Topic: Read this before having an opinion on economics - page 3. (Read 25890 times)

IP is theft.

It's interesting that you are commenting this in a thread titled "Read this before having an opinion".

I'm not going to rehash the thread, but note that if you truly believed you could apply natural rights and homesteading to ideas, then any idea you 'mixed your labour with' would be yours or your assigns' not for a limited time but forever. Does that still sound like a good idea for society? Have you paid your wheel and fire usage fees this month?

No, but they might not capitalize them.

Use similar definition for IP then. If you are the first to claim an idea it's yours for a limited time and you can captialize it.

Society.

IP is more than crappy music. And copyright for music is something that should be looked at closely. It's currently not balanced, and tilted way too much to the copyright holders advantage.


I agree that unenforceable laws shouldn't exist. I don't see how this relates to IP.
If I invent something and is given a temporary monopoly and someone else produces my invention and sells it, we'll meet in court if he doesn't licence the IP from me.
If someone copies my idea in his/her own home and doesn't tell anyone it's hard to get to, but it's still illegal, just like murder is illegal even if no one discovers it.


Things like these are usually handled through WTO, NAFTA or similar organizations. It's a normal contract that people here seem to like so much.


What others do with their property isn't my business. As long as they don't damage my property while they do it. I didn't say protect investment. I said protect property. If someone find another way to do the thing that my IP does, which is different from my way, then they are free to do it. Just like your example with the houses. 

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but there are 2 great books on anti-IP laws and theory:

Against Intellectual Monopoly:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm

Against Intellectual Property:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

I suggest anyone curious about this topic read these and educate themselves.  Even if you dont necessarily agree with everything, you will have a better idea of the strongest arguments for and against copyright.

Will people stop having ideas if its production is not regulated?


I think property laws (in fact all laws) should be simple. I find bitterTea's definition of property pretty simple.


Does It works? For who?
Recently content owners (not necessarily creators) have succeed in pushing a law that block webs that don't follow copyright in my country (spain). I guess this could be improved as a censorship tool.
But we can still avoid copyright with amule or bittorrent, for example.
Would David Bisbal stop producing "songs" if there's no copyright in Spain (many people could take that as an argument against copyright rather than for it)? Probably, because he couldn't pay all his advertisement machine without selling records.
With the internet technology allowing sharing music, the number of artist and concerts is in fact increasing. The music industry is growing, is the recording industry what is shrinking. Should we compensate them for the losses due to copyright infringement or for the losses due to decreasing prices in recording capital too?
How can the artist of Jamendo survive without relying on copyright?


My point is, how the authorities identify law breakers?
I think that laws that can't be enforced should not exist at all.


What if the other country doesn't want to make an agreement that they don't like?


This depends on how do you define protection.
If someone builds 2000 houses around yours, you're investment will be diminished.
Should the state protect all investments?

http://bitcoinweekly.com is already doing that!

I should throw in two other copyfree licenses for good measure.

If you're actually willing to read this (it's pretty long) you can learn something.

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3401

Short summary:

a) Much of the "investment" you describe is useless anyway.  They are copycat products that don't do anything other than allow the copycat to reinvent something that already exists in a non-infringing form.  This is useless (wasteful) investment. 

b) In a realistic model you will be able to profit from your investment even without "protecting" it.

Quote: "I challenge you to do the same for intellectual property."

Hmm, I seem to think along the lines of if you copylefted it or released it into the public domain then it is intellectual property, in that other inellectuals seem quite likely to credit you with having originated the idea.

Whereas if you try to turn it into some kind of "other people are not allowed to do things the sensible or correct or best or better or more effective or more convenient way because i already figured out what that way is" kind of crap that is not intellectual property it might even be anti-intellectual!

("I know your intellect tells you the sensible or even obvious way to do this is the best way humans have yet devised or discovered of doing it, but, so sorry, we are prepared to use violence to prevent you doing so...")

-MarkM-

We're not using the term "scarce" in the same way as you. Economically, something that can be infinitely copied with little or no cost is not scarce. However, if you create laws which make copying a crime, or add some sort of "lock" (like DRM) then you can make certain ideas scarce in some sense.


There are two ways to legitimately claim property. If it's unowned you can homestead it, which is just whatever method society accepts as a market of proving "I claimed this first". If it's owned, you can exchange for it, but the exchange must be voluntary on both sides.

That's property law in a nutshell. I challenge you to do the same for intellectual property.

1) Yes, people keep telling me that. But someone has to actually have the idea first. It's not as easy as you think.
2) No rules that deals with reality is simple. Property laws are equally complex. Doesn't stop people here from liking them.

There are already rules in place. They could be better and some things should never have been allowed to be patented, but for the most part it works.
How it's enforced? By laws, and fees for those who break the laws.
How to protect it from other countries? Unilateral trade agreements.
It's not that hard. Nor is it that easy. It's just the best we can do.

Why should I invest in Intellectual property when I can't protect my investment. If I invest in my house I am allowed to protect it.

I've not read the full thread, but I think the argument against "intellectual property" is pretty simple.
Why private property exist at all?
Because it is the simplest set of rules to avoid conflicts while deciding the use of scarce resources.

1) Ideas are not scarce, two different person can use the same idea at the same time.
2) The set of rules needed to define "intellectual property" is not simple at all.  "Intellectual property" rises more conflicts than it solves.

It is simpler to allow, for example, copying than to just define it unequivocally. If a read a book and talk about it, is it copying? What if I take a picture of some pages? How many words can I copy without "stealing"? What inventions are patentable and what are not (obviously, the wheel is not patentable, but for other things this is not so obvious)? How a state is supposed to enforce all this? How a member of one state protects its "Intellectual property" from people living in other countries? Do we want a global state?

That's what I get for reading blogs... of 4 years old research.
It does seem that the research is "interesting" though. But not interesting enough to put serious research money into. Just tax money.

Google on DCA a bit more. Read the Cancer.org articles.
Etc.
Then tell me it's a full-fledged cure for cancer again.

If anyone truly believes that if anyone _ACTUALLY_ found a large scale functional cancer cure without the world going into a huge uproar about it they have more tinfoil on than me. And I sparkle like a satellite.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice

So, an unpatentable cure for cancer is discovered but no major pharma is interested.
As an extra kicker it does seem that the research was tax funded too.

So, according to the economic theory presented previously in this thread there should be lots of companies trying to get this cure out to the public. Why isn't there?

I don't know. That's a bit like saying that big software projects will rarely if ever be developed as open source. And yet there are open-source operating systems, browsers, databases and webservers that can be freely copied without payment.

I think it's safe to say that without "intellectual property" laws, big-budget films will be funded, produced and distributed very differently from how they are today. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, I hope that you are right and I am wrong, because I'd rather have a hundred $700,000 films to choose from, than to have one $70,000,000 blockbuster to watch.

I have a number of points to make. They are disjointed but I believe they would help to narrow these arguments which seem to confuse a number of people with their semantics. I'll number my points so you can refute or elaborate upon them specifically.

  1. People have created and will continue to create "intellectual property" of value without financial incentive to do so, and they will find financial incentives to do so even without "intellectual property" laws.

  2. The current system is inherently unfair, for many reasons, not the least reason of which is the arbitrary nature of what ideas are considered "intellectual property" and what are not. As such, to support intellectual property you should make specific examples of what idealized laws might look like. Otherwise I and many others will likely assume you mean you support current U.S. or Europe intellectual property laws, or international agreements in their vein.

  3. "Big budget" films will rarely if ever be made without "intellectual property" laws. This seems to me like common sense, which sadly is not as common as one may wish.

  4. People do not need large budgets to create powerful ideas of value. My favorite movie, Primer, was created for $7,000.

  5. It is not the society's legal responsibility to ensure profits on your work, speculation, or investment. If you make a bad investment other people are not responsible to pay you what you expected to make, even if that expectation was reasonable at the time and your investment was beneficial to society. If you buy stock in a business whose goal is to start sustainable food-export communities for starving and poor peoples, and it seems like a sound investment but it's business model failed, no one owes you your investment. That was your risk to take. (This could be a point of contention)

  6. It does not require the initiation of force to copy a book that was sold to me. (This seems to be a point of contention)

  7. It does require the initiation of force to prevent me from copying a book that was sold to me. (This seems to be a point of contention)

  8. It requires the initiation of force to take your property from you, for instance, a book, and as such reasonable force required to address that grievance is not the initiation of force and should be legal. This is complicated however. Help me to elaborate this point.

  9. Something morally or ethically wrong does not necessarily need to be illegal.

 10. My final point for now is an abstract one, and my own opinion. I consider anything that can be put into someone's mind (perhaps as mnemonic devices, words, letters, numbers, names) and then spoken aloud elsewhere, and recorded, no matter how long it takes, cannot be considered property. If they can exist within our minds they can't be owned by someone else, even if we didn't spontaneously think of them on our own.

  Also I would like to hear further ideas about the enforcement and establishment of contract-law alternatives to "intellectual property".

  Thank you for your time. I know this was a long (FIRST!) post.

I chuckled.

You know where to send the finders tip.  

Watermarking indeed, sorry about that. I have edited the original posting.

At least in the case of books, copies will be safe to make now and in the future, as long as only the words themselves are copied. It is possible to envision 'marks' through subtle misspellings intentionally inserted throughout a larger body of work, but that would be particularly easy to counteract through combining multiple sources.

Not for making copies of it.

I believe you mean watermarking but point taken. Though even in the cases of screeners released for Academy Award consideration, the number of people that are receiving copies is still only a few thousand and perhaps only a handful are interested in leaking the films, without collusion. In the case of wide distribution it becomes easier to defeat digital watermarks by combing multiple sources, comparing the differences and removing them or making them unidentifiable. That's just a technical issue though. In theory, it could work.