Sheldon Richman notes in IP Debate Breaks Out at FEE that “At a recent FEE seminar, a debate over intellectual ‘property’ broke out spontaneously among Ivan Pongracic (second from right), Paul Cwik (second from left), and me (left, where I belong). Who won?”
There is no doubt that in just 10 short minutes Richman completely dominates with his clear and concise thinking on this issue (as he did in Sheldon Richman on Intellectual Property versus Liberty). Pongracic and Cwik just re-hash the standard arguments, which are full of holes (as Cwik did in his presentation at the 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference, on the IP panel on which I was a discussant; Cwik’s argument was incredibly weak (as several audience members noted to me), as the IP argument has to be; Cwik’s working paper, “Is There Room for Intellectual Property Rights in Austrian Economics?”, is available here).
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I agree, Cwik’s argument was ridiculously weak at ASC 2008. It was uncomfortable to watch. BTW its Richmond.
My bad it is Richman, I don’t know why I thought it was Richmond.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bookstore.png
Nuff’ said.
The blog link returns a 404. I got to it through here: http://blog.mises.org/archives/010127.asp
That xkcd comic is a personal fave of mine, Conza – I have a copy stuck to my whiteboard here at work which I annoy my coworkers with. It’s such a concise and amusing way to demonstrate the non-scarcity of intellectual works.
No, it’s Richman.
Kinsella,
Are you serious? I’m not a big fan of IP either but this video actually was uncomfortable for me to watch because it was amateurish and childish on the parts of ALL parties involved. The constant “ooooooh”-ing made it hard to take it seriously, not to mention everyone was getting red-faced and emotional. And I know everyone was just having a good time and trying to be funny.
I don’t mean to crap on those involved or call them names but to laud this as a big intellectual ass-whooping… it was kind of barbaric.
I was really disappointed by the video when it came up in my Google Reader yesterday, to be totally honest. It seemed like a rehashing of arguments on both sides and while Richman did make a couple points against the cliches put forth by the pro-IP guys, I don’t really think, “I don’t see how that is the same as breaking into my house and stealing my things” is anything more than stated confusion, not a strong, reasoned defense.
A weak showing by all, as far as I see things.
Taylor, yes, I’m serious–yes, it was informal and impromptu, but I disagree about Richman–he had serious, substantive points. I think Richman’s instant and devastating demolition shows the paucity of arguments on the IP side–since it is in fact unlibertarian.
Richman’s argument begins, “I don’t see how….” That’s a bad move to make, rhetorically. Copyright is a convention, or a set of conventions; the critical debate concerns the relative moral or economic merits of those conventions. The conventions themselves aren’t that hard to grasp. If he really doesn’t understand the convention, or doesn’t understand the moral or economic equivalence being alleged by IP supporters, he isn’t part of the critical debate. To be part of that, he would have to understand the alleged equivalence, and be able to show precisely why IP isn’t an instance of the same general principle as scarce property. But he doesn’t do that; he only insists that he can’t see how they could be the same. As someone wise once said, “That sounds like a personal problem to me.”
Seems to me that this entire discussion revolves around the privatization and monetization of once common property. Predatory capitalism denigrates all forms of being for the simple sense of having. Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided.
The commons, the common wealth of people who create value through simple human interaction in the social space, drive all human advances. This is now being privatized, stolen from the society at large and robbing what properly belongs to all for the exclusive financial benefit of the usurpers.
Left unchecked we will see the day when language itself will become privatized and all will be charged a license fee to simply speak. Shakespeare and Mozart all created without copyright protection full with the knowledge that they did not work alone.
It is merely hubris and arrogance to claim that which was created by collaboration as personal property. People have never done anything alone, everything we have has been created with the cooperation of society at large and we are fools if we allow the flimsy arguments supporting avarice and greed to rob us all.
Jay, your argument only applies to non-scarce resources. The problem is that such things are few and far between, and usually fit under the ticket of “Intellectual Property”. For scarce resources, you cannot claim community ownership without killing us all off. How am I to get permission from everyone to eat the food on my plate?
You need to read Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, where he explains the basis of rights and private ownership as it applies to scarce resources and scarce means.
In this way, libertarians are consistent to accept private property but to reject intellectual property.
The commons, the common wealth of people who create value through simple human interaction in the social space, drive all human advances.
Private property generally facilitates human interaction and collaboration: “I have this, you have that, let’s put them together for productive purposes.” But IP tends to do the opposite–it restricts interaction and collaboration, precisely because it isn’t scarce.
The only way the crowd and participants could have found that conversation “that” funny is if some bongs had been passed around before the camera light came on.
Copyright is a misnomer — insofar as rights differ from privileges. The very term lends itself to the positivist “putting the rabbit into the hat” confusion that commonly masquerades as argument.
Prohibition Privilege is a more accurate term for the present condition. — where privileges are understood to be granted by the state — and whence emanates the violent force upon which such privilege relies.
Jay Greathouse:
As in another recent thread, your comment is too vague to fully understand, but you seem to be lumping legitimate property in with illegitimate “intellectual property.” But if you are solely referring to “IP,” I agree.
Now that I’ve actually watched the video, I will say I was a little disappointed. For starters, the discussion was not very orderly.
When my friends and I discuss a topic, no matter how informal, we’ll usually be polite enough to allow a person to get to the end of an idea before attempting to interject, and on being unsuccessful, we won’t interrupt unless the speaker is dragging on.
Secondly, the arguments presented were quite weak from all parties, but it was an interesting discussion nonetheless from persons perhaps not as eloquent and learned in the topic as Stephan or myself. I’ll be sure to read Cwik’s paper.
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