Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 21. (Read 105875 times)

*facepalm*

Your response has nothing to do with his statement.

If you want to refute the idea that rights come from our ability to reason, explain where they come from, don't ask a ridiculous question.

The answer of course is "it's none of your (or anyone else's) fucking business when someone decides they are ready to have sex".

"Rights come from our human ability to reason, to understand logic, and to be able to for see series of logical events."

Really?  So one person sees a right to sex at the age of 12; another sees it at 16; yet another sees it only within marriage.  How do you decide between them?

Why do you believe you "ought" to be able to eat the food you buy, listen to the music you hear, or think and dream about things you want? Who gave you that right?

If rights are what "ought" rather than what "is," where does your "ought" come from?

This is really something you should be figuring out on your own, but since you asked, rights come from our human ability to reason, to understand logic, and to be able to for see series of logical events. Or something like that. They come from the fact that we are able to declare our own entitlement to our own lives and property, based on our ability to reason and make logical conclusions about those things. Societal laws are just extrapolation or perversion of that reason and logic.
In short, we are born with them.

You're talking about is. Rights are about ought. That is, the right to free speech means that I ought not be restricted from freely speaking, not that I can't be restricted from doing so. Do you disagree with this statement?


Not really, not in the sense that I think you mean.

Yes. This is also the reason that I believe they do not apply to other animals.

Yes.

Yes.

Magna Carta is the extent of my historical knowledge.  The English state was established in 1066 and there were essentially no rights before Magna Carta.  The 1100s were a time of particular cruelty as the Normans set about subjugation of the Saxons.

I'm saying that rights come from law.  Rights are human creations.  They are not written in the stars.  If there is a God, there is no evidence he created immutable rights.  

Do you agree with that?

But you just said that your rights come from the Magna Carta. Which means that if there was no Magna Carta (as there is not in other parts of the world), you would have no rights. Is that not correct?

Where did the rights come from? 

I'm saying that rights come from law.  Rights are human creations.  They are not written in the stars.  If there is a God, there is no evidence he created immutable rights.  

I currently live in US. Did people have no rights before the Magna Carta, or were their rights just oppressed by kings?
We have a Bill of Rights here that lists stuff like right to free speech, right to trial, etc. It's not a document that gives us rights, it's a document that lists the rights that we already have that the government is not allowed to impose on. I suspect your Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights from which it follows, are similar, in that instead of giving you rights, they are laws that prevent your government from taking those rights away.
When you are losing freedom in your example, what freedom are you talking about? If the law gives you rights, and the law is now taking them back, then they weren't rights to begin with, right? At least they aren't now, so since law is right, perhaps those freedoms should never have existed? Or are you now saying that freedom and rights are something that exist outside of law, and your own rights are now being imposed by the government laws version of "rights?"

So you're saying humans living in a geographic region without something like the Magna Carta have no rights? Humans living before the Magna Carta had no rights?

I'm not religious so you'll have to ask someone else about Adam and Eve. 

The rest are easy questions - where do you live?  Here in the UK those rights are in the Human Rights Act but can be traced back to Magna Carta.  I'm sure your country has something similar.  I'm not sure where you get the idea that we get more rights as time goes on.  In the UK, we are losing freedom every year through anti-terrorism legislation and "health and safety" legislation.

Where's the law that gives me the right to use a keyboard? To trade stuff? To eat? To poop? To make personal choices? To think? If rights come from law, I shouldn't have the right to do either of those. It sounds as if you are suggesting that the default human society has absolutely no right to do anything, and as time progresses, more and more rights are bestowed on the population by government?

Actually that sort reminds me of the bible, where humans (Adam and Eve) were created with some limited rights to begin with,screwed that up and ended up with even fewer rights, and for the next few thousand years had more and more rights and restrictions dictated at them by their creator. Like, in the same way we were born with original sin, we are born with only the rights our creator allows us. Maybe that religious mindset is the physchological block here?

Not from the kind of law that you are talking about, and that is the center of your misconception.

All rights come from law.

So much here to discuss. Maybe later. But for now, why are you under the opinion that you bought and paid for the data on a cinematic DVD when you walked out of Walmart with the 'True Grit' DVD in your bag? This is what I don't get about you libertarians. You make these assumptions to support your views.

You paid for a piece of plastic which affords you the ability to use the data on the DVD which represents 'True Grit', which you do not own. Let's say I sell you a cage, and inside the cage is a parrot which will entertain you while you own the cage. Just because you bought the cage (a necessary item to transport the bird), does not mean you bought the bird. The bird is only provided to you for certain use provided you buy the cage.

Let's be clear. The parties involved in making the movie did not sell you their movie. They sold you a vessel which contains their data, which they still own and retain rights to.

So many assumptions on your part, and so many erroneous conclusions.

By the way, I can think of a way that you can legally own the data of all movies. Build your own Library of Babel, as in the short story by Jorge Luis Borges. But as soon as you understand that story, you'll then realize why the movie is valued to the point that you can never own it in the sense that you assume you can by purchasing the DVD.

Japan also treats underage drinking in like manner.

This isn't something that requires a lot of reading; just a lot of introspection and a very good understanding of logic. In the end, it makes sense in the same way as 2+2=4 makes sense, though with many more steps involved. There is a difference between a right and something you are able to do. You are able to shoot someone, you are able to destroy someone's property, and you are able to torture someone else's dog. Those are not rights, even if you are able to perform the actions without consequences.
Regarding what I said earlier about rights not being bestowed by law, as an example, I am able to marry someone of the same sex in any state I want because there are no "rights" to same sex marriage, just no laws respecting the contract from the government point of view. Just because there are no laws specifically making it legal, does not mean that same sex marriage is illegal. There is no need to confer that right to anyone. On the other hand, laws exist to take away rights, such as with the slavery example, where slaves had rights to begin with, and only the laws that punished them from excercising those rights and freedoms were the problem. As I said, laws are only able to take away rights, not give them. In the case of IP laws, it's not that IP laws give you rights to your own or someone else's intellectual property, as is often assumed. I have a right to use my own property, including data I bought and paid for, in any way that I choose. What IP laws actually do is prevent me from exercising that right. It's not that they give you rights to your IP, it's that they prevent me from doing things to your IP despite my ownership and posession of it. No laws give you rights to maim or torture animals. Laws just attempt to prevent you from doing so. Them able to do so does't necessarily make it a right of theirs either.
Ideally, I would love to see you guys go through these steps:

Define what a person is (I'll grant you the line is somewhat blurry, and even I'm not completely confident in my definition)
From that deduce what the most basic foundations of rights are
From that build upon the basic concepts of property rights
Finally, from that, deduce and expand the concept into more complex issues such as mutual respect, incentives through mutual benefits, etc.

I'm not going to hold my breath for even the first step though.

Take your head out of your latest libertarian book for a change, read up on the issue, and get back to me.