Topic: Hardcore libertarians: explain your anti-IP-rights position to me. - page 3. (Read 6806 times)

1. The money those people might have paid was all theoretical; it didn't belong to me and wasn't even promised to me, so I haven't lost it in any greater sense than I "lose" $100 million when the numbers on my PowerBall ticket don't get drawn.

2. If we consider this an actionable harm, then we must also include everything else that diminishes the resale value of my Rembrandt. Maybe a stash of new Rembrandts floods the market, or a new biography comes out that proves Rembrandt was a horrible person so no one wants his paintings, or a new biography comes out that proves I'm a horrible person so no one wants to trade with me. All of these diminish the price I can get for my Rembrandt, so I guess we have to outlaw those as well?

How do you distinguish between a trespasser who gets a footprint on your floor from a trespasser who burns down your house? You can't find it in physics and science. You find it in market value. A footprint on a floor doesn't make the house worthless. Burning it down does. But they're both just physical changes.

You have to accept those kinds of harms. Otherwise, I can spray black paint all over your Rembrandt and you have no damages. After all, it's still paint on canvas. The fact that other people will no longer pay as much for it or pay to see it has to be a recognizable damage.

At least use an appropriate analogy. Such as: photocopying or photographing the painting, instead of defacing it.

You have to accept those kinds of harms. Otherwise, I can spray black paint all over your Rembrandt and you have no damages. After all, it's still paint on canvas. The fact that other people will no longer pay as much for it or pay to see it has to be a recognizable damage.

You're overlooking an important difference between exposing film to light and sharing a poem. In the first scenario, Mark has damaged Jack's property, and frankly I suspect he'd be considered the primary responsible party even if he weren't trespassing (unless Jeff tricked him into damaging the film).

In the second scenario, Mark has caused no harm to Jack; the only possible "wrong" in that situation would be the violation of the contract between Jack and Jeff, but if he's trespassing, there's been no wrong committed at all because the contract hasn't been breached.

Say Jack loans Jeff some film that can be destroyed by light. Mark trespasses on Jeff's property and exposes the film to light. Jack can sue Mark for the damages he suffered as a result of Mark's trespass. If Mark wasn't trespassing, Jeff would be the primary responsible party, because he certainly can reasonably be expected to protect film from light exposure by those he authorized. But he can't police an intruder. (You might argue Jack should sue Jeff and then Jeff has to add Mark as an additional party. But if Jeff ignores the lawsuit, Jack should certainly be able to go after Mark directly.) If a wrong against one party harms another, the harmed party has a suit.

Now imagine Jack loans Jeff his poem pursuant to a contract where Jeff agrees not to share it. If Mark conspires with Jeff to share the poem even though Mark promised not to let anyone do that, the contract is enforceable against him under a direct agency theory. If he doesn't conspire with Jeff, he has to trespasses to get the poem, Jack has an action against him because his trespass makes him an indirect party just as in the film example.

I basically framed Kinsella's argument in such a fashion that [Person_I_Was_Talking_To] cannot reasonably reply in favor of intellectual property.

This is a libertarian-utilitarian position that relies on the false premise logical fallacy.

1) If a person has innovated, it is because of intellectual property laws protecting their work.
2) Innovation makes people happy.
3) Therefore, we should support intellectual property laws.

The premise here, #1, while syntactically-correct, is actually incorrect. Utilitarians take this for granted, however. They rely on the fact that their audience accepts that the premise is the only possible conclusion for why people innovate. They also use words like "optimal level" if you disagree that intellectual property laws provide innovation. However I asked a few questions on the free market to get [Person_I_Was_Talking_To] to verify he only legitimately saw a need to intervene in the market if there was a market failure. This is a distinction from "optimal level", because libertarian-utilitarians distinguish themselves from left-utilitarians in that they want to practice restraint, and only intervene if absolutely necessary. In other words, they don't want to make subjective calls.

My point here was that when it comes to deriving man of his liberties, the onus is on the person wanting to take the liberties away to actually and legitimately prove that it is worthwhile. This is why I asked for just one example where there was a clearly-measurable increase in happiness due to IP law.

With public goods like a lighthouse, you could reasonably make such an argument because you can potentially find more people benefiting from it than paying for it, especially over time.

However, with intellectual property you cannot, because there is clearly at least one person upset that you are punishing them, and the increase in happiness for the person holding the intellectual property is immeasurable and cloudy at best. Additionally, it is unreasonable to make the argument that their happiness is greater than that of the person you are punishing, or the next person, or the next person, or the next person...

Man has an innate evolutionary (or God-given) desire to reproduce, this means we will innovate in order to gain whatever possible edge we can over other potential mates. We don't need artificial incentives to do this, and, in fact, I contend that such encumbrances only hinder innovation. That's basically my point and that is what empirical evidence shows. The first man to make the wheel did not do so because his work was going to be protected. Shakespeare based most of his works off of other's IP and reinforced his "copyright" by regularly updating and revising his plays, not using government thugs. Game developers today enforce their IP by making content "subscribable". IE, you pay a monthly fee.

Monthly fees are the model for most current and future IP that I know of in movies, games, and music. A smart theater of the "future" should be offering a subscription-based model where you pay a monthly fee to watch movies on the big screen. These changes do not require government intervention and are a great business model for the current environment.

For Kinsella's full paper (where he makes the points against the deontological argument, primarily):
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

Show me an actual case where a contract (NOT some other actionable matter) was enforced against a someone who was not a party to the contract either as a direct signatory or an agent or participant in a direct signatory.

You cannot have transferrable property rights if contracts aren't enforceable against third parties.

But whatever that other mechanism is that permits transferrable property rights, unless it's carefully rigged not to, it will apply to other types of rights as well.

This universe doesn't grant any rights to anyone. Rights are invented by humans for political control.

property is theft. 

Agreed for the most part. I know of someone who refuses to copyright his online material because he believes that you shouldn't have contracts and/or agreements with the government, which is what he claims a copyright is. However, he claims ownership of his material, and requests people not steal it by duplicating it.

So-called "intellectual property" violates real property rights, plain and simple.

Which is why I called them 'not contracts'. They're an attempt to end-run around copyright laws and screw customers. Especially with that 'sign after you buy' thing.

That said, I haven't had to see EULA in a long time. FLOSS is your friend!

EULAs are totally invalid contracts.  There is no "meeting of the minds" whereby two parties come to a mutually-understood agreement.  There is almost zero effort by these big corporations to communicate in plain English what exactly all that legalize BS is saying.  And then they hide some little innocent looking phrase cleverly hidden in the 20 pages of dense text that gives them carte-blance to do whatever they want.  Each party must understand what he/she is agreeing to inorder for there to be a valid contract.  At the minimum, there would need to be some multiple-choice quiz after the end of reading the damn EULA to ensure that I, the user, actually understand what I am agreeing to.  The other glaringly obvious flaw with EULAs is the fact that I don't actually have to sign it until after I have purchased it from the store clerk!   

The 'blue' crack was hyperbole. But, all too often, an accurate one. The defining characteristic of a Libertarian is our love for debate (as evinced by the length of this thread)

EULAs are not contracts, and they're not enforceable.