BoingBoing points to a different way to frame “copyright violation” regarding a book that is being “illegally sold” (aka ‘pirated’) along the streets of Mumbai. From the book’s author:
…[H]ow cool is it that The Search is a street bestseller in Mumbai?! Do I care about the piracy? No. No, no no. I care that someone in Mumbai cared enough to rip it off, and that someone there might be reading my stuff. That is just cool. Commercial markets always follow the free, or, well, the pirates in this case. Always.
Perhaps one could argue that “fraud” is occurring, but nothing is mentioned about the “pirated” versions being sold under a false name, plagiarized content, etc.
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If my neighbor risked a huge amount of money to look for oil on his property, and found it. But then upon seeing that, I drilled for oil on my land next door. Would I be using his research without compensating him for it? Sure. Would I be getting part of the profit that he would otherwise have all to himself? Probably. But so what. That’s part of the real world. It’s how life works, deal with it. The oil is under my land too, so I have as much right to access it as he does.
Well the same is true with information and inventions. They are not created, they are discovered. Once discovered I have as much right to use them as anyone else because they flow thru my universe just as much as the original dicoverers.
If my neighbor was smart, he would have parterned with me and split the R&D costs in return for splitting the profits, or he would have bought up my land.
Well, the same is true with information and invention. Without a government monopoly, people collaberate or buy each other out causing R&D costs to go way down and innovation to go up. With copyrights and patents, R&D costs skyrocket and innovation goes down.
So now people come along ans say “wahh, we need a government backed monopoly cause we can’t afford all these high research costs.” But the government granted monopolies are the very cause of the high R&D costs.
Granting a government monopoly on copyrights and patnets would be the equivalent of forbiding me to drill for oil on my land once my neighbor drilled for oil on his. All that would do is increase the cost of the oil while decreasing the ammount pumped. And likewise, the same is true with inovation – copyrights and patents cause the rate of discovery to decrease while pushing up the costs.
But today, the US is clearly entering the information age and one of the consequences of that is that the service value of information is becommong a bigger market than the content value. It is not a cooncidence that the US is facing an insane amount of copyrights dusputes just as we enter the information age. It is not because the information age has opened up a wild frontier that needs to be tamed as hollywood would have you believe, it is because society simply can’t afford the costs of imposing copyrights anymore. The market is saying, “I need to center around information related services and not information related controls”. People who don’t want to get steam-rolled would be wise to listen to that voice.
David, be sure to tell us how many miles upwards your “property” reaches too, if you consider it goes so deep “downwards”. So, do you think you can shoot a plane flying over your head because it infringes on your stratospheric air column?
Where do you get these pathetic ideas from? Sure, stealing is the way life works too, for some, but I wonder who wants you as his neighbour in a libertarian world, that’s for sure.
And don’t tell me you’re interested in avoiding conflicts over scarce resources… or any kind of conflicts as a matter of fact.
Artisan – for a critic of libertarian ideas you are very ignorant of what you criticize.
The Lockean notion of homesteading does NOT allow one to claim ownership of the “stratospheric column” unless he commingled his labor with whatever real space and resources he homesteaded.
An example of such commingling would be building a tall tower – the air space taken by the tower is now owned by the builder – because he was the first to commingle it.
As for avoiding conflicts – the property rights is the only known way of avoiding conflicts. All other methods create tragedies of commons, with resulting warfare when the “common” resources are destroyed. Conflict resolution is the whole raison d’etre for property rights.
Finally, the reason why physical objects can be property and information cannot is very simple: there is no scarcity of information. Any piece of information can be replicated endlessly without any loss of information suffered by the original holder. In fact, the absolutely most successful endeavour in the history of mankind – the science – is completely based on the free sharing of information.
The “intellectual property” is merely an euphemism for “government-granted temporary monopoly rights”. Too bad too many people fail to understand that words are often used in misleading ways.
Now cue the copyright apologist who completely misunderstands the economic meaning of “scarcity”.
Averros, you are taking this too personally. When I say I don’t want David as a neighbour, I’m referring to his definition of neighbors and property. You may think I need to be treated as an ignorant of libertarian ideas, not agreeing with your interpretation of Locke but maybe you restrain your conflict-avoiding overconfidence once you remember this blog is devoted to von Mises, not von Locke.
And while you’re at it, why don’t you remind the community how Locke’s idea of mingling a resource with one’s work necessarily makes it one’s property in the name of homesteading… in the case of flying planes, but not in the case of pumping oil.
By the way, this oil idea of David has been discussed thoroughly by Rothbard, only leading to a completely opposite conclusion. I won’t have the arrogance to call you ignorant of Rothbard (or his ties to von Mises) of course. I’ll just send you the link (to chapter 29 of Rothbard’s http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp Ethics of Liberty; http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp).
The following digest is at http://mises.org/daily/1662
@Paul D,
If you are just satisfied stating that I don’t understand economic theory of scarcity, without bothering to elaborate… it’s probably because you’re convinced your own understanding of this theory is so widespread in the world, and you don’t care for one more disciple… The question is then, who needs a Blog?
OK where do I start
OK fine, lets assume I bought the oil rights under my property as well as my neighbor under his. The same arguemnt applies, are you happy now?
The appropiate respone is “you’re argument is not applicable or workable ot true because …..” and not a response like “pathetic ideas” and “who wants to be your neighbor”. IMHO, this refusal to argue the facts is telling.
FYI, you’re the one instigating conflict. You’re the one trying to tell me I have no “right to drill”, even though I have every right. That I have no right to use information that came by me without coercion and is clearly in my domain at my disposal. You’re the one implying that rights have nothing to do with rational observation (like scarsity) and everything to do with feelings “wahh, I deserve a monopoly cause I created”. You’re the one hurling insults like “pathetic ideas”. I think you should take that powerfull insight and focus it at yourself.
Let’s talk some logic Paul D, (and Dr Kinsella)
Can you define an “economical conflict” without defining the “scarcity of property”? (what is the limitation of someone’s claim?) Maybe not… but it obviously implies the prior definition of property*, i.e. as acquired through homesteading (Locke revised by Rothbard).
Now, can you define property without defining identity (who is the owner)? No.
Therefore, if an identity is to be “weakened” (confused) through wathever economical action, it necessarily implies an economical conflict.
—
*Actually it also implies the prior definition of “economical”… If “economical” means related only with scarce goods (arbitrary definition)… then the answer is yes. If economical means related to the production and distribution of goods and services in general, then it’s not necessarily true.
David C
“OK fine, lets assume I bought the oil rights under my property as well as my neighbor under his. The same arguemnt applies, are you happy now?”
Whose rights to drill under your lawn can you and your neighbor simultaneously buy?
Who would they they belong to? Under what constitution?
You accept Locke but not Rothbard… why?
Artisan,
I don’t think I’m necissairly saying that.
OK, lets turn this arround. I drill for oil on a piece of land I own in texas, and it happens to tap into a vast pool of oil that stretches all the way to New York state. Are you saying that I have monopoly right to all that oil and that no one else has a right to drill for it? Perhaps oil was a bad analogy, if you pull a cup of water from the sea it is yours, but if you pour it back I have as much right to drink that water as you do. Same as with creations. If you don’t want others to use it, you should keep it to yourself, but once you pour it out there (publicly distribute) – the informaiton is everyones to use and you have no right to controll how they use it.
This isn’t rocket science. It doesn’t take much to understand that information has a different nature than physical property and thus the fundamentals of attempting to control it has different consequences as wall as a different nature.
Yes Yes and all the “scarcity” arguments come out as if ideas are “non-scarce” etc. CEOs earning millions on the free market apparently haven’t convinced some die-hard no-IPers (management ability plus strategic know-how, i.e. IDEAS) that many ideas in fact ARE scarce and so falls the scarcity argument, not to mention the ludicrous proposition that “all rights are concrete”: or there are no “abstract assets” which have enforceable property rights. Frankly, no-IP has got to be the weakest of libertarian positions and occupies way too much space on Mises.org, given it’s flimsy foundation.
I think the big problem is there is no good answer. We’d like to have a situation where free discovery is possible yet protect the rights of those having novel ideas and abstract assets from having them pilfered. I think the libertarian argument is going to have to ** gasp ** (at least to Kinsella) be argued on utilitarian grounds: a position many people have no problem with at all. Simply put: If it doesn’t work, do something else. If the state of U.S. IP law is unworkable, then get something else — and while we’re at it, why not posit a practical (and politically possible) transition rather than play “it’s my universe I can dream if I want to” games.
The non-scarcity refers to things that are published and widely known. In fact you are agreeing with the no-IPers here: The way to make money off of scarce ideas is to keep them to yourself and apply them strategically. This is exactly what the CEO is your example is doing. Management ability/strategic know-how is more than just ideas; it’s ideas+skills+labor. The CEO makes money because of his superior ability to put the ideas into practice. What he can’t do is forcibly bar others from observing his publicly visible actions and following them too.
IP does not enforce existing scarcity. It adds artificial scarcity on top of it. To the extent that an idea is scarce, because of secrecy or contracts or what have you, it is already protected by physical property rights.
JIMB,
No, Ideas are not scarse. There exist an infinite number of them. What is scarce is the time, effort, and talent that goes into discovering and utilising usefull ones. That’s what the market should center around – services, not around the controls over how people use invention and content. The whole pro IP arguemt is a red-herring. It is like a plumber wanting to charge by the amount of water that goes thru his pipes rather than directly for his services – and then when the government doesn’t do it for him, he screams that his property rights are being violated.
In fact, what really amazes me about the pro-IP crowd is that with copyrights, at least, the pratical cost of making them work is simply impossible. Even in the the information age, there is no technology that distinguishes between copyright content and free speech content. You can’t make copyrights work without imposing human judgements over the content we create. You can’t make copyrights work without destroying privacy rights. You can’t make copyrights work without the government coercing hardware manufactures to implement back-doors and content checking. While these don’t refute the “copyrights are property rights” assertions – they certinly point to that.
PR, David — The claim is made that because two people can fully own any idea therefore there can be no conflict and no theft and the government is precluded from operating to stop the dissemination of ANY ideas. Nonsense. People that have a novel idea own it, other people don’t own it until they have it or acquire it justly (please forgoe all the foolish examples like “patenting the first house, etc.” because no one supports that on any side of the argument).
Deeper than that the no-IP position asserts there are no abstract rights (wonder how “stock-options” work as that is an abstract conceptual property right: the owner owns “just the piece of paper and ink or the electronic entry” or do they really own an abstract right-of-action?).
Right of action is a foundation of libertarian thought. One can’t argue that people have ownership in their physical body apart from the abstract right of action which is part of that ownership. “Abstract rights” do exist, contradicting the no-IP assertion that government can act only in cases of violations of physical private property (duress seems to come to mind as well … even the threat is a bluff, it is illegitimate).
I see the entire no-IP approach as severely problematic, although we are moving rapidly to a “no-IP” world anyway, in which case our transition would probably be a large longer-term benefit to our competitiveness, the arguments do not well support the position.
JIMB
You have your horse mixed up with the carriage. While just properties lead to strong ownership incetive. Corecion of ownership incentive does not lead to just properties. Stock options, cash, and any other abstract property you can think up is eventually either going to have some real world attachment where violation is a fraud or a coercion or it isn’t. I’m sorry, but when I copy a CD you made – I’m not fraudlently claiming to be you, I’m not coercing you by copying it, maybe I’m taking market share from you and you feel cheated out of it. Then again, maybe I work my fingers to the bone making mud pies, and feel society owes me compensation for it. Just because properties can be made to have abstractions does not mean that abstractions can be made to have properties.
Also, who on both sides of the debate disaprove of the analogies? I desire to hear the perspective of someone else on the the anti IP side.
I’m sure some people are incentivized by IP, then again, I’m sure some plantation masters were incentivized to grow cotton from slave properties. So is there really not a clean answer? or is there just not a clean answer without angering the powers that be?
David C – The anti-IP crowd have a tough sell for another reason: it offends our sense of fair play. A lot of people put themselves into the “starving author’s” shoes (example: the author for the Harry Potter series was on welfare) and don’t want to see work stolen and distributed by those who don’t deserve it. Seems to me to be a fundamental tenet of justice and peaceful interaction.
What if the only way to read a book was to access a password protected website after signing an agreement not to distribute the contents?
And then what happens when someone hacks the website and starts distributing the content for free?
I am not really not trying to make any points, but I am curious what people think of this.
David C
OK, lets turn this arround. I drill for oil on a piece of land I own in texas, and it happens to tap into a vast pool of oil that stretches all the way to New York state. Are you saying that I have monopoly right to all that oil and that no one else has a right to drill for it?
I’m quoting Rothbard on this until I hear one single better argument. Rothbard is saying that’s the best and only way to allocate unowned resources (see above quotes).
Perhaps oil was a bad analogy, if you pull a cup of water from the sea it is yours, but if you pour it back I have as much right to drink that water as you do. Same as with creations.
Your ocean example addresses the flawed scarcitiy problem. The analogy doesn’t stand though because what “makes” art is its uniqueness as unmistakeable link to its author. Water molecules have no identity or uniqueness… nobody can reasonably claim someone else is drinking the same waters he puts “back in the see”.
Now through the lines, I hear 3 slightly disharmonious bells ringing on the artistic copyright-opponent side, so please let me address them:
1: avoiding conflict is the first principle of economy (the scarcity argument)
2: economy doesn’t deal with immaterial concepts in the first place
3: the concept of identity has no value
The answers:
1. This doesn’t NECESSARILY lead to 2 or 3 (see syllogism in my post above)
2. Wouldn’t you agree that economy deals with anything that can be valued
3. Isn’t it pure logic: there’s no ownership without owner, no owner without identity, therefore, identity is very much valuable… in every economical transaction.
Before I go on, one thing that I notice not being stated in the IP debate – is how killing IP is almost guaranteed to be beneifical to the people who use and create it. (But not the people who have distribution monopolies like the RIAA) The reasoning is simple. If I loose controll over a million dollars worth of content by killing IP, at the same time I would gain the liberty to use tens of trillion dollars worth of content – the same is true with everyone on the planet. This is why the Linux and open source community thrives even though to enter requires giving up control. Since the Microsoft community centers around content control, and the Linux community centers around service – it is also easy to see how they are on a colission course. For the same reasons, the pro-IP world and the anti-IP world are not going to mix nicely.
Artisan,
1) I don’t understand what you’re saying, but there is a diference between intractable conflicts like who is allowed to own a car, vs tractable ones like who’se allowed to own a market share on distribution – which is basically the copyright debate is all about when you think of it.
2) I don’t know if this is true. Slaves on the plantation were valued at 30K, but the plantation system was not a healthy economy at all. Air has vale, the sea has value, but we don’t controll how people breathe and drink specifically because of the scarsity issue.
3) Nothing implied that the concept of identity has no value. I could not make nearly as much money giving a Madonna concert as Madonna, even if I coppied everything she made. Linus the founder of linux has a cush job in a high end research lab that pays over a quarter million per year. Even though I’ve worked with Linux for 10 years, and copy it every day, I do not think I could get that kind of a job. Eienstein didn’t get a commission everytime someone used E=mc2 but he did very nicely, it seems. In fact, the more something you make is coppied (with permission or otherwise) the more value identity has. BTW, when I refer to IP, I am usually refering to copyrights and patnets, and not trademarks which are more about fraud free identity.
David C — In point 2 you are back to a utilitarian rather than a principles argument (i.e. the government cannot justly and consistently decide so precluding any action is desireable – that is utilitarian).
“Value” means scarcity. Air doesn’t command a positive price.
What exactly don’t you understand, David?
Do you understand the following concept?
If Mister A had a two square feet ground, from which he could tap a 100.000 sq. feet oil field that would stretch to 100 % under his neighbor’s ground, his purchase price of his property would stand in no relation to the price he paid according to the SCARCITY of the 2 square feet ground on the estate market before discovering the resource, do you understand?
Therefore, scarcity and property and market value have not (necessarily) a direct relation.
This simple example of resource allocation just proves there’s a flaw in the assumption that the VALUE of a good ALWAYS depends on its SCARCITY !
(In this case, Rothbard considers exploitation rights as accessory to property rights inherent to ground A, thus as a reward for the first discovery of a resource rather…)
Uuuuh. Sorry, I’m getting tired. It should read of course:
The later value of the property WITH homesteaded oil field access and exploitation rights stands in no relation to the price the owner paid for the estate according to the SCARCITY of the land surface…
Do you follow?
therefore Blah blah blah (please see above)
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