have the two of us go after the thief, but it’s not an obligation under the ethics of non-aggression.
Walter Block explains the concept as “negative homesteading”: the “first appropriator” of hardship does not have the right to compel anyone else to bear it or any part of it, unless that person was its cause. Being a third-party beneficiary to said hardship does not make one a party to its cause.
Yes it can. Just destroy all the counterfeit copies.
Including those held within the minds of those who have encountered it?
If not, then you essentially concede that those copies are, in fact, the property of those who own those minds. In which case, in preventing them from expressing an idea that has become their property, you admit to violating other people’s property rights in your protection of intellectual property. Which gets back to the point I made several times earlier (and which you and Onar have ignored with impressive thoroughness) that IP and physical property are conflicting moral propositons.
if its not your car but the original victims where is the initiation of force against you? by possessing the item in continued defiance of his will aren’t you in a state of aggression against him? or else, when did your claim to the car take precedence over the owner who had been stolen from?
SondreB wrote the following post at Thu, Oct 21 2010 8:24 AM:
The logical error is that you have only looked at similarities, whereas an exhaustive inductive study requires you to look at both essential similarities AND differences. Francis Bacon pioneered the scientific method of inductgion and that’s a pretty long time ago, so we’re talking ancient knowledge here. You’ve done a very basic error of reasoning, apparently completely unaware of how to reason properly. That should worry you a bit.
Anyways, the essential difference between mind and land is that fruits of your land are scarce like the land itself, whereas fruits of the mind (ideas) are NOT scarce (in the sense that they can easily be duplicated). Hence, fruits of the mind need to be protected in a different manner than fruits of the land.
Fruits of the mind that are not scarce need to be protected, or else what? or else they are scarce… oh dear…
Usually protecting things involves maintaining them in the face of a danger to their integrity but copies of things do not necessitate degradation of originals
Would you answer the over the shoulder book write scenario any differently than Stranger? do tell…
dnixx wrote the following post at Fri, Oct 22 2010 11:30 AM:
No, not at all. Kinsella states that the nonaggression principle is an axiom. That means that he treats it as an irreducible primary that is self-evident. But it is NOT. The irreducible primary here is that we are INDIVIDUALS. The INDIVIDUAL is an irreducible primary, and it has an identity, which as a living being is to preserve its identity. In other words, it needs to act in its self-interest in order to exist. Egoism is therefore the primary, not the nonaggression principle. We as humans have two important attributes. We are 1) animals of reason, and 2) we are social. That we are social means that we by nature thrive with each other in peaceful coexistence. Sociality = peaceful coexistence. Therefore nonaggression (or peace as it is more appropriately is called) is the normal state of human affairs.
Note however that it is still not an irreducible primary, and it is by no means self-evident. There exists certain special cases when self-interest crashes with sociality, and that is among other places in emergency situations. Breaking into a cabin on the mountain to survive is initiation of force, yet perfectly legitimate because self-interest is more fundamental than peace.
Treating peace as an axiom is both moronic and extremely dangerous intellectually because it leads down the road of wacko rationalism with no connection to reality.
But when this is said you are absolutely right that the term “violation” is dependent on what the rights of an individual actually are. Those rights are however not arbitrary.
The crux of the problem here is that mind and idea are intertwined. Ideas only exist because some mind has used its scarce resources to create it. But the idea itself, once codified as information, is not scarce in the sense that it is possible to copy it very easily. Intellectual property exists to protect the MIND, but needs to be implemented on INFORMATION.
I didn’t follow that part of the discussion. There is so much noise in this thread that I don’t want to use too much energy on it. My time and my mind is scarce, you see. But very quickly: intellectual property that comes in the hand of non-agreeing third parties either by accident or by theft still have to respect the intellectual property rights of the creator. I wrote about this in my article, remember? Re-read that and you’ll find that all the confused debate in this thread has actually been addressed, particularly in the last part.
Yes it is an obligation. By keeping a person from their stolen property you are an accomplice.
That does not describe this scenario. By willfully entering into a fraudulant contract you are bringing misfortune on yourself. It is in fact you, the niave purchaser, that is seeking to transfer your own misfortune onto the rightful owner. The owner’s misfortune is over, in that he has relocated his car. If you try to keep him from his car you have stolen it a second time.
Let me ask you to look at this from a different perspective. Say you find an abandoned car( with keys in the ignition, so you homestead it and drive it home. The next day the owner knocks on your day and tells you that the car was stolen and abandoned by the thief, then he demands it back. Are you obligated to return it?
The crux of the problem here is that mind and idea are intertwined. Ideas only exist because some mind has used its scarce resources to create it. But >>the idea itself, once codified as information, is not scarce in the sense that it is possible to copy it very easily. Intellectual property exists to protect the >>MIND, but needs to be implemented on INFORMATION.
This is an admission that what you propose is entirely an example of legal positivism/legal fiction, for some reason you think that certain outcomes that you can engineer through violating peoples property rights in scarce goods justify the violations.
I wonder will you be capable of making distinctions as to what this concept of ‘harm’ to the ‘mind’ is, do insults count? does being mistaken count?
nskinsella wrote the following post at Fri, Oct 22 2010 4:13 PM:
You’re making a very nasty logical mistake here. Suppose you are color-blind. You’re only able to distinguish between white and non-white. All other colors merge together and become grey to you. Then one day you see a special swan and tell people about it. They ask you what color it was and you answer non-white. You don’t know whether it was red or green or blue, but you DO know that WASN’T white.
It’s perfectly ok and legitimate to arrive at a conclusion that the correct system is non-anti-IP, without exactly knowing the details of that system. You do however know for a fact that it is utterly morally wrong and a violation of your basic rights that someone can just copy your novel and then distribute it freely and even sell it under their own name! Or alter it as they please! You DO know for a fact that you need to be able to use FORCE somehow to protect that right, even though you don’t know the fine details of law.
Now, I just happen to know the details a lot better than most IP-proponents, but that is beside the point. You’re making the typical supernatural argument that unless you have perfect knowledge about something you can have no legitimate opinion on it whatsoever.
That’s not an argument, it’s a claim.
Using Onar’s logic, I support mass murder and rape when its good, and oppose it when its bad. What do you guys have against mass murder? So what if the holocaust happened? I’m not in favor of THAT kind of mass murder…
ou do however know for a fact that it is utterly morally wrong and a violation of your basic rights that someone can just copy your novel and then >>distribute it freely and even sell it under their own name! Or alter it as they please!
At what point does the tort arise? is the bad thing the distribution, or is that irrelevant? If its not relevant why did you mention it? if its relevant does that mean making copies for private use is permitted?
nirgrahamUK wrote the following post at Sat, Oct 23 2010 3:48 AM:
This is simply an assertion since you are simply assuming the non-existence of the intellectual property rights that are disputed here. I.e. you’re essentially saying “I am right, and hence: you are wrong.” Grrreeeat argument thar.
Of course insults do not count. It’s a bit frustrating that you come with these anal arguments, which shows zero understanding of the position you are opposing. Intellectual property rights are there to protect mental labor which is scarce. Now, where did “harm” enter this picture? And what does insults have to do with mental labor? Zilch. Nada. If you just educated yourself about the very basic things that IP proponents stand for then you wouldn’t need to come up with these arguments, which are an insult to intelligence.
protect mental labour? because you hold the labour theory of value?
surely mental labour is something expended or not, if its expended and the book is made, great, if the book gets copied, does a magic fairy go back in time and destroy the mental labour that had happened. What do you mean ‘protect mental labour’, as a general concept? I have never observed an author undergo mental death brought about from the mind damage of someone in some part of the world copying their text. nor is there ability to mentally labour or not effected in anyway.
please put forth your theory of how mental labour is a fragile thing that people have a right to not be interefered with, enforceable to the extend that others physical property may be violated. If someone says something and it distracts one from one s mental labour due to its seductive force, causing one to stray from ones true path,. is this also an example of where we require your legal positivism to protect peoples minds?
if its not your car but the original victims where is the initiation of force against you? by possessing the item in continued defiance of his will aren’t you in a state of aggression against him? or else, when did your claim to the car take precedence over the owner who had been stolen from?
The claim to title didn’t take precedence, nor is the third party in a state of aggression, because he did not aggress. The victim’s claim to that particular piece of property is not superior to the right of the third party not to be forced to bear someone else’s hardship. By not cooperating with the victim, he may become a rotten person - but he does not become a rights-violator. The obligation of compensating the victim for the crime falls exclusively on the criminal. It is the thief’s responsiblity to retrieve the stolen property in a manner that does not infringe further (because the third party has already been defrauded) on the rights of the property’s recipient, or to provide for its retrieval out of his own resources. The thief violated the victim’s rights; nobody else did. All the third party did was quite accidentally get in the way.
To answer another objection which was brought up later: There is a huge difference between coming into possession of stolen property as the victim of fraud and finding a property which has is currently unused (since property titles do not terminate without renunciation by the previous owner or neglect sufficient to return the property to a state of nature).
I find it amusing, first mental harm is bad, then its not mental harm, but that which disrupts mental labour is bad… i wonder what will be next…