Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 113. (Read 105893 times)

You keep on about slavery as if the prohibition to make a fizzy drink and sell it under the name Coca-Cola was the same as being bound in chains to a galley oar for life.  Its not the same.

All IP law requires is that when someone else has paid for research, you not copy it and resell it for your own profit.  You are free to ignore it.  You are free to make an alternative.  But what you can't do is say "Bitcoin2Cash has developed a cure for cancer.  He put all his savings into it and it works! I'll make millions if I copy it and sell it 10 cents cheaper than him."  That is simple greed masquerading as a desire for freedom.

The core issue here is freedom.  Disease is unpleasant and we want to reduce it.  Life is hard and we want things that make it easier.  Driving is dangerous and we want tobe able to buy safe cars.  Society has given us the freedom to invest and try to achieve these goals.  Society has given you total freedom except you can't take the outcome of someone else's labour and profit from it.  You can't make a car and sell it as Ford Focus with a Ford logo on the bonnet.  So what?  You can't take the list of ingredients that is on a medicine bottle and sell your own copy.  So what?  These are not major losses of liberty unless liberty means the right to profit off someone else's investment.

If you say that your freedom to copy other people research results is essential to your liberty, you are being ridiculous.  Society's freedom to find cures outweighs your freedom to make a quick profit off other people's work.

If you join this society of your own free will, and you personally agree to it's terms, then sure, govern away. Just don't force others to be a member of your society. Therein lies the difference.

Additionally, me being born into your society doesn't make me a slave/member of your society either. Children are incapable of binding contracts due to their lack of understanding. Parents can make some decisions about how their children will live, but when those children assert their independence they acquire their autonomy (self-governing).

Freedom of choice vs. Slavery. How many times do we need to say it before it sinks in?

I'm glad you at least see the value in investing in research.  All IP law requires is that when someone else has paid for research, you not copy it and resell it for your own profit.  You are free to ignore it.  You are free to make an alternative.  But what you can't do is say "Bitcoin2Cash has developed a cure for cancer.  He put all his savings into it and it works! I'll make millions if I copy it and sell it 10 cents cheaper than him."  That is simple greed masquerading as a desire for freedom.

The core issue here is freedom.  Disease is unpleasant and we want to reduce it.  Life is hard and we want things that make it easier.  Driving is dangerous and we want tobe able to buy safe cars.  Society has given us the freedom to invest and try to achieve these goals.  Society has given you total freedom except you can't take the outcome of someone else's labour and profit from it.  You can't make a car and sell it as Ford Focus with a Ford logo on the bonnet.  So what?  You can't take the list of ingredients that is on a medicine bottle and sell your own copy.  So what?  These are not major losses of liberty unless liberty means the right to profit off someone else's investment.

If you say that your freedom to copy other people research results is essential to your liberty, you are being ridiculous.  Society's freedom to find cures outweighs your freedom to make a quick profit off other people's work.

If the constitution was a contract for anything other than a non-aggression pact (i.e. prevent injury, slavery, and plunder), then no. You must acquire consent, free of coercion, before you negotiate with me for my property and life. Regarding their decendants, the same is true. The rebels who oppose are on the same footing as everybody else. Isn't that the beauty of equity in law? It doesn't matter if you're short or tall, black or white, jew or gentile, it still works. True laws are immutable.


Slavery has been around for thousands of years, and your point..? Since when does the "when" and "how long" matter here? Isn't wrong wrong, and right right regardless of the when? It would seem obvious to anybody, that laws are independent of chronology.


Not true. Everybody else is confusing the generic term "force" with the one which is scientific, which was my whole point. If you can define a word to mean things that don't correlate with reality, they tend to have less utility (due to them being make-believe). I believe in fairies but I'm not going to force you to believe in fairies. I'm not trying to take people's opinion from them, just prevent them from using real "force" upon me due to their confusion. Threats of force aren't real physical force. This is true, but then everything hinges on intent at that point. Self defense comes to mind...


I'm not advocating open source over closed source. You can program however you like. Just don't use draconian laws in an attempt to protect yourself against competition. That makes for less competition  and thus more monopoly power, which is not what we want. The reason why many things don't exist or thrive very well is because governments meddle in the affairs of the private individual in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of their decisions. I'm against meddling nanny/statist/collectivist systems.


Yes I've heard of this "social contract" you're referring to. Bring me the contract to review with my attorney present and I'll decide, after much deliberation, whether or not the terms of the contract suit me. If they (the terms) do not, I will go my way, back to my private property and continue to live my life as I see fit. Don't molest me, and I won't molest you. Fair enough?

So you don't accept the right of people to govern their own society.  Then why argue your point?  You don't need to convince anyone as no-one has the right to self government.

Society, as a group of many, or of one, has no right to force others to play along with their version of entitled reward research system. If you want to do research, do it on your own time and on your own dime or with your comrades. Form your own solidarity association independent of others. If you want to sell the research to someone or develop products from it, then convince them it has value. Maybe you'll get something for it.

Neither is society entitled to force anybody anywhere to "enable" that research. If by "enabling" you in some way encroach or attempt to encroach on my private property, you are enslaving me or are stealing from me. Not nice. Don't do it.

We can argue all the day long on society's proclivities. It isn't a question of what they can do, but whether they should do what their doing. Justify the doing please. Anybody can murder, plunder or enslave.

Just as others have shone in the past, society as a whole can commit the most heinous of crimes and depravities of every stripe upon their members in the name of the majority. Society is a collective of individuals acting in concert to achieve their goals. It is the manner in which they attempt to achieve them that matters.

Just because society has superior numbers doesn't make their acts any more right than before.

You do not live in a "knowledge" economy which gives you the "right" to profit from investment. You are given a monopoly privilege (for a price) which permits you to extricate property from others when it resembles your property in some particular way. It is the privilege to prohibit, in some general or specific way a similarly resemblembling/functioning object as manifest in the characteristics of other people's property.

You don't get the meaning of hostile and violent. If you came into my home without permission that would be hostile. You not leaving when I ask you would also be hostile and may become violent. All of those actions start and finish with forceful interactions. All actions require forces, all actions also require energy. Some are acceptable, some not.

I don't dictate, my intention is to suggest appropriate societal behaviour (via negative laws) which encumbers the fewest number of individuals with the least amount of violent force interactions.

I have never intimated in any way the "taking of property" or the "taking the outcome of someone else's work". That implies the theft of some object owned by them and is something that can be possessed exclusively by them.

Mimicry isn't theft. Never has, never will be. If that were the case, then everbody would be stealing from everybody all of the time. Say it ain't so.

You're clearly grasping at straws. I can be free without having the freedom to enslave you.


I reject your beliefs about society.


That's a non sequitur. Society is nothing more than the humans that comprise it. Humans obviously exist. However, I don't have to accept anything about its legitimacy.

Three people are on an island. Two of them vote to rob the third. That's wrong. It doesn't matter if its 3 or 30 million to 1.

Its silly to say that a free society must be rejected because it is free to be wrong.  Freedom only exists where you can do stupid or wrong things.

You are part of society so its not possible to reject it.  You may loathe it but the very act of communicating that fact makes you a part of the society.  There is no point pretending that society doesn't exist or that its action are illegitimate.  If there is something you disagree with, you can set about changing it.  But you have to start from the reality that society exists and that it can legitimately try to improve life for its members.

Why?


That was my point. It shouldn't be entitled to do that. Since you think it does have that entitlement, since you think it is entitled to declare anything it damn well pleases, I must reject your beliefs outright. I consider your position reduced to absurdity.

Society exists.  Humans don't live in isolation.  Once it gets to the point where it is self directing via democracy, it can legitimately act on behalf of the plurality of its members. 

You ask Is society entitled to declare slavery legal?   It already has for 1000s of years.  You may as well ask if a bear is entitled to shit in the woods.  The bigger question is "Should society declare slavery legal?" and the answer is not.  We have evolved in terms of ethics and slavery is abhorrent to the modern mind.

Slavery is a useful wedge issue.  As is abortion.  For all we know, in 100 years people may look back on our society with disgust at the legality of abortion. However, promoting research is not such an issue.  There is almost no constituency in society that thinks research and innovation should be stopped.  A democratic society that wants to foster these things can legitimately act in a way that does so.  That is why we have intellectual property.  Unless you have some social model that is more powerful than a democratic society, your best bet is to argue that research and innovation are a waste of time and try to get the law changed.  Good luck with that.

You made a claim that isn't backed up by evidence.


How could you possibly know this? Did you travel to a parallel universe? Did you just pull that out of your ass?


Is society entitled to do whatever it pleases? Is society entitled to declare slavery legal? If so, so much for society. If not, why not? Where do you ultimately get these entitlements from? The same place you got your last claim from?

I made no false assertion.

The issue here is whether or not society is entitled to reward research.  Whether its investments in technology or medicine or even safe cars, society is entitled to enable that research and it uses intellectual property as the mechanism to do so.  You and Frederic seem to think you have the right to dictate to the rest of society whether or not it has that right.  You don't.

Then you probably shouldn't make an assertion that you can't back up.

Frederic, your posts seem, to me, so full of errors, contradictions and oversights that it's hard to know where to begin.


Please answer the questions on Libya, it's very relevant to this debate as it provides an ab initio justification for law.  It's quite incredible that you discourse on politics and yet you know nothing of what's happening in Libya and the rest of the middle east.  If the popular uprising there spreads to more of the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, it could come to be the world's biggest geopolitical event since the '70s oil crisis.  In short, there has been an uprising in Libya, a north African country with a population of a few million; the dictator Gaddafi has been [almost completely] overthrown and now a rebel government has to establish law and order.  Here are the question: Do you think Libyans supporting the rebels are bound by the rebels' new constitution & law?  Should their children & grandchildren also be bound?  Are those who oppose the rebels also bound?  Please answer.


Humans do not have different DNA (minor mutations aside).  We all member of a single species and all have the same genetic structure.  We all have the genes for eye colour that, in some people expresses blue, in others brown and in rare cases, green.  Different genes are, as it were, switched "on" or "off" in different people.  If we didn't have the same genetic structure, then an African-Oriental couple couldn't have children, for example.  Don't ask me where were going with slavery, you brought up that subject.  The point I was making is that, once upon a time society thought some races were not "people", and hence could be enslaved like animals.  Fortunately, we know better now, so no, you couldn't justify a law enslaving people.


Libertarianism has been around for a while, but in terms of political importance, right now it's just a popular fad among neo-intelligentia feeling empowered by wikipedia and the internet.  If you think that laws shouldn't change with the prevailing winds, then I can't see why you think IP, copyright or patent law should be altered one whit.  They've been around for hundreds of years.

You're confusing the common understanding of the word "force" with the scientific one.  The scientific one is a precise mathematical statement relating the conditions of an object to its dynamic evolution - a mass of 1kg subject to a force of 1N will accelerate at 1m/s^2.  Such misunderstandings are common in the public.  e.g. people confuse "weight" with "mass", "accuracy" with "precision" and many more.  If I go to your house with a gun, I can "force" you to give me your money without actually exerting any "force" on you.  Even better, I just need to convince you over the telephone that I am holding your family hostage and I don't even need to be near you.  "Force" without physical "force".  You spout "physics" but I think you are not (yet) a scientist.

Absolutely right.  And the laws of almost all countries, originally proposed by, and approved by, the people, have enshrined creative works as valuable, and have likewise enshrined the right of the author to be remunerated.  If you copy a protected work, then you are effectively eroding the rights of the author.

Both sides are making assumptions about "what might have been" and such arguments are as verifiable as asking whether human life might have come about if the Electronic Charge (e=1.6x10^-19 C) had been different by just 1%.  All we know is that, under the conditions of IP etc laws, the computer revolution DID come about.  I find it hard to believe that, if it hadn't, there would have been a massive open-source movement such as we have now though, and it seems to me that Frederic is arguing that all R&D should be open-source.  Open-source is constantly seeking to emulate Closed-source, though, maybe now or soon, that trend will reverse itself.  In any case, IP etc law allows for closed-source AND open-source.  According to the principles of Libertarianism, people, and hence institutions, are free to choose whichever they prefer, right?  If open source is "better", then it will suffocate closed source and Frederic will win.  We just have to be patient.




You say that software without a computer is of "little utility" to the user.  Does that not also imply "of little value", or can objects of "little utility" be valuable?  Your argument that computer software without a computer is useless, implies that a computer without software is useless.  True, you didn't say it, but you implied it.  My opinion is, they complement each other.  Each brings value to the other in a kind of digital symbiotic embrace.  Except not symbiosis... symdigitosys, maybe or symelectrosys :-)

Now we're getting to the nut of the problem.  Ever head of the "social contract"?  Answer the questions on Libya first please, then we'll talk about that.

Frederic we live in a knowledge economy where people are given the right to profit from investment in research.  You seem to think that pretending only material matter has value gives you the right to insist the rest of society to pretend only material matter has value.  You don't have that right.  We exist in society and 1 person does not have the right to tell others how to live.  

Even if you did have the right to dictate to society how to live, your logic is specious.  'Being "hostile" or "violent" behaviour requires force and energy.' is your statement.  So if I come into your home and refuse to leave I am not being hostile?  Any taking of property without consent is hostile and a society frowns on it.  Taking the outcome of someone else's work, which they have made a legitimate investment in, and reselling it for your own profit is hypocritical.

No-one can prove a negative.  It says a lot that you are relying on a logical fallacy.

Your view seems to be that you do like the outcome of research, be it computers or medicines, and that there is no need to have an incentive for people to do it.  Researchers costs money - someone has to pay the salaries of all staff in laboratories while research is being done.  That's why a new drug costs about $800 million to develop.  If you don't allow the investor to make a profit, there will be no new drugs.  Unless you have some better way for for the researchers salaries to be paid while they do their years of work?

Well said. No one is entitled to a profit.

It seems there are two ways you can "profit"; both of which are still personal opinions, best I can tell. Profit and value are similar abstract mental constructs.

1) Profit arises from the opinion that if whatever objects or services you exchanged with another, is, in your mind, of greater value than that property which you previously possessed, you had a gain.

2) In a similar vein, if in the process of modifying the composition of property you already own (the raw physical material), you believe the property conditionally changed for the better, you also profited.

Does profit require human-to-human interchange to qualify?

"Taking" requires energy, hence some sort of force.
Being "hostile" or "violent" behaviour requires force and energy.

How did you come up with no here? Weirdness.

The answer is YES; it is measured in Newtons of force. Your misunderstanding about the characteristics of aggression is fly-by-night seat-of-the-pants stuff. Any attitudes about the specific attributes of the nature Force(s) doesn't change the forces themselves. For that matter, any which way I think about it doesn't change the fundamental characteristics of any physical material matter or any phenomenon related thereto. Thinking differently doesn't change anything about how the Universe operates.

The only way I change stuff is by physically interacting with it, and even then only to a limited extent.

Don't confuse copying with taking. If I copy your hairstyle, I haven't taken anything from you. You don't suddenly become bald. The only thing you don't have is the ability to profit but that was never something you owned anyways. The fact you can profit off of something is a function of everyone else valuing what you have to offer. You aren't owed a profit just because you feel that way.


Can you prove that computers wouldn't have existed anyways or in even a better form than they currently do? I don't see how you can. I think your statement is without merit.