This thief was playing classical music for her horses without paying the license fee. Fortunately a state-backed private monopolist intervened to shut down this criminal operation.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9717/the-state-stops-another-egregious-violation-of-intellectual-property/
The State Stops Another Egregious Violation of “Intellectual Property”
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It is clear that Jeffrey_Tucker hates innovation.
I am not sure what is worse… that this happened or that I am not terribly surprised.
BTW If she played a lot of Mahler, they did the horses a favor. ha ha
Does anyone really believe that innovation goes out the window once the patent office does? If you look at underground communities where people pirate software or rom-hack and translate foreign video games- you’ll see a number of groups that claim responsibility for translations and cracking software. No one ever tries to take credit for someone else’s work there- and when people do it is easily found out and they are ostracized.
The notion of attribution is almost completely divorced from the notion of copyrights and patents. Even pirates and remixers maintain a sense of attribution.
Oh and Manuel Lora, he doesn’t hate innovation. What he hates is the fact that people can own ideas. You see, unlike other capital goods ideas have this interesting little property where they don’t run out if you share them. In fact, they tend to grow and become stronger. There is no such thing as scarcity of ideas; ideas cannot be scarce. So what justification do we have for bottling them up and calling them ‘property’, when they don’t act like property at all? None.
Claiming that ideas and information can only form under a copyright regime where there are monopolistically-assigned “prices” attached to them is patently untrue. Just look at the myriads of open-source projects out there.
At least agree that trying to collect monopoly rents on a small time operation playing music for their own use is absurd.
You sure showed Manuel Lora a thing or two, kmeisthax.
… (psst, I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic).
Mike,
I think Kmeisthax is new the Mises community.
A ha ha ha.
———
But she has dropped the practice after being told that she must pay a £99 annual licence fee as it constitutes a “performance”.
She received a telephone call from the Performing Right Society
———
I hope such absurd law will be never established here.
You see, unlike other capital goods ideas have this interesting little property where they don’t run out if you share them.
Yes, but *like* other capital goods, they require payment of the opportunity cost of using the same resources for some other purpose.
So if people value the knowledge contained in new ideas — and they do, in and of itself — then through what prices does the market communicate to them which ideas to produce? If something valuable gets the correct market signal even when price-controlled at zero, why doesn’t that happen for price controls on other goods?
Claiming that ideas and information can only form under a copyright regime where there are monopolistically-assigned “prices” attached to them is patently untrue. Just look at the myriads of open-source projects out there.
Nobody ever makes that argument. Of *course* there are many instances where people give up rights they legally possess in order to achieve some other goal. They do that when they “open source” software they’ve written. Just the same, they do it whenever they give away food to the poor, or let a co-worker keep the pen.
None of that, however, establishes anything good about the consequences of *deleting* that kind of right altogether. From the fact that propertyless communes produce small crafts, it doesn’t follow that property should be abolished. From the fact that open source projects exist, it doesn’t follow that IP should be abolished.
Silas: “So if people value the knowledge contained in new ideas — and they do, in and of itself — then through what prices does the market communicate to them which ideas to produce? If something valuable gets the correct market signal even when price-controlled at zero, why doesn’t that happen for price controls on other goods?”
Pricing of new-idea-making is exactly the same as any other good or service. No different whatsoever from paying a violinist for a performance.
/sigh
Open software is a great concept often cited in these arguments. Of course, open software still makes money–they give you the software for free and charge for support. It is just a different model for capturing market share, and it is a good libertarian approach.
If we eliminate all the State enforced intellectual property laws, great ideas and inventions will still be created. New ways will be thought of to make a profit by some means. We just don’t see what those means are yet. But it would be rather naive to think that you will get everything for free. After all, do any of you work for free?
I have said before that a likely avenue for creating movies, music, and literature in the absence of copyright would be by subscription. Subscribers would finance works of art they are interested in and get their own copy. Everyone else could copy the works for free, but only if enough people agreed to pay for the original creation. If everyone waited for someone else to create the work so they could get it for free, then nothing would be created. That is a perfectly legitimate libertarian model for funding artistic works (and a very historical example in the form of patrons of the arts who paid for art that everyone enjoys).
Inventions and research would still be done if the value of the research was deemed worthwhile to those who paid for it. Once developed, everyone could use the new mechanisms and processes for free. If everyone waited for someone else to pay for the research, then nothing would get done. But that is fine because it just means we are happy enough with current technology and unwilling to invest. Lack of patent laws are a perfectly legitimate libertarian approach to knowledge production.
It is possible that a society with no intellectual property would be far superior to one that respects intellectual property. That is certainly the contention of those who oppose intellectual property laws. It is also possible that a society with no intellectual property would stagnate relative to one that respects intellectual property.
The conclusion I can draw is to look at history. Before there was any recognition of intellectual property, the pace of progress in science and art was modest to the point of nothingness. As progress picked up over the centuries, the concept of intellectual property gradually formed. The genesis of legal rights to intellectual property is coincident with the explosion of technology and art. Today it is a cultural phenomenon that people everywhere are hoping to think of the next big thing and gain fame and fortune. To me it seems obvious that intellectual property rights are the prime motivator of entrepreneurs and impresarios.
But the opponents of intellectual property see it differently. They think that the explosion of knowledge and capability happened in spite of intellectual property rights. They believe that there would be more and better ideas in the world if it were not for pesky intellectual property ownership holding us back. Growth of copyright and patent protection obviously is a false positive correlation with growth of copyrightable and patentable products of the human mind.
You get what you pay for. Intellectual property costs time, effort, and money to create. There has to be some way to finance the creation of intellectual property. You cannot simply say it is free and expect it to multiply. And it seems apparent that some approaches to intellectual property will be more amenable to its creation than others. All I am saying is that the historical trend has favored recognizing ownership of intellectual property concomitant with the growth of such property. I would be glad to hear an explication of how lack of intellectual property rights will lead to a greater available of the product because so far I am not convinced.
Silas: “So if people value the knowledge contained in new ideas — and they do, in and of itself — then through what prices does the market communicate to them which ideas to produce? If something valuable gets the correct market signal even when price-controlled at zero, why doesn’t that happen for price controls on other goods?”
Ok, I’ll bite.
People valuing the knowledge contained in a new idea in and of itself, is not the same thing as someone seeking the market price of the value of new ideas. While both are legitimate perspectives, they are not the same thing.
Kind of like how I immensely value the idea of voluntary cooperation, and understand its value to society. However, there is simply no way for me to put a price valuation upon this idea. Even if I can comprehend the opportunity cost of ignorance of this idea (which btw, is the only opportunity cost I can see for an idea, as there is no such thing as having to choose between mutually exclusive uses of it), I’m still at a loss to price it as a marketable good, simply because it isn’t marketable. To call it “zero-price controlled” is to misrepresent the infinite reach of an idea.
Just because some ideas can be made marketable via force of artificial IP scarcity is not to say that it provides value. In fact, some of us feel that it detracts value, and that the opportunity cost of this ignorance may be what ushers in the next dark ages.
“Pricing of new-idea-making is exactly the same as any other good or service. No different whatsoever from paying a violinist for a performance.
/sigh”
Hey, Brian, how about recording the violinist and not paying for the performance any more? The violinist starves and dies, but his performance lives on forever free of charge.
In the absence of the violinist’s right to control recording of his performance, he has lost part of his ability to earn a living. Other people are using his talents and abilities but not paying him. It may be an abstraction, but he has nevertheless been robbed just as surely as if someone had taken his violin.
You have no more right to take a recording of the violinist and listen to it against his will than you have a right to force him to play for free against his will. Both involve taking advantage of a person against their will (coercion).
The big lie of the anti-IP argument is that enforcing property rights is aggression against the consumer. It is the other way around–the consumer is using aggression against the producer. No one is forcing the consumer to buy the music if they do not want to. To argue that artists have no intellectual property rights is the consumer forcing the artist to give up his effort for free. Producers are justified in defending their rights from the thieves who would take what they did not produce.
I do not see how people can say that taxation is theft in one breath and then claim that intellectual property is free for the taking in the next breath. Its all selfish, lies, and hypocrisy.
@Brian and the like-minded:
A lot of people claim that if we didn’t have Rothbardian property rights, people wouldn’t produce anything. But obviously that’s false. Rothbardian property rights don’t exist anywhere today, but people still produce, so obviously that’s false. And, in such a system, if certain businesses aren’t profitable because of taxes or regulations or whatnot … hey, sounds like the market is working the way it should. [/satire]
See the flaws? You just made the same ones.
@8: Just because some ideas can be made marketable via force of artificial IP scarcity is not to say that it provides value.
And just because some common property can be enclosed and charged for access (by force) is not to say that private property provides value. In fact, some of us have worked up some rockin’ arguments about how much better it would be for the earth to be just one big commune.
David: “Hey, Brian, how about recording the violinist and not paying for the performance any more? The violinist starves and dies, but his performance lives on forever free of charge.”
Whoa, what? Surely the violinist would not choose to starve. What if I never make a recording OR pay for a concert? Then the violinist dies anyway?
“In the absence of the violinist’s right to control recording of his performance, he has lost part of his ability to earn a living. Other people are using his talents and abilities but not paying him. It may be an abstraction, but he has nevertheless been robbed just as surely as if someone had taken his violin.”
This is ridiculous. Using his talents and abilities?? His ‘ability to earn a living’ (in this case) is performing for people. How the hell is he not still able to do this? He still has a violin.
“You have no…right to take a recording of the violinist and listen to it against his will”.
Sorry yes I do. See there is no crime, no damage. How would he even know he had been “injured”? He hasn’t LOST anything. Would I also be committing a crime if I possessed a spectacular aural memory and could ‘replay’ the performance in my mind? Does the violinist now have a claim on my memory??
“I do not see how people can say that taxation is theft in one breath and then claim that intellectual property is free for the taking in the next breath. Its all selfish, lies, and hypocrisy.”
LOL. Well to tax something requires a transfer of actual property, but seeing as intellectual ‘property’ refers to things that aren’t acutal things, they can’t be expropriated. They can’t even be traded. The claim is not “intellectual property is free”. It is “intellectual ‘property’ is NOT property because IT DOES NOT EXIST IN THE FRICKIN PHYSICAL WORLD!”
Silas: “A lot of people claim that if we didn’t have Rothbardian property rights, people wouldn’t produce anything.”
Who are ‘a lot of people’?
“See the flaws? You just made the same ones.”
Please explain.
David: some of us don’t think it’s either black or white.
For the violinist example, I can think of several tracks on which to continue the example:
- did the violinist agree to being recorded?
- do we all agree that “his performance lives on forever free of charge” is a good thing (I think we do)
“You have no more right to take a recording of the violinist and listen to it against his will than you have a right to force him to play for free against his will.”
This is an utter fallacy.
Also: some of us do something like what you describe for a living – we write something (programs) for others, and agree that it will be performed time and time again without us getting a fee for each time performed.
And it works for me. I could have chosen to do as you suggest for the violinist, to charge less (or free) but charge per use.
The important thing is… I have the power to do that BEFORE I “perform” – after that, my bargaining power diminishes considerably.
Copyright laws allow me to regain some of the lost bargaining power – but I don’t think that if they disappeared, I would lose my livelihood – after all, I can still “perform” (write) when others are reproducing what I wrote (rules for a machine).
Personally, I think that -some- copyright is a GOOD thing, because we want to encourage sharing of those performances – in exchange, we get them after a “reasonable period” has passed.
What I definitely don’t like, are the mafia-like groups like the one described in the article above, which I don’t believe represent the original performers, and the undue power middlemen have in the process.
In the absence of the violinist’s right to control recording of his performance, he has lost part of his ability to earn a living. Other people are using his talents and abilities but not paying him. It may be an abstraction, but he has nevertheless been robbed just as surely as if someone had taken his violin.
You have no more right to take a recording of the violinist and listen to it against his will than you have a right to force him to play for free against his will. Both involve taking advantage of a person against their will (coercion).
What kind of nonsense is this? Apply the same argument to, say, looking at movie stars – if you see them without paying, you’re robbing them just as surely as if someone had taken your violinist’s violin. When they walk down the street, everyone else in the street immediately becomes a criminal! And the Japanese tourists who snap his photo should get life!!
@David Spellman:
“Hey, Brian, how about recording the violinist and not paying for the performance any more? The violinist starves and dies, but his performance lives on forever free of charge.”
It’s up to the property owner whether recordings are allowed to be made in a particular environment. You aren’t aggressing against the violinist by recording the vibrations emanating from his instrument if you’re allowed to be in earshot of him and you’re not violating a contract with the property owner. BTW, his performance ‘living on forever’ would normally be considered a good thing.
“In the absence of the violinist’s right to control recording of his performance he has lost part of his ability to earn a living.”
No he hasn’t. He could charge people to enter his property and record him for a fee. Like anything else with a price attached, people may choose to pay it or not.
“Other people are using his talents and abilities but not paying him.”
Huh? They are controlling his body? I don’t think anti-IP folk are suggesting that people lose the property right in themselves. The soundwaves emanating from his violin are not his talents and abilities, only the non-scarce product of them.
“It may be an abstraction, but he has nevertheless been robbed just as surely as if someone had taken his violin.”
He still has the property rights to his body, talents and violin. He hasn’t lost a thing.
“You have no more right to take a recording of the violinist and listen to it against his will than you have a right to force him to play for free against his will. Both involve taking advantage of a person against their will (coercion).”
I can do what I like with a recording I’ve made without aggressing against any person, including the original performer. I can certainly aggress against someone in the act of make the recording (such as barging in on someone in their bedroom and recording them while they practice), but any recording can be listened to (and copied) without aggression being necessary as recordings, like all patterns, are non-scarce.
“The big lie of the anti-IP argument is that enforcing property rights is aggression against the consumer.”
Who is claiming such a thing? IP rights are not property rights – property can only exist in scarce items.
“It is the other way around–the consumer is using aggression against the producer.”
You need to demonstrate this. An assertion is not sufficient.
“No one is forcing the consumer to buy the music if they do not want to. To argue that artists have no intellectual property rights is the consumer forcing the artist to give up his effort for free.”
You may keep an idea in their head and not be forced to reveal it (you own your brain). Once it’s copied from your head to a piece of property you don’t own, aggression does not have to occur in order for it to be consumed by a third party.
“Producers are justified in defending their rights from the thieves who would take what they did not produce.”
Production isn’t relevant to ownership. Only homesteading and voluntary trade are relevant.
“I do not see how people can say that taxation is theft in one breath and then claim that intellectual property is free for the taking in the next breath. Its all selfish, lies, and hypocrisy.”
No, it’s not. Taxation is aggression against property by definition. Copying ideas is not. Property can only exist in scarce things. Ideas are not scarce.
Gustavo F.,
“- did the violinist agree to being recorded?”
What part of “against his will” did you miss? You quoted it in the next sentence. If he agreed to be recorded on some terms, he abides by the terms. If you record him on some terms, you abide by the terms. That is the essence of intellectual property. And it does not depend on any definition or intervention by the State–only the integrity and interpersonal respect of contracts.
You are a computer programmer for a living. You agree to write code that will be executed infinitely with no royalty accrual to you. You have contracted to those terms of your own free will and must abide by them. But if you wrote software on your own and did not agree to let other people use it, then my position is that they are not entitled to use it. Brian would not agree–he believes he can take it for his own use, but I would wonder if you agree as the author rather than the beneficiary?
Of course, you are free to write software and put it into the public domain for Brian to use if you want to. But that is different than arguing that everyone has to do that. It has nothing to do with the State enforcing a monopoly–it has to do with ownership of self and the products of your time and effort. Despite Brian’s claim that intellectual property does not exist, I would argue that it does by the very fact that we are arguing about whether it can be owned.
“The important thing is… I have the power to do that BEFORE I “perform” – after that, my bargaining power diminishes considerably.”
In a society with no respect for intellectual property, this is exactly the bargaining position all people are placed in. Before you write software, you can contract for what will be written. If you wrote software and tried to sell it as a product, no one would have to pay you for it. The first customer could copy it for every other user and you get nothing for your effort. Do you think this would put a damper on the production of software products?
What would happen is already happening in software–it is open source and given away for free, but the money is made by support fees. That is considered a good thing, and time will tell whether it leads to more or less software. The software industry is in transition to a service oriented model.
But what about music, literature, and movies? Can they make a $100 million dollar movie and give it away for free? What model do they use to justify the cost in terms of profit? I suggested subscription based patronage of the arts, and it is a proven model. But will it produce the quantity and quality of output we see today? The cost of production in a copyright regime is spread over a large number of people in small increments. A subscription system may result in far less availability if former customers simply wait for what they can get for free. That is a choice, and it is a free choice. It is a choice that society can embrace just as well as acknowledging intellectual property is also a choice that society can make.
The fundamental question is whether intellectual property is real. If it is, then why would people not have the right to own and control it? If it is a phantasmal fiction in our minds, then why would anyone be averse to letting people control what does not really exist?
Monopoly can exist in a free market. Monopoly cannot exist in the absence of scarcity either. On the one hand, anti-IP claims that intellectual property is an artificial monopoly. On the other hand, anti-IP claims that ideas should be free because there is no scarcity of ideas. These two concepts are in conflict. If there is a free market for ideas and they are not scarce, then no monopoly could exist even with State enforced intellectual property rights. People would simply refuse to pay for the IP and look elsewhere for new ideas. Intellectual property rights do not prevent you from having new ideas; they only prevent you from using other people’s ideas.
The reason people don’t like patents and copyrights is precisely because good ideas actually are scarce, or else acquiring original good ideas really is expensive. If good ideas were a dime a dozen, no one would complain about intellectual property since they could just select from an unlimited supply of alternatives. It is precisely because intellectual property is well-defined, pragmatically tangible, expensive to produce, and scarce in quality that people covet it.
The truth is that those who want unlimited rights to intellectual property cannot produce it themselves and desire to profit from the fruits of other people’s labor. As I have said before, if you don’t want to pay for my book, or music, or movie, you are welcome to create your own. If you want to benefit from what I spent time and money creating, even if it is ephemeral information, then you need to pay my price. No one is forcing you to pay me, and you should not force me to entertain you against my will. Pay for what you get.
There is no need for logical treatises on the subject of intellectual property. I know as well as everyone else what the real issue is.
People want free movies and free music. They will define morality in terms that absolve them from moral obligations for personal gratification.
What a sorry way to define one’s moral values.
There is no need for logical treatises on the subject of intellectual property. I know as well as everyone else what the real issue is.
People want free movies and free music. They will define morality in terms that absolve them from moral obligations for personal gratification.
What a sorry way to define one’s moral values.
@David Spellman
“There is no need for logical treatises on the subject of intellectual property.”
Thank God for that! Logic’s kinda tiring ya know…
“I know as well as everyone else what the real issue is. People want free movies and free music.”
Yep, I think it’s safe to say that everyone would prefer free stuff over non-free stuff. Thank god that some stuff is naturally free! Like ideas, patterns etc.. And then we have property and markets to deal with that pesky scarce stuff. Sorted!
“They will define morality in terms that absolve them from moral obligations for personal gratification.
What a sorry way to define one’s moral values.”
Wait… who did what now?
david spellman says:
“The truth is that those who want unlimited rights to intellectual property cannot produce it themselves and desire to profit from the fruits of other people’s labor…”
this is distorting the ip-unbelievers’ position. there are no rights whatsoever, neither to free access, nor to subsidized protection for something that isn’t physical.
also, on an historical point, the statute of anne (precursor of today’s copyright) was enacted to control a boom in the exchange of ideas, ideas that may been seditious or dangerous to the ruler’s grip over his subjects.
arguing for status quo because you approve of the current product mix clashes with the austrian concept of subjective valuation. my tastes versus yours…
David Spellman
“People want free movies and free music. They will define morality in terms that absolve them from moral obligations for personal gratification.”
Right, and all libertarians are actually Republicans Who Like to Smoke Pot. Oh, wait, here’s one. Free-market supporters are greedy people who want to destroy wealth redistribution so that they can make themselves richer at the expense of the poor.
This is why we make logical arguments rather than attacking a person’s motives for making the argument. Sorry if I come off a bit flippant, but the comment I quoted was really off base.
David Spellman:
The whole point of IP protection is to artificially create a scarcity of ideas. Person X invents/discovers process/pattern/methodology Y. State protection of Y means X is protected from all subsequent – possibly even previous – uses of process Y without payment/permission. Y is now necessarily scarce. Without this protection, there is no scarcity.
I understand that there appears the ‘undesirable’ consequence of idea proliferation when IP protection is removed, given current market infrastructure around automatic IP protection. However, IP protection automatically and necessarily trumps physical property rights – at least in their current incarnation. I would prefer to leave it to the free-market to negotiate a new infrastructure sans-IP, rather than limit the use of physical property.
Can you propose a system of IP protection which does not limit the use of my fairly acquired physical property and protects patterns/ideas/intangibles? Perhaps that would be something I could support. Full disclosure: I am a software engineer, ergo vested interest.
@ David Spellman : you made an interesting post, which I should read and understand in depth before answering.
Sadly, your next post is basically a troll, and kind of negates the previous and thoughtful post (whether right or wrong).
Still, I appreciate your sharing of ideas, it’s difficult to advance if no-one dissents
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