ClaytonB:z1235 or whoever started this thread seems to think that the free market will come crashing to the ground if more than one well can be drilled into the same oil reservoir.
For the record, and regardless of whether I agree or disagree with it, I've said or implied no such thing. This is a strawman, and a fictitious one at that.
Z.
aerborne: information, ideas, call it what you will you're trying to support (C) yes? Stephen kings The Stand is a 1000+ page idea he had.
information, ideas, call it what you will you're trying to support (C) yes? Stephen kings The Stand is a 1000+ page idea he had.
I liked that book.
"It has been well said that, while we used to suffer from social evils, we now suffer from the remedies for them."
F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
aerborne:You're both arguing what the word idea means and completely sidestepping the point. Semantic arguments are pedantic.The point is, *WHATEVER* word you want to call it.
Whatever you call it -- for the sake of my analogy introduced in this thread -- if you can represent it as a 10GB binary sequence, then it is a part of the informational universe. If you created that sequence, then you homesteaded that area of the informational universe, hence you own it.
aerborne:Avatar is an unscarce resource infinitely reproducible without destroying the quality of the original.
In the physical universe, yes. In the informational universe it is as scarce and reproducible as a square meter or an atom is in the physical universe. Do you know how analogies work?
aerborne:Your idea for validating copyright law doesn't address THAT argument from the IP freely crowd (such as myself) because it doesn't matter whether you homestead a 10gb binary sequence, or a napkin from a bar, it's the same thing.
Hmm... Well you guys from the "IP freely crowd" would still have to show how my analogy fails. Failing to do that would make you a "property freely" communist in both the physical and informational universe, or at least a hypocrite that applies different criteria to analogous situations for no apparent reason.
aerborne:How does your logic account for the fact that, using avatar as an example, i can encode it in h264, divx 6 xvid, 3gpp etc and EACH file at any specific, or VBR will be it's own UNIQUE sequence of bits. he cannot homestead ALL Possible combinations that could be played back and appear as Avatar, because the digital representation of the information is not the information itself. In fact, a VHS is not digital at all how do you homestead that?
Very good question deserving an even better answer. In the same way that signal processing and information theory have provided you with the tools to transform one binary sequence into another, they have provided us with the tools to establish and quantify similarity (or vicinity) of such patterns in the informational universe. For instance you can reverse (flip from 0 to 1 and vice versa) all bits from the Avatar 10GB binary sequence, making it "totally different" from the original but signal processing and information theory can easily sniff that out and would place the resulting "negative" of the original in very close proximity to the original in the informational universe. The area of the informational universe owned by Cameron (surrounding its 10GB Avatar pattern) comprises of all such sequences that are sufficiently similar (or close in the informational universe) to the original.
aerborne:How does one homestead anything that's not digital but infinitely reproducible such as how to build a DVD player in the first place? How could copyright have existed 100 years ago when there was no digital media.
You're starting to make my case here. Perhaps the advancement of technology and the free markets which increasingly create, trade and treat information as property (and as something of value to the free market) demand an introduction of new paradigms such as the analogy I'm trying to introduce here.
z1235: abskebabs:The analogy is a failure however, since the former physical universe is composed of scarce means with quantitative relations between cause and effect whereas the same properties cannot be ascribed to the latter when one realises that the notion of scarcity can only be applied to describe the means with which to acquire information and not information itself. ... As for scarcity, in the informational universe there is ONLY ONE 10 gigabyte pattern called "the movie Avatar". Regardless of how many times you copy a DVD with the same pattern (thus making such patterned DVDs non-scarce in the physical universe), there still only remains ONE such pattern in the informational universe (out of 2^(8x10^9) available), owned by its ONE proper owner (creator, producer, homesteader) making it very scarce there, indeed.
abskebabs:The analogy is a failure however, since the former physical universe is composed of scarce means with quantitative relations between cause and effect whereas the same properties cannot be ascribed to the latter when one realises that the notion of scarcity can only be applied to describe the means with which to acquire information and not information itself.
...
As for scarcity, in the informational universe there is ONLY ONE 10 gigabyte pattern called "the movie Avatar". Regardless of how many times you copy a DVD with the same pattern (thus making such patterned DVDs non-scarce in the physical universe), there still only remains ONE such pattern in the informational universe (out of 2^(8x10^9) available), owned by its ONE proper owner (creator, producer, homesteader) making it very scarce there, indeed.
This statement is circular... look at the order of the highlighted words, you say the bit pattern is owned, which makes it scarce. Scarcity, in Hoppean philosophy of property, is a pre-condition to property. Air is not owned by anybody because it is abundant. Bit patterns are also abundant and, more importantly, the physical objects they describe are limitless.
Clayton -
z1235: ClaytonB:An analogy which breaks down when you consider that physical resources are conserved (cannot be created or destroyed) and information is not*. How can you "destroy" a 10 gigabyte pattern that occupies its own location in the informational universe (of all possible 10GB patterns)? You can "destroy" it as much as you can "destroy" a cubic meter of the physical universe.
ClaytonB:An analogy which breaks down when you consider that physical resources are conserved (cannot be created or destroyed) and information is not*.
How can you "destroy" a 10 gigabyte pattern that occupies its own location in the informational universe (of all possible 10GB patterns)? You can "destroy" it as much as you can "destroy" a cubic meter of the physical universe.
I think there is a hidden philosophical disagreement between you and I... I suspect that you are, at one level or another, a Platonist (e.g. forms, such as numbers and bit patterns, are just as real as the physical world). I am not. Numbers - bit patterns are just binary numbers - are a strictly human abstraction which we use for describing and manipulating the physical world.
Information is destroyed through the simple act of erasure. If the master copy of Avatar were to be destroyed before the movie was released, that would be it. No more Avatar.
ClaytonB:Your valiant efforts in homesteading a piece of property are not why you own it. The homesteading argument, or rule of first use, is a "tiebreaker" in property disputes. The same would be valid in the informational universe. The same logic would be used to decide who owns a particular 10GB pattern (and its informational vicinity) in the informational universe. If I created it, then I have "homesteaded" it (rule of first use) thus my claim to its ownership is superior to yours unless you can prove that you've "been there" (i.e. created the pattern) before I did. What's the problem?
ClaytonB:Your valiant efforts in homesteading a piece of property are not why you own it. The homesteading argument, or rule of first use, is a "tiebreaker" in property disputes.
The same would be valid in the informational universe. The same logic would be used to decide who owns a particular 10GB pattern (and its informational vicinity) in the informational universe. If I created it, then I have "homesteaded" it (rule of first use) thus my claim to its ownership is superior to yours unless you can prove that you've "been there" (i.e. created the pattern) before I did. What's the problem?
The problem is that the practical result of your "property claim" is an invasion of my property. If I rip a CD (which I own) into MP3 form on my computer (which I own), your property claim to the "intellectual property" on that CD - which prohibits me from making MP3 copies onto my computer - is actually an attempt to aggress against my property (my CD and my computer) by prohibiting me from using it in a way that does not result in a property conflict with anyone else.
You keep trying to press this analogy between the physical and informational universe to the detriment of your ability to analyze the issues, IMO. The actual consequences of "property" in patterns is the prohibition of copying. That's it. It is "copy right". But as the cost of copying has gone down due to technological advancements, it has become more and more clear how absurd it is to prohibit the producer willing to copy at the lowest cost from doing so. It's childish, like when an older sibling smashes his younger sibling's Legos saying, "stop copying me, make your own!". Against Intellectual Monopoly makes an overwhelming case against the supposed benefits of copy right and patent.
ClaytonB:If you make a claim on some physical resource and I make a claim on that same physical resource (claims, like information, are not conserved and can be multiplied without limit... cf European colonization), a property conflict will arise. If we bring our dispute to a court, instead of just fighting it out, the court will want to know who was first using that physical resource, as evidenced by at least demarcating it, if not actively laboring on it. If neither of us was using the physical resource, then neither of us has a higher claim to it. Otherwise, one of us was using it first. Whoever was using it first is the owner. Exactly. If Cameron and you enter into a dispute over who owns the 10GB pattern "Avatar" (i.e. that particular area of the 10x10^9 dimensional informational universe) then the court would award ownership of that area to Cameron and not you. He "homesteaded" it by creating it, and you didn't, regardless of how easy it is for you to make a physical copy of his DVD. The law of property in the informational universe would only be concerned about appropriation and demarcation of areas in THAT universe. No matter what you do in the physical universe, Cameron owns that ONE area of the informational universe that's demarcated by his 10GB Avatar sequence and its vicinity. Simple really.
ClaytonB:If you make a claim on some physical resource and I make a claim on that same physical resource (claims, like information, are not conserved and can be multiplied without limit... cf European colonization), a property conflict will arise. If we bring our dispute to a court, instead of just fighting it out, the court will want to know who was first using that physical resource, as evidenced by at least demarcating it, if not actively laboring on it. If neither of us was using the physical resource, then neither of us has a higher claim to it. Otherwise, one of us was using it first. Whoever was using it first is the owner.
Exactly. If Cameron and you enter into a dispute over who owns the 10GB pattern "Avatar" (i.e. that particular area of the 10x10^9 dimensional informational universe) then the court would award ownership of that area to Cameron and not you. He "homesteaded" it by creating it, and you didn't, regardless of how easy it is for you to make a physical copy of his DVD. The law of property in the informational universe would only be concerned about appropriation and demarcation of areas in THAT universe. No matter what you do in the physical universe, Cameron owns that ONE area of the informational universe that's demarcated by his 10GB Avatar sequence and its vicinity. Simple really.
Property conflicts, as I am using the term, refer to conflicts between human bodies and their extensions - via property - in the physical world. I recommend reading this piece by Stephen Kinsella for an overview of the difference between real property and patterns.
ClaytonB:The proper solution to the copying issue is for the movie producer to only show his movie on his own property and require, as a condition for entering, that all customers leave their cameras outside. He can expand his reach by signing NDAs with a theater chain, so that the movie can be shown in many venues on the same terms. I don't see how your solution is more proper than mine. You're merely stating that Cameron's property in the informational universe cannot be property (i.e. his) unless he builds an electric fence and a repelling force-field around it.
ClaytonB:The proper solution to the copying issue is for the movie producer to only show his movie on his own property and require, as a condition for entering, that all customers leave their cameras outside. He can expand his reach by signing NDAs with a theater chain, so that the movie can be shown in many venues on the same terms.
I don't see how your solution is more proper than mine. You're merely stating that Cameron's property in the informational universe cannot be property (i.e. his) unless he builds an electric fence and a repelling force-field around it.
Yes, part of the definition of real property is that you must somehow demarcate or emborder it in a publicly visible way (I'm borrowing from Kinsella, here). This is, of course, impossible in the informational universe apart from some artifice, such as a "pattern registry" or some such silliness.
ClaytonB:It is a human convention, like language, but its domain is the physical world. The reason for this is that property evolved to prevent conflicts and restricting property to the narrowest definition in real, material objects, limits the range of possible conflicts. Same thing with information,
ClaytonB:It is a human convention, like language, but its domain is the physical world. The reason for this is that property evolved to prevent conflicts and restricting property to the narrowest definition in real, material objects, limits the range of possible conflicts.
Same thing with information,
Information evolved to avoid conflicts? Please explain how.
ClaytonB: z1235: As for scarcity, in the informational universe there is ONLY ONE 10 gigabyte pattern called "the movie Avatar". Regardless of how many times you copy a DVD with the same pattern (thus making such patterned DVDs non-scarce in the physical universe), there still only remains ONE such pattern in the informational universe (out of 2^(8x10^9) available), owned by its ONE proper owner (creator, producer, homesteader) making it very scarce there, indeed. This statement is circular... look at the order of the highlighted words, you say the bit pattern is owned, which makes it scarce. Scarcity, in Hoppean philosophy of property, is a pre-condition to property. Air is not owned by anybody because it is abundant. Bit patterns are also abundant and, more importantly, the physical objects they describe are limitless. Clayton -
z1235: As for scarcity, in the informational universe there is ONLY ONE 10 gigabyte pattern called "the movie Avatar". Regardless of how many times you copy a DVD with the same pattern (thus making such patterned DVDs non-scarce in the physical universe), there still only remains ONE such pattern in the informational universe (out of 2^(8x10^9) available), owned by its ONE proper owner (creator, producer, homesteader) making it very scarce there, indeed.
Perhaps my writing wasn't clear. The "owned" part is not what's "making" the 10GB pattern scarce. It's as scarce in its (10x10^9-dimensional) informational universe as any cubic meter (m^3) or an atom is scarce in the (3-dimensional) physical universe, thus ownership of that pattern (and its vicinity) in the informational universe would be equivalent to ownership of any cubic meter (and its surroundings) in the physical universe. I'm establishing an analogy here -- and NOT a binary indexing system for every cubic meter or atom of the physical universe, as you seem to have understood.
z1235: ClaytonB: z1235: As for scarcity, in the informational universe there is ONLY ONE 10 gigabyte pattern called "the movie Avatar". Regardless of how many times you copy a DVD with the same pattern (thus making such patterned DVDs non-scarce in the physical universe), there still only remains ONE such pattern in the informational universe (out of 2^(8x10^9) available), owned by its ONE proper owner (creator, producer, homesteader) making it very scarce there, indeed. This statement is circular... look at the order of the highlighted words, you say the bit pattern is owned, which makes it scarce. Scarcity, in Hoppean philosophy of property, is a pre-condition to property. Air is not owned by anybody because it is abundant. Bit patterns are also abundant and, more importantly, the physical objects they describe are limitless. Clayton - Perhaps my writing wasn't clear. The "owned" part is not what's "making" the 10GB pattern scarce. It's as scarce in its (10x10^9-dimensional) informational universe as any cubic meter (m^3) or an atom is scarce in the (3-dimensional) physical universe, thus ownership of that pattern (and its vicinity) in the informational universe would be equivalent to ownership of any cubic meter (and its surroundings) in the physical universe. I'm establishing an analogy here -- and NOT a binary indexing system for every cubic meter or atom of the physical universe, as you seem to have understood. Z.
But bit patterns are not scarce! You are talking about an analogy of scarcity but it is not scarcity itself. This can be shown via reduction to absurdity. You chose a very large limit to the size of what you consider to be the information universe but your choice of that limit is arbitrary. It could have been 5GB. Or 1GB. Or 1MB. Or 1KB. Or, it could have been 1 byte. For that matter, it could have been 1 bit. So, who homesteaded the first bit? That person owns, by extension, all information whatsoever because all discrete information can be reduced to bits.
In addition, I think it is obfuscatory to constantly refer to this 10GB limit, as if it establishes some sort of finitude to the information space. By adding just one bit - 10GB + 1bit - the size of the information universe is doubled. The size of the physical universe would not be doubled if one additional atom could be created in violation of the law of conservation of mass. This indicates that there is something fundamentally different about bits and atoms and that an analogy of this sort is no analogy at all. And, even supposing we limit ourselves to only patterns of 10GB in length, such a universe is effectively infinite. It is incomprehensibly large. 2^(10*2^33) is an incomprehensibly large number of patterns and is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. There can be no scarcity in a universe whose resource (patterns) is in infinite supply.
Let's consider the homesteading of random bits. It is easy, with the aid of a hardware random generator, to generate billions of random bits. Can I fill hard drives with random bits, then begin searching the works of others (say Cameron's Avatar) for copies of portions of my random bits, which I homesteaded on my hard drives?? This is absurd. But, on your conception of property, it is valid.
Then there's the whole issue of encryption and proof... if I keep my "pirated" copy of Avatar encrypted at all times except during playback, how will you ever be able to prove that it is, in fact, Avatar? One scheme is to split illegal or politically controlled information into two random bit streams that, when XOR'd, yield the original bit stream (basically, one-time pad encryption), then store the two bit streams on physically separate drives, say, remotely. Whose property rights are these bit streams violating?? The morass of absurdity into which this can go should be a red flag that something is amiss in your theory of property.
ClaytonB:I think there is a hidden philosophical disagreement between you and I... I suspect that you are, at one level or another, a Platonist (e.g. forms, such as numbers and bit patterns, are just as real as the physical world).
That's a very good point. The "real" (3-dimensional space + 1-dimensional time) world as we perceive it is as much a model, concept, approximation of the REAL world as is my model of a 10x10^9-dimensional informational universe.
ClaytonB:Numbers - bit patterns are just binary numbers - are a strictly human abstraction which we use for describing and manipulating the physical world.
They are obviously much more than that, as the free market increasingly creates, trades, and values information as property. I'm merely introducing an informational universe in which this property resides -- and this human "abstraction" of mine is no different from the 3-dimensional abstraction that we humans are using to model and describe the reality around us and the physical objects residing in it. The concept of physical property is just another human abstraction designed to conveniently fit the 3-dimensional human abstraction of the universe. As our perception of the universe changes, so will our definition of property. Can you exclude the possibility that 300 years from now humans may all end up being a bunch of interconnected brains in jars creating and trading increasingly elaborate informational patterns in an informational universe? What value (if any) would the concept of physical property have in such a world?
ClaytonB:Information is destroyed through the simple act of erasure. If the master copy of Avatar were to be destroyed before the movie was released, that would be it. No more Avatar.
That's ok. An explorer can homestead a faraway island, or a planet and lose the map or instructions on how to get back there. In both cases (Cameron in the informational universe and the explorer in the physical universe) have merely lost the proofs for their ownership claims, and without the proof so goes their claim as there's no court in the world that would assign them ownership of a property by only taking their words for homesteading it. That doesn't mean that the 10GB Avatar pattern is "destroyed" from the informational universe. It's as "destroyed" from the informational universe as the explorer's lost island or planet is "destroyed" from the physical universe when he lost his map/instructions.
ClaytonB:The problem is that the practical result of your "property claim" is an invasion of my property.
Well, then I guess we'll have to resolve the conflicting claims, won't we? If my analogy works (and it has worked splendidly, so far) my property claim collides with your property claim. I propose that, as society allocates increasingly more capital, labor, and productive resources into creating and trading information as property from the informational universe, my property claim will be increasingly judged by the free markets (hence, by the courts) as stronger than your property claim.
ClaytonB: If I rip a CD (which I own) into MP3 form on my computer (which I own), your property claim to the "intellectual property" on that CD - which prohibits me from making MP3 copies onto my computer - is actually an attempt to aggress against my property (my CD and my computer) by prohibiting me from using it in a way that does not result in a property conflict with anyone else.
I understand. As reasonable free market agents, we could possibly come to an agreement that you may make copies of my pattern for your own use. We could also possibly come to an agreement that by me selling you a CD with my pattern on it I have in no way relinquished my homesteaded ownership of my pattern in the informational universe. I know it's mine. You know it's mine. The courts know it's mine. So if you're caught making copies and distributing them out on the free market then you're trespassing over my property in the informational universe and I'm taking you to court for it. You OK with that?
ClaytonB:The actual consequences of "property" in patterns is the prohibition of copying. That's it. It is "copy right".
It may or may not be just prohibition of copying. It could be more or less than that depending on how the free market perceives the validity of both of our property ownership claims -- mine for property from the informational universe, yours from the physical universe. They are both valid claims, IMO, and whenever humans have had conflicting property claims, laws usually emerge to reasonably resolve them -- "copyright" being just one manifestation of such laws.
ClaytonB:But as the cost of copying has gone down due to technological advancements, it has become more and more clear how absurd it is to prohibit the producer willing to copy at the lowest cost from doing so. It's childish, like when an older sibling smashes his younger sibling's Legos saying, "stop copying me, make your own!".
You're calling the pirate copier of the DVD Avatar a "producer" merely providing a "low cost" solution to the free market? You're calling Cameron's claim to ownership of the 10GB Avatar pattern and the area of the informational universe around it childish and absurd? Wow. You don't see ANY validity to the analogy I'm introducing and to the property claims that arise from it?
ClaytonB:Against Intellectual Monopoly makes an overwhelming case against the supposed benefits of copy right and patent.
I'll take a look at it, though I've been involved in a few anti-IP debates here already, so I'm pretty familiar with the main anti-IP arguments. Not impressed.
ClaytonB:Property conflicts, as I am using the term, refer to conflicts between human bodies and their extensions - via property - in the physical world.
Any objections to expanding the concept to informational property in the informational universe? I'm still waiting for a good objection to the analogy, as all of them so far have been mere lists of differences between the physical universe and the informational one without refuting the analogy itself.
ClaytonB: I recommend reading this piece by Stephen Kinsella for an overview of the difference between real property and patterns.
I'll check out that one too. Thx.
ClaytonB:Yes, part of the definition of real property is that you must somehow demarcate or emborder it in a publicly visible way (I'm borrowing from Kinsella, here). This is, of course, impossible in the informational universe apart from some artifice, such as a "pattern registry" or some such silliness.
Nothing childish about registries, really. The free market has used real property registries for centuries now. What's wrong with everyone knowing who owns what, both in the physical and the informational universe? And any informational property in the informational universe could be easily demarcated or embordered by defining an informational vicinity (similarity) boundary around each original 10GB pattern.
ClaytonB:Information evolved to avoid conflicts? Please explain how.
Information as property evolved (and is evolving right before our eyes) to avoid conflicts in the informational universe (colliding claims of ownership in areas of the informational universe) just like physical property evolved to avoid colliding claims in the physical universe.
z1235:Any objections to expanding the concept to informational property in the informational universe? I'm still waiting for a good objection to the analogy, as all of them so far have been mere lists of differences between the physical universe and the informational one without refuting the analogy itself.
Pro )Dogs should be treated like cats. since i can draw an analogy between dogs and cats. a cat is like a little dog that doesn't like to play fetch.
Anti)I object that dogs should be treated as one would treat cats, here are some differences, they express different genes, they manifest different behaviours, they have different instincts, they have different physiologies, i feel differently about them.
Pro)so far all you have done is make a mere list of differences between cats and dogs without refuting the analogy.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
z1235:Information as property evolved (and is evolving right before our eyes) to avoid conflicts in the informational universe
rewriting history? how do you respond when I say that patents and copyrights are inventions of judges engaged in legal positivism under the aegis of states?
nirgrahamUK: z1235:Any objections to expanding the concept to informational property in the informational universe? I'm still waiting for a good objection to the analogy, as all of them so far have been mere lists of differences between the physical universe and the informational one without refuting the analogy itself. Pro )Dogs should be treated like cats. since i can draw an analogy between dogs and cats. a cat is like a little dog that doesn't like to play fetch. Anti)I object that dogs should be treated as one would treat cats, here are some differences, they express different genes, they manifest different behaviours, they have different instincts, they have different physiologies, i feel differently about them. Pro)so far all you have done is make a mere list of differences between cats and dogs without refuting the analogy.
LOL - is there a way to give rep points or something on these forums? I laughed out loud reading this... thanks!
nirgrahamUK: z1235:Information as property evolved (and is evolving right before our eyes) to avoid conflicts in the informational universe rewriting history? how do you respond when I say that patents and copyrights are inventions of judges engaged in legal positivism under the aegis of states?
Of course that is all that patents and copyrights are. z1235 seems to think he/she invented the idea of "homesteading information space" but that's exactly what copyright/patent has always been about, this concept that by thinking something and writing it down, it somehow becomes "yours", in analogy to the way that by fencing a piece of unowned land it thereby becomes yours. Property exists with or without the state. Copyright and patents exist only by virtue of the state. Do the math.
And here is a beautiful example of why claim does not constitute a sufficient basis for property. If a claim were a sufficient condition for rights in real property, every cubic micron of the planet (and the moon and anything else visible from Earth) would long ago have been claimed.
Land and mining claims are also the inventions of states and legal positivism. I have yet to hear a single theory to explain how these can come to be owned from the communists.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Stranger: nirgrahamUK: z1235:Information as property evolved (and is evolving right before our eyes) to avoid conflicts in the informational universe rewriting history? how do you respond when I say that patents and copyrights are inventions of judges engaged in legal positivism under the aegis of states? Land and mining claims are also the inventions of states and legal positivism. I have yet to hear a single theory to explain how these can come to be owned from the communists.
I remember reading Rothbard's description of US mining associations and how they managed mineral rights before the US gov't had authority out West. Very fascinating. The State has entangled itself and imposed its centrally-planned bastardizations of law on every aspect of human life. That does not mean that all law is state law.
not so, the common law had provision for land ownership. mining is just a right that a landowner of 'mine-able' land has automatically.
ClaytonB:But bit patterns are not scarce! You are talking about an analogy of scarcity but it is not scarcity itself. This can be shown via reduction to absurdity. You chose a very large limit to the size of what you consider to be the information universe but your choice of that limit is arbitrary. It could have been 5GB. Or 1GB. Or 1MB. Or 1KB. Or, it could have been 1 byte. For that matter, it could have been 1 bit. So, who homesteaded the first bit? That person owns, by extension, all information whatsoever because all discrete information can be reduced to bits.
Perhaps your perceived absurdity comes from your lack of understanding of the proposed concept. The length of the sequence I picked (10GB) merely defines the dimensionality of the informational universe -- 10x10^9 in this case -- and it was picked to be able to accommodate the largest binary sequence created so far, e.g. the movie Avatar. Every information residing in this universe would have to be 10GB long. The ones that are actually shorter (songs, software, etc) would simply have 0s appended to them in order to make them all 10GB long, i.e. "residents" of a 10x10^9 dimensional universe. As I also said in my OP, but you probably missed as you initially had a wrong understanding of what I was trying to accomplish, just like there are plenty not-owned, not-claimed, not-yet-homesteaded cubic meters (out of the 2^266 available) in the known physical universe, there are plenty of not-owned, not-claimed, not-yet-homesteaded 10GB-long binary sequences (out of the 2^(10x10^9) available) in the known informational universe. So to answer your question, a person can claim to own a 10GB pattern of zeros followed by a 1 only if he can prove to the courts that he was the one that first created it (homesteaded it) in the informational universe. Even if this ownership was being granted to him it would be of no use to anyone as you can't really do anything with it and it would be "light years" (in informational universe sense) away from valuable properties such as the 10GB Avatar pattern (and its vicinity). So go ahead and try to claim it, and see if anyone cares.
ClaytonB:In addition, I think it is obfuscatory to constantly refer to this 10GB limit, as if it establishes some sort of finitude to the information space. By adding just one bit - 10GB + 1bit - the size of the information universe is doubled. The size of the physical universe would not be doubled if one additional atom could be created in violation of the law of conservation of mass. This indicates that there is something fundamentally different about bits and atoms and that an analogy of this sort is no analogy at all. And, even supposing we limit ourselves to only patterns of 10GB in length, such a universe is effectively infinite. It is incomprehensibly large. 2^(10*2^33) is an incomprehensibly large number of patterns and is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. There can be no scarcity in a universe whose resource (patterns) is in infinite supply.
The dimensionality (thus size) of the informational universe can always be expanded as needed by commerce and technology. Still I don't see a problem with the analogy. By the bolded part you seem to still misunderstand it, though. The analogy is not between bits and atoms. It is between 10GB patterns in a 10x10^9-dimensional informational universe and atoms (or cubic meters) in a 3-dimensional physical universe. Ultimately, if 5 new dimensions were discovered in physics (or in space), would you still stick to your Lockean concept of property confined to 3-dimensional space and 3-dimensional objects in it?
ClaytonB:Let's consider the homesteading of random bits. It is easy, with the aid of a hardware random generator, to generate billions of random bits. Can I fill hard drives with random bits, then begin searching the works of others (say Cameron's Avatar) for copies of portions of my random bits, which I homesteaded on my hard drives?? This is absurd. But, on your conception of property, it is valid.
You just said that the universe comprised of all possible 10GB patterns is "incomprehensibly large" (there's actually 2^(10x10^9) of them). Go ahead and fire up all your super-computers, and create ALL possible random 10GB binary sequences, and save them on hard drives -- then see how much that costs you and what you get in return. I estimate that it would take you all the time left in the universe (before it collapses back into itself, if it does) and all the humanity's capital and labor to "cover" (explore, homestead) but a smidgen of the 10x10^9-dimensional informational universe, and it will most likely be useless to anyone just like a smidgen of 10^6 (one million) cubic meters of physical space 3 light years away from the Sun is useless to anyone now. So be my guest and homestead any portion of the informational universe by running a random generator. On the other hand, you could follow Cameron and by dedicating much less capital and resources create a 10GB pattern (homestead a targeted, better area of the informational universe) that's actually worth something on the free market.
ClaytonB:Then there's the whole issue of encryption and proof... if I keep my "pirated" copy of Avatar encrypted at all times except during playback, how will you ever be able to prove that it is, in fact, Avatar? One scheme is to split illegal or politically controlled information into two random bit streams that, when XOR'd, yield the original bit stream (basically, one-time pad encryption), then store the two bit streams on physically separate drives, say, remotely. Whose property rights are these bit streams violating??
Go ahead and encrypt and encode the Avatar all you like. If eventually you start selling it in public (with the decoder included, of course, or else how are people going to see it?) then I'll find you and take you to court where I will prove that you have trespassed over my property in the informational universe. The existence of sophisticated thieves of physical property does not affect your concept of physical property. Why should sophisticated schemes of covering up your tracks (so as to fraudulently claim that you have not trespassed over my property in the informational universe) affect my concept of informational property in the informational universe?
ClaytonB:The morass of absurdity into which this can go should be a red flag that something is amiss in your theory of property.
As I've shown above, no such absurdity exists.
Are you implying that ANY analogy between X and Y can be refuted (devalued, dismissed) by the mere statement that X does not equal Y? Some powerful stuff you've got there.
z1235: aerborne:You're both arguing what the word idea means and completely sidestepping the point. Semantic arguments are pedantic.The point is, *WHATEVER* word you want to call it. Whatever you call it -- for the sake of my analogy introduced in this thread -- if you can represent it as a 10GB binary sequence, then it is a part of the informational universe. If you created that sequence, then you homesteaded that area of the informational universe, hence you own it.
z1235: aerborne:Avatar is an unscarce resource infinitely reproducible without destroying the quality of the original. In the physical universe, yes. In the informational universe it is as scarce and reproducible as a square meter or an atom is in the physical universe. Do you know how analogies work?
z1235: aerborne:Your idea for validating copyright law doesn't address THAT argument from the IP freely crowd (such as myself) because it doesn't matter whether you homestead a 10gb binary sequence, or a napkin from a bar, it's the same thing. Hmm... Well you guys from the "IP freely crowd" would still have to show how my analogy fails. Failing to do that would make you a "property freely" communist in both the physical and informational universe, or at least a hypocrite that applies different criteria to analogous situations for no apparent reason.
homesteading a digital byte sequence in the "information universe" is no different then writing a book using the 26 possible letters of the english alphabet and saying you've homesteaded the information contained in the book in an "information universe." All you're claiming is that copyright is now possible because we have digital technology.
z1235: aerborne:How does your logic account for the fact that, using avatar as an example, i can encode it in h264, divx 6 xvid, 3gpp etc and EACH file at any specific, or VBR will be it's own UNIQUE sequence of bits. he cannot homestead ALL Possible combinations that could be played back and appear as Avatar, because the digital representation of the information is not the information itself. In fact, a VHS is not digital at all how do you homestead that? Very good question deserving an even better answer. In the same way that signal processing and information theory have provided you with the tools to transform one binary sequence into another, they have provided us with the tools to establish and quantify similarity (or vicinity) of such patterns in the informational universe. For instance you can reverse (flip from 0 to 1 and vice versa) all bits from the Avatar 10GB binary sequence, making it "totally different" from the original but signal processing and information theory can easily sniff that out and would place the resulting "negative" of the original in very close proximity to the original in the informational universe. The area of the informational universe owned by Cameron (surrounding its 10GB Avatar pattern) comprises of all such sequences that are sufficiently similar (or close in the informational universe) to the original.
z1235: aerborne:How does one homestead anything that's not digital but infinitely reproducible such as how to build a DVD player in the first place? How could copyright have existed 100 years ago when there was no digital media. You're starting to make my case here. Perhaps the advancement of technology and the free markets which increasingly create, trade and treat information as property (and as something of value to the free market) demand an introduction of new paradigms such as the analogy I'm trying to introduce here. Z.
z1235:Are you implying that ANY analogy between X and Y can be refuted (devalued, dismissed) by the mere statement that X does not equal Y?
ClaytonB: I remember reading Rothbard's description of US mining associations and how they managed mineral rights before the US gov't had authority out West. Very fascinating. The State has entangled itself and imposed its centrally-planned bastardizations of law on every aspect of human life. That does not mean that all law is state law. Clayton -
nirgrahamUK: not so, the common law had provision for land ownership. mining is just a right that a landowner of 'mine-able' land has automatically.
Very nice non-explanations guys. You still don't have any theory of how one comes to own a mineral deposit.
Since you don't have any theory of property, there is just no point in arguing against your fallacies. You're not presenting an alternative.
nirgrahamUK: z1235:Are you implying that ANY analogy between X and Y can be refuted (devalued, dismissed) by the mere statement that X does not equal Y? nope.
So are you saying anything?
you homestead the rival good. in this case the rival good is mineral deposit.
z1235:So are you saying anything?
nirgrahamUK: you homestead the rival good. in this case the rival good is mineral deposit.
So then I can also homestead information, since much like mineral deposits information will be entirely consumed very quickly if it is not the private property of the first homesteader.
Stranger: ClaytonB: I remember reading Rothbard's description of US mining associations and how they managed mineral rights before the US gov't had authority out West. Very fascinating. The State has entangled itself and imposed its centrally-planned bastardizations of law on every aspect of human life. That does not mean that all law is state law. Clayton - nirgrahamUK: not so, the common law had provision for land ownership. mining is just a right that a landowner of 'mine-able' land has automatically. Very nice non-explanations guys. You still don't have any theory of how one comes to own a mineral deposit. Since you don't have any theory of property, there is just no point in arguing against your fallacies. You're not presenting an alternative.
The Minerals argument is a red herring, and another fallacy you've committed here is to demand that we can't debunk your argument without having an alternative argument.
Stranger:So then I can also homestead information, since much like mineral deposits information will be entirely consumed very quickly if it is not the private property of the first homesteader.
what you say is true of a particular media.that is a particular piece of tangible property that is understood by interpreters of information as being a source of information.
but is not true of information itself. information itself is conceptual. there is no information without an interpretational scheme.
if you insist on completely conflating media with information, then please desist referring to information and please refer only to scarce media. you shall find that there will be nothing to stop me making scarce media of my own that has qualities similar to your scarce media. our media encodes the same information.
if you find there is a difference , subtle as may be, between media and information then we can talk about that.
nirgrahamUK:analogies live or die by the relevance of the differences. sorry you missed that.
So have you shown how the differences are relevant to the analogy, or you are simply going to proclaim them as such?
I have said that information and tangible material are not both equally property; because one is rival and scarce and the other is not rival nor scarce.
Stranger: nirgrahamUK: you homestead the rival good. in this case the rival good is mineral deposit. So then I can also homestead information, since much like mineral deposits information will be entirely consumed very quickly if it is not the private property of the first homesteader.
WTF?
ClaytonB: WTF? Clayton -
he doesnt think that cd's encode information.rather, he thinks cd's are information. and because cd's can be consumed, he therefore thinks information can be
aerborne: The Minerals argument is a red herring, and another fallacy you've committed here is to demand that we can't debunk your argument without having an alternative argument.
Thank you for pointing this out. I really should not be wasting my time dignifying that line of discussion with responses.
nirgrahamUK: ClaytonB: WTF? Clayton - he doesnt think that cd's encode information.rather, he thinks cd's are information. and because cd's can be consumed, he therefore thinks information can be
Oh my God.
I used to hold to IP... but even when I held to IP, I realized that it was a pretty iffy concept and if I had read the counter-arguments to IP back then, I certainly would have realized right then and there - statist though I was - that IP is BS. I guess the urge to rationalize what is, no matter the cost, is difficult for some people to resist.
nirgrahamUK: what you say is true of a particular media.that is a particular piece of tangible property that is understood by interpreters of information as being a source of information. but is not true of information itself. information itself is conceptual. there is no information without an interpretational scheme.
The equivalent to the media is the oil well, not the deposit itself. Oil wells are cheap to make, simple to reproduce and, once an oil deposit is known, anyone can tap into it. Now if you want to hold to the idea that an oil deposit is rivalrous, you will also have to concede that information is. Much like with an oil deposit, information can be extracted and supplied to the market only to the extent that its marginal value is greater than the marginal cost of producing more from the well. Beyond that point, the deposit is worthless. To grant unlimited access to an oil deposit then is create a race between all oil producers to extract as much oil as possible before this marginal threshold is reached. In information, the same race happens, as all producers of media attempt to supply the market as quickly as possible, with complete disregard for the damage to the source they are causing. The same thing happens with fish, forests, or any other natural resource.
But of course, real economists do not consider this race to be "efficient production", since once the resource has been destroyed through this process another resource must be produced in order for the market to be supplied again. Why would capital be invested in the production of another resource? Only if this investment is protected with a property right in the discovered resource.
As we see, property in information is exactly the same principle as property in any other natural resource. And of course, communists neither believe in the ownership of natural resources as they do in the ownership of information, as the objection in both cases is exactly the same.
If the communists would just admit that they are communists, then I would not be able to raise an objection to their attempts at refuting property rights. Since they won't admit to being communists and claim that private property is justifiable, then they must provide us with their theory of property, how property can be acquired in a world of scarcity yet excluding one instance of scarcity (which they sometimes admit information is, sometimes not, sometimes both) that doesn't also create an exception for many other kinds of sometimes-scarcity.
aerborne:How is this argument any different then writing on a napkin at the bar?
That's fine. Both a digitized image (at large enough resolution) of the napkin or the written text (as ASCII characters turned into bits) can be represented as 10GB sequences making them members of the 10GB-dimensional informational universe. What of it?
aerborne:the mythical parallel universe of information, this is like the god argument, it exists because the bible says it does.
?...My informational universe and informational property within it, as concepts, are as "mythical" as the concept of physical property. They are all concepts created by humans for humans for the purpose of resolving conflicting and rival property claims.
aerborne:homesteading a digital byte sequence in the "information universe" is no different then writing a book using the 26 possible letters of the english alphabet and saying you've homesteaded the information contained in the book in an "information universe." All you're claiming is that copyright is now possible because we have digital technology.
Not really. All books are by nature "digital" (i.e. quantized) as they are simply discrete finite-length sequences of letters (which come from finite sets, say size 200, in order to include all letters used by mankind). Thus the informational universe of all possible books is comprised of all possible letter sequences of whatever length would be needed to accommodate the longest book ever (to be) written. The writer of each book becomes the owner of a piece of property in the informational universe of books, which is a subset of the larger (more encompassing) universe of all possible 10GB patterns.
aerborne:No, That's not how codecs works, and further it doesn't address analog sources. You do understand the difference between analog and digital right?
Believe me, I know quite a bit about signal processing and information theory. Any analog signal, if quantized by intensity and sampled in time and/or space with high enough granularity (bandwidth) can be easily transformed into a digital (thus binary) sequence and occupy its own spot in the 10GB-dimensional informational universe. Vice versa, any digital signal can be presented (transformed back) into what our senses perceive to be an analog signal (CD music, movie Avatar).
aerborne:You're saying information is not infinately reproducable in the "information universe" which is a construct of your imagination.
So? Is the concept of physical property or ethics or freedom any more "real"? Everything we are discussing here is a ultimately a human construct/concept, including our concept of a 3-dimensional physical universe with 3-dimensional objects in it. It's a model/construct that best allows us to operate and thrive as agents but that doesn't necessarily make it any more "real" than our senses would allow.
aerborne:You're talking about copyrighting a binary sequence as if the sequence is the information itself. It's not, and never will be.
Is that a promise or a threat?
aerborne:You're argument is like saying stephen king couldn't copyright The Stand until he had the ability to scan it into a PDF and homestead the byte sequence in the information universe.
Or he could just represent the sequence of ASCII characters (letters) into a binary sequence and claim THAT piece of the 10GB informational universe as his own. All instances of a 10GB representation of his book would demarcate the boundaries of his homesteaded property in the informational universe.
aerborne:That's why your argument and analogy falls apart. You can't seperate the information from the medium it's stored on because doing so destroys your case.
Actually, it is exactly the separation of the information from any physical medium (in a physical universe) -- and placing it into an informational universe -- that IS my case.
nirgrahamUK: I have said that information and tangible material are not both equally property; because one is rival and scarce and the other is not rival nor scarce.
They are both rival and scarce in their respective universes. Hence, information is property in the informational universe and tangible material is property in the physical universe.
There are not different universes, there is our universe. i deny your bizarre ontology
nirgrahamUK: There are not different universes, there is our universe. i deny your bizarre ontology
As you wish. One can bring a cow to the water but he can't make it drink.
Didn't you know that this is as real as this?
Stranger:To grant unlimited access to an oil deposit then is create a race between all oil producers to extract as much oil as possible before this marginal threshold is reached. In information, the same race happens, as all producers of media attempt to supply the market as quickly as possible, with complete disregard for the damage to the source they are causing.
What on earth?
If you insist that "information = physical media," then you cannot consistently claim that the information is being "extracted," "consumed," "damaged," etc.
Why anarchy fails