Stealing of intellectual property is incorrect.
To steal property, the victim must be missing the stolen property.
Therefore, it is not theft.
Mises.org editor Jeffrey Tucker had a good blog post on intellectual property July 19, 2010: I hesitate to link this essay of L. Neil Smith because, if it influences you without his consent, you are guilty of stealing from him. Maybe you think that you have his implicit consent because he has posted it online. He doesn’t see it that way.
“There is no discernible difference between physical property and intellectual property,” he writes. “The farmer begins with a tree-covered lot that he must clear and plow and plant, and the writer with a damnedly blank page or screen.”
What is wrong with that analogy? Yes, the farmer owns the land. Yes, the writer owns the page and screen. The farmer, however, does not own the idea of plowing and planting. Nor can the writer prevent others from arranging letters and words in a particular way because he somehow owns the ideas expressed on his paper. Land and paper need economizing. Plowing and writing do not: they are ideas and can be infinitely reproduced without rivalry over the original.
To put it another way, if Crusoe, alone on a[n] island, discovers how to pick berries, he owns all the berries he can pick. No one may steal what he has gathered. If Friday shows up and start[s] to pick berries in the same way, Friday is not thereby a criminal. He is merely learning just as everyone in society learns from others. If Crusoe uses violence to stop him from picking berries on grounds that Crusoe owns the very idea of berry picking, it is Crusoe who is the criminal.
If you are a baker, the cake you make is your own. The idea of baking, and the techniques you use, cannot be claimed as your exclusive possession if you share them with others. If you are a snappy dresser, you own your tie and hat, but if every time you go out in public you are inviting others to share in your ideas of wearing a tie and hat.
I think its alot simplier to just say, property could not be stolen if property is not missing.
Q.E.D.
Unfortunately, people have a tendency to define “stealing” to include “doing something with your own propety of which the state does not approve”. Like, for example, using your property to express a concept that the state has tried to limit through IP. Or you know, not paying your their taxes.
IP is a big business cartel. It literally created new markets, that might not be possible in it’s current form..
IP enforcement stems from a genuine human feeling that someone “stole” my idea. It may not be stealing. But their is a certain human emotion that is evoked when someone else uses one’s idea.
That idea is new, and came along only after the state started giving unwarranted privilege to the originators of ideas. In the past, copying a person’s idea was considered to be an act of homage, as long as due credit was given. More recently, the most common form of “stealing” a person’s idea has been to beat the actual creator to the patent office.
It would be simpler to say, intellectual property does not exist.
More like, there is a particular emotion when someone is deprived of additional profit.
Wow, I think this is a good way to put it!
Yes. Changing laws and regulations have an effect on the markets. These new things that are possible with IP are created by firms. These firms crowd out businesses that don’t benefit from IP laws.