Yes, Jeffrey_Tucker, you *are* obsessed with the IP issue because you will contort all evidence you see until it fits the template of “IP bad” as opposed to more reasonable inferences like “State legal systems corrupt” or “dinosaur company making ridiculous claim”.

That’s called “confirmation bias” and it’s something you’re supposed to avoid, not revel in. You might as well make a post about someone getting shot for trying to enter a military base without authorization and report it as “OMG so-called ‘property rights’ lead to MURDER!!!!”

to silas berta:
ridiculous claims are the logical consequence of nonsensical ip provisions. we can all laugh, but only the lawyers get to laugh all the way to the bank.

“nuance”

Yes, this is ridiculous and reprehensible.

But rather than throwing IP out altogether – wouldn’t a reform of existing arrangments be more… feasbile?

Just stopped by the blog after a hiatus and am amazed that Silas is up to the same tricks. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that he still hasn’t actually given a good reason to reject the Kinsella brand of anti-IP argumentation.

It’s been over a year since I decided it wasn’t worth it to try to discuss the issue with you, Silas, but what the heck. *Have* you come up with anything resembling a decent objection to Kinsella yet? Because if not, every single one of your posts on this blog is far more question-begging than anything Mr. Tucker writes here.

Oh, PLEASE, I think your supposed “obsession” with IP is lovely. It is nothing compared with the decades of my life I have been spoon feed, no make that force fed, no make that pounced into my bloody face to the point of near death experience – the IP party line propaganda: “it’s property!!!!!!” “it’s incentive!!!!!!!” “it’s protection!!!!!” “copiers are like thieving pirate bastards who board ships and murder people!!!!” , “it just needs a little reform!!!!!” … or how about … “you must not be one or give a damn about the starving artist, writer, musician, programmer, inventor in his garage, and so on!!!!!” … or … “you’ll see things differently when you get out of high school and get into the real world!!!!” … or … “You’re communist!!!!”

You can’t make this stuff up. The responses on the blogs by pro-ip are so predictable I don’t even try to argue anymore, just make a few points to get to people who are sincere and willing to think about it.

Silas, there was nothing in there that serves as a good rejection of Kinsella’s anti-IP argument. In fact, this section:

“The problem with this line of reasoning, is that creators (and their assigns) do not claim to own “the information”, except in a metaphorical sense. They are making specific claims about others’ moral right to instantiate it, which is different. While we may have reasons to find this claim unjustifiable, it cannot be on grounds of non-scarcity: they are, undebatably, making a claim to the use of scarce resources. It may indeed violate others’ rights gained through homesteading, and that would be a good argument against their claim; but even if true, this would have nothing to do with ideas being non-scarce.”

Shows that you have misunderstood Kinsella’s argument. His response to those arbitrarily trying to control someone else’s property is that those claims are unjustified.

But since most IP advocates use idea-ownership as the basis of their claims, the rest of his essay addresses those. Your brand is easily dimsantled in the first few pages of his article; the other takes a little longer but similarly does not stand.

Did AP compensate Obama for using HIS image? Did they get permission to take the image they took? Isn’t the true original image that of Obama himself?

What if I publish a picture of “the man in the moon”? I’m I then beholden to some photographer because my subject was the same as his and he publised his first?

More BS for Attorneys Fees Generation, quack arguments for quick bucks.

Do you anti-IP people realize that what you are after is the “right to copy” which is positive right?

I’m impressed as for the first time ever at Mises.org IP-opponents admit they’re aware of something called “fair use”…

Of course fair use should read “every possible use” in their eyes… but seriously, this is third class art. So who cares? What does it demonstrates?

Like in Picasso’s quote: good artist “borrow”… great ones “steal” meaning this guy borrowed everything from… not some AP Photographer… but much more from Andy Warhol.

ktibuk,

Of course not. Don’t be silly.

“that is like saying that the anti-murder people are after a “right to breath” which is a positive right.”

So you are saying you can not live without downloading pirated songs, movies and software.

No one is stopping you from creating your thing but no. You are entitled to the products of other people, right? Just call their product, “non property” so you can feel better during you parasitism.

Hey Daniel_C, do you have any real arguments?

Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to copy your entire method of refuting points you disagree with.

I’d just like to point out that Shepard Fairey, the “street artist” in question, was originally known for his “OBEY” artwork, trenchantly satirizing totalitarianism in the style of socialist realism.

His unironic conversion to the Obama cult was, for me, one of the more disturbing events of the campaign.

It is tragically poetic that he should now be persecuted under the regime he has lionized.

Something else I’d like to be clear about, at least for my part, is that even though I am against Intellectual Property laws, I do still believe that copying someone else’s work and profiting from it while adding none of one’s own effort does indeed make the copycat an a$$hole. Being anti-IP doesn’t necessarily imply that copying someone else’s work should be socially acceptable…it simply means it should not be illegal. It’s similar to how painting racial slurs on your house makes you a small-minded moron but shouldn’t make you a criminal in the eyes of the State. In my opinion, the focus on IP legality has put artists and consumers more at odds with each other than they would be otherwise. The more the responsibility of protecting ideas and effort are handed to the State, the greater the resentment between creators and consumers, and the less respect each party has for the other.

“Does anyone have a cogent argument regarding whether or not ideas can actually be considered “property”? Kinsella’s argument is the best I’ve come across against the notion of ideas as property, but I have yet to see anything convincing in support of it.”

I have. In many comments sections, attached to the many many many many IP socialism posts. Just search my user name.

“Also, I don’t think anyone here has suggested that we should have a “right to copy” anything, as that implies an obligation on the part of the creator to distribute his/her work to anyone who wants to copy it. No one is suggesting that an artist should be forced to give away his or her work.”

Yes in fact they do. Copying without the consent of the owner (since IP is man made it has a producer which would be the owner) is aggression. Just like fraud aggression.

Also I agree that the cost of protection of IP should fall on the owner. But this doesn’t mean anybody has a right copy whenever he gets some kind of access to it. Having access is not the same thing as having consent.

To say this is similar to saying “you may own jewelry while you keep it at home, but if you wear it outside and “share it” anyone can steal it and this wouldn’t be crime”.

I wrote this somewhere else but I would like to repeat it.

Even if we accept that scarcity plays a role in determining something to be property or not, for the arguments sake, before “the act of copying” the original is scarce. The thing that makes and idea is the “act of copying”. This means the act of copying should be analyzed not on the basis of scarcity but something else. I say aggression is about “consent” and “copying without consent is aggression”.

I am still waiting for a response.

ktibuk: Drop the IP socialism shtick; you don’t have a leg to stand on. It’s the defenders of IP, not its (libertarian) opponents, who reject the fundamental principle that ‘homesteading a natural resource by mixing your labor is the basis of all property rights.’ This is unarguable: If I *don’t* have the right to build a copy of something with the homesteaded materials in my possession; if you have an enforceable right to prohibit me from doing as I will with those materials; if I may use them, like rented goods, only at your sufferance – do what you will, *except*…; then by what perversion of the English language can my homesteading those materials be said to make them ‘mine’ and not, at bottom, yours or some other authority’s? Planning on redefining anything else soon? I’d just like to know early, so I can get in practice with the new vocabulary. Maybe you can take old Syme’s suggestion and abolish right and left, too; they’re troublesome on occasion.

“Everything in the RIAA, nothing outside the RIAA, nothing against the RIAA.” It fits. Then there’s a nice seasoning of newspeak redefinition of the word ‘ownership’, such that even if I carve something fresh out of unowned ground, I ‘own’ it, but it still isn’t really mine to do with as I please. Grandiose universal claims of authority? Outright rejection of Locke with regard to physical goods? Politically-driven subversion of language? If we’re IP socialists, you’re IP fascists.

If you don’t want to be called a fascist, you can start by not smearing us as socialists (especially since we take Locke more seriously than you do), and perhaps you can finish by …being less deserving of the term.

Everyone has a right to copy what he knows, unless he has agreed to waive that right by contract. If I learn 2+2=4, I have a right to copy that information, unless I agreed in advance with the person who told it to me that a condition of my being told was that I could not copy it. All use of knowledge comes down the to ability to copy. Human beings are not goldfish. We keep copies of information in this big storage array on our shoulders. There can certainly be moral dimensions to certain types of copying. For example, if someone confides in me and I violate their trust by revealing a secret, I have committed an immoral act, but I have not violated their rights.