Political Theory

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

Eugene — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:04:53 GMT

This is how I see contracts being applied to property:

I see it as a form of NDA. If you produced certain information and condition the release of this information on certain actions, you should be able to do so. So for instance if you produce a software program you should be able to release it as a property defined as the following: "Window 7 for use but not for sale". So even though physically you release property that can be sold, officially, and logically you release only that part of the software which can be used but not sold. So although it might be possible to sell the software, logically it should not be possible, because that software program is a conditional property, it comes with certain conditions. In the legal sense it is not even theoretically possible to sell such software program because that software program is not defined as property that can be sold.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

MaikU — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:14:50 GMT

The scarcity/rivalry argument. I think this is just irrelevant. Once you accept the notion that property can have a contractual agreement attached to it, it is irrelevant whether this property is scarce or not.

Once you accept, that IP can only work with contracts you demolished current IP instantly. Contracts only bind two parties who signed them. Thanks.

But most importantly as intellectual property becomes more and more valuable at the expense of physical property, protection of this property becomes ever more vital.

But that just plain wrong! The opposite is true. "Intellectual property" becomes more and more useless due to the Internet almost no cost of copying it. Where is value in something that is INFINITE?

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

John James — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:35:13 GMT

Eugene:
Having said that, I will give you a list of several anti-IP arguments which I don't find plausible.

So now we're saying "a law is good and should be implemented until you can present a good enough reason not to"?

This is a sort of "guilty until proven innocent" way of reframing the debate, in which you begin with the assumption that IP is legitimate, and anyone against it must make a case of such. It's a little like the more common tactic made by IP advocates of assuming that things covered by IP laws [e.g. ideas, patterns] are actual property in the first place. Except that in that second case you make a sort of "begging the question" argument, in which it is claimed that those things are property and should be protected as such, because they are called "property" and are protected as such...

Whereas in this case you're pretending as if the anti-IP person is for something. This is just like statists who, as Kinsella said "insinuate the presumption that the anarchist is for something, and thus needs to prove it before we abandon the current (statist) order and “adopt” the system known as anarchy."

As he said "This approach tries to color anarchy as just one of many prima facie equally valid competing possible systems. Anarchists have the burden of proving we should “adopt” it just like a socialist bears the burden of proving we should adopt socialism."

As you'll see, that's exactly what this entire list is. Not a single whisper of a positive argument in support of IP...just a bunch of irrelevant drivel masquerading as some sort of refutation, riddled with the same errors that bring you to your fallacious conclusion.

1. The supposed arbitrariness of IP laws. As I said physical property laws are also arbitrary. You can't have a single elegant law for every kind of property. There are a lot of boundary issues. That's why we need courts to come up with common sense solutions to seemingly arbitrary problems.

Your entire premise of physical property laws being arbitrary is a false one. Let's go back to the rhetoricals you thought were so damaging to property law: What does sound have to do with physical property? Pollution qualifies as a tort when it's a tort (duh). There is no question of whether or not something is pollution. This is something you have made up in your mind (or to help your argument). The question is whether or not someone else's rights have been demonstrably violated. And of course pollution is a tough subject. But just because of the inherent difficulty in proving a tort through pollution, it does not make a case for IP. None of anything you said has anything to do with making your case. It does not support IP in the slightest.

As for the air rights (and ground rights) see

Hoppe, 1993. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in
Political Economy and Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer

Rothbard, Murray N. 1973. For a New Liberty, Macmillan, New York;
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty.asp

Kinsella, Stephan. 2003. “A libertarian theory of contract: title transfer,
binding promises, and inalienability” Journal of Libertarian Studies 17, no.
2, Spring, pp. 11–37; www.mises.org/journals/jls/17_2/17_2_2.pdf

Block, Walter v. Richard Epstein. 2005. “Debate on Eminent Domain.”
NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 1144–69

2. The scarcity/rivalry argument. I think this is just irrelevant. Once you accept the notion that property can have a contractual agreement attached to it, it is irrelevant whether this property is scarce or not.

So first scarcity didn't matter because "in the future physical property will be trivial"...and now that that argument has been called out for the useless nonsense it is, you're changing over to "well...contracts could make non-scarce objects scarce...so...uh...yeah."

Again...how in the hell is this an argument in favor of IP?

3. The argument that IP laws prohibit you to do certain things with your property. This is wrong too. You can't forge a signature with your pen or stick that pen into someone's eye even without IP laws. Moreover with IP laws nothing is being prohibited, since without the creator of the content which you distributed, that content wouldn't even exist. So you don't prohibit anything, yon don't limit any liberty. How can you prohibit something that the distributor couldn't even do before?

This might possibly be the worst defense of anything I've ever read. Seriously.

First of all, forging a signature would be fraud. And depending on the circumstances, stabbing someone is either a tort or a crime. Either way it is an act of aggression, and a violation of the rights of another human being to be secure in his person. No one ever argued that anyone should be able to do anything with their own property up to and including physically stabbing someone. That has got to be the most idiotic strawman ever constructed. Seriously...fraud and violence. Those are basically the only two legitimate limitations on one's actions in libertarian theory.

And not only are you trying to claim as though anyone ever argued that those limits were illegitimate (seriously I can't even believe I'm having to write this), but to top it off, you're actually using those examples as a sort of "me too" argument in favor of actual illegitimate restrictions on freedom. First the implication is "well you're not allowed to stab someone with your pen, so it's not like you have free reign with your property anyway". And most idiotic of all, you try to use these legit restrictions to claim that IP somehow doesn't prohibit you to do things with your own property?

You essentially state:

"The argument that IP laws prohibit you to do certain things with your property is wrong. You can't do certain things with your property even without IP laws."

So...I could say "chaining you to a chair doesn't prohibit you from physically doing things. You couldn't fly around like a bird even if you weren't chained to a chair."

Next your argument becomes: you're not prohibiting anything by preventing someone from writing a story about young wizards and witches who go away to a magical school to learn their craft. Why? Because without J.K. Rowling, this idea wouldn't exist. So by prohibiting someone from writing about it, you're not prohibiting someone from writing about it. Because before, the person couldn't write about them because they didn't exist. (It's not as if someone else could have thought of that idea...only Rowling could come up with that). So even though (without IP laws) someone could write such a story, your not preventing them from doing it by preventing them from doing it...Because even though they can now, before they couldn't. So you're not prohibiting anything. Get it?

And again, as if any of this even resembles any sort of argument in support of IP.

4. The argument that it is a monopoly given by the state. First of all state is not required to prosecute for IP infringement. Second of all the only thing that is necessary to do is to stamp your album/movie/software with copyrights warning, that's it. You don't need to register it with the state or something of that sort.

Are you...are you kidding me? You're going to argue that IP is not a legal monopoly? You're seriously going to try that nonsense? You just got through saying Rowling should "retain complete control of the information she produced"...including being able to prevent others from using their own property to reproduce it. No one else can even use the name "Harry Potter" without her consent, and you're going to argue there is no monopoly power?

And what the hell is this nonsense about stamping work for copyright? Besides being totally wrong, what the hell does the fact that you get a state granted legal monopoly protection without having to ask for it have to do with it not being a state granted legal monopoly protection? In other words, is your entire argument seriously that a monopoly is not a monopoly unless you ask for it?

And again, as if any of this even resembles any sort of argument in support of IP.

5. The argument that IP harms progress. It is true that current patent law might do more harm than good, but this is not the case with copyrights. For example copyrights for a movie do not in any way hinder competition. A movie is unique and non extensible, so without IP laws the only competition would be to sell the movie, which is hardly why you would want competition. But most importantly as intellectual property becomes more and more valuable at the expense of physical property, protection of this property becomes ever more vital. Even today if IP did not exist, the movies and music industry would be hurt badly, the software and drug industries as well. It is clear to me that IP is absolutely necessary to sustain the capitalistic mode of production in the future, especially with the progress of nano-technology.

So because you think a copyright on movie isn't harmful because you can't renew the copyright [not even postive that's true] and you think it only prevents someone else from selling it [positive that's not true], then that's an argument in favor of copyright. This seriously has to be the most pathetic argument I've ever heard.

Next you fall back to your "in the future it will be more necessary because physical property will be trivial" nonsense, and then you resort to the old fallacy of "the industry would suffer if people who work in it couldn't have a monopoly on their work"...and you even extend this same nonsense to the pharmaceutical industry as well...even after you just got through saying patents should be abolished. And just in case there was any doubt of where you were coming from, you explicitly state the most common fallacy that "without IP laws technonolgy wouldn't advance." Please provide any evidence of this and then we can talk.

It's funny. Movies and medicines were two of the first things listed in the "There are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property" article. [You really haven't read a single thing anyone has suggested, have you?]

And yet again, as if any of this even resembles any sort of argument in support of IP.

6. The argument that once you have IP laws everything in the world would be prohibited, including speech and language itself. This is just ridiculous. Anything can be abused, but that's why we have courts to define what is exactly intellectual property, just as we would have courts to decide what is pollution, what are the rights of a child, or what is intent.

No one said "everything would be prohibited." Again you're either intentionally making up strawmen or you're unconsciously looking for any possible ground you think you can stand on. You have already admitted that arbitrary limits and exceptions have to be placed on these "rights" you claim to exist out of "creation". And why is that? Because your entire premise is so ridiculous that even a blind man could see how stupid it would be if you didn't do that. Even you would readily admit that you either limit these rights in scope or time arbitrarily, or you extent them to infinity, choking off rights in real things and forcing life and commerce to a screeching halt.

And yet again, as if any of this even resembles any sort of argument in support of IP.

I'd like to ask again, that you provide a coherent argument with some actual support for anything you say. "Arguments in favor of IP" is in the title of this thread, and in almost two weeks and two pages you've done nothing but go on ad nauseam with your futuristic nonsense (which isn't an argument so much as a statement of belief), derailed the discussion into a debate about homesteading, and attempted to change the subject further by simply claiming arguments against IP aren't good enough...and all the meanwhile completely ignoring most of what anyone actually says, not bothering to read any of the resources anyone suggests, and continuing to present the same error-laden nonsense over and over again.

So once again, please provide a coherent argument in support of IP.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

Eugene — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:45:07 GMT

This discussion helped me to clarify better my for-IP stance, but indeed I'm not sure if it helped you or not. You probably heard all the arguments for and against IP and already made up your mind, so I don't see why would you change it now, its not that I can bring new arguments, I assume most things were already said.

Having said that, I will give you a list of several anti-IP arguments which I don't find plausible.

1. The supposed arbitrariness of IP laws. As I said physical property laws are also arbitrary. You can't have a single elegant law for every kind of property. There are a lot of boundary issues. That's why we need courts to come up with common sense solutions to seemingly arbitrary problems.

2. The scarcity/rivalry argument. I think this is just irrelevant. Once you accept the notion that property can have a contractual agreement attached to it, it is irrelevant whether this property is scarce or not.

3. The argument that IP laws prohibit you to do certain things with your property. This is wrong too. You can't forge a signature with your pen or stick that pen into someone's eye even without IP laws. Moreover with IP laws nothing is being prohibited, since without the creator of the content which you distributed, that content wouldn't even exist. So you don't prohibit anything, yon don't limit any liberty. How can you prohibit something that the distributor couldn't even do before?

4. The argument that it is a monopoly given by the state. First of all state is not required to prosecute for IP infringement. Second of all the only thing that is necessary to do is to stamp your album/movie/software with copyrights warning, that's it. You don't need to register it with the state or something of that sort.

5. The argument that IP harms progress. It is true that current patent law might do more harm than good, but this is not the case with copyrights. For example copyrights for a movie do not in any way hinder competition. A movie is unique and non extensible, so without IP laws the only competition would be to sell the movie, which is hardly why you would want competition. But most importantly as intellectual property becomes more and more valuable at the expense of physical property, protection of this property becomes ever more vital. Even today if IP did not exist, the movies and music industry would be hurt badly, the software and drug industries as well. It is clear to me that IP is absolutely necessary to sustain the capitalistic mode of production in the future, especially with the progress of nano-technology.

6. The argument that once you have IP laws everything in the world would be prohibited, including speech and language itself. This is just ridiculous. Anything can be abused, but that's why we have courts to define what is exactly intellectual property, just as we would have courts to decide what is pollution, what are the rights of a child, or what is intent.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

MaikU — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:44:37 GMT

Physical property by definition has clear boundaries, it has shape, it is visible in plain light and it is rarely arbitrary (maybe in case of rivers, seas or land, that's why I am skeptical about homesteading concept). While mere concepts or ideas or patterns are just zeros and ones and is not rivalrous and everyone can use them at the same time without preventing the "author" from using it himself. How it is possible to distinguish one IP infringement from another? Why you don't address my point that owning ideas mean owning other people? How is it not true?

Just as John said, either provide coherent argument or just stop repeating same old mantra. I am personally tired of this discussion which seems to lead nowhere.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

John James — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:00:38 GMT

Eugene:
The boundaries of IP are as arbitrary as the boundaries of physical property. How much sound can you emit without it being considered aggression, how much molecules should be considered pollution, how much can your neighbor block the sun or how high can the airplane fly above. This is all arbitrary.

Again you show how little you know about any of this subject matter.

Obviously IP does not protect every word you produce. I see it as a form of NDA. If you produced certain information and condition the release of this information on certain actions, you should be able to do so., So for instance if you produce a software program you should be able to release it as a propery defined as the following: "Window 7 for use but not for sale". So even though physically you release property that can be sold, officially, and logically you release only that part of the software which can be used but not sold. As far as I know this is how Rothbard saw it as well.

Can you provide a coherent argument with some actual support for anything you say? Or are we just going to continue to get nothing but your personal feelings on all these topics?

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

Eugene — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:00:17 GMT

The boundaries of IP are as arbitrary as the boundaries of physical property. How much sound can you emit without it being considered aggression, how much molecules should be considered pollution, how much can your neighbor block the sun or how high can the airplane fly above. This is all arbitrary.

Obviously IP does not protect every word you produce. I see it as a form of NDA. If you produced certain information and condition the release of this information on certain actions, you should be able to do so., So for instance if you produce a software program you should be able to release it as a propery defined as the following: "Window 7 for use but not for sale". So even though physically you release property that can be sold, officially, and logically you release only that part of the software which can be used but not sold. As far as I know this is how Rothbard saw it as well.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

MaikU — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:07:17 GMT

Eugene:

To return to the IP.

Copyrights are a must though. A person has a right to information he produced, information that wouldn't exist without him. So if J.K Rowling wrote a Harry Potter book she is the owner of the content of this book. Without her this book wouldn't exist so she does not deprive anyone of anything when she retains complete control of the information she produced.

In the future physical property will probably become trivial, and the only thing valuable will be intellectual property. Without copyrights the world will resort to socialism in which the most intelligent and capable people will be utilized in jobs that do not require this level of talent and intelligence. Most valuable work will be done either for free or subsidized by donations. Incentives will be a lot smaller. Progress will be seriously hindered just as it was hindered in the Soviet Union because of inefficient allocation of resources and weak incentives.

There is no right to "information" because it is all trivial and absurd. If I know what you know, you can't prevent me from using what I happen to know just because you claim, that you came up with certain idea first. You can not homeasted ideas. Come on, we are back to basics here. Seems that you learned nothing from these discussions because you are repeating same old mantra: IP is must IP is must, but fail to provide coherent theory HOW it can be enforced, how it can be distinguished from other peoples' IP and more importantly, what are exact boundaries of IP. Because it was pointed out thousands of times that IP boundaries are completely arbitrary and vague. How many words should be different before two books can be claimed to be different and not infriging anyone's IP? Talking about "unique ideas" is also vague tactics, because almost everything (if not just everything) can be proven to be derivative work from previous ideas and patterns.

Your future prophesies are worthless here. I won't even go there and won't try to refute your mere subjective imagination about how future would look like.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

John James — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:48:11 GMT

Eugene:
IP is important, though patents are seriously overused. Actually I would prefer not to have patents at all. If two people have made the same invention both should be able to sell and make money out of it. With patents only one of them can. This is unfair.

Even when you reach the right conclusion you get there for the wrong reason. You've really gotta stop using that word.

Copyrights are a must though. A person has a right to information he produced...

What does that mean? You mean a person has a right to prevent others from using their own physical property in such a way that resembles something he made up? A claim on and monopolistic control of everyone else's property. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Without her this book wouldn't exist so she does not deprive anyone of anything when she retains complete control of the information she produced.

The problem is you're arguing that she should have control over what other people do with their own resources. When you say she "retains complete control of the information she produced", what you mean to say is that she controls what other people can do with their own ink and paper, with their own voice, or with their own video camera. This certainly deprives others. You said yourself that two people could come up with the same thing independently. Story ideas or characters only have to be even remotely similar for someone to cry copyright infringment and create countless hours and countless dollars worth of wasted time and resources dealing with such nonsense. Here's a perfect example.

Copyright deprives others of the freedom to create freely, without fear of accidentally creating something that is too similar to something someone else claims to have come up with...(when if you really wanted to get down to it, every single damn story ever told could be gutted down to roughly one of five basic themes...and then even further to a single formula...and with the way these lawsuits come about, every single character could be boiled into roughly 50 different archetypes. Maybe even less. If I expended even minimal effort I could easily build a case for infringment against anything you write or film or say that would be just as good as a lot of the lawsuits out there.)

You claim copyright deprives no one...on the contrary, it is complete intellectual freedom that deprives no one. Someone taking words someone else has written, and using their own paper and ink, creating their own personal copy of it, doesn't take the words away from the first person. He still has everything he always had before. His idea is not missing from his head. His story has not disappeared from his own paper. It's all still there. He hasn't lost anything he had before. The "owner" still has his property and ideas.

And of course your predictable argument will be: "The first man has lost potential profit!!!" [Which of course, there is no evidence for, and anywhere you do find evidence, it actually points to the opposite.] So that argument dies. Then you'll say: "He created that story! He has a right to sell it!." And I'll say of course he does. Nothing is stopping him. So you try something else: "But he created it! The other guy didn't do anything! He just learned from and emulated someone else! And you're saying he should be able to make money off of someone else's idea! That's not fair!"

Putting aside the whole meaningless notion of "fairness" [what's fair? As Milton Friedman said: "Who deserves what? Nobody deserves anything."]...even putting aside all these nebulous relative terms like that, which have absolutely no place in serious discussion, I'd say you're exactly right. All that second guy did was learn and emulate. That's all IP infringment is. That's why every argument you make in favor of IP is wrought with exceptions and limits in scope or time, that are completely arbitrary, and based on completely flawed premises...because you can't take your arguments all the way through to their full, natural, ultimate conclusions, because then you'd end up preventing everyone from doing anything without paying some copyright holder his juice for your use of his phrase "Thank you."

Even when you shy away from the utilitarian arguments (which have absolutely no evidence to support them) into more philosophical territory, the notions used are just as littered with the same errors heard again and again....what Kinsella eloquently called "a deontological-Marxoid-utilitarian hodge-podge masquerading as libertarian-Lockean principle (even Locke didn’t think his natural rights theory included IP)"....(didn't you try to use Locke in favor or your arguments in this thread? Or had you already derailed your own thread into a different subject by that time?)

In the future physical property will probably become trivial, and the only thing valuable will be intellectual property. Without copyrights the world will resort to socialism in which the most intelligent and capable people will be utilized in jobs that do not require this level of talent and intelligence. Most valuable work will be done either for free or subsidized by donations. Incentives will be a lot smaller. Progress will be seriously hindered just as it was hindered in the Soviet Union because of inefficient allocation of resources and weak incentives.

That has to be one of the most asinine things I've ever heard. You actually sound like a TVP-er.

If you're not going to at least do the courtesy of reading any sort treatment of length on the subject (such as Against Intellectual Monopoly or Against Intellectual Property, the latter of which has already been recommended to you and is made freely accessible in multiple textual forms, as well as audio here as well as on iTunesU), then you could at least read a few of the literally scores of articles available on the subject on this very website and at least try to come up with an original argument (wait, are you infringing on someone else's ideas on why ideas are property, subject to exclusive ownership?)

There are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property

The Worst Argument for IP Ever?

And here' a nice one in light of this final paragraph of yours:

Objectivists: “All Property is Intellectual Property”

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

Eugene — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:46:57 GMT

To return to the IP.

IP is important, though patents are seriously overused. Actually I would prefer not to have patents at all. If two people have made the same invention both should be able to sell and make money out of it. With patents only one of them can. This is unfair.

Copyrights are a must though. A person has a right to information he produced, information that wouldn't exist without him. So if J.K Rowling wrote a Harry Potter book she is the owner of the content of this book. Without her this book wouldn't exist so she does not deprive anyone of anything when she retains complete control of the information she produced.

In the future physical property will probably become trivial, and the only thing valuable will be intellectual property. Without copyrights the world will resort to socialism in which the most intelligent and capable people will be utilized in jobs that do not require this level of talent and intelligence. Most valuable work will be done either for free or subsidized by donations. Incentives will be a lot smaller. Progress will be seriously hindered just as it was hindered in the Soviet Union because of inefficient allocation of resources and weak incentives.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

MaikU — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:15:06 GMT

Homesteading is wrong, ergo IP is correct? :D

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

John James — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 22:46:25 GMT

Has anyone else noticed this thread about "arguments in favor of IP" has turned into one about the details of homesteading? I guess it's a lot easier to argue when you focus on things other than your baseless argument.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

MaikU — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:26:04 GMT

z1235:

MaikU:

I can take a shit for 2 hours, but does my excrements have value? I doubt it...

Valuable or not, it'd hard to argue that it wasn't yours.

yeah, and would have to clean it myself :/

Eugene:

The problem with fencing or the "first come first serve" basis is that it is extremely easy to claim ownership. So the first person who would go to the moon could claim ownership of the moon.

You can't. For the same reason Columbus couldn't claim ownership of America's continent. One can only claim ownership of what he uses (previously unused). Fencing is only a mark of a claim but I personally doubt that it could be considered legitimate ownership (fencing 100 square miles of the Moon, for example). Homesteading is problematic concept, that's why I am looking at it skeptically, but then again, there is no other better theory..

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

John James — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:57:31 GMT

Eugene:
The problem with fencing or the "first come first serve" basis is that it is extremely easy to claim ownership. So the first person who would go to the moon could claim ownership of the moon. But why stop here? Why do you even have to go to the land to claim it yours, you can just declare it and that's it. So the first person who declared Mars to be his would be the just owner. Obviously this makes no sense. In the same way just by arriving first to the land doesn't make sense. Its just too easy and arbitrary to acquire ownership this way. Besides if you favor the "first come first serve" principle, then you still value labor, after all you don't give ownership to the first person who declared the land to be his, but only to the person who labored to get there. I value labor more than you. I believe it is not enough just to arrive to the place, you need to do something more, I'm not sure what should it be, but in order to acquire the right to exclude other people from a big piece of land, you'll need to do something substantial.

Re: Two arguments in favor of IP

mikachusetts — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:42:45 GMT

The problem with fencing or the "first come first serve" basis is that it is extremely easy to claim ownership. So the first person who would go to the moon could claim ownership of the moon. But why stop here? Why do you even have to go to the land to claim it yours, you can just declare it and that's it.

Does a sole declaration of ownership mean de facto ownership? Sometimes. But usually its backed up by a powerful state. Like I've said, I'm not sure what you think ownership is, but I'm describing it as the legally recognized sole controller of property.

Besides if you favor the "first come first serve" principle, then you still value labor, after all you don't give ownership to the first person who declared the land to be his, but only to the person who labored to get there. I value labor more than you.

How much value you or I place upon labor in the act of homesteading has no effect upon what would be most likely. I personally think it is insufficient to say "I own the Moon" and then recieve legal title. I personally think it is insufficient to land on one spot of the moon and claim ownership of the whole moon. But its sooo unlikely that those claims would be legally recognized (sans state) that I see no reason to adress the issue. This doesn't just go for the moon btw. No one is going to accept wild claims of ownership over the grand canyon or the atlantic ocean.

I believe it is not enough just to arrive to the place, you need to do something more, I'm not sure what should it be, but in order to acquire the right to exclude other people from a big piece of land, you'll need to do something substantial.

What you believe will have little effect over how things will be. Even if you ran a title company, you would not be able to compete against firms which used less strict criteria for granting title. If I wanted to build a mall on a lot, and acme title co. said "We will protect your claim if you put a fence around the lot and a sign that says when you will start construction" while Eugene's title co. said "Until the mall is x% completed, the lot is not legally in your name" who do you think I am going to go to?

Regarding exclusion: A land developer is unlikely to hold pieces of unused land for too long. He is either going to build on it or sell it. I think sometimes people think that large firms are going to sweep up huge tracts of land and just sit on them; just because they could doesn't mean they would. It would cost a fortune to survery that much land so that a title could be registered, then the costs of excluding others, would mean that they would be losing money on unused land. Any profit seeking firm would either build on it, or sell it, but not hold it.