Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 104. (Read 105893 times)

I'm well aware of all that you mentioned. Just because my views are often nearly opposite bitcoin2cash's does not mean my views are not well thought out or absent of independent thinking.

Don't kid yourself. Most people simply allow the current system to propagate itself without actually actively examining and deciding that it is what they want. Have you ever seen how Americans vote?

Right, because we know that society always decides what's moral and just.

I know but its refreshing to have to examine your basic assumptions again.  Without him, there would not actually be a conversation so I'm happy he posts.

Actually, take heart. Society has decided that our view is more important than bitcoin2cash's views.

Exactly right. Let's say that we have a disagreement and we each go to our courts, my court A and your court B. There are four possible outcomes.

1. A and B both rule in my favor
2. A and B both rule in your favor
3. A rules in your favor and B rules in my favor
4. A rules in my favor and B rules in you favor

Outcomes (1) and (2) present no problem. The matter is settled. Outcome (3) is where each of our courts rule against us. That's unlikely so we'll ignore that. The real issue I'm betting you're worried about is (4) where my court rules in my favor and your court rules in your favor. There are then two additional possibilities.

1. A and B have a mechanism to settle this by going to court C to settle the dispute
2. A and B don't have a mechanism in place and simply go to war with each other

We'll call the courts that have a mechanism in place "legitimate courts" and we'll call the courts that don't have a mechanism in place "bandit courts". Since as you pointed out, there will be competition, who has the advantage? I'll quote Walter Block on this.


If you defraud me into thinking that your restaurant is some other restaurant or that I'm buying a CD from Trent Reznor when I'm really buying it from Rent Treznor, I'll sue you in the aforementioned private courts. If you're not committing fraud, if I'm just a consumer not doing his homework, well, caveat emptor.

Actually when we look example by example, it seems we do lose them.  Not that it matters as you don't care - your ideas are more important than the consequences for other people of your ideas. 

I'll stop replying to you on this; I'm comfortable that you see the absence of IP and being more important than the presence of movies, games, etc. and in your utopia, if these things did miraculously survive it would be a bonus.   That's not my utopia but we all have our own ideal so peace out.

Who chooses which private court?  Presumably there will be many, each catering to different markets for justice, and even some competing in the same market.

It might be difficult for any random guy called Bill Gates to pretend to be the Microsoft (TM) guy - a small matter of not having an enormous personal fortune at hand.  But who can stop me opening a restaurant called "Burger King", with the same sign over the door, the same color seats, the same menu, the same everything - except (maybe) the food?  Likewise, the website catering to NineInchNails - who can stop me setting up a website claiming to be the "real" site that sends contributions to the musicians, even with a nice video (suitably 'shopped) from the lead singer?  If you answer to this latter is TOR, cryptography, etc, then you'll be waiting a long time for Joe Public to figure it out.  Bitcoiners are savvy, but it's clear bitcoins ain't never going mainstream for exactly this reason.

First of all, drop the hyperbole. If you can't argue on the merits of your ideas alone, few people are going to be convinced by name calling, "utopia", etc. It just makes your position seem weak because you feel the need to engage in such tactics.


Private courts. Will that business just be able to ignore the ruling? Sure, but it will make life difficult for them. Would you do business with a company that has a history of never allowing itself to be brought to justice? Probably not.


Let's say my name is Bill Gates and I sell software "made by Bill Gates". Of course I can slap my name on it. Of course I can claim I'm "the real" Bill Gates. What I can't do is intentionally lead anyone to believe that I'm "that other" Bill Gates. That's fraud, pure and simple.

I said I was done with this thread, but there are so many holes in these pro-libertarian posts that I just can't help myself.  Here are just two such holes:

bitcoin2cash, in your libertarian utopia, can you please explain:

• how exactly will consumers be able to sue any given establishment?
• exactly why any given restaurant cannot declare itself to be the "real" burger king?

EDIT: Please be clear and don't avoid the questions.


Man, you just don't see the big FAIL written across this.  What's to prevent other sites saying the same thing?

The Nine Inch Nails CD made ~$1,000,000 dollars even though anyone could have downloaded it and burned their own copy. That means that the sales were mostly from people that wanted to support the band. If there are several different stores that have the same CD but only one of them is paying royalties to the band, most of those people will buy it there. The store can have a contract with the band to ensure exactly that. The official website could sell it there directly. I've laid it all out for you, there's nothing left to argue about.


Yes. However, as I've explained to you several times now, all of those things are still possible and we won't lose them.

Um now you are being obtuse.  CD sales requires that the shopkeeper pays a for the CD.  DVD sales requires that the DVD be paid for.  Absent IP protection, CD and DVD sales will go close to zero.

And you edited out my question.  If the cost of the move to an IP less world is that you lose the movies and the games and the big research projects, do you think the tradeoff is still worth it?

Just like Clerks could have made its money in DVD sales even though it would have been available for free download.


Some movies and some games. Not all movies and not all games. We would still have great movies and games. They just might not be made using millions of dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slip_%28album%29

Seems pretty clear.  The free download was not where they made their money - it was in the CD sales.  If someone else were able to make NIN Cds, they would have got nothing.

And as we discussed earlier, individual artists and programmers really can't stop themselves producing.  They love it.  But that is entirely different from large projects that require budgets like computer games and movies.  We've covered this - I don't know why you want to repeat it ?  Your position is that even if movies become much scarcer, the trade-off isn't worth it.  Or are you saying that making movies scarcer would be an unacceptable price and then you'd be willing to countenance intellectual property ?

Just like the Nine Inch Nails album that was released as a free download but still made ~$1,000,000 in CD sales?

Clerks would have made zero money without copyright.  Its the payment from movie theatres that is needed.

Did you forget Clerks vs. Pirate's of the Caribbean 3 already? A movie made on a shoestring budget has a higher audience rating than the most expensive movie ever made. Clerks could have easily made that money back without copyrights and without copyrights it would have spread far and wide even faster than it did.

The problem is that you keep equating all movies with $100+ million dollar movies. I don't think that's very fair.

gibson042 I suggest you read Chapter 6 the book Ruwart wrote.  Its pretty damning in terms of people dying for no good reason and she is a libertarian herself. 

I'm loathe to go into the copyright thing again.  But everyone accepts that movies need a way to recover their production cost and without copyright, there is no way.  If it was remotely viable, they would already be doing it.  Its worth paying attention to what the market tells you.

As discussed earlier in the thread, its fine to say "movies are not worth it - lets abolish copyright anyway" but then its a question of how you convince the society you are in that the trade-off is worth it.  If I recall correctly, your objection is that you don't want the fact that you are a part of society to be taken into account so its sort of a dead end for you.

My entry to this thread, a link demonstrating how patents harm rather than help pharmaceutical development, fell on the deaf ears of its principal satanic advocate but was of some utility to other participants.

The conversation has since shifted to copyright, and our rogue now claims that a publication monopoly is necessary for creative works. This opinion is also non-factual, and smarter men then ey people have thought about and documented an answer to the question of how original content can be rewarded in a world without copyright.

Trademark, too, has been addressed. Others have asserted this here already, but to reiterate (emphasis mine):

Stephan Kinsella, the author of that last quote, has also written and made publicly available a detailed but still short (under 60 pages) explanation of how Intellectual Property is an inconsistent system and violates tangible property rights: Against Intellectual Property. I have no expectations regarding Hawker, but believe it will be valuable here nonetheless.

Edit: retracted an unnecessary snipe.

I like movies and games too. I also make my living selling software. I'm already biased towards agreeing with you but my principles prevent me from stomping on the rights of others.