So anyhow, before I got totally bored with this topic for now, I was reading one last article from Kinsella.
And more than this. IP is not possible without legislation; legislation is not possible without the state. And conversely: with a state, you always get legislation; and legislation always leads to a proliferation of bad laws (see my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society).
What this means is that not only is your case against IP weakened if you do not adopt libertarian principles and reasoning to undergird it. But if you support the state at all–if you are not an anarcho-libertarian–then you do not really oppose IP. If the state exists, it will legislate, and it will probably enact IP laws, along with plenty of other bad laws. So, if you support the state, you really can’t complain about IP laws. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, “No socialist author ever gave a thought to the possibility that the abstract entity which he wants to vest with unlimited power—whether it is called humanity, society, nation, state, or government—could act in a way of which he himself disapproves.”
IP opponents must not oppose only the “worst excesses” of IP. They must oppose all IP, root and branch, on principled, pro-private property, grounds; and more than this: they must oppose the state itself, and legislation as a means of making law.
How about the fact that there’s a clear pattern on the book written by somebody? If the book suddenly got mulched and there was nothing recognizable about it being a book, then fine.
If you are saying that you own the matter of the book in a certain way as to make it so people are able to read it but not copy it, you have to assume that, between reading it and copying it, you have to mess with the arrangement of the matter of the book in different ways. But I already showed that, between those two activities, they do not have to mess with the arrangement in different ways.
If you are still trying to say that you own the book and not the pattern of it, you have to just acquiesce to the example with the television that you gave before, you have to say that you own it entirely and that, whether it is in the trash of not, it is yours. But that it clearly incompatible with selling it to people. For, once you sell it, you relinquish your complete ‘rights’ to it.
The only option left is saying that you should be able to ‘own’ the arrangemant. And, again, so you do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that, once you admit that it only makes sense to say that you are advocating that people should be able to own arrangements, your argument is revealed as ridiculous. Not at all. Instead, it would just get rid of the mysticism that surrounds this issue and make us be able to get past all of the definitions and actually ask whether it is expedient to do so.
I define ‘IP’ as being able to have monopolies on arrangements. Whether that is expedient is what we need to determine. And, by the way, I offered arguments skeptical to its expediency earlier, showing, I think, that the general argument for ‘IP’ is a general revolt against the market system because it implies that no one has incentives to do ever seek profits in any way because people will simply steal their idea and be able to destroy their profits it without having to deal with all of the research cost involved in figuring out how to do that. (That was a bad explanation; but, to see my point, refer back to some of my posts in this thread, especially my original post to hayekianxyz and the end of one of my posts to M1ThinkTank.)
My point is that I see no difference between that “incentive problem” and that of any other profit-seeking activity, which most people, including you, do not consider to be a problem. (I expand on my point more in my next post in which I respond to M1ThinkTank.)
OK, let me put it another way. You’re quite correct that in an equilibrium position there is, by definition, no incentive for further profit opportunities. But the point I’m trying to make is that even in disequilibrium position, there will be fewer incentives to invest in R&D if one cannot capture the returns from doing so. It’s a comparative point, a society in which individuals cannot capture returns from investment will see less investment. Economists such as Douglass North have pointed to the institutional change that was the extension of property rights to ideas as being a key cause in the industrial revolution.
As I said, it’s analogous to the general case against socialism. When property is socialized, individuals can’t reap what they sow, they don’t internalize the returns from investment of any variety and as such will factor this into their decision making.
As I said, it is impossible to demarcate property in ideas
Attempts to rationally justify and demarcate any sort of property runs is problematic, as a lot of the useless quibbling around here is a testament to. To take but one example, what constitutes homesteading? Many people have tried to answer this question and no conclusive answer has really been given, homesteading may simply mean fencing off an area or it may mean literally “mixing ones labour with the ground”, but the latter term is ambiguous. I don’t see why property rights in ideas would be any different, changes in circumstances motivated institutional change which then further affects the incentives of individuals.
I suppose my problem is that I don’t see how all property is really just social convention, much in the same way that property in ideas are.
“If you are still trying to say that you own the book and not the pattern of it, you have to just acquiesce to the example with the television that you gave before, you have to say that you own it entirely and that, whether it is in the trash of not, it is yours. But that it clearly incompatible with selling it to people. For, once you sell it, you relinquish your complete ‘rights’ to it.”
I have shown you time and time again I don’t have to sell you complete rights to it. I’m renting it to you for an indefinite time, on a one time payment. You have the right to carry it around, put it in your book case, read it, all provided you do not intend to copy it. I have every other right to it. That’s it. If somebody picks up that rented and unpossessed piece of property, they don’t necessarily own it. They only gain the rights to it which have been abandoned. That may or may not have been all of them. Now determining if that piece of material is owned can be made more difficult if it has been mulched. But not that hard if it was still a book.
I have shown that handling the book is different if any other condition is met. e.g. the earthquake in Somalia, the right to handle the book at night vs. day, living in my house with the intention to paint it etc. Your intentions count as a condition. If that condition doesn’t match up with the rights you homesteaded, you are in violation of the other owners rights.
To avoid speaking nonsense, we have to define our terms unambiguously.
I responded to that here:
Now that will probably not mean much to you. But, to be clear, anti-‘IP’ is not pro-socialism of ideas. For that is just nonsensical.
But you said this:
Why does that apply to finding certain profit opportunities but not others? If I interpret your response less strongly and see “there will be fewer incentives to invest in R&D if one cannot capture the returns from doing so” as “there will be fewer incentives to invest in R&D if one […] capture[s fewer] returns from doing so”, yes, I agree. But the problem with that is that it does not acknowledge the unseen. Sure, giving people monopolies if they do something gives them more incentives to do that. But that gives other people less opportunities to innovate, too, which is clearly an issue.
You have still not really responded to the point of my argument. I do not exactly blame you for that, though; for it is not very ‘nuanced’ or precise because of my weakness in economics. But I expand on my points here:
No one has showed me how the other profit opportunities differ from the ones that they want to protect with ‘IP’ laws. The fact is that, whether you are producing oil, books, or whatever, if a person creates something good and starts profiting, other people will follow suit and reduce their profits. With researching where to sell oil, people just say that they get “first mover” advantages and that it why it is OK. But, with books, they entirely forget about the “first mover” advantages and just talk of how they will have no incentive to make anything new.
Sure, that makes sense if you sign a contract with them.
The handling of the book is not different; just the relationship that the person has with the contract is different; and, in this case, it is against what the contract says. So, sure, that makes sense if you sign a contract with them. But, to be clear, it has nothing to do with how they handle the book. For they may read it or copy it while messing with the arrangement of its matter in the same way.
But you have no contract with the guy who picks it up. So the two things that I quoted above do not help prove that you somehow retain partial rights of a lost book.
But Sam Armstrong’s argument is an attempt to make an end-run around appealing to authorship because that implies rights in patterns/ideas. You are saying that authorship (“See, the pattern of letters in the book I wrote is the same as the pattern of letters in this book whose copy I did not authorize”) in itself is evidence of ownership. But that implies that patterns/ideas can be owned. That is a different subject from my argument with Sam Armstrong.
I think both you and Sam Armstrong are incorrect here. SA’s argument implies that it’s possible to write a contract that distinguishes between holding a book with intent only to read it and reading it with intent to copy it. But this is kind of silly. Maybe I have a photographic memory and I can retype the contents of the book after reading it at Waldenbooks (without purchasing, so no breach of contract). Or, maybe the type of information in the book is of an immediately useful variety, for example, stock tips or other such information which can be relayed (copied) without being mimeographed. The root problem is that “intent” is subjective so it is not possible to write a contract on that basis. Who’s to say what the intent was?
However, I think you are also incorrect. You imply that it is not possible to form a contractual agreement not to engage in actions that do not result in an alteration of the material configuration of the physical world. I think this is incorrect. Consider a performance bond to fidelity. The prohibited actions are any sort of sexual contact with another person than the person’s spouse. If the conditions of infidelity in the performance bond are objective then the bond would be enforceable. Violation of the bond would not be the result of changing the material configuration of the physical world but engaging in a certain action or actions which you have agreed not to engage in (for example, going out to dinner alone with a woman who is not your wife or holding her hand, etc.) If the cheated spouse can demonstrate with evidence that the agreed conditions of the bond have not been met, the bond can be awarded to the injured spouse.
Non-disclosure agreements could certainly be formed in a natural order legal system regarding the copying of books or any other media. Despite the ease of copying data in the modern world, corporations manage to keep very sensitive data private with all manner of NDAs. I can’t see NDAs as being solely a creature of the State, even though MPAA/RIAA’s leg-breaker-style IP certainly is.
Boldrin and Levine’s Against Intellectual Monopoly gives specific case studies of how IP hampered the Industrial Revolution (Watt’s steam-engine patents, etc.) and how industries which have been largely unprotected by IP have, in fact, flourished because of it.
But Sam Armstrong’s argument is an attempt to make an end-run around appealing to authorship because that implies rights in patterns/ideas. You are saying that authorship (“See, the pattern of letters in the book I wrote is the same as the pattern of letters in this book whose copy I did not authorize”) in itself is evidence of ownership. But that implies that patterns/ideas can be owned. That is a different subject from my argument with Sam Armstrong.
The copied pattern is evidence that they violated my property rights, it isn’t the actual property right. So it’s usable in court, but it is based on the fact that they had to use my property. If they can prove that they didn’t use my book in order to make the copy, then that’s cool.
Sam Armstrong:
I have shown you time and time again I don’t have to sell you complete rights to it. I’m renting it to you for an indefinite time, on a one time payment. You have the right to carry it around, put it in your book case, read it, all provided you do not intend to copy it. I have every other right to it. That’s it.
Sure, that makes sense if you sign a contract with them.
No, it doesn’t make sense if I signed a contract with them (because again, you can break contracts). It makes sense if I transfered rights over to them, but retained some of them for myself. If I sell somebody the right to live in my house, they can sell that right to someone else. There is no contract between me and this new third party, but they don’t own the entire house just because they don’t have a contract with me. They only own the right to live in the house.
If I sell Josh the right to live in my house provide his name is Jim, he can sell that right to anybody named Jim. But they still only have the right to live in the house provided their name is Jim. If Jim then changes his name to Perry, he no longer meets the condition of right to live in my house provided his name is Jim. He still owns that right though, so he can sell it to another person named Jim. And none of these 3rd parties have ever signed a contract with me.
Now if one of these guys abandon’s their right to live in the house provide their name is Jim, Anybody else can then homestead that right, including me. If I don’t and someone named Jim homesteads the right to live in the house provide their name is Jim, and changes his name to sam, they don’t get to homestead the right to live in the house provided their name is Sam, because I still own that right.
It is evidence that a book like yours was used but it is not necessarily evidence that the very book was used. The book in question could be a copy of a copy of your book. You can say, “well, that’s the same thing, I owned the first illegal copy, too” but that’s a circular argument since the very point in contention is whether or not a copy is proof of violation of the reserved rights.
Your argument might have some validity if xeroxing was the only way to copy things. A xerox is a bit like a photograph, it is a record of the state of the physical world at some time and place. So, you could use the xerox itself as evidence that your very book was copied but not by virtue of the pattern of letters on the page, rather, by virtue of the unique attributes of the book, i.e. the paper texture, page size and shape, the font used, spelling errors or other unique features of the very book you originally sold.
But xerox is not the only way to make a copy. A person might use OCR software and reprint from their computer. If so, the printed reproduction of the book is no longer a record of the state of the physical world at some time and place. It is a completely abstract copy of the pattern of letters in the book. So, such a reproduction of your book cannot be evidence that your reserved rights were violated without appealing to the contents of the book (pattern/idea).
Except it isn’t an abstraction. It’s in physical memory of a computer. I’d would own those registers (or what ever rights the person who put it in those registers had) in that computer for making an illegal copy on that computer using my original book.
For example. Let’s bring in another party. Let’s say he posted it on a google site or something. He has the right to use that under what ever conditions google has spelled out in their terms of service. If he uses my book to copy it to those servers, I now own his rights to use that server in what ever conditions google has spelled out. If he then further accesses that account, he’s guilty of hacking, and infringing on my rights to that server.
Now let’s say that there are no terms and conditions and that anybody can post anything up on some server. Do I own the server bits where anybody can post anything they want. Is that party who has that server responsible for it? Yes. Their server is doing something which is using my property in what ever registers that I own in order to copy it, and I own those registers because somebody used my book to copy it, just as if it were the paper of a xerox. Just as someone is responsible for a tree on their property falling on my car, so too are they responsible for using my property to copy the information on it. So I now have a property right in that server just as I would in a xerox of the original book. If the people who own it do anything other than erase it so that they can retake ownership of their server, they have violated my property right in that server. Cause remember, the cost of using my property to copy it is either a) immediate destruction of the copy, or failing that b) transfered ownership of the media the copy is on.
There is really only one way to get around this. Somebody reads the entire book and makes some sort of broadcast over the radio. Then somebody who had no premeditation with the person who broadcast it records it on a tape recorder and then transcribes that recording into a book. That is literally the only way that I can think of that a legit unauthorized copy of a book could come out.
There was illegal use of my property involved, but I can’t stop people from hearing it just as you couldn’t stop the person from looking at a poster board. I also can’t stop them from recording what they hear. You could stop the person broadcasting it, but if you didn’t get him in time, tough titties. Other than the fact that you can still take it to the guy who broadcast it over the radio.
I never meant to imply that; but I will defend it anyway. If you try to make a contract with a person without the indication that you breached the contract being a change in the external world, that is just mysticism. With your example, that of course results in a change in the external world; that is, it implies that the relationship of your body, a thing of the external world, and the body of one other than your spouse, a thing of the external world, is of a certain type. If that were not true, how else would you enforce the contract? It would be silly, for example, to make a contract saying that you will pay me $1,000 at the time at which I have a certain sort of dream. For, as far as I know, it is impossible to verify what sorts of dreams people have. If I am wrong, just think of an other example of something completely private; and you will see what I mean.
(What I was saying to Sam Armstrong was that, if he is not talking about contracts, he is not talking about him owing certain classes of objects, and he believes that one of his lost books should be readable but not copyable, his only possibility is to talk about partially owning the matter of an object; but, as I showed earlier, the handling of a book does not necessarily differ between reading it and copying it. Also, by the way, I am not really sure whether it makes any sense to say that you partially own something, anyway. I was just trying to show him that the only way to hold his position is to advocate that people should be able to ‘own’ classes of goods. Notice the first few words of what you quoted: “If you are saying that you own the matter of the book in a certain way as to make it so people are able to read it but not copy it[…]”. That is a pretty specific condition. Your response would have made more sense if I had started that with “If you are [pro-‘IP’]” or something like that.)
Sure, that makes sense if the first party has a contract with the second party and the second party has a contract with the third party. But, again, if a dude finds your book on the side of the road, he is not agreeing to any sort of contract with any one.
Sam Armstrong: