Epicurius: “Now, what if I hacked LvMI with a team.”
Yawn.
“The webiste is not physical property, I have agreed upon no contract against hacking it. Have I aggressed upon the (members of) the institute?”
Define hacking.
This is in reaction to the article itself.
It seems that the author was not really that familiar with the anti-IP arguments after all. He assumes anti-IP is about the denial of the existence of ideas or ‘spiritual’ aspects of humanity, when anti-IP differentiates ‘physical’ things from ideas, based on scarcity and abundance.
He also seems to be a believer in libel and assumes that libertarians would be horrified at the thought that anti-IP permits libel. As if spreading lies or embarrassing information does not reflect badly on the messenger and can serve to make them less ‘marketable’. Anti-IP folks on the other hand recognize that the reputations of both the messenger and the ‘victim’ of libel could not actually be owned.
Coercion by ‘mere’ words and gestures is nonetheless a threat on scarce resources, namely, one’s body, as opposed to ideas, which can’t be ‘destroyed’ or threatened to be destroyed.
The ‘honor’ aspect of contracts is also quite distinguishable from IP. Indeed, contracts regarding scarce resources need not be fulfilled by one party, but doing so comes with consequences. Courts’ recognition of the validity of contracts and the obligations imposed on the parties has come about is indicative of the people’s attitudes towards property rights. Hence when people ignore the implications of property rights, courts can be manipulated into defending socialistic ideas.
It is at this point that we realize that ‘to IP or not to IP’ is based on utilitarian grounds. Society must be geared to reject IP because it is harmful to the economy, just as society has embraced property rights to a certain degree, because property rights serve to direct scarce resources where people can gain maximum utility from them.
But anyway, IP is ultimately a choice between specific parties. If someone wants to keep some trade secret or would not want his associates to engage in sharing certain knowledge, then contracts can be drawn accordingly, without covering third parties.
Yawn.
I kno. It’s totally ametuer to need a team. I’m just trying to get the job done faster.
Define hacking.
Changing code; I don’t have to touch the physical servers at all.
Perhaps if you would realize I’m not attacking your (I assume you are anti-IP) position (stop being paranoid as Strangeloop would say) you would realize I am just trying to gain a better understanding (or just read my posts wherein I said even if IP were legal, I would still pirate it).
Epicurius:
Changing code; I don’t have to touch the physical servers at all.
Perhaps if you would realize I’m not attacking your (I assume you are anti-IP) position (stop being paranoid as Strangeloop would say) you would realize I am just trying to gain a better understanding (or just read my posts wherein I said even if IP were legal, I would still pirate it).
Oh, come on! You’re changing the physical state of the server when you hack it.
But its a none issue since the forum is hosted on private physical property, and the institute is welcome allow and disallow occupants of it.
So what? What makes physical property legitimate property if it is not rivalrous? Why do I have the right to exclusivity in my servers, my house, but not exclusivity in my intellectual products? It is obviously not rivalry since all the IP communists have dropped the pretense. There is no reason to allow for one but not the other.
nskinsella wrote:
I agree that to a materialist using information to guide your actions is not an invasion at all, but that’s the point. You are simply ignoring the fact that the information was produced by a limited resource, namely the mind, and that by copying the unique products of someone’s mind without consent you are invading the borders of their life, which includes both their body AND their mind.
Even if that were true (which it isn’t), it would still not be socialism. You could argue it is dictatorship or feudalism or whatever from a materialistic viewpoint, but socialism!?!?
MnoruS:
I can assure you that I am VERY familiar with it and that nothing new has come up in this debate.
Some libertarians are horrified by that, but those who are more consistently materialistic are not. Those who are consistently materialistic end up with communism or mayhem.
If it ever was deemed that banning cannibalism or slavery is harmful to the economy, does this then justify the legalization of these practices?
Mises Pieces wrote:
To a materialist there is a HUGE difference, but to me there isn’t. When you rob a bank with your own gun you are also only using your own property. Isn’t it a horrible, horrible restriction on your private property usage not to be able to use your own gun as you please? In general, materialistic libertarians accept that this is not ok, because you threaten or damage someone else’s physical property. But you do not recognize that you damage someone by copying and distributing their intellectual work. In fact, many people here argue that lies and defamation are perfectly ok, and they argue that espionage and peeping is ok too. If you find some DNA sample of your neighbor in the trash then it’s ok to clone him and to post all his genetic diseases on the internet, because it’s just information, right? In other words, you are taking a stance that something is not harmful because it only involves information, and in a sense information does not really exist.
But espionage and invasion of privacy IS harmful to the person, because information is real and very important to him. Information is as real and important to him as physical property.
You also ‘use’ the bank’s property without the bank’s permission…
Prove it? Point by point?
You mean you’re tresspassing your neighbor’s property to collect samples? I think that’s resolvable in property rights alone as well.
And even if it isn’t, then what, how are IP laws going to stop someone from grabbing samples you left elsewhere? Or are you going to control the whole internet w\ the state? If an issue can’t be resolved within property rights theory, most likely, it can’t be resolved at all. IP enforcement is always counteractive in fact; the only way to truly defend information is in the realm of “materiality”.
If it ever was deemed that banning cannibalism or slavery is harmful to the economy, does this then justify the legalization of these practices?
Dude you cut my quote. The whole sentence is:
Society must be geared to reject IP because it is harmful to the economy, just as society has embraced property rights to a certain degree, because property rights serve to direct scarce resources where people can gain maximum utility from them.
To suppose that banning cannibalism and slavery were harmful, is to completely twist the fabric of the universe. But playing along, if cannibalism and slavery provided more utility than social rejection of cannibalism and slavery, then yes, I would have to advocate for such. But it just isn’t the case; property rights provide maximum utility for society and its members. FYI these utilitarian arguments are rather Misesian and as far as I know are not embraced by Kinsella, Hoppe, etc.
Anyway, your arguments still fail to address exactly how someone gains ‘ownership’ of an idea just because they thought it, even though others could think such and use such ideas on their property. Contracts, the agreements of which may be ‘non-materialistic,’ do still pertain to very specific, scarce resources. So it isn’t accurate to refer to anti-IP folks as ‘materialists’ as though ideas neither exist nor have value to them.
Oh well it looks like you won’t change your mind so this will be my last post on this thread. Good luck in your intellectual journey.
if cannibalism and slavery provided more utility than social rejection of cannibalism and slavery, then yes, I would have to advocate for such.
disgusting
While the website itself is not physical property, it’s hosted on servers which are physical property. In order to “hack the website”, one must actually hack the serves which host it. This constitutes trespass and vandalism of said servers.
MnoruS wrote the following post at Mon, Oct 18 2010 12:48 PM:
I would like to see you provide som evidence for that. There have been many cannibalistic societies and many of them have persisted for thousands of years. The same is true for slavery. Obviously THEY didn’t think that this was ludicrous to the point of completely twisting the fabric of the universe. In fact, abolishing slavery was not a slam dunk. It’s not like someone said “slavery is bad” and then everyone rolled over because they realized what a complete twist in the fabric of the universe this was. On the contrary, there were hardcore proponents of slavery that fought bitterly for the right to enslave people. They made a whole lot of utilitarian arguments, which aren’t easily dismissed out of hand: 1) slavery is good for Africans, they have a better life as slaves than as free men in Africa, 2) freeing the slaves will release havoc on America and destroy the country, 3) it’s too expensive to send them back, 4) slavery is the backbone of the southern economy. To abolish it is to wreak economic depression on all.
These were utilitarian arguments for slavery and they were very convincing to a whole lot of people.
See, THIS is the reason I asked this outrageous question. I’m pretty sure that many libertarians are so far out that there is no hope of ever recovering them in the realms of the rational, but at least such a question then brings out the rationalistic answers that scares the bejeezes out of a few people, and in that case I have at least achieved something.
First let me add that one does not gain ownership over the IDEA but over a certain UTILIZATION of an idea (typically distribution for commercial gain). In other words, you are free to think the idea and to use it in your personal life. You’re even free to tell people about the idea. The only thing you’re not free to do is to commercialize it.
Second, you start with the difficult exceptional cases first and use them to undermine IP at large. Let’s start with a simpler case, namely novels. What you copyright is not an idea but the particular word sequences.Those word sequences are so unique that it is highly improbable that anyone will produce the same word sequences and thereby infringe your copyright. Thus, in the case of novels and other complex information patterns your criticism simply does not apply.
The way you build up intellectual property rights is exactly the same way you build up physical property rights: by mixing your labor with the natural state. The natural state is the information equivalent of a blank slate. You start with no information and then you produce information which is the fruit of your labor. If that information is unique you have earned the right to make it your property.
Unlike the marxist folks they don’t practice materialism consistently. One of the cases where they DO practice materialism is with respect to intellectual property. They seem to understand that hard-disks are limited resources (cf the strange debate about hard-disks and hacking in this thread) but fail to understand that the MIND is a limited resource, and that it is the MIND that is protected by intellectual property. Marxists have no problems with this and they are very open about it: they don’t believe in mind, and therefore they deny both IP and private physical property. They understand that in a materialistic worldview there is no such thing as a choice to mix one’s labor with the natural state and hence no grounds for lockean property.
Only on one point to the marxists and the anti-IP libertarians agree: they disregard the mind. Marxists dismiss it altogether saying that it really doesn’t exist (because they only believe in atoms), and libertarians end up with a similar view by implication since they act as if it does not matter that the mind is a limited resource and does not factor it into their equation for IP.
OK, maybe this is a dumb question, but… as far as I can tell, patterns of information appear to be, by nature, (positive) externalites. Is this wrong?
That said, the difference seems to be that the creator wants to retain some degree of control over how the externality is used by those who receive it.
Are there any other examples of externalities that are treated in this way, where their producer still retains partial control of them after emitting them?
e.g. if my neighbor creates a spectacular Christmas light display, am I allowed to photograph it and sell postcards of it? Or if he gives an outdoor concert, am I allowed to make recordings of it from my property and sell them?
Or, in terms of physical property rights (I realize this is more complicated because it involves physical invasion of property), if a factory belches smoke over my property, but I find a process to capture this smoke and extract chemicals from it, does that factory retan any control over how I use those chemicals? OK, that’s not very realistic, but what if I live by a golf course and balls are hit onto my property? Am I able to keep those golf balls? Am I able to sell them? I have no idea, and am just thinking out loud… but is there any fundamental difference between IP and other externalities?
Once an idea becomes public knowledge, it is not scarce anymore. What harm is there to the author of a book if you copy the book (and there was no contract signed stating you would not copy it)?
Those word sequences are so unique that it is highly improbable that anyone will produce the same word sequences and thereby infringe your copyright.
“So Unique” is a definitional nightmare but just for giggles please define “unique” and also at what complexity something becomes “unique”.
Oh, bugger I may have just infringed on your creation of the phrase “so unique”.
This ^^^.
Arguments for IP are themselves IP. Therefore, advocates of IP cannot use pro IP arguments without the original creator’s permission. If I recall correctly, it was some King in the 17th century. Don’t violate his property rights!
[edit It was queen liz the 1st She had no children. IP should have died with her]
Here is my initial response to Onar Åm’s blog post. I haven’t addressed everything, but I think I’ve addressed (what I see as) the most important issues. Again, I’d like to thank Onar Åm for joining the Mises.org forum so quickly after his blog post was brought up here.
What Are Intellectual Property Rights?
Åm defines “intellectual property rights” as “rights to ownership over products of the mind such as novels, music, articles, research data and software”. The definition hinges on the phrase “products of the mind”, for which he does not provide a systematic definition or explanation. On the face of it, the phrase “product of the mind” points to anything and everything produced by people, as all action requires thought. However, this is obviously not what Åm means by the phrase, since he provides examples which are intended to contrast what he would call “products of the mind” against what he would not call that. Given this ambiguity, perhaps he would do well to use a more precise phrase instead of “products of the mind”.
Materialism
Åm makes two mistakes when introducing the allegedly materialistic attack on intellectual property rights by Marxists and “some libertarians”. First, he confuses the Marxist materialist conception of history with materialist metaphysics. Thus it cannot be accurately stated that the two groups in question are making the same attack on intellectual property rights. Second, the metaphysical materialism that he criticizes is a straw man. The key issue of all metaphysics is the nature of existence, which is a semantic issue at heart (i.e. how should one define “existence”). Metaphysical materialism asserts that physical objects are the basis for existence. As a result, information can only be said to exist in terms of physical objects. This is not the same as saying that information does not exist at all.
Denying the concept of information leads to a performative contradiction. Since all combinations and interactions of physical objects can be called “information”, denying the concept of information entails the inability to reason about anything other than the most fundamental objects of existence. However, in order to deny the concept of information, one must (at least implicitly) reason about more than just those objects. Thus a performative contradiction is reached. None of Åm’s consequentialist examples can then be consistent with denying the concept of information, as they all involve denying some information while accepting the rest.
Codification
Åm seems confused about the concept of lien. It is not, as he states, “the combination of physical property with contracts that were tied to the property, and not merely to the owners”. Rather, a lien denotes “the right to retain the lawful possession of the property of another until the owner fulfills a legal duty to the person holding the property, such as the payment of lawful charges for work done on the property” (source). In other words, a lien is the right for someone to hold a piece of property as collateral against the property owner’s debt to him. Åm’s example with the farmstead would be unenforceable – upon selling the property, the farmer relinquishes all claim to it. For him to enforce the maintenance of the old farmhouse after the sale would mean he retains a controlling interest in the property.
Sieben: “Arguments for IP are themselves IP. Therefore, advocates of IP cannot use pro IP arguments without the original creator’s permission. If I recall correctly, it was some King in the 17th century. Don’t violate his property rights!”
Yep. I argued somethign similar here: An Objectivist IP Argument for Taxation http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/02/24/an-objectivist-ip-argument-for-taxation/