Hello libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, fellow travelers, and those who just kind of experimented in college but have been curious ever since.
Today we bring up a subject only slightly less contentious among the aforementioned ideological groups than abortion or deep-dish pizza. I am speaking, of course, of intellectual property laws.
Many commenters in the precious few articles we have seen on this issue in our previous lives expressed a desire to rein in the perceived outrages and over-application of IP, without necessarily wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.
Linked here is a free copy of a book, Against Intellectual Property, that I hope you will take the time to read. The author, Stephan Kinsella, is a critical voice in the current milieu of libertarian, anti-state, anarchist, and minarchist thought, and even when I disagree, I always enjoy his thorough and rigorous logic.
I believe the title tells you where Mr. Kinsella stands on the topic, however, for those of you uncertain either of the practical or ideological underpinnings of IP as it currently exists and why the system should be abolished rather than merely reformed, I hope that you take the time to grapple with the presented material and hone your own thoughts and arguments.
Comments
155 responses to “Intellectual Property and You: An Introduction”
I.P. Freely should be the name of an An-Cap warez site.
Or a “Chinese Libertarian ‘Water-Sports’ Porn” site
That’s obviously a sub-forum. I mean 100% of porn is pirated IP anyway
Odds and Ends- my first post here
file under: homophones
50 Shades of Phoenix: Arizona gov candidate spills spicy sex life details
Adler was fired two days later.
So ESPN was niggling at Adler?
They were certainly niggardly in retaining his services.
Serena is an absolute beast on the court
She is…so fuck anybody who gets offended by it.
DERPY! Good to see you.
BTW the links articles last longer than 4 hours over here so FYI, check with your doctor before cross posting.
DERP! Hooray!
Hiya Derpy!
Hey, Derps. Good to see you.
Our derp reserves are still sub-optimal here. We can use your services.
More Odds and Ends
Idaho judge orders no sex for man convicted of statutory rape
file under: STEVE SMITH
MYSTERY: Half-eaten shark on Florida beach raises speculation about what killed it
Although, if it was STEVE SMITH, one would expect him to have raped the shark, eaten the half with the head and leave the tail half to wash ashore.
In other news, I set a new weight low- 153. Feeling good about that. Also, I had a 4 day weekend and I’m off this week too. Life is good.
Hi, Derpy! Welcome aboard. Congrats on the low weight; you’re a lean, mean, linguistic machine!
To give an example of the downsides of patents: technically, drugs are not patented. What gets patented is the process for making the drug.
To avoid infringing on patents, generic drug manufacturers often use the patented process with a bunch of unnecessary steps tacked on. It’s like if someone patented the process of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you could avoid infringing on the patent by taking the lid off the jar, putting it back on, taking it off again and then spreading the peanut butter.
Sounds silly doesn’t it? Yet this is exactly what generic drug manufacturers must do to avoid lawsuits. Pointless, reversible reactions are added for the sole purpose of making the process different.
oopsy. I didn’t mean for this to go here.
But, still fascinating. Thanks.
But, but, without patents no one will make medicine!
To out myself – I am generally in favor of IP, especially since most of the arguments I have heard against it are from the socialist/communist end of the political spectrum about the evil of making money.
All that to say, I am not really versed in what libertarian arguments there are in favor of its abolition, and I am actually very interested to know how abolishing IP works out better with something that is so heavily dependent on massive R&D like pharma.
It’s not just true there, it’s true in most areas of innovation. In my mind, the issue is the court system, not the patent system (as it could be if reformed, not as it actually is at the moment).
I would pose that we would need a libertarian argument in favor of having it rather than one in favor of abolishing it.
Pharma is a tough sector that way since cost of producing a new drug is so impacted by the regulatory regime that it’s not hard to imagine pharma innovation screeching to a halt in the US if IP laws were changed without corresponding deregulation.
The argument in favor of IP in pharma is primarily a utilitarian one. My impulse would be to simultaneously deregulate and eliminate IP and see if we still have a problem, rather than leave the existing system in place under the presumption that we would have a problem without it.
I would pose that we would need a libertarian argument in favor of having it
That would start with coming to a common understanding of what we mean by “property” and “property rights”. One, I hope, that is not lashed to primitivist notions that only things can be property.
Once you accept that intangible property is actually property, the basis for giving exclusive rights to some forms of intangible property via IP laws can be developed.
This is actually a pretty difficult philosophical exercise, BTW.
Masterfully understated. There is a long list of really sticky philosophical problems that get caught up in IP discussions.
If Bishop Berkeley was right, the only kind of property is intellectual property . . .
They very well may not make NEW medicines.
True for process patent, but what about composition of matter?
I was one of those loathsome lurkers at the other site for a few years, and I was able to pick up most of the references, but I never was able to decipher the often hilarious STEVE SMITH references.
In the Before Time, there was a drive by commenter named Steve Smith who ran a blog called The Concerned Troll. Steve had an unfortunate habit of saying dumb things, so the regulars started making fun of him. One of them noted that he looked like a shaved Sasquatch and thus the joke was born. It got so bad that Matt Welch actually asked people to stop making fun of him.
References, and everything. Bravo.
“It’s not so much the unkind words as it is the lack of any quality, creative fan fiction to go along with it,” he says to me in a private e-mail. But more importantly….”
You people failed.
That was pre-SF’s Warty Hugeman and the Doomcock of Doom vs STEVE SMITH story.
Needs moar STEVE SMITH-Warty Hugeman crossover episodes.
Thank you, Derp. It all makes sense now.
There was an actual commenter named Steve Smith who went inactive long ago. He went on one of those cruises sponsored by TSWSNBN and it became apparent that he was very, very hairy. People started making sasquatch jokes, etc. References to the fictional rapesquatch are always in all-uppercase to differentiate from the actual person. STEVE SMITH ALWAYS TYPE IN ALL CAPS AND REFER TO SELF IN THIRD PERSON. AND RAPE.
Thank you, Tonio.
STEVE SMITH CAN HELP. COME TO CAVE AND WE TALK.
AND BY TALK, MEAN RAPE.
Fun fact: I know someone named Steve Smith. While he is not large and hairy (he reminds me of Skinny Pete from BB), he grows a very fine crawl space weed. And no, I have been in the crawl space, and he has never raped me.
Crawl space weed sounds like a winning garage band name.
The one I want to know are the references to this Lucy person and her apparently being the worst. Joined too late to know that one, I guess.
As far as I can tell, because I’m post-Lucy, she used to write for Reason and actually engage with the commentariat regularly. Then she got fired for something (I remember seeing spelling and grammar errors somewhere?) and the commentariat was so heartbroken that her name was wiped from the records.
You’re conflating two different women. Lucy was a writer over at Reason for a while who would throw down with the commenters regularly. She’s aware of this place and we linked one of her stories during our first couple of days. After she was no longer at Reason, it became fashionable to not talk about Lucy.
Nicole/Nikki was The Worst, which was either an endearing joke or an absolute truth depending on how well you got along with her. She hasn’t been an active commenter for about a year.
Still out shoveling her sidewalk.
Ah, I see. Thank you Jesse and John Titor! Also, that’s right. I think I recall seeing some posts from that Nikki. If memory serves, wasn’t she the one claiming that not aborting your unborn child was immoral?
Yeah, she was the anti-natalist, your mileage may vary on whether you find them tolerable.
Lucy has her own blog these days – but I dare not provide the link. She also writes for a number of websites.
She is a regular at Anti-War.com. Hi ever body. So this is where all the cool kids went after Reason shit the Trump brick.
Someone’s mom didn’t get him out of Twin Falls, Idaho
Who da ho?
Twin Falls.
Not relevant to your excellent contribution, but it’s a good song.
A bigger shark.
Congrats derp. You weigh less than I do now. That is impressive. I guess I have to get off of my ass.
1. I oppose copyright and patents as a violation of natural law. The Founders even made it clear when they included them in the constitution that they were making an exception.
2. As exceptions go, it isn’t the worst. If we carefully limit them, it isn’t a big issue for me.
3. In short, if I were dictator, IP would be the last against the wall.
4. However, the way copyright works now is totally unacceptable.
My proposal is a carveout for Disney. Just give them a special status and reset the copyright law to what it was before Disney started pushing it ever further.
A special status – like the Boyscouts or the Olympics? Nothing worse than a quasi-governmental organization.
This is the same way I assume term limits will be implemented if it ever passes.
It’s the renewability that’s the big issue for me. While agreeing that IP is a violation of natural law, I’d rather argue for achievable reform rather than get lost in the weeds of trying to sell outright elimination of IP to the public. I see nothing wrong with a woman being able to churn out a couple of really good pieces of IP and have a nice comfortable life from the proceeds of that, and perhaps her widower should be able to continue to enjoy that income. But I don’t think that children, grandchildren, etc, should be able to continue to derive direct income from something they didn’t invent and cannot own according to natural law. If the inventor/author manages to save or invest enough of the proceeds to pass on a family fortune, that’s fine. But to deny heritability is tricky without denying saleability. I think that you should be able to sell IP rights to your work while you are alive, but if rights terminate at your death (even if you no longer own those rights) then you are creating an incentive for the competitors of the buyer to hasten your death.
I would like the courts to say “Sure congress can constitutionally set the length to whatever they want as long as it is finite, but it can’t be extended so every current work reverts to the copyright law when originally created.”
I oppose copyright and patents as a violation of natural law.
How so?
Updated because I couldn’t get THE FUCKING ALT-TEXT TO WORK GODDAMNIT so I made it a caption instead.
Totally worth the extra effort.
As long as you’re happy, I’m happy. I DID IT FOR YOU!
I’m touched! In a good way.
By Coach Kingsbury?!
In WordPress, if you fill out the title attribute field for an image, it will display on MouseOver.
Not a bad idea to copy/paste it in both alt and title attribute.
Here is a visual on how to do it.
Sort of a Lockean view that if you mix your labor with the aether you can own an intellectual result and have control over what people can use it and in what manner. That said fuck the Mouse.
Yeah, the Disney people sued the shit out of the people who dared to publish “Mickey Rat” underground comics, and I think drove them out of business. MR was clearly parody, clearly NOT Disney and clearly fair use – they punished them for making fun of them.
If copyright law was rewritten according to purist libertarian principles, I presume that authors/publishers would simply require anyone who buys their stuff to do so subject to certain conditions like not copying it, and specifying that the condition would pass along with the work each time the work was resold.
Indeed, this could actually go on indefinitely – there would no longer be a time when the work went into the public domain unless the license terms said so.
And say goodbye to fair use unless the license allows it.
And libraries.
The true purist position is no IP, period. This is about an acceptable compromise that moves society in the direction of liberty.
I think the clearest debunking of the trope that “without strict IP no one has an incentive to create.” is the open source software example. Hell even the open source licenses are open source. And the competition is stiff. MIT, GNU, Apache. GitHub’s entire existence is built on people creating so that other people can copy it. Also, I think IP and attribution are two separate issues. Attribution falls under fraud theory.
“without strict IP no one has an incentive to create.”
Or the hundreds of years of European publications that existed before intellectual property concepts did.
I stirred a nest at my company around that. Contractually, any code I write is property of my employer or their client depending on the terms of their contract. I wanted to use some angular directives hosted on GitHub under the MIT license, and made some tweaks. I then made the mistake of asking permission to do the right thing and submit my changes back. Nobody said no, but there is apparently a high-level discussion involving lawyers and VPs over how to do the right thing and make sure that IP I generate is properly secured for its owner. Which, its nice to work for a firm that is ethical enough to admit that if we are going to use these sorts of things, we need to be participating members of the community and not takers.
Well, it is my understanding that much of the open-source software is created by programmers and software engineer types who are gainfully employed by big tech companies like Apple and Google, who of course benefit greatly from IP laws. So if there were no IP laws, would Apple and Google even exist to pay the salaries of the engineers who write open-source software? How much open-source stuff would really exist without IP laws?
The only thing I get for writing articles and stories here for here is exposure. I find the exercise satisfying for personal reasons.
“God existed before the Glibertarians….so you can give your heart to Jesus, BUT YOUR ARTICLES BELONG TO THE GLIBS!”
/Gunny I.P. Hartman
Open source actually depends on IP law. It (usually) isn’t public domain.
For example, with PD software you can take it and use it in a proprietary means and not share the source with your clients.
If it is under the GNU license, you would have to share the source. Which means someone can fork your product and create a cheaper/freer version.
Yes because without IP laws Open Source would depend on the quality of your obfuscation tool.
I am merely trying to point out one of the biggest arguments AGAINST IP reform is that no one will create, and that simply isn’t true. People have been and will continue to create. Also, I wanted to separate the attribution need from the IP viewpoint. Attribution is simply not tricking your MaDougals customers into thinking they are getting McDonalds.
I would also point to the world of fashion, where designers regularly rip each other off – it’s how trends are created. And guess what? An Armani is still and Armani and commands a high price, and an off the rack suit of a similar cut at Men’s Wearhouse still goes for a fraction of the cost. The world didn’t end, the clothiers didn’t go out of business, and even in 2017 we don’t run around wearing Star Trek unitards because the fashion industry got screwed by a lack of IP.
If the end result is all of us getting to run around in Star Trek unitards, you’re making a compelling case to radically strengthen IP.
Does the pic qualify as today’s Wiener Wednesday?
If you have to ask, probably not.
I’m firmly in a “You’ll know it when you see it” kind of camp.
::claps furiously::
Claps furiously… I read that waaaay wrong.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
::*aps furiously::
There, now there’s something for everyone, including cartographers.
*Studies ancient map – sees hand pointing to Terra Incognito saying “Here there be Fapping”*
Crusty signal lit?
Getting back to the topic, I side more with the “ideas are not property” camp. You can’t steal an idea the same way you can steal car. If I steal your car, you don’t have it anymore and I do. If I “steal” your idea, you still have it- you’re just not the sole beneficiary anymore. You can call me a lazy copycat, but I didn’t steal anything from you.
Intellectual property is an extension of plagiarism, which I think is better addressed informally. In comedy for example, there is no joke copyright office, but comedians who “steal” jokes (intentionally or not) face shunning.
“Stealing” ideas is what people do. They see something that works and they imitate it. Often, they improve upon it with their own creativity. Can you really say Star Wars is an original creation? It’s a mash-up of tropes that have been around since the Stone Age, filtered through Flash Gordon and WW2 movies.
Aviation progress was held back in the early 20th century because of legal battles waged by the Wright Brothers against anyone else who tried to build an airplane. Wilbur Wright said: “It is our view that morally the world owes its almost universal use of our system of lateral control entirely to us. It is also our opinion that legally it owes it to us.” That mindset is exactly the problem with the concept intellectual property.
There is no way to stop ideas from being copied. Even patents and copyrights expire after a number of years. I think it would be better to abolish patents and copyrights and let plagiarism be punished informally. Like so many other issues, the libertarian position should be: do we really need laws for this?
Furthering that, if I think it is mine. Even if the only reason I think it is because I saw your version first.
My thoughts are still mine, to claim you own my thoughts makes you a slaver.
well said.
Comedians can easily work around charges of plagiarism by saying, ‘I didn’t know’ like Amy Schumer did. And with that, she still sells out (I think) places. It strikes me as a bit weak because all I’ve heard for years and years was how tight knit the comedian tribe is and they generally are very knowledgable and informed regarding their craft and the work of their peers.
The dirty secret of comedy is that a lot of them steal. In fact, some of the most successful ones are shameless joke thieves- I’m looking at *you* Dennis Leary. Milton Berle once said Bob Hope never had a joke that he didn’t have a week later. David Brenner threatened to beat up Robin Williams if he didn’t stop stealing his jokes.
The Honeymooners is the template for 75% of all sitcoms that followed, through this very day.
One of these days, Gojira….to the Moon!
Which makes her denial all the more laughable.
If I “steal” your idea, you still have it- you’re just not the sole beneficiary anymore
Its still theft of your car even if I return it, you know. Even if I return it before you know its gone. I’m not sure I see how this isn’t “you’re just not the sole beneficiary of your car”.
Where I struggle has to do with monetization of ideas. If you are monetizing your idea, then when the idea is “taken” your ability to monetize is reduced, and somebody else has the ability to monetize it now. This, to me, sounds like letting somebody use your bank account (which, BTW, is also intangible property just like your ideas are).
There’s a serious misunderstanding about copyright, BTW – copyright does not apply to ideas, but only to a particular expression of ideas. Copyright in no way gives anyone any claim to your thoughts. Copyright makes no one a slave or a slaver.
Still not really analogous, though, since you’re still “taking” some of the finite use-value of the car. If I see your car and make myself an exact duplicate of it, I have harmed you in no way.
By the same token, if I make an exact copy of every single item in your bank account, while leaving all of it right there, I have stolen nothing from you.
And that’s a fair point that gets at the utilitarian argument I allude to above. But it’s a utilitarian argument, not a libertarian one. I’m not sure I agree that you have a “natural right” to “monetize ideas” with exclusivity, but there may be a pragmatic argument for creating IP privileges.
you’re still “taking” some of the finite use-value of the car
Agreed. Just like someone who “steals” your idea is taking some of the finite monetary value of the idea. Query: is monetary value a sub-class of use value?
But it’s a utilitarian argument, not a libertarian one.
I don’t see how the basis for having property rights in your car is less utilitarian than the basis for having property rights in your ideas.
I’m not sure I agree that you have a “natural right” to “monetize ideas” with exclusivity
If you have a natural right to monetize your labor or your stuff, why not your ideas?
This gets into some of those elusive philosophical issues you mention above.
You’ve raised the issue of stocks, bonds and cash as being essentially “intellectual property” before, and that’s a very interesting line to tread, but I think you’re still on the “real property” side of the line (if there is an ontological distinction to be made between “real” and “intellectual”).
Stocks, bonds, and (fiat-currency) cash are all essentially contracts. If you and I have a contract between us, and someone else photocopies that contract, that does not make them participants in the contract.
The bond, for example, is a promise from another party to pay back money you have loaned. If someone fabricates the bond and takes the money, it is not the bond they have stolen – it’s the money.
People often talk past each other on this issue because, as you point out below, they don’t distinguish between patent, copyright and trademark, which are very different beasts with their different rationales.
As a creative type who started out life as a musician/songwriter, then went to writing essays (some published), before moving into construction, I tend to think first and foremost of things like songs, essays and stories (copyright).
The concept that a piece of music, for example, can “belong” to someone is a very recent development historically speaking, and is something someone prior to about 1800 would have found exceedingly bizarre. This is the basis of my assertion that there is no “natural right” to monetize something that exists only intangibly, and the concept that there is one leads, for example, to Taylor Swift using common English phrases in her songs, copyrighting them, and then taking legal action against people who print those phrases on T-shirts. Or Abercrombie and Fitch suing the City of Hollister CA for printing the name of their city on shirts.
There was a time when restricted access to the means of producing intellectual content (printing presses, record presses, CD burners, & whatnot) that certain parties found they could charge money for things people wouldn’t ordinarily pay for. Finding out that you can get someone to pay for them in certain circumstances does not create a positive right to make people pay you for them.
Thus – in response to your last point, I have a right to monetize my labor because I have a right to not labor on your behalf if you don’t pay me. If you sit there and recite a poem that I hear and remember on first hearing, haven’t you really “copied it” into my memory of your own free will? Am I supposed to forget it after you’ve recited it?
IOW, I can’t force you to show me your song, and you might make me pay you to do it, but once you’ve done it, you’ve done it – it’s shared. By the same token, if I do labor for you and don’t tell you it’s going to cost you money, it’s a widely recognized principle that you don’t have to pay me. But if I want you to pay me and you don’t, I don’t have to do the work for you.
I have no problem with IP that is designed to protect against fraud, like common law trademarks, but the vast majority of it is protectionism in its worse form.
I think that is an exception worth noting to my mostly hard core opposition. If you think you are supporting the creator when you buy something, but you really aren’t, then that is a legit case instance of fraud.
And shit. I see we still don’t get edit buttons.
I think IP represents one of those big divides between the anarchist types and the Objectivist types. IIRC Ayn Rand was a strong believer in IP laws. Her view, I believe, was that if I create an idea with my mind, it is just as much my property as if I created a physical object with my hands. Both are instances of the human mind creating something where nothing existed previously. The fact that one is tangible while the other is intangible is irrelevant from a property rights point of view. The only question is how those property rights may be fairly defended and transferred while protecting everyone’s liberty. To be honest I tend to side more with the Objectivist philosophy on these things in part because I am very very *very* jealous of my property rights.
See my response to #9 above. While I agree with Rand on the creation of the human mind part, I am more extreme on it. Just because you think X first doesn’t make my thinking X not my property too.
Just because you think X first doesn’t make my thinking X not my property too.
You’ll be happy to learn that the copyright laws, at least, agree with you.
There’s an arbitrary line drawn in the Objectivist concept of ‘idea property protection’, and it’s primarily due to the fact that said creation of art/literature/whatever almost always requires the absorption and use of other people’s ideas. Say I write Anthem, a book that was clearly influenced by other dystopian fiction like We. Say I use patiented objects, like say, a lightbulb as a central part of my plot. Say I name my character Prometheus and engage in a metaphorical storyline of his mythology. These aren’t my ideas, but I use them as components of my own.
A great deal of work is at least ripping off the monomyth, and who’s to say that idea is open to public use? Even the Objectivist concept of IP has to be extremely broad and arbitrary in order to actually allow people to create.
I recommend you download and read the FREE linked book in the post.
Broadly speaking, many market anarchists believe that the origin and purpose of property rights is to adjudicate scarcity. If you have a car, and I take that car, you can no longer use the car. It is scarce.
Ideas are infinite. My copying of your idea does not remove the idea from your head, therefore it is not scarce, and property law does not apply.
Of course I’m giving a *very* generic gloss to an idea that is fleshed out in full book length, so again, I recommend you read it, even if only to provide engaging Devil’s Advocate arguments that you can sharpen your own opinion against.
Just to add to this: the real difficulty of IP for a libertarian is that it requires the government to enforce it, with all the dangers of regulatory capture, etc, that go along with government involvement.
many market anarchists believe that the origin and purpose of property rights is to adjudicate scarcity.
I struggle with this, because your property rights are completely unaffected by how common or scarce the particular class of physical item is.
Plus, intangible property (like cash, securities, etc.) is not inherently scarce at all, but can be duplicated endlessly. The response usually is that duplicating intangible property erodes the value (think inflation) of the pre-existing stock of that property. Which raises a whole host of questions of its own (such as, why should the owners of the pre-existing stock be protected against erosion of the value of their property), but mainly presents an argument that many agree with in one setting (you shouldn’t be able to duplicate intangible property like stocks or cash because it erodes value) but disagree with it in another (the same people will say you should be able to duplicate intangible property like intellectual property even thought it erodes value).
Classically, only one person at a time can use an item of physical property, hence its “scarcity”, but since intangible property can be duplicated without affecting the original owner’s ability to use his instance of the intangible property, intangible property isn’t “scarce”. However, the exclusive use of a physical item seems an incredibly outdated basis for property rights in a more modern economy.
I suspect that most of the oppo to IP is really based on our current system for enforcing IP rights, kind of like objecting to real property because our system of recording and transferring rights to real property is a pain in the ass.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but as it currently sits if I think of a new construction technology here in Texas and you think of the exact same construction technology in New York, whoever gets to the patent/copyright office first can completely fuck the other person. That seems inherently unjust to me.
^This. Really good point.
That is how patent law is different from copyright law. Patent and copyright present very different issues in some ways. The first to file nature of patent law is an arbitrary construct of trying to create usable rights in a patent. Its basically a pretty utilitarian thing, based on a conclusion we are better off with enforcable patents than without. Once you say “yes, we want enforcable patents”, you will be hard pressed to avoid something like a first to file system.
I completely disagree.
This presumes that “ideas” are created ex nihilo, which is a pretty antiquated idea that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
To take a reductively simple example, if I say to myself “I wonder if I could create a shape with four equal sides and equal angles and all four corners” and then draw it out, I have “invented” the “square” in the ancient sense of “discovered something that was there waiting to be discovered,” but I did not create squareness as an idea. If you do the same thing in the next room ten minutes after me, are you stealing my intellectual property? That’s pretty much exactly what happened with airplanes, and the Wright brothers considered their IP to have been violated (are birds in IP violation, too? or did the Wright brothers violate the Creator’s IP by copying bird wings?)
To be fair, this gets at one of my central philosophical bones to pick with Rand, which is this notion of the individuality of ideas “created” by human minds. “Invention” only happens when ideas lack a certain obviousness, not when they are created from nothing by an isolated, self-created mind (IMHO).
Of course, products are no more ex nihilo than ideas, but that doesn’t stop us from giving property rights in products. If I make a chair with my own hands, well, somebody raised me, somebody taught me how to use tools, somebody created chair designs that I either used or borrowed, etc. Once you start with “You didn’t build that”, its hard to stop.
True, but the fact of the materiality of the object makes it unique and transferrable in a way that a song, for example, is not. The made object has an added element that you might call “existence” that the idea lacks.
If you and I each think up a song, and it happens to be the same song (let’s say it’s “Wild Thing,” a song that could plausibly be written by different people in different places without ever being aware of each other), we are taking nothing from one another other than the potential of making money by performing that song when no one else is allowed to, but which one of us has the “natural right” to exclusive performance of the obvious little piece of music and the anticipated revenue stream associated with it?
but which one of us has the “natural right” to exclusive performance of the obvious little piece of music and the anticipated revenue stream associated with it?
According to copyright law? Both of you. Independent creation being a defense to copyright infringement and all.
On the Glibertarians.com style-sheet
To the moderators, in your infinite wisdom and power, ye who shall be duly praised and honored, may all who displease you be transformed to cat-anuses forthwith;
i offer a humble observation: links on the main page appear in different colors. There doesn’t appear to be any systematic reason for the different colors (sometimes the same color will repeat), and they don’t change color depending on whether they’ve been already-visited or not (as far as i can tell).
Wondering if there are other options. In particular, some single color which changes (light/dark) if any given post has already been perused.
I realize that i will now be smited as the impudent worm i am. I regret nothing! Thank you master
That pompadour is fantastic and I never tire of seeing it.
Blink tags.
+, 1996
Your punishment is to submit a better one.
The text color appears to automatically key off of the first tag – all articles with Big Government as first tag in same color, etc.
I am no authority, but so much of human progress has been based on derivative use of other people’s ideas the notion of locking up concepts is absurd.
*steals Brooksie’s idea of “fire” and runs back to cave*
The Kingsbury brothers were little kids when I was in high school. Their father was our linebacker coach. He was a badass.
He was QB my freshman year, incidentally also Mike Leach’s first year. Incidentally I met him (Kliff) at a house party once, only very briefly, a handshake type of thing. Seemed like a nice enough guy, he was at least polite enough to thank me when I told him good game, instead of just brushing me off.
Apologies if this is old news. It made me laugh.
HuffPo snowflakes travel to Buddhist monastery for advice on dealing with Trump. Hilarity ensues.
“Non-action sometimes is very powerful,” Brother Phap Dung pronounced. “Sometimes we underestimate someone sitting very calm, very solid and not reacting and that they can touch a place of peace, a place of love, a place of nondiscrimination.
Man, Buddhist mysticism is so easy nowadays. I could just say that with only having a basic idea of what Buddhism entails.
Very disappointed they didn’t suggest lighting themselves on fire in the street and solemnly taking it however.
TL;DR Buddhism:
“Nut up.”
Fap Dung ?
“So easy when you are not living it 24/7 and one can just remove oneself,” fumed Tracy Richards-Pelle.
Welcome to the freaking point of Buddhism, you idiot. Existence is suffering.
Which reminds me = don’t ever ‘debate’ with libertymike
Although your tete-a-tete with him yesterday inspired this quip from me
re: his penchant for whipping out $10-words (using them in $0.05 sentences) whenever he gets defensive? Waving around highfalutin’ vocabulary like some kind of “cat raising its hair to appear larger than it is”-effect? =
“Its like a man who drives a Rolls Royce to Chuck-E-Cheese and imagines everyone will think them, “classy”
In my defense, I had been drinking.
I just pictured an entire Lost Horizon scenario with HuffPo writers and a crashing plame
What is the sound of HuffPost fapping?
I wonder why they decided French Zen Buddhists were the ones to go with and not Japanese ones. Is cultural appropriation not a problem this week?
This kind of dovetails with Rufus’ excellent piece on entrepreneurialism yesterday. There is a huge leap from idea to market to success. Nothing is more despicable to me than those fucks whose entire existence revolves around suing real companies. Talk about innovation killers.
Just as a link to some other resources, TechDirt, writes about IP quite a bit. And Duke has the Center for the Study of Public Domain, which publishes a list yearly of items that would have entered the public domain under earlier copyright laws.
A no-IP scenario: A person invents a widget. As soon as someone else observes the design of the widget, the observer has the same right to manufacture and sell widgets as the original inventor. Are y’all okay with this?
I’m new to the IP debate, so if there’s an obvious flaw in my scenario, please point it out politely 😉
One of the concerns is that a handful of large companies will scoop up the idea and profit from it while the originator gets jack. There is concern that this will ultimately stifle innovation – after all, why invent a new widget, perfect the design, market it, and sell it only to have GE swoop in once the idea proves to be a good one, scale up the production, and rake the profit after I have spent the time, energy, and financial risk to create something? Just as important – how to keep the GE’s of the world on their toes and pushing innovation when they don’t have to fear some as yet unknown competitor entering the marketplace and luring away their customers with better stuff? It’s a tough circle to square, but there is no doubt that IP, patents, and copyright laws as they currently exist seem to do more harm than good.
Well, I’ve actually been there. We have a patented product that a giant competitor copied. The cost of fighting them was just simply retarded, so we took our lumps, tightened our customer relationships, improved our turn time, etc. Many years later, they have all but exited the space. We are still here.
IP is no cure-all.
Awesome. They can copy but you’re the essence.
And this ties into the small business v. big business discussion we had in the other thread. Big business is not the same as small as your case about taking it to court shows. They have more muscle and can squeeze the little guy; not to mention the ability to crony things up with the government. Small business don’t have that kind of pull usually.
Yes, exactly. Over the years I have spent a shit-ton of money on IP and it always pisses me off.
I can’t speak for others of course, but I personally am perfectly fine with your scenario.
I would encourage you to download & read the free book linked in the post for one side of the debate.
This is not an attempt to answer you, but just to point out =
IP is as much a subject of much debate within libertarian circles as between them and others. i.e. There is no “y’all”. You would be better off actually addressing someone who has specifically identified themselves on the ‘no-IP bandwagon’
“addressing someone who has specifically identified themselves on the ‘no-IP bandwagon’”
That’s sort of how I meant “y’all”. People who are not on board with a no-IP solution would naturally not assume I am addressing them. One can only be so careful with one’s phrasing when one is playing in a comments section while one should be working…
Well, nothing in this scenario prevents person A from making and selling their own widget. If they want to get rid of person B’s widget business, they have 2 basic options: out-compete person B (by offering a better-quality or lower-priced widget, or adding to their product in some useful way, eg), or use force to stop them (either directly, or by employing a third party). IP, insofar as it’s essentially “stop copying my idea or I’ll get the government to fuck you over”, falls into the force category.
Libertarians have no problem with person A offering a superior product, but are usually not totally comfortable with using force to stop person B. Especially when it takes the form of IP litigation, which carries all the other disadvantages of government enforcement of a nebulously defined privilege.
Calling IP a privilege may (or may not!) be stealing a base. First, you need to have a good definition of property that aligns with the kind of property you think people should have enforcable rights in. Protip: if you try to limit your definition of “property” to “stuff”, you are going to have a hard time with intangible property.
If IP falls within that definition, then its not a privilege to have your rights enforced.
I’m OK with that.
Do you think the first homo sapien that figured out how to make fire on purpose should have been able to punch the other cavemen, cause they were copying him, and he thought of it first? If you want to keep your good idea a secret, don’t tell anybody.
Thanks for the responses. As mentioned, I’m new to these concepts. You’ve given me some pondering to do!
Just recently rewatched “The Social Network”, which is a great tool for illustrating why IP is bullshit. For those who haven’t seen it, the story goes like this:
1. Programmer is approached by two brothers to help them build a lame website.
2. Programmer takes a component of their idea and builds a very successful website.
3. Rather than make any effort to, you know, make anything of their own, the brothers use their access to expensive lawyers to pursue IP litigation against the programmer.
4. Despite having done nothing to earn a penny, the two brothers manage to extort $65M from the programmer.
When I was a lowly doctoral candidate, we all had to go to a commercialization workshop and try to sell what we had developed in our PhD projects to real VCs in a mock “shark tank” scenario. We all got asked the same question: do you have patent protection? We got asked this over and over. The VCs were in consensus that to get hearing you needed a
patent, because otherwise Philips or Siemens or someone will just copy your idea with a whole team of experienced engineers and massive market penetration. Certainly from my vantage point at that meeting, patents were the only hope for a small player to compete with big players who were notoriously non-innovative. I got a positive impression of them. Of course 99% of the time Siemens just waits the patent out.
Or, as noted above, Siemens knocks off the product anyway and assumes that their legal resources can outlast yours.
Actually, if you get patent protection and that does happen, you’re in a really good position. Contingency arrangements are predicated on the depth of defendant pockets. Siemens? You’ll be beset by attorneys dying to take your case.
^ This.
Silicon Valley had a good storyline on this in the second season where the “Big Corporation” uses IP law to screw over the actual innovators and steal their stuff, which seems to me to be the more common scenario than “little inventor guy protected from bullying corporations by IP law.” In my perusals of IP practices gong all the way back to the Stationer’s Register it doesn’t seem like IP laws have ever been very effective at their stated goals of protecting the inventor of an idea.
All of Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are on the Stationer’s Register, but not one logs Shakespeare as the author.