Comments (26)

• Sasha Radeta

  At least he's calling for voluntary open-source community, unlike communists who want to see copyright abolished (banning the free market for limited use of works of authorship).

  Published: June 11, 2009 9:51 AM

• kmeisthax

  @Sasha Radeta

  There is nothing free market about 'copyrights' that are created by government coercion. Regular property can be owned, exploited, and defended because of the homesteading principle. 'Copyright' cannot exist without a government that coerces people into not sharing.

  Those who want to fight copyright are not communists. Copyright _is_ communist. The communists claim that workers are exploited, having their work 'stolen' by 'capitalists'. Thus, the workers should own the means of production. The copyright doctrine is based on the idea that authors are exploited, having their work 'stolen' by 'publishers'. Thus, the authors should own the means of publication. Hence why there is a push to grant authors nontransferrable 'moral rights' in many jurisdictions where such things have not already been granted.

  On a related note, you cannot make 'copyright' from contracts because contracts only bind those who actually sign it. Any attempt to do so is just a non-disclosure agreement, except that since the target of the agreement is someone that can't lose their job over it there's much less disincentive to leak.

  Published: June 11, 2009 10:40 AM

• Peter Surda

  @Sasha Radeta
  As I explained several times, IP does not create markets. Classical property does. IP just alters the way they behave.

  Published: June 11, 2009 10:41 AM

• AJ Witoslawski

  At least he's calling for voluntary open-source community, unlike communists who want to see copyright abolished (banning the free market for limited use of works of authorship).

  There is no such thing as intellectual "property." Ideas are not like land or water, which you can own by virtue of homesteading it or contracting the ownership out of someone else who has homesteaded it. Ideas, since they are nonfungible and do not exist in the material world, cannot be owned. Thus, intellectual "property" is a bankrupt idea backed by corporatists, fascists, socialists, and state monopolists.

  Published: June 11, 2009 11:36 AM

• Daniel C

  Sasha, if you have to use parenthetical explanatory notes whenever you invoke a crucial term, it's a sign that you aren't utilizing the ordinary and commonly-held sense of the word(s). I hope you see that people like Jeff Tucker are in fact arguing against the common perception of IP and copyright—not your substitute.

  Published: June 11, 2009 11:40 AM

• Umberto Abrahams

  @Sasha Radeta
  "At least he's calling for voluntary open-source community, unlike communists who want to see copyright abolished (banning the free market for limited use of works of authorship)."

  Copyright and patents are state-enforced monopolies.

  Are you really a supporter of state-enforced monopolies?

  Than you are no libertarian and you are against free markets!

  Published: June 11, 2009 1:49 PM

• Matthew

  Sasha Radeta,

  I responded to your most recent comment to me on a previous IP-related blog entry. It's at http://blog.mises.org/archives/010099.asp

  Published: June 11, 2009 2:26 PM

• s burgess

  can any one ...direct me to any good books for arguements for and against copy rights and patents..i have to admit im confused to where i stand.if some one spends time money or effort to produce an idea should it not be considered his property.the same as same as someone who spends time money or effort to produce a solid good.on the other hand can an idea be concidered one mans property when nearly all or should i say all ideas are to at least a large degree progressions of past ideas.any way peoples whats the best reading on these issues

  Published: June 11, 2009 2:44 PM

• jc butte

  Here we go again...

  Umberto, thanks for taking me back to the early days of the LP or Objectivist clique where you either let it do your thinking for you or you were a statist.

  I can imagine IP without the state. A private company that is more or less universally respected by industry could issue patents. Rogue companies that ignored them would find their markets very limited.

  Abolishing patents completely is patently absurd. If fact asserting such marks one as pretty much divorced from reality. I get the impression that the primary objection to patents is simply that the government issues them, which is a very shallow argument, but a less dangerous one than those such as Mr. Witoslawski who challenge their legitimacy on metaphysical grounds.

  PS, I just filed a utility patent online a couple of days ago and I feel very good about it, as I can actually talk about it now without the requirement of the execution of an NDA.

  Published: June 11, 2009 3:08 PM

• Eric

  @s burgess

  I'm in a similar boat. As an extreme example, what if I took "Meltdown" or "Human Action" and replaced Woods and Mises with my own name? That's plagiarism, I know, but passing others ideas off as your own either in plagiarism or patent infringement is basically the same thing, right? I know all my non-free market talk is simply fallacies needing to be corrected so forgive my ignorance.

  Published: June 11, 2009 3:08 PM

• BioTube

  Plagiarism is fraud, just like using a trademark without permission is fraud. To paraphrase SCOTUS(US v Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coke - I ain't kidding!), once a name/mark has achieved a 'secondary significance' as meaning a certain product/company, it means that and other uses are fraud(for example, nobody really thinks "coca cola" refers to any concoction that contains the two).

  Published: June 11, 2009 5:06 PM

• Aaron

  My thoughts and discoveries are certainly part of my private property. The state or mob should never take them away.

  This is one area where I think that the LvMI is getting off course.

  Published: June 11, 2009 5:51 PM

• kmeisthax

  @jc_butte

  A union of corporations that only bought from other 'patent-respecting' corporations? Sure, you can fathom this. It's certainly possible in a minarchist or anarcho-capitalist society that respects individual liberty that someone could try private intellectual property enforcement. The problem is though, that such a system would fail spectacularly. Patents and copyrights are -already- stifiling innovation when the government coerces people to 'respect' them because they misrepresent the way innovation actually happens.

  Innovation is, 95% of the time, people maintaining and improving products they already make. The products we purchase and consume now are much better than products made 20 or 30 years ago because of very small incremental improvements being copied everywhere, not because of massive jumps being created by very few minds.

  So, if I'm a person that owns a few factories, whom is asked to join the IP union, I have to give up the free use of another's ideas, and agree not to deal with anyone who doesn't follow the union's rules. In exchange I get, what exactly? If I'm an idea-heavy corporation then sure, I get to prevent others from using my ideas without paying me money, while I lose very little since most of my output is patentable ideas. But if I'm a factory-heavy corporation, I lose a lot since I don't produce as many ideas. If I join, I now have a bunch of people playing manager, telling me if I can produce what I want and charging me for the service. I also have a bunch of customers I'm not allowed to deal with.

  In this scheme, an idea creator has a net benefit by being able to control factories and producers, while a factory or a producer has a net loss by being controlled and having to pay the idea creators. Any organization like this would likely fall apart, because it's essentially the same thing as a group of corporations joining together to try and force prices higher. It fails because people end up 'cheating' for their own benefit.

  I.E. People aren't going to follow a private IP regime because they can just 'go rogue' and sell better products. People in the IP regime would end up figuring it would be better for them to buy the better 'rogue' goods. It's too restrictive and there's no benefit.

  @Eric

  Copyrights and plagiarism are different. You can plagiarize the public domain, and it does happen. Schools are very adept at ratting out plagiarists without using copyright.

  Published: June 11, 2009 5:56 PM

• Matthew

  @Aaron

  My thoughts and discoveries are certainly part of my private property. The state or mob should never take them away.

  How, pray tell, does a state or mob "take away" your thoughts or discoveries? They can certainly duplicate them and utilize them themselves, but they can never deprive you of their use.

  You might respond that it someone would be taking away a book you wrote by printing and selling copies (at his own expense) of text that you had originally composed. You must keep in mind that you too have the right to print and sell copies of the text you wrote. No one has ever taken that away from you.

  If you pick lemonades and open a lemonade stand, and your neighbor opens up a lemonade stand next door, you won't be able to charge as high a price as you like. Has your neighbor taken away your ability to sell lemonade at a particular price?

  Published: June 11, 2009 6:04 PM

• kmeisthax

  @Aaron

  It is not enough to just say it's property and defend it. What basis do we count something as being 'owned', and why is it 'owned'?

  For private property, we have the homestead principle: Anything which someone mixes one's labor with is considered owned by that person.

  What principle, then, covers intellectual property while being consistent with individual liberty? The current IP regime doesn't seem like a good candidate. It explicitly sets end dates on IP. What kind of property expires?

  And how can it be consistent with individual liberty? IP explicitly purports to remove the individual liberty of someone who would produce something that goes against the IP owner's wishes. It removes control of the printing press and gives it to the author, it removes control of the factory and gives it to the inventor.

  Published: June 11, 2009 6:11 PM

• jeffrey

  Certainly your discoveries are your own. But when you share them with others, others can be influenced by them and make copies.

  Published: June 11, 2009 6:34 PM

• jc butte

  kmeisthax,

  May I ask what you do for a living or how you came upon your assessment of the origins of creation?

  I have been engineering equipment and processing systems (food industry) for almost 25 years. I have been promoting my own IP products for 10 years. Your description does not conform in any sense to the world that I know.

  Industry associations define industry. Today some are quasi-governmental (UL) and others are private but work with government regulatory agencies. They could, after a period of transition, work without government involvment. In an anarchical society in which law is present, a private IP regime would be demanded by everyone except pirates and while pirates will always exist, they will always exist at the margins of society.
  

  Published: June 11, 2009 6:44 PM

• newson

  to s. burgess:
  the anti case is well represented by "against intellectual monopoly" and also "against intellectual property"

  http://www.dklevine.com/papers/anew.all.pdf

  http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

  this article also documents the origins of copyright law:
  http://questioncopyright.org/promise

  Published: June 11, 2009 7:21 PM

• Matthew

  jc butte,

  In an anarchical society in which law is present, a private IP regime would be demanded by everyone except pirates and while pirates will always exist, they will always exist at the margins of society.

  Your description of a private IP regime is basically consistent with the "anti-IP" position I and others espouse, though we would differ with the words you've chosen due to their connotations.

  I believe the issue being debated is whether natural law provides for property rights over ideas. Just as private justice providers would codify and interpret natural law to resolve disputes covering tangible goods, they would be faced with the same task for copyrights, patents, etc.

  The question then, is whether IP rights would be strictly the product of contractual provisions and limited to a particular community, perhaps like pledging not to drive impaired on a defined private road system, or whether it would be derived from nature, like murder, where it doesn't matter to which justice provider one subscribes.
  

  Published: June 11, 2009 7:28 PM

• BioTube

  Mr. Butte, you seem to have forgotten Franklin and Tesla: the former never patented nothing and the latter, after seeing his royalty contract nearly destroy Westinghouse, famously ripped them up. Care to argue how the world's poorer for either rejection of IP?

  Published: June 11, 2009 9:18 PM

• kmeisthax

  I am not saying that you couldn't -try- to create a private IP system. What I am saying is that trying to enforce it on everyone is impossible. In many cases innovation is obtained by many companies imitating each other, and those companies would gain very little from an IP association.

  Here's what I'm trying to say:

  You could very well see publishers agreeing not to print books that others have printed. There's a mutual benefit for all involved in such an arrangement to cooperate. But they don't control all of the distribution channels. Internet users are free to share their own copies voluntarily because they are not party to any IP-related agreements. Attempts to block them would prove as fruitless as current attempts to block them.

  The only way to have strict, enforceable IP outside of a few agreements between major industry players, is to say that IP is a natural law right.

  I honestly doubt we could assert that. Normally, natural law is to prevent actions that directly harm people. I.e. murder, theft, etc. To assert that IP is a natural law right is to say that if someone shows you an idea, you didn't coerce him to show you the idea, and you don't have any pre-existing contractual obligations, then using it harms the person directly. This is absurd. If he freely gave you an idea he can't stipulate terms after the fact no more than he could freely squeegee your car's windshield and demand payment.

  Now, if he made you sign a paper saying "I will not tell anyone this idea unless they have also signed this contract" or something like that, he would have a signed contract. Such contracts already exist, they are called non-disclosure agreements. You could also do the same to emulate patents. But I don't think that we can just assume that those outside the agreement would be heavily marginalized. So called "rogue" producers might be able to out-compete and out-innovate those inside the agreement, and the agreement would fall apart because no one would benefit from it anymore. However, to have a court try to uphold that agreement as law on other people would be coercion.

  Published: June 11, 2009 9:19 PM

• kmeisthax

  To fix my last sentence and avoid ambiguity, when I say "uphold that agreement as law on other people" I am referring to subjecting people not party to the agreement to the provisions, restrictions, and obligations in that agreement.

  Published: June 11, 2009 9:26 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

  jc butte wrote "I can imagine IP without the state. A private company that is more or less universally respected by industry could issue patents."

  Leaving aside how it would get that respected, that's not "without the state". You cannot have a private company without the state, unless you are going back to obsolete meanings of the word which included partnerships.

  Published: June 11, 2009 11:34 PM

• Peter Surda

  I think the key to making a decision about being pro or contra IP is to understand what it is and what it is not. IP is not the ability to sell, rent or license immaterial goods, or to prosecute fraud regarding these. That's (classical) property. What IP is, is allowing you to apply these rules to a third party (i.e. to a party that has not agreed to a contract). In the world of rival goods, this would be kind of similar to the difference between the ability to make a contract and ability to prevent tresspass. With rival goods, these two abilities cannot be separated without being in conflict, so a lot of people seem to come to the conclusion that they cannot be separated for non-rival goods either. After analysing it, it is obvious that they can. So the question is, whether both of them are economic/moral/whatever (pro IP), or only the first one is (against IP). There is also a third possibility, to reject the classical property too, meaning none of the four abilities / rights would be practicable. I don't think anyone here is advocating that one. Other stances toward property would be inconsistent.

  I made a picture and mentioned it several times, can't harm to do it once more: http://shurdeek.shurdix.org/tmp/ip.png

  Cheers,
  Peter

  Published: June 12, 2009 9:04 AM

• Umberto

  @jc butte

  Oh, so your defense for patents and ip-nonsense is that you can take the profit from your state-enforced monopoly?

  Ah, and therefore you are no more than a socialist!

  There are very cheap flights to Cuba! Enjoy your stay!

  Published: June 13, 2009 2:53 PM

• Umberto

  @jc butte

  An addendum:

  "I can imagine IP without the state. A private company that is more or less universally respected by industry could issue patents."

  An organization that issued "patents" and enforced them would be nothing else than the state. An illegitimate organization.

  What about that: Someone wears a "special outfit". Would that person own in your little world that outfit? Would it be legitimate for him to bash everyone who wears a similar outfit?

  IP is utter nonsense. Those who support the "idea of IP" want a socialist state with a central bureau for registration.

  Published: June 13, 2009 2:58 PM