dotCommunists
The February issue of IP Law & Business has a couple of interesting pieces (free registration required): "Pulling Back the Covers" (Google is dragging the book world online. Will the publishing industry make the leap with its copyrights intact?), and "Meet the dotCommunist" (about Eben Moglen: "This Columbia law professor believes all intellectual property should be abolished. So, how did he get the backing of some of the biggest IT companies in the world?").
It further illustrates my contention that most opponents of IP are, unfortunately, either unprincipled (read: utilitarian) and/or anti-capitalism. But there is a principled, pro-property rights opposition to IP. More IP resources here.
Comments (4)
tz
I haven't read the articles, but I'm not sure which if either criticism you are applying to Moglen, since I also read his work and things he does for the FSF (who uses copyright to protect freedom in the form of the GPL, and the creative commons licenses which seem to follow the idea for things other than software) and neither seems to apply.
I find the media tend to get things wrong more often than not, even on simpler issues regarding either technology or IP, so when they are combined the suprising result is if they get things exactly right.
Noting the two top news blogs I read are groklaw.net and blog.mises.org.
It is not evidence of being unprincipled if someone doesn't live like they were in a fantasy world. If the dragon isn't going to be slain or die of its own obesity anytime soon, sometime the best you can do is have it bite its own tail or similar while waiting.
Yet even here, the mises.org FAQ:
What is your reprint policy?
Insofar as it is possible, the Mises Institute has a liberal reprint policy, ... For Daily Articles, matters are more simple: write us as at permissions and ask. In general, we prefer links to web reprints if only because the author might like to make changes to an article later. As for Rothbard's works, the Mises Institute owns most of the rights to them. Our tendency is to avoided exclusive rights though we are open to anything. As for photos, we've never turned down any request but we would like to know about it.
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Do I have to ask? (or any other of the pun forms)
Published: February 15, 2006 4:05 PM
Stephan Kinsella
"tz" writes:
Read the article. I agree the media can be sloppy, and some of what Moglen says, while sounding commie on the surface, might not be, but too much of it does indicate commie-symp. He apparently calls himself a "dotCommunist" and spouts off leftoid-sounding poppycock like, "Communities, not industries and not individuals, make things." And don't forget--he clerked for, and apparently still worships, Thurgood Marshall. Umm, does not sound like a libertarian to me.
I am not sure how this breezy, non-rigorous comment is supposed to justify the aggression that utilitarians support.
Published: February 15, 2006 5:03 PM
tz
If you are going to have an environment where there are IP laws, then you write something like the GPL to insure that a commons remains the commons. Were IP laws to disappear entirely, the GPL would be moot - I would be free to incorporate other's modifications and do my own which others could use. Instead the situation allows anything I don't preemptively protect to be taken private.
The equivalent meatspace problem is what if I want the "north 40" to be a nature preserve - that my "use" is specifically not to develop it. The problem is that in order to "own" property, I must "mix in my labor", i.e. develop the property or put it to use. I've heard few and differing things about squatter's rights, easements, and such in physical property rights, so I don't know if there is any one position, however most would not say I personally could own large swaths of land by simply declaring my "use" to be a nature preserve. Almost every example of conflict involves contradictory or conflicting developed uses (e.g. the railroad track where the sparks from the train set a farmer's crops on fire).
If I create something which CAN be covered by IP, I MUST protect it, because it would be like the "nature preserve". Something I want to be a commons or in public.
Where in the various flavors of libertarian property theory does it cover things where a private individual wants something to be public or a common, and wants that in perpetuity?
The more general point is that there will be aggression (or simply "evil" or whatever you happen to mean by the word "aggression" which seems to include or discard things which aren't in the dictionary definition). If I can cause the state to use its aggression against itself instead of me, all the better.
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I also find it easier to simply renounce all force instead of trying to categorize it to what ends up being an individual definition of when it is or is not aggression or is or is not justified. I don't find it immediately obvious that just because I am being or have been hurt in either person or property that I can inflict either similar or dissimilar harm on the person who has harmed me. Retribution is (justified) aggression.
In any society there will be those who cannot defend themselves, even by paid proxy. We are neither in heaven nor utopia (where people don't aggress, nor are aggressed against - nor will there be shortages or economic calculation), so rights have to have a mouth that has teeth to enforce them, not merely one that emits hot air even when the hot air carries the most principled and rational arguments. I think you've said you would kill if your property was being stolen - why not just stop the robber with proper and principled prose? But if violence trumps voice in any context (which is mightier, the pen or the sword), rights are merely an abstraction that only sometimes is useful in the real world.
You might say I am unprincipled for asking how ungoverned societies will work, but I think socialists and communists have the same problem and would consider you or me equally unprincipled if we ask how they will do economic calculation under their system. No amount of principles or desire to do good will allow them to do without a market what only a market can do.
So I don't know where libertarian purity comes in. In the Catholic church we have Confession, and the recent Popes and saints went the most often. The institution that built western civilization admitted that the best of the best were loaded with imperfections, and the majority quite sinful. As I am. And when trying to figure out how to resolve the problems caused by coercion and falsehood I have to keep in mind such things.
I can point to the standard I fall short of daily. My fall doesn't make the standard a problem. I'm the problem. I don't live up my principles, even far lesser ones. So what do I do? Just whine? Point out everyone else who falls? Or do I try to minimize the harm I do?
In short, it doesn't matter which set of principles I or you or anyone comes up with, they won't be followed. Some will intentionally and malicously violate them. So in a world where people will naturally do some evil (or "aggression"), and avoid promoting justice, what do you do?
I've admitted even the most minimal state unavoidably does evil (I don't use "aggression" since I think such argot simply confuses things). I don't try to justify it in the sense that it will be required to do things that violate the virtue of justice.
The evil done by a minarchy is unintentional, but necessary (hence the principle of double-effect - the good of preserving life and liberty is intended - the evil is quite real, but can't be avoided in this world).
Another double-effect example would be if you were stranded in a blizzard and there was an unoccupied cabin. Do you freeze to death or violate property rights? The good of avoiding the former would require the unintended but necessary evil of the latter. Would you freeze to death to keep your principles intact?
And if you do break and enter, of course you are going to eat the food, steal anything not nailed down and trash the place. If not, why not? If you could limit your damage to only that which was necessary to preserve your life, it is possible that a state run by men could do the same. Maybe not likely, but possible.
And you've not commented on the Mises.org reprint policy. Is that because you have no opinion?
Published: February 16, 2006 4:44 PM
Stephan Kinsella
tz:
"I also find it easier to simply renounce all force instead of trying to categorize it to what ends up being an individual definition of when it is or is not aggression or is or is not justified.
I don't konw what it means to "renounce" force. The "act" of renouncing does not prevent or even bind you from using force, so not sure what it means. And of course libertarians are not against force, just aggression.
> I don't find it immediately obvious that just because I am being or have been hurt in either person or property that I can inflict either similar or dissimilar harm on the person who has harmed me.
Okay.
>Retribution is (justified) aggression.
No, it is justified force.
>In any society there will be those who cannot defend themselves, even by paid proxy. We are neither in heaven nor utopia (where people don't aggress, nor are aggressed against - nor will there be shortages or economic calculation), so rights have to have a mouth that has teeth to enforce them, not merely one that emits hot air even when the hot air carries the most principled and rational arguments.
I am not sure what you mean, rights "have to have". Rights don't have to do anything, as far as I know.
>I think you've said you would kill if your property was being stolen - why not just stop the robber with proper and principled prose?
I said it could be justified in this case, not that I "would" do it, or that there is no duty to try a more proportional response first. But it's easy to see how the owner's use of force to stop the theft could escalate, if the thief resists, into very violent struggle.
>You might say I am unprincipled for asking how ungoverned societies will work,
It is not unprincipled to ask things.
>I can point to the standard I fall short of daily. My fall doesn't make the standard a problem. I'm the problem. I don't live up my principles, even far lesser ones. So what do I do? Just whine? Point out everyone else who falls? Or do I try to minimize the harm I do?
I don't understand your question.
>In short, it doesn't matter which set of principles I or you or anyone comes up with, they won't be followed.
Okay.
>Some will intentionally and malicously violate them. So in a world where people will naturally do some evil (or "aggression"), and avoid promoting justice, what do you do?
I don't understand your question. Are you asking a technical question about how to deal with aggressors? Or with how a theory should deal with this fact?
>I've admitted even the most minimal state unavoidably does evil (I don't use "aggression" since I think such argot simply confuses things).
Oh, no, it is the refusal to honestly use clear concepts and labels to identify the nature of what is being discussed that confuses things. It is the "non-labelers" who confuse things.
>And you've not commented on the Mises.org reprint policy. Is that because you have no opinion?
I was not aware you had asked a coherent question about it. You made a comment, as if it is obvious what the question must be; as if it is obvious what is "wrong" with it, and that therefore, "needs" defending. But it's not. What, exactly, is your question?
Published: February 16, 2006 4:58 PM