Intellectual Property (IP) & Theft

[dualstow]

Continued from the Coronavirus thread:

When a large fraction of the users of a product resort to loopholes/scams or the black market (e.g., pirating), it generally indicates that the seller is charging a price above the true market price (i.e., the price is not accurately reflecting the true value that most customers are placing on the product).

In the case of WSJ, they are simply charging too much for their product. They’d make more money by charging a bit less, and as an added benefit, fewer people would be tempted to use loopholes/scams to get their product.

Sorry, I'm just now getting caught up on this thread, so I'm just now bumping this back-and-forth from a few pages ago, as it's actually a subject that I'm extremely passionate about.

I'm generally in agreement with Tortoise's comments, but I'm excited to provide a much more verbose perspective on it ...

FWIW, I'm a software developer and a "creative", but I also believe that the entire concept of "Intellectual Property" is immoral (recommended: read some of Stephan Kinsella's writing on this subject). This combination is probably pretty rare, as my beliefs about IP can seem opposed to my ability to profit off of software or creative work I might develop. I like to think that it gives me a more objective perspective on the subject.

When I was a kid I "pirated" games for my Commodore 64 and Amiga. Later in life I would rip rented DVDs and even Blu-ray discs. I don't do those things currently, partially because I'm older and better-off financially (so some of those things I might have balked at the prices of wouldn't seem as expensive now, but also I would have more to "lose" by getting in trouble for it). But I'm also buying more software and movies now because the prices (and licensing terms) are a lot more reasonable than they used to be, IMO. There are a lot of great apps for my iPhone, iPad, or MacBook that seem "cheap" compared to what software cost years ago. And I can buy an app for my iPhone and be "officially allowed" to install it on my wife's and/or daughter's iPhone without paying any extra. Apple makes it difficult (impossible?) to "jail break" an iPhone these days, so I don't know if pirating iPhone apps is even a thing these days but, even if it were, why would I go to the trouble (and potential legal risk) just to save the $1-5 that most apps cost these days? (and many don't cost anything, and are instead supported by ad revenue)

Movies are similar, but not quite as good of a deal. I buy most of my movies via iTunes these days, and watch them via my Apple TV (streaming media box). I find most movies these days to be crap, but I still find myself paying $20 to "own" the movie, versus $4 (or whatever it usually is) to rent it. At my age, and especially after a cocktail and some wine and a late dinner, I find myself falling asleep at some point during the movie. So I've been burned in the past by renting a movie, only to not have time to finish watching it until after the 48-hour rental window had passed. I figure also that we might have been willing to go to a movie theater and pay more than $20 for 3 of us to see it, not including the overpriced popcorn and drinks. Also, if I was a person who traveled often (I'm not) Apple makes it both super-easy and permissible to download that iTunes movie onto my laptop or iPad to watch on the plane.

But movies still aren't a "great" deal compared to my iPhone/iPad/MacBook apps. $20 for a movie I might not watch again for another year (if ever)? So it doesn't surprise me that there still *are* a significant number of people who find ways to circumvent this by ripping Redbox rentals (where you're still contributing "something" financially, spending time/effort to circumvent the copy protection, and then spending money on extra disk storage to store your library locally), or who find these movies online (which is often a mixed bag quality-wise, and where you're adding some legal risk to yourself).

Getting into somewhat fuzzier territory, I also share my iTunes account with my brother, and he shares his with me. He's 10 years older than me and lives in another state. He has a huge iTunes library that he's amassed over the years, and I've got a smaller (but still pretty large) iTunes library of my own. On my Apple TV I can very easily swap between using my account or his account...I don't even need to re-enter the passwords (it saves multiple accounts). I'm not sure if Apple added this feature to intentionally "support" this use case or not. Either way, I feel no guilt about it. If he came to my house to visit, it would seem perfectly reasonable to expect that he should be able to log into my Apple TV in order to access his movie library.

So, my point being that a lot of the "reasons" why I might have been more pro-piracy in the past have been resolved amicably these days.

Getting back to the original topic of the WSJ online: I mentioned that I don't really have a whole lot of desire to even read their articles. It sounds like they may have better content than most, so I wouldn't necessarily mind reading their content. But it wouldn't be worth it to me to pay $20/month. $1/month? Maybe, maybe not even that. If I had a stronger desire to read their content, I could see paying $1 or more to read it, but still can't ever imagine paying $20/month to read it. YMMV. Do you think they'd rather that I pay $1/month to read it versus giving them $0/month to not read it?

I remember reading a while back a story about how (if I'm remembering right) Microsoft was selling some of their software for dirt cheap in certain places in the world, because software piracy was so rampant. They would rather get something, rather than nothing, and it wasn't "costing" them anything other than "potential" profits (which they weren't going to get anyway). Software can be easily/cheaply (even freely) duplicated.

On the flip side, I want to be clear that I have no qualm with a company that decides to charge top dollar for their software, locks it down with copy protection and limited "rights" for the consumer, and charges regular upgrade or annual licensing fees. That's their prerogative. But I also wouldn't shed a tear for them if I learned that someone cracked their copy protection and put it out on the internet for others to download for free. If it was a popular enough app for a large enough audience, it would surprise me if such an alternate source like that wasn't available, as it just seems like common sense that such a "market" would emerge. If it's a niche app catering to customers with deep pockets, and where support is often necessary, it might be in their best interest to continue charging what they're charging. If there's a potentially huge market of cost-conscious users who don't need much, if any, support, then I'd count them as being stupid for stubbornly "overcharging" for their software, as they'd make out better if they lowered their price or, better still, figured out a different pricing/feature structure, where they could sell to the smaller segment at a higher price, and the other segment at a low price.

I make a distinction between "Intellectual Property" which is not "scarce" and thus should not be considered to be "actual" property, versus actual property which *is* scarce. If you build a bicycle and I steal it, you no longer have your bicycle. I do. That's clear theft. If I make a copy of your bicycle, you still have your bicycle. You've just "lost out" on the ability to profit from selling me one of your bicycles, and you never had a natural right to have me buy your bicycle in the first place. Preventing me (via man-made/enforced IP laws) from making my own copy is actually immoral and a form of slavery, as you are infringing upon my natural rights to combine the resources I own with my skills/time however I see fit.

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but I also believe that the entire concept of "Intellectual Property" is immoral

why

I edited my post several times, so I'm not sure if this was a sentence I added/revised after you started to quote it, or if you just left it out of your quote for some reason, but I offered a simple explanation/analogy when I stated:
"Preventing me (via man-made/enforced IP laws) from making my own copy is actually immoral and a form of slavery, as you are infringing upon my natural rights to combine the resources I own with my skills/time however I see fit."

What if you stole apples from a commercial orchard, but didn’t damage the tree. Which would that be closer to?

I would consider that to be theft. Whoever owns the apple orchard owns whatever level of production that apple tree produces, so by taking one apple from the tree, I've stolen one apple from the owner of the orchard. I've also likely trespassed.

A more interesting thought excercise, IMO, is this one:

You have a special breed of apple trees that produce especially delicious apples. Maybe you spent a good amount of time cross-breeding different types of apples to come up with that special new type of apple. You sell me an apple. I take that apple and its seeds and am able to grow my own apple tree and eventually sell that same breed of apples myself. It is my natural right to do that. If you attempt to prevent me from doing so, you are, in fact, the one who is infringing on *my* natural rights.

Are you making a copy of a customer’s bicycle, or the guy who put his life’s work into designing that particular bicycle?

It doesn't matter, IMO. I have a right to make a replica (and modify the design, if so desired, or not) of your bicycle. If you want that bicycle design to be a secret that no one else is allowed to copy, then you have a right to try to keep it a secret (e.g., only ride it on your own property, hoping that no one else can see it). You have a right to make more of them and sell them, but you don't have a natural right to prevent me from copying the design, once it's "out in the wild." As an entrepreneur, you have several ways that you can go about trying to maximize your profit (and "ownership" of the design), including:
1) Be first to market. It will take some amount of time for competitors to come along, copy the design, and start selling them on their own.
2) Establish your brand as being one where you make it well known that you were the originator of the design, you use the best parts, have great quality control, and are constantly improving upon the design.

If you don't like those options, and don't see enough value in having a limited time window of selling your bicycles before someone else comes along and copies it and does a better job of profiting off of the design, then you have the right to not bother spending the effort to design it in the first place.

[stuper1]

If IP is immoral, then where is the incentive for say a pharmaceutical company to invest huge amounts of money to develop a new drug if they know that they are going to have to immediately share the profits with other companies who didn't invest a penny in the research that was needed? That latter scenario is the one that seems immoral to me. It seems to me like a lot of pharmaceutical research, and other types of research, would not get done if companies didn't have this profit motive.

Very possibly I am missing something. I have subscribed to Kinsella's podcast on CT's recommendation. I will have a listen. I just noticed that he's been a guest several times on the Tom Woods show, which I like a lot, so I imagine he's worth listening to.

[dualstow]

(CT-Scott) A more interesting thought excercise, IMO, is this one:

You have a special breed of apple trees that produce especially delicious apples. Maybe you spent a good amount of time cross-breeding different types of apples...

Although they’re totally pertinent to the discussion, I didn’t bring up Monsanto seeds or drug companies that have different prices in impoverished nations, simply because I’m not able to talk about everything at once. But, I’m sure that will be tackled. (Edit: didn’t see Stuper’s post until finishing up this entire post)

I’m just trying to get your ideas right and to not put words in your mouth for now. I don’t know exactly where I stand on this. I’m malleable. But, I think I lean towards IP theft is still theft, it’s as immoral as physical theft, and I have occasionally been guilty of it. I accept that I am immoral in that regard, however I do recycle and have never littered. :-)

The part that I can’t easily wrap my mind around is the distinction between actual property and IP, with actual property being called “scarce.” Is that jargon that comes from property law, and dollars are scarce even if you have a billion of them, or is it just being used casually?

In any case, I think about those anti-piracy ads for Hollywood in which they say if you pirate, you’re hurting the cameramen, the stagehands, etc. I tend to agree, even though I know piracy is rampant and unstoppable. I don’t think telling a camera operator, “Well, you have the right not to be in this line of work” is going to cut it, much less charges of enslavement.

I know a guy who argued that Disney’s copyrights on things like their version of Snow White should expire because “they have enough money.” I don’t think that’s what you mean, but it influenced me in the opposite direction, i.e. to be pro-IP, long ago.

I should mention: my most recent acts of piracy involved paying for something and then not being able to view it or hear it due to digital management rights snafus. For example, I rented something on a Mac mini and Apple locked it on me because apparently Mac minis can be used to broadcast something to a massive audience. They wanted me to study some help guide to work around it, but in the end I bootlegged it. Similarly, I used to pay for an internet radio channel and the app wasn’t working, so I obtained an illegal copy even while I was paying. Before that, true IP theft. For example I used to copy friends’ CDs to cassette, and do the same for them.

This slavery thing— I need to read up on it.
I guess I need to check out Kinsella. Where can I steal his book? I’m kidding. I would guess it’s freely available.

[CT-Scott]

dualstow, thanks for bringing this into it's own thread!

If IP is immoral, then where is the incentive for say a pharmaceutical company to invest huge amounts of money to develop a new drug if they know that they are going to have to immediately share the profits with other companies who didn't invest a penny in the research that was needed? That latter scenario is the one that seems immoral to me. It seems to me like a lot of pharmaceutical research, and other types of research, would not get done if companies didn't have this profit motive.

I was expecting someone to bring up this example. No offense, but I liken this to the "Who will build the roads?" question, often used against libertarians/anarchists. The simple answer, IMO, is "I don't know/care, but someone will figure it out."

A somewhat more thoughtful answer might be to point out that there once was a time in history when some amazing people developed some amazing cures for diseases, and there were no IP laws on the books back then. So, if IP laws were abolished today, the business model for developing drugs would certainly change. I suspect that, in many ways, it might change for the better for a lot of people. For a certain segment of people, the amount of money they might make under "the new rules" would very likely be far less than before. But I don't think "preserving one's way of making money" is a valid moral argument.

I'd like to think that many (most?) young people who first become interested in chemistry and finding cures/treatments for diseases, are doing so out of their own curiosity and passion for the subject, and aren't doing it "for the money." If it was no longer as lucrative of a business, I suspect that many of those same people would have still pursued that career. And a lot of creative business people will come up with new ways to make money related to the field.

I could ramble on longer on this, but I'll leave it at that for now.

[dualstow]

By the way, a week or so ago I mentioned that I used to download Louis CK’s shows from his official site. He had two guidelines for the web developers:

(1) Everything is five bucks
(2) No digital rights management (DRM)

He fought with his people over it and eventually won. This made it very easy to listen to his stuff and transfer it from desktop to laptop to iPod Touch and, yes, if you broke the honor system, to a friend.

I thought it was so cool. But it was his choice.

[stuper1]

Like Dualstow, I don't really know where I stand on this yet either. I'm looking forward to hearing some of Kinsella's podcasts.

I don't get the road-building analogy though. If I build a roadway, then I have something concrete to rent to people to get my money back. It's not an intellectual property situation.

If I spend a bunch of money researching how to come up with a new drug, and then the week after it comes out, every other company can make the same drug without having put the research in, where is the morality in that? I'm the one that put the time and money in. Doesn't morality indicate that I should get to profit off of putting that time and money in?

[vnatale]

I guess I need to check out Kinsella. Where can I steal his book? I’m kidding. I would guess it’s freely available.

Steal This Book by Hoffman, Abbie; Haber, Izack; Forcade, Tom; Cohen, Bert Published by Pirate Editions, Grove Press 7th (seventh) Printing edition (1971) Mass Market Paperback Mass Market Paperback

https://smile.amazon.com/Steal-This-Boo ... l_huc_item

Vinny

[Xan]

I know a guy who argued that Disney’s copyrights on things like their version of Snow White should expire because “they have enough money.” I don’t think that’s what you mean, but it influenced me in the opposite direction, i.e. to be pro-IP, long ago.

What about this argument: if the current copyright laws that Disney pushed for had been in effect back in 1939, they couldn't have made Snow White because it still would have been owned by the Brothers Grimm.

I believe at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, copyright was 14 years, with an option for renewing for an additional 14 years. How about going back to that? (Doesn't address patents etc.)

[CT-Scott]

I’m just trying to get your ideas right and to not put words in your mouth for now. I don’t know exactly where I stand on this. I’m malleable.

Thanks for adding this clarification. I appreciate it. And I'm happy to hear that you aren't completely dead-set in your opinion (all of us, myself included, should be open to being convinced of something opposite of what we currently believe).

But, I think I lean towards IP theft is still theft, it’s as immoral as physical theft, and I have occasionally been guilty of it. I accept that I am immoral in that regard, however I do recycle and have never littered. :-)

I get that it's been driven into us to believe that Intellectual Property is just another "type" of property. I also am skeptical that I'll ever see the situation change, so long as we are living in a world run by big governments / corporatocracy, where there's a vested interest in keeping IP laws in place.

The part that I can’t easily wrap my mind around is the distinction between actual property and IP, with actual property being called “scarce.” Is that jargon that comes from property law, and dollars are scarce even if you have a billion of them, or is it just being used casually?

I think this is a term I was first introduced to by Kinsella. He's written a lot on the subject, and he tends to get pretty "academic" in the discussions, whereas I like to think about, and write about things, in more "laymen's terms," especially since I have a goal of convincing regular folks about my opinion, and not just discussing it in an abstract sense among well-educated people. So, I may be missing a lot of the nuance of the term as Kinsella might define it, but I believe a simple way of thinking about the term "scarce" is that something is scarce if it can only be used by one person at a time.

In any case, I think about those anti-piracy ads for Hollywood in which they say if you pirate, you’re hurting the cameramen, the stagehands, etc. I tend to agree, even though I know piracy is rampant and unstoppable. I don’t think telling a camera operator, “Well, you have the right not to be in this line of work” is going to cut it, much less charges of enslavement.

Yes, it sounds cold and cruel, and I'm certainly sympathetic to anyone who makes a living doing something where abolishing IP laws would cause them to be out of work. But I don't think that's a legitimate reason for *not* abolishing IP laws, if/when you become convinced that IP laws are, indeed, immoral.

I know a guy who argued that Disney’s copyrights on things like their version of Snow White should expire because “they have enough money.” I don’t think that’s what you mean, but it influenced me in the opposite direction, i.e. to be pro-IP, long ago.

I'm glad you brought this example up, because it gives me an opportunity to discuss one of the biggest "tells" IMO that Intellectual Property is not "real/actual" property. If I own something physical, I should (and do) have a right to own it for however long I want. I can pass it on to my heirs, who can pass it on to their heirs, and it can remain owned by the family forever. It just makes perfect sense, doesn't it? IP laws don't apply the same logic to IP, though. There's a "time limit" for how long you're allowed to own it. Corruption behind the scenes can often allow a big megacorp like Disney to find creative ways (or pay off politicians) to allow them to circumvent those rules, but for the average person, there are time limits where eventually the IP goes into the "public domain." Those rules don't apply to physical property. If you want me to consider IP to be "real" property, it should get the same benefits for everyone. If I invent the first bicycle, I should be allowed to own the rights to all bicycles forever. If I never want to allow anyone else to make a bicycle at all (and aren't even willing to let them build a bicycle even if they're willing to pay me a licensing fee), I should be allowed to do that, shouldn't I? Of course, you can see why if IP laws were as restrictive as "real/actual" property rights/laws, it could cause all innovation to come to a grinding halt. So, they know they *can't* make them as restrictive as "real/actual" property rights/laws. Nevertheless, it serves as a great example of how the two things are not comparable.

Another example: Clothing designs are not eligible for protection under IP laws. Why not? Shouldn't they get the same protections? Same goes for food recipes.

This slavery thing— I need to read up on it.
I guess I need to check out Kinsella. Where can I steal his book? I’m kidding. I would guess it’s freely available.

I'll try to dig up some links and post back with them. The "slavery" aspect is something I don't think I saw discussed a lot, but I think I saw some brief mention of it (or something like it) and it's something that really clicked with me, which is why I like to use the analogy. I look at it as something where we anti-IP-ers can take the moral high ground, rather than simply coming across as someone who is just too cheap to pay for things.

[CT-Scott]

I don't get the road-building analogy though. If I build a roadway, then I have something concrete to rent to people to get my money back. It's not an intellectual property situation.

Sorry if I wasn't clear...I didn't intend to equate roads with IP. I was simply saying that asking "Who will build the roads?" is the same as asking "How can I make a living if you abolish IP laws?" The point being that in a utopian libertarian/anarchic world, based on a belief that the existence of a government limiting my natural rights is immoral, the fact that governments may or may not be particularly good or well-suited to building roads doesn't matter. If abolishing the government is the correct/moral decision, people will figure out how to handle long-range transportation, etc. Similarly, if IP laws are immoral, then it isn't my job to figure out how some people currently making their living in a way that requires IP laws to exist will now be able to make a living absent IP laws. If IP laws are immoral, we need to abolish them, and some otherwise-innocent folks will need to adjust to that new world. I'm confident that the world won't end and that people will go on inventing new things, even if they can't profit as much, or in the same way, as before.

If I spend a bunch of money researching how to come up with a new drug, and then the week after it comes out, every other company can make the same drug without having put the research in, where is the morality in that? I'm the one that put the time and money in. Doesn't morality indicate that I should get to profit off of putting that time and money in?

No, you have no moral "right" to someone else's money (property). In a free/capitalist world, you try to sell me something and I decide whether or not I want to pay you the price you're asking for it.

Again, as I already stated, things would certainly change in a world where you didn't have a government-enforced "right" to "own" the idea/invention/drug you came up with. I can't give you the answers to how you could still earn a living in such a world, but I suspect that other anti-IP-ers have thought through the topic more and have some ideas (but, FWIW, the "first to market" example I gave in a previous post, is one). But even if there don't seem to be any great ideas, it shouldn't be a factor in the decision for abolishing IP, if the decision to abolish it is based on a realization that the IP laws, themselves, are immoral. Consider this: When slavery was abolished in the USA, a whole lot of people profiting off of it were going to be hit hard financially. Would it have been better, then, to have allowed slavery to continue?

[dualstow]

I know a guy who argued that Disney’s copyrights on things like their version of Snow White should expire because “they have enough money.” I don’t think that’s what you mean, but it influenced me in the opposite direction, i.e. to be pro-IP, long ago.

What about this argument: if the current copyright laws that Disney pushed for had been in effect back in 1939, they couldn't have made Snow White because it still would have been owned by the Brothers Grimm.
..

Certainly. And, the guy I was chatting with talked about public domain. They got away with it, and then copyrighted their specific version. Uh-oh, I can hear your voice in my head, Scott, saying, And *I* got away with copying the Disney DVD

I’m still rereading Scott’s most recent post, but part of it and the above makes me think that taking this to its logical conclusion, those with the best lawyers win. That certainly seems amoral, and every bit as ‘law of the jungle’ as anarchy.
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Oh, Scott, you mentioned trespassing (apple orchard) and that reminded me: in Sweden, isn’t there a term that means “every man’s right” and refers to the legal right to cross someone’s property as long as you don’t hang out and build a campfire and do weird things? I think so. And of course there are countries where they don’t have IP law. Nigeria maybe.

I wouldn’t want to have pure anarchy in the world. What happens in apocalyptic novels after a devastating event is usually no prettier than that event. Gangs take over. We haven’t had an apocalypse yet, but it could be argued that gangs of lawyers have a stranglehold on things. I think I still prefer that to anarchy, even if it’s hypocritical. Sort of an enclave of fairness amongst all the chaos and crime. It’s still an evolving system, and it if seems silly that George Harrison gets sued for ‘My Sweet Lord’, well, that’s the way it is. A work in progress.

[dualstow]

Where do you stand, Scott, on
(1) Plagiarizing a melody from another song and putting it out, where it becomes a big hit
and
(2) Copying a copyrighted film and then selling the copies on the street?

[CT-Scott]

Oh, Scott, you mentioned trespassing (apple orchard) and that reminded me: in Sweden, isn’t there a term that means “every man’s right” and refers to the legal right to cross someone’s property as long as you don’t hang out and build a campfire and do weird things? I think so.

At the risk of getting off-topic, I do think there are a lot of complicated aspects to even real/actual property rights, and I my stance on some of them may differ from others and/or may be less rigid (or simply not completely thought through). So, to your example, I don't know that I'd object to that Swedish take on property. I also look back and think, at some point someone (Native Americans?) may have "homesteaded" the land I'm on. If some Native American ancestor came up to my house with a stone tablet with a crude deed written to "my" land on it, would they have a better claim of ownership?

What about the sky above my land? How much of that do I own? More properly, how much "should" I be allowed to claim ownership above? Or how deep *below* my land do I own?

These seem like complicated questions to me, and I'm not sure if anyone would have an answer that would make complete sense. If I look to the Bible, I don't think I can find a lot written there to make it clear how God thinks we should consider to be our "property", other than to consider my time here temporary and not to get too "attached" to owning anything of this world.

[bedraggled]

Do check Moda's Thomas Paine quote in his member info. The quote, and the idea behind the quote should add spice to this broth. Might make a hearty stew. Henry George's thoughts may apply.

[CT-Scott]

Where do you stand, Scott, on
(1) Plagiarizing a melody from another song and putting it out, where it becomes a big hit
and
(2) Copying a copyrighted film and then selling the copies on the street?

Those are both complicated questions, that I may not have great short answers to, but I'll put myself out there and say that I *personally* would consider both to feel immoral for me to personally engage in. But I also believe that IP laws are immoral and should be abolished, and should that ever happen, neither of those examples would be illegal and, in short order, individuals/companies would adapt to their new world and figure out ways to do what they wanted to do such that they were no longer reliant on making their living off of things that could be so easily/cheaply/openly be distributed by 3rd parties. There's also something to be said for "public shaming" where if you get yourself to be well-known based on your talent, you can still have a market because a lot of people who appreciate your work will shun 3rd parties who they perceive as profiting off of your hard work without contributing much on their own. Lastly, even those 3rd parties can be helping you by offering publicity for your work, which can have an indirect/positive impact for you financially. You won't make money *directly* from the guy selling a bootleg of your latest CD, but your music may get played/enjoyed by more people, which could help you financially longer-term.

Also, consider this: It used to be the norm that musicians made their money by playing live, ticket sales, T-shirt sales at the concerts, etc. It wasn't until later that the concept of staying home and continuing to profit immensely from the cut they made from CD/streaming sales became a thing. If that ceased to be a thing again, musicians who are passionate about music and want to make it their primary source of income would adapt. Others who have stage-fright could make money by making music for someone who commissions the work for them (e.g., for a jingle for a commercial). Still others who are only in it for the money and who don't like playing live music might need to find a different career. Remember, too, that music like sports, is something that very few people today can "get rich from" and a lot of people still do it for fun or because they're passionate about it, even though they know that they may need to "pay the bills" with some other job.

[dualstow]

Do check Moda's Thomas Paine quote in his member info. The quote, and the idea behind the quote should add spice to this broth. Might make a hearty stew. Henry George's thoughts may apply.

I bet Moda has some very interesting insights into this topic.

Oh, Scott, you mentioned trespassing (apple orchard) and that reminded me: in Sweden... “every man’s right” and refers to the legal right to cross someone’s property...

At the risk of getting off-topic, I do think there are a lot of complicated aspects to even real/actual property rights, and I my stance on some of them may differ from others and/or may be less rigid (or simply not completely thought through). So, to your example, I don't know that I'd object to that Swedish take on property. I also look back and think, at some point someone (Native Americans?) may have "homesteaded" the land I'm on. If some Native American ancestor came up to my house with a stone tablet with a crude deed written to "my" land on it, would they have a better claim of ownership?
...
Bible..to consider my time here temporary and not to get too "attached" to owning anything of this world.

That’s exactly the direction I was going in. I was imagining an Australian aborigine knocking on the door of a white Australian homeowner’s place and explaining why it was immoral to keep him out. White guy says it’s an excellent and convincing argument, and yet you can’t come in.

By the same token, if I were a popular author, I might hear very good arguments against IP law but I would try my damnedest to enforce my immoral copyrights in court. Ok, it’s time for me to find Kinsella.

EDIT: how about this ⇢ https://mises.org/library/case-against-ip-concise-guide

[stuper1]

If I spend a bunch of money researching how to come up with a new drug, and then the week after it comes out, every other company can make the same drug without having put the research in, where is the morality in that? I'm the one that put the time and money in. Doesn't morality indicate that I should get to profit off of putting that time and money in?

No, you have no moral "right" to someone else's money (property). In a free/capitalist world, you try to sell me something and I decide whether or not I want to pay you the price you're asking for it.

Again, as I already stated, things would certainly change in a world where you didn't have a government-enforced "right" to "own" the idea/invention/drug you came up with. I can't give you the answers to how you could still earn a living in such a world, but I suspect that other anti-IP-ers have thought through the topic more and have some ideas (but, FWIW, the "first to market" example I gave in a previous post, is one). But even if there don't seem to be any great ideas, it shouldn't be a factor in the decision for abolishing IP, if the decision to abolish it is based on a realization that the IP laws, themselves, are immoral. Consider this: When slavery was abolished in the USA, a whole lot of people profiting off of it were going to be hit hard financially. Would it have been better, then, to have allowed slavery to continue?

I never said I had the right to someone else's money. I said that another person didn't have the right to profit off of my time and money. Those are two entirely different things.

The abolishment of slavery example is totally irrelevant. I'm not arguing that I should get to profit off of someone else's labor. I'm arguing that I should get to enjoy the fruits of my own labor, without someone who hasn't put the labor in getting a free ride. To me the morality of that is clear.

Let's take another example. If I'm a musician and make a song and put it out for sale, do I get to make the terms of the sale since I was the one that created the song? If you don't like the terms, and you just unilaterally decide to take my song without paying for it, does that mean that I have enslaved you?

[CT-Scott]

I never said I had the right to someone else's money. I said that another person didn't have the right to profit off of my time and money. Those are two entirely different things.

Your "time" doesn't have any inherent value, except to you. If it takes you 2 weeks to make a table, and I can make that exact same style/quality of table in 1 week, is your table worth twice as much?

The abolishment of slavery example is totally irrelevant. I'm not arguing that I should get to profit off of someone else's labor.

No, but you *are* arguing that you have the right to *prevent* me from using my body/resources/time to do with it however I see fit. That's where the slavery analogy comes into play. You are enslaving me by forcibly controlling how I'm allowed to move my body and work with raw materials and resources that I own.

Let's take another example. If I'm a musician and make a song and put it out for sale, do I get to make the terms of the sale since I was the one that created the song?

Under government-enforced monopoly/IP-laws, yes you get to make the terms. Absent government force, you could certainly write up a contract that I could choose to sign and agree to, and if I broke those terms, you could sue me. However, a passerby who heard me playing that song would not be bound by any such contract, and record or recreate the song and sell it, and you would have no claim against that person.

These thought exercises only seem murky because we're talking about fake/"intellectual property" and not real/actual/physical property. With real property, if you make a bicycle and you sell me the bicycle, you don't own the bicycle anymore, I do, and I can do whatever I want with it. To suggest otherwise would seem obviously laughable to any normal person. But with fake/intellectual property, you think you still own some aspect of this "thing" you've sold me and have a moral right to continue to control what I do with it. You don't.

[dualstow]

...
These thought exercises only seem murky because we're talking about fake/"intellectual property" and not real/actual/physical property. With real property, if you make a bicycle and you sell me the bicycle, you don't own the bicycle anymore, I do, and I can do whatever I want with it. To suggest otherwise would seem obviously laughable to any normal person. But with fake/intellectual property, you think you still own some aspect of this "thing" you've sold me and have a moral right to continue to control what I do with it. You don't.

This thing I’ve sold you. But in some of your original examples, you never bought it in the first place. Before you even get to copying and redistributing, media was essentially taken and no monetary compensation was given. Unless you count renting as buying.

[Tyler]

Preventing me (via man-made/enforced IP laws) from making my own copy is actually immoral and a form of slavery, as you are infringing upon my natural rights to combine the resources I own with my skills/time however I see fit.

Many years ago I was working for a small US-based company making iPhone cases, and we did a lot of manufacturing in China. A coworker was visiting a few factories to try to qualify new vendors, and he was particularly interested in one that was already making cases for competitor. While visiting the factory, he noticed that the company address listed on the package was in China rather than the US. After a bit of questioning, he discovered that the Chinese company had indeed produced the cases at one point. But they also made their own duplicate of the steel tools and packaging production machines. They were selling cut-rate pirated copies of their customer's product (identical in every way because it was literally the same tool designs) throughout Asia under their customer's name while pocketing 100% of the profit!

When my coworker asked the factory owner why on earth he thought this was a good way to do business, the owner's response was something like "why should I not be able to sell anything I want and also be successful?". Needless to say we never worked with them.

Anyways, I find it kinda interesting that your justification for being against IP laws echoes the same thought process of that Chinese factory owner raised with the Communist mindset. Not to say you're a Commie. Just pointing out another side to the story on the small business level rather than the giant conglomerate level that is easy to hate.

If you don't like those options, and don't see enough value in having a limited time window of selling your bicycles before someone else comes along and copies it and does a better job of profiting off of the design, then you have the right to not bother spending the effort to design it in the first place.

The thing you may not realize is that your position hugely benefits large corporations and basically prevents any startup from making something new. A small company will NEVER be able to compete on price with an established company like Google or Walmart because of the efficiencies of scale they enjoy and their anti-competitive ability to price something at below cost for as long as it takes to put you out of business. If there were no IP rights, the big companies would simply steal every good idea and nobody else would stand a chance. That's a recipe for the death of innovation and the promotion of monopolies.

[stuper1]

I never said I had the right to someone else's money. I said that another person didn't have the right to profit off of my time and money. Those are two entirely different things.

Your "time" doesn't have any inherent value, except to you. If it takes you 2 weeks to make a table, and I can make that exact same style/quality of table in 1 week, is your table worth twice as much?

If it takes me 10 years of research to develop a life-saving drug, and it only takes you two days to reverse-engineer and make an exact duplicate of that drug, which one of us should enjoy more profit off of selling that drug to willing purchasers?

[dualstow]

^ What Tyler said.

So in the west, James Dyson can sue Hoover because they listened to his idea of a bagless vacuum cleaner, apparently rejected it, and then started selling their own bagless vacuum cleaner.

With China, you apply for a patent and the Chinese read it and put your product out before you have a chance to do so yourself. It happened with the original selfie stick and, I believe, FinalStraw. That metal drinking straw that you can impale yourself on if you’re not careful. They even used the creator and CEO’s face!

[Libertarian666]

For anyone here who would like to read an extended and serious debate about IP, message me and I'll send you a gift copy of Origitent (https://www.amazon.com/Origitent-Why-Or ... B07DRQ9NWC). This offer is good for up to 90 copies in total, one per person.

[CT-Scott]

Anyways, I find it kinda interesting that your justification for being against IP laws echoes the same thought process of that Chinese factory owner raised with the Communist mindset. Not to say you're a Commie. Just pointing out another side to the story on the small business level rather than the giant conglomerate level that is easy to hate.

It's a double-edged sword. You want to use cheap Chinese labor to produce your "idea" for as cheaply as possible, so that you can maximize your own profit. Under current IP laws, you could choose to instead produce it yourself or inside of the US, where IP laws are enforced. But, I still consider IP laws to be immoral and am fine being likened to the Chinese factory owner you've cited. I'm also opposed to all governments, whether they be a Communist dictatorship or an immoral Democracy like ours.

I would argue that innovation has been horribly stifled as a result of IP laws. The greatest innovation through history was built on the shoulders of the inventors that came before them, by improving upon the ideas of the inventor that came before you. We now stifle the degree of innovation by allowing companies to claim ownership of an idea for an ever-extended period of time, often preventing someone from taking that idea to the next level.

The thing you may not realize is that your position hugely benefits large corporations and basically prevents any startup from making something new. A small company will NEVER be able to compete on price with an established company like Google or Walmart because of the efficiencies of scale they enjoy and their anti-competitive ability to price something at below cost for as long as it takes to put you out of business. If there were no IP rights, the big companies would simply steal every good idea and nobody else would stand a chance. That's a recipe for the death of innovation and the promotion of monopolies.

I touched on this above. I disagree. Large corporations love IP laws. IP = government-endorsed monopolies. Absent IP laws, a startup may have a hard time "competing on price", but they can be first to market, and they can compete on quality. And if we give the inventor a little bit of credit for having thought up the idea in the first place, they clearly have some advantage there, too, to be able to better understand, and improve upon, their invention.

Having said that, I don't think it's a necessity for happiness to be in complete control of all aspects of your invention and to own all profits from it. An artist can be commissioned to create a piece of artwork that a larger company plans to copy a thousand-fold for resale. The company will make a lot more money than the original artist, while lacking the talent/creativity of the original artist. But the original artist went into that relationship willingly, and agreed upon a sum of money that they were willing to produce the artwork for. Over time, as that artist builds up her portfolio, she will add to her wealth, make a name for herself, and perhaps be able to start up a company of her own to distribute her work as she sees fit. Similarly, an inventor lacking financial resources, may willingly enter into an agreement with a larger corporation, where they sell their idea to them. What I'm describing here is nothing new, and has been done before IP laws were around, and continues to happen today even with IP laws. With the advent of the internet, social media, and things like Kickstarter, I'd argue that there is a much more level playing field than ever before for individual low-resource creators.

[CT-Scott]

For anyone here who would like to read an extended and serious debate about IP, message me and I'll send you a gift copy of Origitent (https://www.amazon.com/Origitent-Why-Or ... B07DRQ9NWC). This offer is good for up to 90 copies in total, one per person.

Is that you? Did you write that book? I must admit I had never heard of it, and was confused by the title combined with the fact that Kinsella had written the Forward to the book. So then I had to Google that and found this:

“Introduction” to J. Neil Schulman’s Origitent: Why Original Content is Property
http://www.stephankinsella.com/2018/06/ ... origitent/

So, apparently the title is accurate, but Kinsella's writing of the Forward is not to be interpreted as Kinsella agreeing with it.

In any case, I'd be happy to take you up on your offer. Thanks in advance!