Jeff Tucker has been writing a series of articles, inspired by the works of Kinsella, Boldrin and Levine. I make my living from intellectual property (I am an engineer), so I thought I'd share some of my random thoughts on the subject.
I think it should be emphasized that all creativity is variation on a theme. No one is truly original. Every bit of art, music, fiction, architecture, interior decor, industrial design and so on that you have ever encountered in your life form the mental scraps of paper from which you construct the collage of your own creations. As an engineer, whenever I sit down to learn a new computer language, or start work on a new project, I do a lot of copying and pasting from the work of others into my own creations in order to "bootstrap" myself. My ability to create new designs is really the ability to recall on demand the right tool or trick that I probably "cheated" or "copied" from someone else, if I'm smart.
So, this brings up the question of how people ever learn things in the first place, when there's no one else to copy from. How did the first computer programmer ever figure out how to boot a computer? The only way to learn, other than copying, is trial and error. If I am not copying off someone else's work, then I have to replicate for myself the haphazard process of trying things until something works. This brings me to the point that there is a theoretical, utilitarian argument for abolishing IP (not just the empirical argument that Boldrin & Levine make in Against Intellectual Monopoly): genuinely new creativity is always the product of expensive and time-consuming trial and error. The artist who has not studied the works of DaVinci must replicate DaVinci's effort in attempting to draw the body this way and that way until he finally gets it just right. Studying DaVinci is a way to avoid duplicating DaVinci's effort. This process of purposeful plagiarism can only increase total wealth and productivity by eliminating wasteful duplication of effort.
While I may not want people to copy my work (and thereby be able to compete with me without having to expend the cost of the process of original discovery), I should be in favor of people copying the work of others as much as possible because this process makes me wealthier. Think of the innumerable YouTube videos which paste together pieces of the works of others to make completely new entertainment that did not exist before. Under the most stringent interpretation of IP, these videos are all "plagiarism" because their source materials are not completely original. But whose source materials are completely original?
I will quote from Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property:
"... ownership of an idea, or ideal object, effectively gives the IP owners a property right in every physical embodiment of that work or invention. Consider a copyrighted book. Copyright holder A has a right to the underlying ideal object, of which the book is but one example. The copyright system gives A the right in the very pattern of words in the book; therefore, by implication, A has a right to every tangible instantiation or embodiment of the book—i.e., a right in every physical version of the book, or, at least, to every book within the jurisdiction of the legal system that recognizes the copyright."
I think this is a crucial point that deserves even more emphasis - intellectual property is a right to a pattern. I want to further extend this observation to note that every pattern can be represented as a number by simply converting the specification of the pattern to digital form and interpreting the digital representation as a binary number. Critics of Digital Rights Management have used this fact to create so-called illegal numbers and even illegal prime numbers. These are numbers that, when interpreted as digital code or data, represent or violate some intellectual property or other. Obviously, numbers cannot be owned, so the concept of illegal or owned numbers is helpful in highlighting the absurdity of intellectual property, particularly digital "rights" management.
How are patterns to be protected, then? There is one, very simple way to protect a pattern: do not publish it. If you do not want your movies to be copied, then only show them in cinemas. If you do not want your book to be copied, then only make it available through paid readings (and check people for recording devices on the way in). If you do not want your software to be copied, then do not release the code, provide a web interface and perform all processing locally.
Secrecy is the correct foundation for intellectual property. If you have discovered or created a pattern that solves a problem or will entertain people, etc. that pattern can only be "owned" if you keep it a secret, that is, do not reveal it to others. In this sense, intellectual "property" is more like property titles (which Hoppe crucially distinguishes from property itself), than property. An anonymous property title can be created by use of secrets - challenge and response or "password" protocols. Anyone can withdraw from any anonymous bank account... so long as they know the secret number or pattern which represents that bank account. Patterns in general should be understood as property in the same sense. If you publish the account number of your anonymous bank account, it is no longer your bank account in any sense. If you publish your ideas, they no longer belong to you in any sense.
Lastly, I wanted to talk about the internet DNS (domain name server) system and spontaneous homesteading of patterns. There is a healthy industry of speculators who purchase .com domains at the usual $20 and hold onto them until such time as someone attempts to register that domain. Let's say I want to register "bobsbargainbasement.com" but I find out that, lo and behold, this domain has already been purchased by somebody out of Omaha, NE. I contact them and they say they want $1000 for the domain! Now, I could complain that they are engaging in extortion but, really, they are providing a valuable service. By reserving likely-to-be-registered domains, they are acting as auctioneers and causing domain names to be owned by those who really value them the most. There are probably many "Bob's Bargain Basement"s in the country (or world), and by forcing me to bid for use of the doman, rather than just buy it for $20, the speculator is helping ensure the domain geso to whichever of us values that domain the most. This is exactly the same as ticket scalping.
How can domain-name patterns be property, but other kinds of patterns not? The reason is that a domain name is really a purchase of a right to an entry in lookup-tables in the domain-name servers. Each of these servers is privately owned and the owners have agreed to place entries in their lookup tables for domain-names which have been purchased from ICANN. The DNS system is largely self-regulating (though state interference is growing) and is a wonderful example of how the market can, through voluntary cooperation, produce what the state through coercion cannot: ownable patterns.
Clayton -
Fantastic post, thanks for that.
Base model cars of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but quarter-mile races.
Thanks, I was eager to share these thoughts. :)
I also appreciated your thoughts, but I don't quite get the connection between domain name entries and ideas.Domain names are like deposit boxes in a bank: you have one specific number/code that is assigned to you and cannot be purchased by anyone else. Ideas, on the other hand, can be copied. Care to elaborate? I'd really like to understand.
Well, let's not talk about "ideas" per se, because I have yet to see anyone give a satisfactory definition of what an "idea" is - perhaps it is an undefinable concept because it circular, I don't know. So, instead of ideas, let's talk about the physical manifestations of ideas (because, from an economic point of view, this is all that is really relevant, anyway): patterns. A pattern is like a series of binary bits on a hard drive, or the shape or form of a car body, or the set of configurations into which a configurable toy can be placed. These are all patterns and they can each be objectively described, given enough effort.
DNS entries are a subset of patterns... the patterns that describe domain names, such as "mises.org" and "google.com" etc. The point of my article is that patterns, per se, cannot be owned unless they are kept secret, but that domain names are a well-known exception to this - a domain name can be owned even though it is public information! This is a remarkable example of how the market can produce proper ownership of patterns. However, it must be remembered that DNS entries are a tiny subset of the set of all patterns, so while the market produces ownable public patterns (in DNS names), it does not make just any public pattern ownable.
It should be considered an act of plunder/aggression to break into someone's property and steal their secrets (hacking should not qualify as breaking unless the hacker alters some physical configuration of the victim's property, i.e. cutting a wire, drilling a hole, etc.) Information that has been kept secret should be treated like property and its theft should be treated as a crime. But once you publish something, you've relinquished all claims on it.
ClaytonB:It should be considered an act of plunder/aggression to break into someone's property and steal their secrets (hacking should not qualify as breaking unless the hacker alters some physical configuration of the victim's property, i.e. cutting a wire, drilling a hole, etc.) Information that has been kept secret should be treated like property and its theft should be treated as a crime. But once you publish something, you've relinquished all claims on it.
hackers always do though, arent they changing the orientation of physical magnetic 'switches' on the harddrives of their victims ?
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
Yes, but in that respect, they're not breaking. What I'm pointing out is that braindead politicians and laws like the DMCA assume that it makes sense to criminalize "violation of the intended use" of something. This is absurd. If you put your computer on a network and put a notice up that says, when you log in, "Only John Doe is authorized to access data on this computer, all other access is prohibited" then, on the braindead view, it should be criminal for a hacker to proceed since everything he does after that is a violation of the intended use of the system.
This is retarded. It's like saying that it should be illegal for someone to take some property you abandoned out in the woods because you placed a sign on it saying "This property belongs to John Doe, do not remove from here." For something to be yours, you must take measures to safeguard it. If you do not keep your data secret, you have nobody to blame but yourself. It's just like Hollywood stars who complain about photographers snapping pictures of them in compromising positions in public - if you don't want photographs of yourself, stay indoors on your own property and pull the blinds. Otherwise, quit whining.