Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 4. (Read 105893 times)

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It's not aggression because nothing scarce was stolen. Ideas are not original.

Sorry - still wrong in logic.  I can sue someone who takes my car and I can sue someone who resells my software.  Being able to protect my IP does not prevent me protecting my car. It simply means that if you want to sell products like mine, hire some staff and write your own.  

Still baffled as to how you can say that the alternative, where you wait for someone else to hire staff and create a product, then take their work and sell it for your profit, is not aggression.  

If you have any examples of irreducible property issues, I'd be interested in hearing them. The definition of 5) is further modified by 6.2) and 6.3) which would include the "space", or less dense PMM, embordered by more dense PMM. I'd say there is no such thing as a vacuum, just less dense PMM, which if controlled in some reasonably exclusive manner, would make it yours. Density is a non issue I think.

Your example of satellite orbits should be explained by 6.1. Which is to say, you could attempt to claim the entire universe (or orbital paths), but by mere proclamation that wouldn't necessarily make it property. If you can't physically occupy it yet, or you haven't occupied it yet, you haven't homesteaded it, so it's up for grabs by somebody clever enough to figure out the physical problem of acquiring it.

To wit, if the satellite orbit had never been occupied before, your attempt at trading/exchanging it would be a partial farce, or at least not logically enforceable in a court of law, because you haven't occupied that "space" yet to make it yours. That's not to say you couldn't trade that space with anybody else in any legally contractual way, just that if you didn't occupy it first and somebody else did, I don't think you have a case (or a leg) to stand on.

I've always felt some squeamishness when it came to homesteading and property abandonment definitions. I'd like to hear some competing opinions on the matter if you've got the stomach for it.

A reductionist approach to political philosophy if i have ever seen one!
It might be too reductionist. I think that property rights do exhibit irreducible complexity sometimes.


I don't agree with 5). That would imply that a vacuum is ownerless, in which case you could homestead the inside of someones vacuum chamber. Space must be part of the definition. But which space? Einstein tells us that all inertial frames are relative. There has to be a third component: scarcity of properties.

Real life example: sattelite slots in geostationary orbit are traded like real estate.

Would you vet the following for me? I'm curious about your opinion on the matter.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.485594

apples are not composed of oranges and oranges are not composed of apples.  

apples can exist in the absence of oranges and vice versa.

They are independent.


Physical matter and information are NOT independent.  information cannot exist in the absence of physical matter. information cannot be created or modified without modifying physical matter.

So your analogy is invalid.



Do I need to spell it out?

Physical property = Right to exclude others from controlling a finite, delimited amount of matter.

IP = Right to control ALL physical matter in the universe in a finite, delimited amount of manners.

See how the two rights cannot hold at the same time?

I'm sure the people whose IP you are profiting from won't have any qualms about suing you for any money you make.  Provided you don't hurt anyone and don't mind the inconvenience of having your assets seized, no-one will have any qualms.

Of course if you decide to use violence on the poor law enforcement people, that would be different but you have said you won't

I won't have any qualms about replicating a patented life-saving drug and selling it to the poor for a price they can afford.

I know - at heart you are a good guy.  I doubt copying a patented drug design and selling it without a license is your thing either.  The is plenty money to be made from actually creating your own stuff without leeching off other people's stuff.

I won't be initiating violence.

If you decide that stealing someone else's work and selling it for your own profit is what you want as a career, its far more likely that you'll simply be sued for the undeserved earnings.  If you decide to inflict violence on the law enforcement staff, that would be very sad.

It's not my opinion. It's my property right and I'm entitled to it. If you want it, you'll have to spill my blood.

That's your opinion.  You are entitled to it.  But those of us who like living in societies where innovation makes us rich compared to the rest of the world are entitled to disagree.

Copyright infringement is not larceny. Whether the medium is paper, electronic code or something else, it was your property to begin with. You have only modified it to your whim. It belongs to nobody but yourself. To claim that these mediums can become somebody elses by merely the alteration of its shape is the greatest theft of all.

Sorry you have confused theft and larceny.

Logic fail.  Stealing apples is not the same as stealing oranges but both are bad things.  Same with stealing any other property. 

Even theft of real property isn't always aggression, it's theft.  A 'cat burgler' is a sneek thief, but does not threaten anyone in doing so.  Copying of copyrighted data isn't theft, it's copyright infringement.  Theft is taking something that belongs to another, and thus denying them the ability to utilize their own property.  Copying of copyrighted data does not prevent the copyright holder from utilizing the data in exactly the manner originally intended.

If that is true, the statement "stealing physical property is not aggression" must follow. by homesteading "intellectual property" you are staking a claim to ALL physical matter in the universe, whether previously owned or unowned.  


If someone is persuaded to invest money in a monopoly of burger joints, enforced by a local protection racket, and if a competing burger chain manages to break up the racket, the investor isn't a victim of theft. He is a victim of a bad business decision (and possibly an accessory to an act to aggression)

btw it doesn't make a difference whether that protection racket tries legitimize itself by using fancy names or appealing to collectivist myths.


Don't put words in my mouth. I never said such a thing.  I said that my caring about causing "harm" should not be relevant for social ethics.  I care about reducing my CO2 emissions because I think they cause harm. Others don't care because they don't believe in climate scientists. I shall not force them to reduce emissions because those are NOT social ethics.

Btw, I pay for movies because I'm a nice guy, not because I believe it's a crime not to.  I disapprove of assholes, but I don't believe they are committing a crime merely by being assholes.  



You obviously don't consider that a crime. (See above).

Stealing intellectual property is aggression.  If someone is persuaded to invest money on the basis of patent protection and you steal the property, that is aggression.

Saying you don't care if your behaviour causes harm merely underlines that you want to be able to profit from stealing other people's work.  Personally I would prefer to profit from robbing banks.  I don't think either of us can really count on these as career options though.

I never made such a claim.

The concept of "harm" is irrelevant to my argument.

For the purpose of social ethics, I don't care whether the act of copying patterns is "harmful" to others or not.  All I care about is whether someone's life and property is being aggressed against.

The concept of "aggression against life and physical property" is 1) precisely defined and  2) objectively measurable with arbitrary precision.

The concept of "harm" is neither.  It could mean almost anything.  (though I would be delighted if you could come up with a precise, measurable definition of "societal harm").

That's why it can't be used to derive social ethics. Rights are meaningless if there is no objective way to discover whether a rights violation has occurred.

Not that I don't have my own personal views an what is harmful or immoral. For instance, I believe that procrastination is harmful to society. Does that give me the right to aggress against people who procrastinate? No, because it's a personal ethic and not a social ethic.  


Also, you are confusing "not doing X",  with "doing the opposite of X".  The opposite of giving is taking. refusal to give is not the same as taking.  refusal to take is not the same as giving.  The opposite of positive 1 is negative 1, not zero.

If I drop dead tomorrow I am not in in any way "harming" Pfizer through "lost sales" of Lipidor.  I am merely ceasing to benefit Pfizer.

If Pfizer develops a life saving drug, and refuses to sell it to some people, Pfizer is not "killing" those people. It is merely refusing to benefit them.