In “PRO-IP, Rights, and the Roots of Copyright Opposition” in the Randian “Capitalism” magazine, one “M. Zachary Johnson” cheers on the recent “PRO-IP” law, which as the always-perceptive Mike Masnick of Techdirt notes, “accept[s] the addition of a ‘Copyright Czar’ position to the White House” and “strengthened copyright laws, yet again, despite little evidence they needed any strengthening. This law is nothing more than a weak attempt to prop up some struggling businesses who made the mistake of clinging to an obsolete business model far too long. All it will actually serve to do is to limit more creative forms of expression and much more innovative business models from being allowed to thrive.”
But the Randians love this artificial law legislated by a corrupt and immoral criminal state. In creating “a copyright protection office in the executive branch of government” and providing “more extreme penalties for pirates,” the law creates “a proper authority for protecting intellectual property” and it also “makes a much-needed moral statement.” Incredible they believe this marauding, criminal state can create a “proper authority” or make “moral” pronouncements.Also note the same old error creeping in of thinking that creation is an independent source of property rights (for more, see Libertarian Creationism, Inventors … are like unto … GODS…., Rethinking IP Completely, and Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors).
Notes Johnson, “the creator of a piece of intellectual property owns the product of his work.” His argument? “If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it.” And likewise, for “music, movies, software.” But note the mistake here Johson makes: “If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it.” The “therefore” is the giveaway: he says this because he thinks of the creation of the loaf as the act that gives rise to ownership. Then this leads to the analogy with other created things, like music. But creation of the loaf is not the reason why the baker owns it. He owns the loaf because he owned the dough that he baked. He already owned the dough, before any act of “creation”–before he transformed it with his labor. If he owned the dough, then he owns whatever he transforms his property into; the act of creation is an act of transformation that does not generate any new property rights. So creation is not necessary for him to own the resulting baked bread. Likewise, if he used someone else’s dough–say, his employer’s–then he does not own the loaf, but the owner of the dough does. So creation is not sufficient for ownership.
The rest of the argument is confused as well. Johnson argues that there are property rights in creations, and glorifies the (utilitarian) Constitution that enshrines them–why, then, ought they last only for a finite time, instead of forever, like other types of property rights do? And take this argument:
The pirate deprives the creator not only of the relatively small amount of money to be paid for the product. He deprives the creator of his very means of living, his ability to control, trade and profit from the work of his mind. That is a crime legally, morally, and on the deepest philosophical level, metaphysically. It is a matter of the creator’s ability to maintain his own existence.
But this implies that property owners have a right not only in the physical integrity of their property but in the value of their property; they do not: value lies in the way others esteem your property. (See Rethinking IP Completely, and Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors for further comment on this.)
Finally, when he notes, “The PRO-IP Act … is a welcome law and a welcome message,” he accepts the idea that law can be or ought to be made by legislation. Of course, this is wrong, for several reasons–see my post Regret: The Glory of State Law for elaboration.
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@Rob Biddle
Sorry, I knew my reply would have been easier to understand if I had framed it in your terminology, but it was too late at night to write an addendum, so I let it go knowing you would come back for the rest.
Essentially, the problem arises because you seem to have over-interpreted the right to the position in the hierarchies of others as a claim on that position that would exclude anyone else’s claim. It is not. Rather it is an exclusive claim on whatever benefit is forthcoming subject to the will of any buyer.
If product A costs $X and a different product B that, in this case, will produce the same results also costs $X , the one who earns a higher position in the buyer’s value ranking gets the $X he has to spend, and the other gets $0. At the same time, the creator of the new and improved power drill and the creator of the new flavor of aged Tequila get $0 too , because the buyer valued the medicine he chose more than those two items in the question of how to spend that $X. If the buyer chooses A over B because the pill was able to be smaller due to the nature of A’s creation, then that was the aspect of the creation that earned A the position in the customer’s hierarchy of values to caused him to give A the $X and not B.
In short, IP protects nothing more or less than a creator’s exclusive right to compete in the free market with his creation for the subjective evaluations (that may or may not be objectively arrived at) of the potential buyers in that market. A moral government must guarantee that no third party will interfere in that process. The details underpinning this are abundant in the preceding 100 comments.
@MichaelM
Sorry for the delayed response.
“Improvement: something that makes something else better.”
Exactly my point. The terms “improvement”, “better”, and “value” all refer to the subjective utility of the valued to the valuer. There is no way to objectively determine whether a transformed resource has increased in value, decreased in value, or remained the same.
@Aaron
The objective definition of the value of any improvement is:
Any position it might attain in the (subjectively defined) hierarchy of values of any party relative to all other alternatives available to that party.
A moral government may not interfere by specifying any particular assessment of value for any improvement. It protects the right of the creator to whatever value anyone else may place on it if and when, and not before, someone does.
No one’s rights are violated by giving someone the exclusive right to the disposition of something that has no value to anyone. The second someone desires it however, a value has accrued to it. Government must guarantee that the achievement of that value shall be on terms set by the creator/owner.
In short: the objective value of any improvement is its subjective value to all other human beings.
@MichaelM
You stated that a person could be granted “the exclusive right to the disposition of something that has no value to anyone.”
But did you not also say that matter and energy “are subject to the control of the one who contributed the improvements embodied in them”?
If “improvement” is the criteria for ownership, any thing which “has no value to anyone” has not been improved and, therefore, can not be owned.
@Aaron
“anyone” in that context has to mean anyone else. It is (or should be) implied that the “someone” granted the right improved it per his own values.
That statement was merely added to complete the idea that all protected values are determined by the subjective judgments of the market, and when those values for a paticular improvement are zero, no one is harmed and it costs the government nothing to continue to regard it as “protected” on the record if the owner/improver met the requirements defined for establishing a claim to protection. Protection is ready to be exercised if and when others do value it and anyone decides to violate his exclusive right to it.
@MichaelM
To clarify the point, are you saying that a natural resource becomes owned once it is altered in such a way that its subjective utility (to the person who altered it) has increased?
@Aaron
Yes, in this moral context: if previously unowned, any improvement one values becomes “owned” in the sense that one is morally justified in continuing to possess it and use it. But that is not ownership in the political sense.
A moral government is only concerned with interrelationships among men and never with one’s relationship to oneself. That is why I said no one has anything to lose by granting exclusivity to something no one else but the creator values. The government does that by objectifying in laws what it will do if and when anyone else values it and violates that exclusivity, but otherwise, taking no action (i.e., not interfering with the creator’s possession and use).
The government’s job is to translate moral ownership from the context of the individual into the context of a society of interacting individuals without loss.
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