Topic: Hardcore libertarians: explain your anti-IP-rights position to me. - page 5. (Read 6806 times)

I never said verbal agreements were not valid. Or even the short-hand agreements that take the form of pricetag. You see the price tag and you know, that if you give the clerk that specified amount of money, you can leave the store with the item. That is an explicit, if abbreviated, agreement between you and the store.

That's just because we're not a Libertarian society. But in a Libertarian society, that's exactly how IP would work. It would be in the form of contracts, either explicit or implied.

In a Libertarian society, assuming courts are operated by the government, the government will have to set default contractual terms because otherwise it could not enforce contracts. Whatever those defaults are, people are always free to change them. Likely, if the default included no IP or IP that most sellers didn't find satisfactory, restrictions on what you could do with the CD once you got home would be included in the sale contract.

Right, because we don't have Libertarian IP in this country. If we did, you would likely have to enter into a contract with the rights holder to buy a CD. This could easily be made efficient and streamlined and there would be a large incentive to do so. As I said, you'd probably have to show some kind of ID card that indicated you had entered into a contract with the distributor of the movie in order to enter a movie theater. It wouldn't be hard to make this efficient.

Note that the terms could be much worse than the ones in the United States. With IP terms set by law, the terms are a balance between creators and consumers and include things like fair use. With IP terms set by contract, the terms are much more in the control of the creators and likely would include much more restricted fair use rights. This is why Microsoft uses EULAs.

So if I walk into a candy store, put a candy bar and a dollar on the counter, what happens? Can the candy store owner just take my dollar and not give me the candy bar? How do I know the candy bar is mine after I've paid?

I have met dozens of Libertarians and I've never met a single one who believed that implied contracts were invalid where the terms were not unconscionable, known to both parties, and one party gave the consideration to the other that was understood by both to signify acceptance of the contract.

How are you going to enforce your ownership of IP without tax-funded government? If taxes are theft (they are), then you are violating others property rights to enforce your own.

You don't have the right to the fruits of my labor to enforce your ownership claims, no matter how valid those claims may be.

Laws are not the same as contractual terms. When I buy something at the store, the only terms I'm agreeing to are the exchange of ownership (implied by tradition as part of the act of sale) and whatever terms are explicitly laid out at the point of sale (return policy, etc.). When I buy a CD, I'm trading my money for the store's plastic disc, but I'm not agreeing to any restrictions on what I do with that disc once I get it home.

Those restrictions are part of the law, not the sales contract. If I violate them, it won't be the seller (the store) who comes after me, it'll be a third party (the copyright holder, or law enforcement) who had no part in the sale and is not acting on behalf of the seller; and I won't have violated any agreement, I will only have violated the wishes of third parties I've never met and politicians who don't represent my interests.

Implicit contracts are not valid. this is the core of libertarian philosophy, and why, if they're self-honest, libertarians are against IP.

Why aren't they violating my right not to be stolen from? Why does your right not to be stolen from extend to cover the car? And the answer is that the right extends to cover the car because of the contract.

Call it extensions, call it whatever you want. But the fact is, contracts create rights, or extend them, or make actions violations of rights that wouldn't otherwise be. Whatever. The terminology is not important. The point is, rights obtains contractually are real rights and in fact most rights are obtained in this way. If your boss doesn't pay you for your labor, he's violating your rights because he agreed to pay you.

When you buy a CD in the United States, you are entering into an implicit contract with the seller of the CD. This contract incorporates the laws of the United States to set the defaults. You are, of course, free to negotiate other terms, but the law will have to set the default in every society. Otherwise, there is no way courts could enforce contracts.

+1.

I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I am a fervent opponent of IP law. Others have already covered the philosophical argument that IP infringes on property rights; personally, with regard to copyright, I'm more disturbed by the infringement on free speech. But let me focus on the OP's practical argument for now.

You've overlooked a very simple solution.

As you stated, writing the cookbook would provide a clear benefit to society. Gourmands would benefit from having healthy, tasty meals available more readily. Chefs would benefit from being able to cook better meals that customers would pay more for. Farmers, foodservice suppliers, and everyone else who profits from the restaurant industry would benefit from the growth of that industry.

So, here's the realization you're missing: those benefits make the act of writing the cookbook valuable in itself. Everyone who would benefit from the existence of that cookbook has an economic incentive to pay you to write it. That payment is a investment in their future profits (or their enjoyment of tasty meals).

If you're only able to think of the cookbook as a product -- something you have to invest your time into making, then recoup that investment later by selling copies -- then you won't be able to see past the copyright-based business model. But if you can let go of the concept of cookbook-as-product, and focus on the labor that goes into writing it, the solution will be obvious.

People will tangibly benefit from reading your cookbook. They can't read it until you write it. It won't be written until you willingly provide your labor. You can withhold that labor until someone (or a group of people pooling their money) agrees to pay you a price you consider fair. Therefore, you can be pretty damn sure that people will pay you to write it: at most, you'll just need to find a middleman to collect payments and hold them in escrow, not too different from what's already done on political campaign sites, Kickstarter, Sellaband, etc.

And once that's done and you publish the book, you can stop worrying about who copies it, since you've finished the job and been paid for it.

You've created a new human being, which by virtue of being a human being, has certain rights. We're already straying rather far afield from the basic information that the OP wanted, but since that's been covered, I'm OK with that. I'm in favor of the concept of Negative rights, in which the Right to life, for instance, is defined as: the right NOT to be killed. The right to property is the right NOT to be stolen from.

If You and I make an agreement to transfer ownership of a vehicle, the vehicle becomes my property, and is no longer yours. You haven't lost any rights, nor have I gained them. If you, or a third party then tries to drive off with my car, then you or they are violating my right NOT to be stolen from, and most certainly I can enforce that.

I tend to avoid the whole concepts of "rights" all together.  There are only humans, and there are agreements between humans.  Simple.

Really? So who gave us our rights and where did they come from?

We give rights to ourselves by agreeing to abide by them.

I want the right to live. As long as I do not take another's life, I have that right. If I take someone's life, I've given up my right to life because I've proven that I will not respect another's right to life.

I want the right to own property. As long as I do not take another's property, I have that right. If I steal something, I've given up my right to own property because I've proven that I will not respect another's right to own property.

If someone refuses to respect the rights of another, they can not expect to have rights of their own.

Once someone legitimizes violence as a tool to be used against others, they legitimize violence as a tool to be used against themselves.

We can interact with each other through mutual voluntary agreement, or we can use force. The initiator sets the premise for future interaction.

Sorry, I still can't understand what you're trying to say. Say my wife and I have a daughter. She now has certain rights. Didn't my wife and I, by creating our daughter, also create those rights?

Rights arise as a consequence of particular states of affairs. By creating those states of affairs, we create the rights that arise from them as a consequence.

And agreements do create rights. If you buy a car from me, you now have the right to that car, a right you didn't previously have. The agreement created the right. I suppose you can argue that you always had the right to all possessions you justly acquired and that the right to the car is merely a consequence of a pre-existing right, but that weaker version of the difference between rights and agreements is too weak to make your point. (For example, you can certainly enforce that agreement against a third party who destroys the car that is only yours because of the agreement.)

Every valid agreement creates a new right on the part of all the parties of that agreement -- the right to enforce the agreement.

Agreements are created (made).

You cannot create rights.

The only reason you approach the problem that way is because you are conditioned to think that you own ideas.  In the real world you never own ideas, because often many people have the same idea, and once an idea is exposed then everybody has the same idea.

Thus the problem does not exist today or in fictional hard-core L. world.  Or in other words, very little incentive.  The only being, "it is clear that society as a whole will be far better off if more chefs could utilize my techniques."  First off, why should society believe you?  It's called hubris, and many people have it.  It isn't a problem for society, as long as those people have no power...  So why should society give them power?

Your problem is that you really do have good ideas that will help society.  And the question is, what do you do to get your ideas out where everybody can have those same ideas?

Instead of spending 500 freaking hours (12.5 weeks at 40hrs per) to write a cookbook...

  Get free kitchen help with interns who want to learn from you.

  See the world (travel) and teach in exchange for room and board.

  Start a school for people to pay and come learn from you.

  Publish a recipe or two every now and then (like in a newspaper column or even just on your establishment's door "this is what I cooked yesterday.").

Or if you really don't care about society, just keep on moping about how if only the world were fair you could control how people use their ideas.


OK, transition to less hardcore happens here...


If society says ideas could be owned, would you charge a royalty for each time someone follows a recipe in your book?  Would you sue for damages if they followed it wrong or made some changes to it?  I hope the answer to both is, "of course not, that would be silly."

The ideas in the cookbook can never be owned, but the book itself -- layout, text, pictures, etc. can be owned similar to the compilation copyright today.  If someone were to republish a book identical or with the exact same set or even substantially the same set of recipes as yours, it would be a violation.

But if someone took just your venison recipes and other venison recipes from many other places and put them into a new "How to Cook Venison" book, such that yours make up no more than a fraction of the whole and only a fraction of yours were used, no violation.  (As they didn't just lift your pages intact!)

This is how cookbooks are treated, generally, today.  And even when not food, say, programming algorithms instead, it is how recipe books are treated.  And then you have some crass lawyers who come in after the fact and patent or otherwise claim ownership over said algorithms, and cause no end of grief for some deep pockets who happened to use them.  Even if neither the lawyers nor the deep pockets ever saw the book, or the patent, or anything else.

(BTW, I "invented" the bubble-sort as a kid in the late 1970's.  I had no idea that it had been invented long before or that it was called a bubble-sort or that it was a poor algorithm or anything like that.  It was just an obvious way to sort my list.  Similar "inventions" (also known as "ideas") happen every day, and when you are in the middle of it, it is obvious that the concept of IP ownership as practiced today is fundamentally flawed.)

I don't understand this distinction. What is the difference between an agreement and the right to enforce an agreement?

Wow, lots of good explanations. Very helpful. I'm still not entirely convinced but at least I know what to read up about now.

+1

1. No it is not.
2. No I do not.
3. If "society" thinks it is important that you write a cookbook, it will provide you with whatever you need to write it. If they don't then maybe they didn't need it that badly after all.
4. Not necessarily, but also not really relevant.

There are other solutions which would allow you to share your recipes with only minimal inconvenience to yourself. Such as allowing a single observer to watch you prepare the meals and take notes on the ingredients and process.

Just because you are unable to think up a business model which makes what you want to do profitable does not mean you should be permitted to invent one that benefits you to the detriment of the rest of the society (as IP laws do.) I would claim that IP laws do more harm than good. (with regard to the creation of what is currently called IP) But we have a "tradgedy of the anti-commons"[5] where just because we don't see the things that are not created we don't count them as negatives.

Also, +1 on what the 3rd party contract people said.

[5] if anyone knows what this is acutally called, please let me know.

+1.  Simple.