Yet that property is very real. So very real that you want to take it to use it for yourself, and are making a point at not caring what I have to say about it.
Information is real and useful, it's just not property.
Do mathematicians "create" theorems? [...]
If I rediscover it, it is mine to use.
You know that is not how IP works, right?
Laws of nature are for anyone to use if they can so manage. I am a painter and I come up with a piece. Now I choose to charge people to come and see it. I am not pretending dominion over paint, canvas or the technique I used to produce my painting.
Yet the equivalent of those could conceivably be patentable in other disciplines.
I am pretending property over the original alignment of colors that is the picture I have come up with.
And while I will support your work if I like it, I am not recognizing any such claim, much less accepting its enforcement.
Then you come along, take a picture under the pretense that I cannot restrict access to that piece, that it somehow belongs to everyone, and god knows what else.
The physical object is yours. You can restrict access to it, and, for example, forbid anyone to enter your house with a camera. But once you expose it in a museum with no such restrictions, for example, you have no business forbidding anyone from circulating pictures of it. I don't think art history books are paying royalties to the artists in illustrations, or their families.
You take the stance that originality does not exist, that voluntary alignment of objects hold no meaning nor value, that a thousand monkeys with a typewriter and infinite time can come up the whole of Shakespear's work,
Nope, nope and nope. Originality exists. Voluntary alignment of objects may be meaningful and valuable. It's just not property. It's not something that can be taken from the author by the act of reproducing it.
and then pretend that I am calling dibs on words and semantics.
I think you're mixing me up with someone else here?
When was the last time that anybody got rich by patenting a programming language? Aren't these useful inventions? Don't they get invented all the time?
Programming languages were invented for the very purpose of being spread. You are oblivious to the intention of the creator, thinking that intangible creation were made for masses benefit, at the cost of its creator's time, effort and resources.
My point here was that useful stuff gets created even without the financial incentive of IP laws.
In general, I'll be respectful with the intention of the creator. That doesn't mean I recognize he has a right to dictate how his creations will be used (or not) once they have entered public circulation.
That is their very right, ideas aren't properties, their expression is. A movie maker isn't demanding rights over the concept of romance, only his take on it. A mathematician knows there is no rights to be held on a theory, but the software he builds after it, that is his property. If you can understand his process and give it your own shot, you are in your right and the more power to you. But to copy his software to spread it at your profit and at his detriment, this is not only aggression against the creator but also pocketing his wealth for yourself.
That is an arbitrary line to draw, and one that isn't that clear in IP laws. Software patents do try and make properties out of ideas. Luckily, their very absurdness is what keeps them from doing much damage. Most companies keep patent portfolios defensively, knowing full well that practically nothing of value can be built without stepping on top of someone's IP.
If you could reliably heal yourself by checking a website and following simple instructions, doctors would have no business, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
Specialists fill for your inability to specialize in said domain, in the expectation of returns for services rendered. The very existence of specialists implies that they were able to profit from their specialty more than from being common laborers, which is the reason we don't live in caves anymore. But we are headed straight towards cave land if they can't make a profit of holding and applying knowledge that you don't have.
So, coming back to the example to which you're apparently replying, you mean that if a website could reliably diagnose every disease that would be a step backwards?
I understand the value of specialization and intellectual work. I contend the point that it needs rely on the ability to artificially restrict the dissemination of information.
If intellectual rights are moot, then a doctor has no right to charge you for a diagnosis.
We are still talking about intelectual
property laws, right?
If so, this is patently false. The doctor can charge me because paying him is immensely more practical and safe for me than educating myself in medicine in order to cure myself, not because such scientific and medical information is proprietary. There is a
natural opportunity cost here. IP laws try and enforce artificial barriers to the dissemination of information to create scarcity.
In sum, mathematics, science, and medicine have progressed alright for centuries without anybody really needing to artificially restrict anybody else's use of information.
Yeah let's forget the existence of sponsors under the form of kings, feudal lords and later governments and corporates, all that have greatly benefited from said research that they financed.
Exactly: they greatly benefited from said research
without the need to restrict anyone else's access to, or use of, the results. That proves IP laws unnecessary.
My business plan seems to be sound enough that you want to take over, don't you?
Absolutely not. I don't recognize your right to dictate what I do with the bits you discovered. I certainly don't intend to try and tell others what they can not do with information.
And somehow what isn't property turns into "desirable property" out of a sudden. Well shit, son.
Desirability doesn't make property. Exclusion is needed too. The very concept of property comes from the fact that some things are finite and so we both can't enjoy them at the same time. So we must either fight for them or somehow agree on how to distribute them. Information is not finite.
You pay to be taught but you don't pay for the book that holds that knowledge? That is nonsensical.
I pay for both, if I can afford it. The first because it's a service; if I can't afford it, I do without it. The second because I want to support the author and encourage him to produce more good stuff. I will sometimes pay for books that are legally downloadable for free. But if I can't afford the book, I'll download a copy with no remorse. I'll buy one when I can. Nobody is any better for me waiting to read the book until I got employed again, especially if the book helps make me more employable.
This is admittedly a contrived example. I don't intend it to represent the general case of piracy. I just mean it's in the domain of morals, not law.
More to the point, I don't recognize the author's, or anyone else's, "ownership" on the end product. And I don't support laws that try to criminalize something like lending a book to a friend. In the IP model, that's as much "stealing" as downloading it from a warez site, right?
