One difference comes down to the fact that the car is actually property, and hence recoverable, whereas once the book sale contract has been breached, the exclusivity of the information transferred thereby cannot be recovered.
Yes it can. Just destroy all the counterfeit copies. The same happens with counterfeit paper money all the time.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Live_Free_Or_Die:I don't understand why Monopoly Nazi's see IP as a devisive issue. Lilburne asked for this sort of language to be cleaned up. It's not conducive to, or helpful in debate. @Stranger, that goes for you with the IP Communist comments as well.
Live_Free_Or_Die:I don't understand why Monopoly Nazi's see IP as a devisive issue.
Lilburne asked for this sort of language to be cleaned up. It's not conducive to, or helpful in debate.
@Stranger, that goes for you with the IP Communist comments as well.
Communism is an economic doctrine, naziism is not. The label of communism is a response to the IP communists denouncing pro-IP economists as monopolists for two reasons. Firstly, traditionally communists have always denounced capitalists as monopolists and property as monopoly, and secondly, the economic doctrine of the anti-IP libertarian is common ownership of all information, hence communism.
To ask that communists stop being called communists is just political correctness imposed in open economic debates.
Stranger: Communism is an economic doctrine, naziism is not.
Communism is an economic doctrine, naziism is not.
communism |ˈkämyəˌnizəm| (often Communism) noun a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
communism |ˈkämyəˌnizəm| (often Communism)
noun
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Hayek:
The difference between these and other kinds of property rights is this: while ownership of material goods guides the user of scarce means to their most important uses, in the case of immaterial goods such as literary productions and technological inventions the ability to produce them is also limited, yet once they have come into existence, they can be indefinitely multiplied and can be made scarce only by law in order to create an inducement to produce such ideas. Yet it is not obvious that such forced scarcity is the most effective way to stimulate the human creative process. I doubt whether there exists a single great work of literature which we would not possess had the author been unable to obtain an exclusive copyright for it; it seems to me that the case for copyright must rest almost entirely on the circumstance that such exceedingly useful works as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.
Similarly, recurrent re-examinations of the problem have not demonstrated that the obtainability of patents of invention actually enhances the flow of new technical knowledge rather than leading to wasteful concentration of research on problems whose solution in the near future can be foreseen and where, in consequence of the law, anyone who hits upon a solution a moment before the next gains the right to its exclusive use for a prolonged period.
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
I'm going to have to disagree with you ano that one. Say, for example my car is stolen. The thief then sells it to you for $5,000. It's still my car. The thief had no legitimate claim to sell it to you. He sold you nothing. We are both victims, me of car theft, and you of fraud. Why should the fact that the thief swindled you out of your money keep me from recovering my property? Your calim is against the thief, not me. If you prevent me from recovering my property, after being shown proof of ownership, why should I refrain from using force?
It would still be an intitiation of force against me. I'd be an awfully big jerk not to give it back to you and then just have the two of us go after the thief, but it's not an obligation under the ethics of non-aggression.
Walter Block explains the concept as "negative homesteading": the "first appropriator" of hardship does not have the right to compel anyone else to bear it or any part of it, unless that person was its cause. Being a third-party beneficiary to said hardship does not make one a party to its cause.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Yes it can. Just destroy all the counterfeit copies.
Including those held within the minds of those who have encountered it?
If not, then you essentially concede that those copies are, in fact, the property of those who own those minds. In which case, in preventing them from expressing an idea that has become their property, you admit to violating other people's property rights in your protection of intellectual property. Which gets back to the point I made several times earlier (and which you and Onar have ignored with impressive thoroughness) that IP and physical property are conflicting moral propositons.
if its not your car but the original victims where is the initiation of force against you? by possessing the item in continued defiance of his will aren't you in a state of aggression against him? or else, when did your claim to the car take precedence over the owner who had been stolen from?
SondreB wrote the following post at Thu, Oct 21 2010 8:24 AM:
What are the logical errors in this? What false are there in this example?
The logical error is that you have only looked at similarities, whereas an exhaustive inductive study requires you to look at both essential similarities AND differences. Francis Bacon pioneered the scientific method of inductgion and that's a pretty long time ago, so we're talking ancient knowledge here. You've done a very basic error of reasoning, apparently completely unaware of how to reason properly. That should worry you a bit.
Anyways, the essential *difference* between mind and land is that fruits of your land are scarce like the land itself, whereas fruits of the mind (ideas) are NOT scarce (in the sense that they can easily be duplicated). Hence, fruits of the mind need to be protected in a different manner than fruits of the land.
Fruits of the mind that are not scarce need to be protected, or else what? or else they are scarce.... oh dear.....
Usually protecting things involves maintaining them in the face of a danger to their integrity but copies of things do not necessitate degradation of originals
Would you answer the over the shoulder book write scenario any differently than Stranger? do tell....
dnixx wrote the following post at Fri, Oct 22 2010 11:30 AM:
So, if anything, it is the definition of property that would be arbitrary, and this is where the disagreements stem from, isn't it?
No, not at all. Kinsella states that the nonaggression principle is an axiom. That means that he treats it as an irreducible primary that is self-evident. But it is NOT. The irreducible primary here is that we are INDIVIDUALS. The INDIVIDUAL is an irreducible primary, and it has an identity, which as a living being is to preserve its identity. In other words, it needs to act in its self-interest in order to exist. Egoism is therefore the primary, not the nonaggression principle. We as humans have two important attributes. We are 1) animals of reason, and 2) we are social. That we are social means that we by nature thrive with each other in peaceful coexistence. Sociality = peaceful coexistence. Therefore nonaggression (or peace as it is more appropriately is called) is the normal state of human affairs.
Note however that it is still not an irreducible primary, and it is by no means self-evident. There exists certain special cases when self-interest crashes with sociality, and that is among other places in emergency situations. Breaking into a cabin on the mountain to survive is initiation of force, yet perfectly legitimate because self-interest is more fundamental than peace.
Treating peace as an axiom is both moronic and extremely dangerous intellectually because it leads down the road of wacko rationalism with no connection to reality.
But when this is said you are absolutely right that the term "violation" is dependent on what the rights of an individual actually are. Those rights are however not arbitrary.
The crux of the problem here is that mind and idea are intertwined. Ideas only exist because some mind has used its scarce resources to create it. But the idea itself, once codified as information, is not scarce in the sense that it is possible to copy it very easily. Intellectual property exists to protect the MIND, but needs to be implemented on INFORMATION.
I didn't follow that part of the discussion. There is so much noise in this thread that I don't want to use too much energy on it. My time and my mind is scarce, you see. But very quickly: intellectual property that comes in the hand of non-agreeing third parties either by accident or by theft still have to respect the intellectual property rights of the creator. I wrote about this in my article, remember? Re-read that and you'll find that all the confused debate in this thread has actually been addressed, particularly in the last part.
]I'd be an awfully big jerk not to give it back to you and then just have the two of us go after the thief, but it's not an obligation under the ethics of non-aggression.
Yes it is an obligation. By keeping a person from their stolen property you are an accomplice.
That does not describe this scenario. By willfully entering into a fraudulant contract you are bringing misfortune on yourself. It is in fact you, the niave purchaser, that is seeking to transfer your own misfortune onto the rightful owner. The owner's misfortune is over, in that he has relocated his car. If you try to keep him from his car you have stolen it a second time.
Let me ask you to look at this from a different perspective. Say you find an abandoned car( with keys in the ignition, so you homestead it and drive it home. The next day the owner knocks on your day and tells you that the car was stolen and abandoned by the thief, then he demands it back. Are you obligated to return it?
Peace
>>The crux of the problem here is that mind and idea are intertwined. Ideas only exist because some mind has used its scarce resources to create it. But >>the idea itself, once codified as information, is not scarce in the sense that it is possible to copy it very easily. Intellectual property exists to protect the >>MIND, but needs to be implemented on INFORMATION.
This is an admission that what you propose is entirely an example of legal positivism/legal fiction, for some reason you think that certain outcomes that you can engineer through violating peoples property rights in scarce goods justify the violations.
I wonder will you be capable of making distinctions as to what this concept of 'harm' to the 'mind' is, do insults count? does being mistaken count?
nskinsella wrote the following post at Fri, Oct 22 2010 4:13 PM:
You are opposed to abolishing the IP system; yet you admit you don't know what a proper IP system should look like. Rich. Typical.
You're making a very nasty logical mistake here. Suppose you are color-blind. You're only able to distinguish between white and non-white. All other colors merge together and become grey to you. Then one day you see a special swan and tell people about it. They ask you what color it was and you answer non-white. You don't know whether it was red or green or blue, but you DO know that WASN'T white.
It's perfectly ok and legitimate to arrive at a conclusion that the correct system is non-anti-IP, without exactly knowing the details of that system. You do however know for a fact that it is utterly morally wrong and a violation of your basic rights that someone can just copy your novel and then distribute it freely and even sell it under their own name! Or alter it as they please! You DO know for a fact that you need to be able to use FORCE somehow to protect that right, even though you don't know the fine details of law.
Now, I just happen to know the details a lot better than most IP-proponents, but that is beside the point. You're making the typical supernatural argument that unless you have perfect knowledge about something you can have no legitimate opinion on it whatsoever.
No. It's because you are incoherent and all over the map.
That's not an argument, it's a claim.
Using Onar's logic, I support mass murder and rape when its good, and oppose it when its bad. What do you guys have against mass murder? So what if the holocaust happened? I'm not in favor of THAT kind of mass murder...
>>ou do however know for a fact that it is utterly morally wrong and a violation of your basic rights that someone can just copy your novel and then >>distribute it freely and even sell it under their own name! Or alter it as they please!
At what point does the tort arise? is the bad thing the distribution, or is that irrelevant? If its not relevant why did you mention it? if its relevant does that mean making copies for private use is permitted?
nirgrahamUK wrote the following post at Sat, Oct 23 2010 3:48 AM:
This is simply an assertion since you are simply assuming the non-existence of the intellectual property rights that are disputed here. I.e. you're essentially saying "I am right, and hence: you are wrong." Grrreeeat argument thar.
I wonder will you be capable of making distinctions as to what this concept of 'harm' to the 'mind' is, do insults count?
Of course insults do not count. It's a bit frustrating that you come with these anal arguments, which shows zero understanding of the position you are opposing. Intellectual property rights are there to protect mental labor which is scarce. Now, where did "harm" enter this picture? And what does insults have to do with mental labor? Zilch. Nada. If you just educated yourself about the very basic things that IP proponents stand for then you wouldn't need to come up with these arguments, which are an insult to intelligence.
protect mental labour? because you hold the labour theory of value?
surely mental labour is something expended or not, if its expended and the book is made, great, if the book gets copied, does a magic fairy go back in time and destroy the mental labour that had happened. What do you mean 'protect mental labour', as a general concept? I have never observed an author undergo mental death brought about from the mind damage of someone in some part of the world copying their text. nor is there ability to mentally labour or not effected in anyway.
please put forth your theory of how mental labour is a fragile thing that people have a right to not be interefered with, enforceable to the extend that others physical property may be violated. If someone says something and it distracts one from one s mental labour due to its seductive force, causing one to stray from ones true path,. is this also an example of where we require your legal positivism to protect peoples minds?
The claim to title didn't take precedence, nor is the third party in a state of aggression, because he did not aggress. The victim's claim to that particular piece of property is not superior to the right of the third party not to be forced to bear someone else's hardship. By not cooperating with the victim, he may become a rotten person - but he does not become a rights-violator. The obligation of compensating the victim for the crime falls exclusively on the criminal. It is the thief's responsiblity to retrieve the stolen property in a manner that does not infringe further (because the third party has already been defrauded) on the rights of the property's recipient, or to provide for its retrieval out of his own resources. The thief violated the victim's rights; nobody else did. All the third party did was quite accidentally get in the way.
To answer another objection which was brought up later: There is a huge difference between coming into possession of stolen property as the victim of fraud and finding a property which has is currently unused (since property titles do not terminate without renunciation by the previous owner or neglect sufficient to return the property to a state of nature).
I find it amusing, first mental harm is bad, then its not mental harm, but that which disrupts mental labour is bad... i wonder what will be next....
Are you claiming then that it's no longer my property. By being a "awfully big jerk" and not giving it back, you are depriving me of my property. You are, not the thief. You are the agressor. If I use force, it is in defense of my property. On the other hand, you are the victim of fraud. Just as you said, "There is no justification for the victim to compel anyone else to share the harm that is done to him except for the one who caused it," you are not justified in depriving me of my rightful property simply because you were defrauded by someone else. You gave the thief money and did not get what was promised. That is between the two of you. My hardship is that my car was stolen. I am not sharing my hardship with you. Your hardship is that you were a victim of fraud.
Put it another way. Driving away in my car without my permission is stealing. By refusing to return my property to me, you are now a thief. I have every right to treat you as such. The fact that you paid some other thief does not change the fact that the car is mine, and no one else has any right to it.
faber est suae quisque fortunae
EDIT: After thinking through this a few times, I'm changing my position. I was coming from the position that the forceful retrieval of stolen property from a third party is "collateral damage" - but I was missing a rather obvious difference. And unlike some people in this thread, I can admit when I've been wrong.
No, because of the lockean labor theory.
surely mental labour is something expended or not, if its expended and the book is made, great, if the book gets copied, does a magic fairy go back in time and destroy the mental labour that had happened.
"Surely physical labor is something expended or not, ig it its expended and the potatos are made, great, if the potatos get stolen, does a magic fairy go back in time and destroy the physical labor that had happened?"
I hope you understand how utterly ridiculous your argument is when translated into materialistic terms.
What do you mean 'protect mental labour', as a general concept?
Well, what do you mean by property rights, as a general concept?
I have never observed an author undergo mental death brought about from the mind damage of someone in some part of the world copying their text. nor is there ability to mentally labour or not effected in anyway.
"And I have never observed a farmed undergo physical death brought about from the corporal damage of someone stealing his potatos, nor is his ability to physically labor or not affected in any way."
Again, when translated into materialistic examples I hope it becomes obvious to you how insane your argument is.
Onar, by changing the word "stolen" to "copied" you completely destroy your own analogy. The potatoes would not have been stolen in a true analogy, but duplicated. You are not thereby deprived of any potatoes. You should stop trying to argue with analogies, it isn't working for you.
I would have no obligation to testify against the thief, nor to allow access to my property if he were hiding on it.
Property used to break the non-aggression principle is no longer under its protection(to a proportional degree).
The thief caused the hardship; it is through the thief that your justice must come. It is not an act of aggression to obstruct that process. I would have no obligation to testify against the thief, nor to allow access to my property if he were hiding on it. You could publish the fact that I am someone who collaborates with outlaws, if you wished - and in a society with a well-established reputation rating system that should be sufficient incentive in most cases to prevent such obstruction of justice from occuring.
We've established that I know you have my car, and that it's my car. I've proven it to you. I'm not asking for testimony. I'm asking to be allowed to drive away unmolested. You are being a jerk and not giving it back, as you've said. My simply driving away in my car, without laying a hand on you, would not be agression, correct? Would your use force to prevent me be agression? If you attempted to drive away, would that be agression? If you answer no to any of these, tell me how it would be different had you not paid the thief.
How does paying a thief allow you to drive my car or prevent me from driving my car.
>>No, because of the lockean labor theory.
what? the theory that evidence of being the owner of scarce physical property better involve some objective fact of a relationship between you and said property that is prior and superior to claim of latecomers? that's relevant to non-scarce non-physical property how? besides which the labour in the theory is that which acts a demonstration of ones act of homesteading, it is not what 'requires protection' itself
>>I hope you understand how utterly ridiculous your argument is when translated into materialistic terms.
ha no, since you have switched from mental labour to the product of mental labour. way to equivocate ! besides which if you originally had meant to say the 'product' of mental labour requires protection, protection from what? what is tangible is protected under standard property right theory, what is intangible does not require protection, because nothing can harm it, it is impervious to attack, damage, degradation. it is an idea that exists as it ever did before or after someone else instantiated their own thought of it.
>>Well, what do you mean by property rights, as a general concept?
I'm all for protecting physical property as a general concept, but you recoil from broad protections against mental harms, because you have some mystical theory of mental harms due protection and mental harms which are not.
no but you have experienced the dissapearance of his potatoes ! his ability to labour would not form any part of my argument in why depriving him of his potatoes so that he no longer has them is wrong. its the deprivation that is wrong...but see... this is where things differ when they are non-scarce intangibles, there is no such lack of potatoes to point to.
verily; there are examples of physical action resulting in physical death... so there !
Jack and Jon - see my edited post.
ok, that's it. I give up. I knew in advance that many libertarians are so stuck in their materialistic thinking that they are completely incapable of thinking outside their own conceptual framework. Therefore it doesn't matter how much I am pointing to the elephant in the room. You're still going to not see it. In short, I see no hope for you. I am perfectly capable of understanding your materialistic viewpoint, but you have no way of seeing the non-materialistic viewpoint, and hence this is not going to be a fruitful debate.
Me: "there's an elephant in the room?"
You: "I see no elephant."
Me, pointing incessantly: "there! there! Right in front of you!"
You: "where?"
Me: "that grey blob in front of you!"
You: "you mean that the world is morally grey?"
Me: "no, no, the elephant is grey. It's standing right there in front of you with a trunk and big ears and a very long nose."
You: "Are you saying that I have big ears?"
Me: "no,no, the elephant!"
You: "What's an elephant?"
Me: "gaaaaaaaagh!"
In short, I don't want to torture myself any longer with trying to talk reason to people who have mentally blocked out a significant portion of reality and refuse to see it.
Cheers!
So even if we can't reach agreement on who is right and who is wrong in the wider matter, you cant even bring yourself to admit that the analogy you advanced as one of your attempts to elucidate your position, is flawed? you cant admit that potatoes when taken without permission disappear from the stock of the original owner, whereas ideas and information do not by necessity disappear when another instantiates a copy of them (with or without permission)?
That's okay Onar, the purpose of a debate is not to convince the other side, but the spectators. This thread will stand forever as a monument to pro-IPers inability to even acknowledge the most basic flaws in their reasoning, whilst their opponents pry their position to pieces by indicating those flaws.
That perfectly illustrates the untenability of alleged intellectual property. Even if one were to conceed that a theft had happened, the victim could hardly claim any damages. Propery rights covers the property itself, not the value of said property. My making a million copies of a book would certainly lower the valure of the author's copies, but the author would still have all of his copies, in the same way that my openign a burger joint next door to another burger joint would devalue the latter's burgers.
That is not a copy, that is just a fleeting idea. It has no value.
As I explained before, ideas spread, but information decays. That is why destroying counterfeit copies preserves exclusivity.
Onar: "Kinsella states that the nonaggression principle is an axiom."
Not true. I never have. I've always scrupulously referred to it as a principle. Another strike for the clueless European.
Stephan Kinsella [email protected] www.StephanKinsella.com
Onar: "You're making a very nasty logical mistake here." no. You are asserting statist ideas. It is that simple. Shuck them. Shuck them, my son.
In short, I don't want to torture myself any longer with trying to talk reason to people who have mentally blocked out a significant portion of reality and refuse to see it. Then why not challenge me to a debate on debate.org?
You have not convinced me that it won't be a waste of time. From what I can tell you're a very bad thinker, and it does not serve me to waste my precious scarce mental resources on debating someone who is completely oblivious to his opponent's viewpoint. If you can demonstrate that you can manage to see one inch outside your materialistic viewpoint, I will debate you. Otherwise it will just be like banging my head into a wall. I'll be understanding all your arguments (because I understand materialism), but you won't have the foggiest idea of what *I* am talking about.
Just like how Marx and Engles completely understood bourgeois logic, but the bourgeoise themselves were incapable of understanding proletarian logic! Teach us more, Father Onar!