Intellectual Property

[moda0306]

What are your guys' philosophies surrounding intellectual property?  Namely...

1) Does it even exist? Whether provable or not, if "ownership" is something that we can recognize as a moral truth in certain scenarios, is an idea or a work of digital art/creation one of them?

2) Functionally, how should our government recognize and enforce intellectual property?  Should it be different based on the nature of the item? If I invent a nuclear fusion device, should I get the same patent period as someone who slightly improves on how a nose hair picker is designed?  How do we do anything here that isn't completely arbitrary?



As for my humble opinion...

1) Intellectual property DOES exist.  If you write a beautiful song, it is your creation.  Others shouldn't be able to download it for free.  In fact, I believe intellectual property, from a funamental philisophical point of view, is FAR more "real" than property established by "homesteading" vast acreages of land or strip mining a different vast acreage.  Our intellectual creations are almost the MOST REAL type of property that exists.  It is fundamentally linked to our own achievement in ways that farming "your land," fishing "your pond," or mining "your minerals" will never be.

2) I have no f*king idea how to govern intellectual property rights.  It's a mystery to me.  Unlike land, while land-ownership claims may be quasi-illegitimate from a philosophical point of view, from a functional point of view, they're FAR easier to enforce than intellectual property.  I think our current system is probably quite flawed, but it's a damned difficult task that we've heaped upon judges and lawyers that probably need a host of engineering degrees on top of their law degrees to do their job right.  I think we'd be in a lot worse of a spot if we didn't patent IP.

What do y'all think?

[Kshartle]

This is not thread jack Moda, but if my song is my property, and no one else's, if I agree to sing it for you for $3, why do I have to give $1 to an IRS agent? It was my property and mine alone right? The $3 was your property and the song was mine, so why is it not theft when the guy takes a dollar from me? It was a fair, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) an even exchange of our property wasn't it?

If you can answer this question without contradiction then we will easily establish whether intellectual property really exists or not I think.

It will take one or two more posts I think after your response.

[Pointedstick]

IMHO, ownership is inherently tied to scarcity. If something is for all intents and purposes infinite or unlimited, it makes no sense for people to own chunks of it. What advantage would they gain from it? None!

This is why I can't get behind IP. IP consists of thoughts and ideas, which are, for all intents and purposes, infinite and unlimited. One person's having the idea does not in any way diminish anyone else's capacity to have or enjoy or make use of or improve upon the idea.

To me, using the laws of private property to govern IP akin to trying to charge people for breathing despite the fact that air is basically still infinite here on planet earth.

[Mountaineer]

An idea is not property anymore than me thinking "that was a wonderful movie" is my property.  An idea only is transformed into property when something material is made using that idea.  The material is the property.

... Mountaineer

[Kshartle]

An idea is not property anymore than me thinking "that was a wonderful movie" is my property.  An idea only is transformed into property when something material is made using that idea.  The material is the property.

... Mountaineer

This is correct but I think if moda can answer the question I posed without contradiction we can see clear evidence of why this is the case.

[moda0306]

IMHO, ownership is inherently tied to scarcity. If something is for all intents and purposes infinite or unlimited, it makes no sense for people to own chunks of it. What advantage would they gain from it? None!

This is why I can't get behind IP. IP consists of thoughts and ideas, which are, for all intents and purposes, infinite and unlimited. One person's having the idea does not in any way diminish anyone else's capacity to have or enjoy or make use of or improve upon the idea.

To me, using the laws of private property to govern IP akin to trying to charge people for breathing despite the fact that air is basically still infinite here on planet earth.

PS,

You're right but then you seem to steer it wrong.  To me at least.  Intellectual Property is about SCARCE ideas: Good ones that provide material profit  to others.  Of course ideas are infinite.  So is matter (pretty much).  But some matter is inherantly scarce and valuable... especially when you start arranging it with other matter in useful ways.  So we can't just say "matter can't be property" because it's just made up of a bunch of energy bits that are all the same anyway (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc).

See what I mean?

[moda0306]

This is not thread jack Moda, but if my song is my property, and no one else's, if I agree to sing it for you for $3, why do I have to give $1 to an IRS agent? It was my property and mine alone right? The $3 was your property and the song was mine, so why is it not theft when the guy takes a dollar from me? It was a fair, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) an even exchange of our property wasn't it?

If you can answer this question without contradiction then we will easily establish whether intellectual property really exists or not I think.

It will take one or two more posts I think after your response.

Loss and force are also part of reality.  We must find out some way to organize it.  Government is one of those ways.  There is no perfect way to get rid of force.  Further, property perhaps does NOT trump certain other ideas.  Perhaps there are other principals within morality that actually ride HIGHER than that of effects of your actions being YOUR legitimate property.

But let's save this debate for later, man.  This could get messy otherwise.

[dualstow]

I agree with both of your points, moda, although I could possibly be swayed by the arguments of others on this.

[Kshartle]

This is not thread jack Moda, but if my song is my property, and no one else's, if I agree to sing it for you for $3, why do I have to give $1 to an IRS agent? It was my property and mine alone right? The $3 was your property and the song was mine, so why is it not theft when the guy takes a dollar from me? It was a fair, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) an even exchange of our property wasn't it?

If you can answer this question without contradiction then we will easily establish whether intellectual property really exists or not I think.

It will take one or two more posts I think after your response.

Loss and force are also part of reality.  We must find out some way to organize it.  Government is one of those ways.  There is no perfect way to get rid of force.  Further, property perhaps does NOT trump certain other ideas.  Perhaps there are other principals within morality that actually ride HIGHER than that of effects of your actions being YOUR legitimate property.

But let's save this debate for later, man.  This could get messy otherwise.

Ok there's no need for it to get messy. Here me out. Let's operate under the assumption that the song is my property. The $3 is your property. We can even imagine that you sang a song and someone paid you $5 for it and the government took $2 (you're a better singer and in a higher tax bracket) and left you with $3. Any way you look at it the $3 is yours free and clear and so is my song.

So we exchange. Under threat of violence, $1 is taken from me by the tax man. You can come up with creative names, but there is no question this is a violation of property rights. We exchanged property that no one else had claim to, and now they are claiming it and taking it by force. Even if you think this is a good arangement, it's clear what it is.

Is it clear that if the song was in fact my property to begin with I've robbed, regardless of how neccessary you might think this theft is? (lets not get into that here please)

Pending your answer I'll continue with just one more post.

I just went ahead anyway.

[moda0306]

An idea is not property anymore than me thinking "that was a wonderful movie" is my property.  An idea only is transformed into property when something material is made using that idea.  The material is the property.

... Mountaineer

Obviously, ideas have to be put into some sort of physical format (sound, writing, etc), so eventually a material is involved, but it is ultimately the idea that is valuable... not the paper or ink or the sound waves. 

For instance, if I write a book, the mental stimulation it offers someone is what is valuable.  The ink and paper are just ways to transmit those messages from my brain to yours.  But as soon as I've done that, you could take that book and hire a publisher to make a ton of copies.  Obviously, my idea is no longer scarce. But it was before I put it on paper.  And it truly is valuable.  Shouldn't that scarcity and value be recognized within the realm and principles of "property?"

Creativity, thought, ideas, time, etc ALL have to be combined with physical things to make up what we often think of as "property."  The only difference between a book and a gallon of milk is that the scarce, valuable thought tied up in the book is FAR more of its value than the physical properties of the book itself compared to a gallon of milk.  To use the good ideas tied up in a gallon of milk to make a profit, I would have to do a massive amount of work.  So dairy farmers know that their ability to come up with good ideas will lead to a competitive advantage for them instead of their competitors.

But a book is different.  If I write a book filled with incredible ideas applied in ways that nobody has thought of before, the actual transmission mechanism of that book could be dirt ass cheap (paper and ink)... so cheap, in fact, that all my work now is just making publishers richer, rather than myself.

Now here's the thing... I don't think anyone has a "right" to something they shouldn't have expected in the first place.  I'm a HB'er when it comes to that.  If you knew working for $100k would only yield you $60k after taxes, and you did the work, don't b!tch and moan. You chose to work for $60k.  Accept the reality of your choice.  But if we are drilling down into moral truth, I don't see how a system of property can exist without valuing the actual CREATIVE energy it takes to create an idea that is valuable to others.  Perhaps everyone should manage how to transmit that idea so they can profit, but perhaps that is simply a bit of advice to give to someone to avoid THEFT, rather than simply acknowledging the moral reality of idea creation.

[Kshartle]

IP requires government to be enforced. An intellectual property "owner" cannot exercise his rights of ownership without a government court/justice system. He can hire third parties to enforce contracts he engages by stipulating the enforcement terms in the contract, but he is powerless to stop people anywhere in the world from singing his songs, copying his books etc. He can only ask for government protection to defend his IP "rights".

Government can only exist if property rights are violated (taxation). A volutary contract enforcement agency is not a government, and it can't enforce your IP "rights" either.

So we are left with an internal contradiction. IP rights can only exist if property rights are violated. Chew on that for a moment. It is like saying "free speech can only exist if some people aren't allowed to speak". It's a non starter.

Contrast this with real property. I don't need the violation of anyone's rights to defend my real property. I can defend my home, my car, my gold, my factory etc. i can defend them because they acutally exist in the material world. Even the granny down the street can theoretically defend her property rights by asking others to help her defend them or by paying someone. No one's rights require the violation of the right's of others to defend. There is no contradiction because those property rights actually exist......because the property actually exists. It's not property if you don't have a right to it and it can't be defended in theory (like air or the moon for example).

The contradiction of requiring the violation of property rights to exercise intellectual property rights shows that the theory of intellectual property rights existing is clearly false.

What is it then that we are discussing? We are discussing government-enforced monopolies of ideas.  

Like all monopolies this drives up prices on consumers and leaves us worse off than before. It prevents production of life saving drugs that would lower costs and save lives and improvments of other ideas and inventions that would make our lives better.

[moda0306]

This is not thread jack Moda, but if my song is my property, and no one else's, if I agree to sing it for you for $3, why do I have to give $1 to an IRS agent? It was my property and mine alone right? The $3 was your property and the song was mine, so why is it not theft when the guy takes a dollar from me? It was a fair, voluntary and (as far as anyone can prove) an even exchange of our property wasn't it?

If you can answer this question without contradiction then we will easily establish whether intellectual property really exists or not I think.

It will take one or two more posts I think after your response.

Loss and force are also part of reality.  We must find out some way to organize it.  Government is one of those ways.  There is no perfect way to get rid of force.  Further, property perhaps does NOT trump certain other ideas.  Perhaps there are other principals within morality that actually ride HIGHER than that of effects of your actions being YOUR legitimate property.

But let's save this debate for later, man.  This could get messy otherwise.

Ok there's no need for it to get messy. Here me out. Let's operate under the assumption that the song is my property. The $3 is your property. We can even imagine that you sang a song and someone paid you $5 for it and the government took $2 (you're a better singer and in a higher tax bracket) and left you with $3. Any way you look at it the $3 is yours free and clear and so is my song.

So we exchange. Under threat of violence, $1 is taken from me by the tax man. You can come up with creative names, but there is no question this is a violation of property rights. We exchanged property that no one else had claim to, and now they are claiming it and taking it by force. Even if you think this is a good arangement, it's clear what it is.

Is it clear that if the song was in fact my property to begin with I've robbed, regardless of how neccessary you might think this theft is? (lets not get into that here please)

Pending your answer I'll continue with just one more post.

Yep... assuming something is your morally legitimate property (if this concept exists), then taking of that would constitute theft.  Unless we are to consider it a user fee for operating on land that is someone else's or something.  See my quote for a bit more perplexing concept on property in a world where we actually have to make claims on things that are NOT an affect of our actions (land & resources) to affect them to a more profitable state (farm, gasoline, etc).

[Kshartle]

Now here's the thing... I don't think anyone has a "right" to something they shouldn't have expected in the first place.  I'm a HB'er when it comes to that.  If you knew working for $100k would only yield you $60k after taxes, and you did the work, don't b!tch and moan. You chose to work for $60k.  Accept the reality of your choice.

If I buy a bar knowing the bartenders will likely steal from me do I not have a right to the stolen money?

Are they really no longer stealing from me? Is it really their money and not mine?

You're argument is about how someone should approach the world, in your opinion, to live the best life possible. It's not an argument that no theft is actually occuring correct?

[moda0306]

IP requires government to be enforced. An intellectual property "owner" cannot exercise his rights of ownership without a government court/justice system. He can hire third parties to enforce contracts he engages by stipulating the enforcement terms in the contract, but he is powerless to stop people anywhere in the world from singing his songs, copying his books etc. He can only ask for government protection to defend his IP "rights".

Government can only exist if property rights are violated (taxation). A volutary contract enforcement agency is not a government, and it can't enforce your IP "rights" either.

So we are left with an internal contradiction. IP rights can only exist if property rights are violated. Chew on that for a moment. It is like saying "free speech can only exist if some people aren't allowed to speak". It's a non starter.

Contrast this with real property. I don't need the violation of anyone's rights to defend my real property. I can defend my home, my car, my gold, my factory etc. i can defend them because they acutally exist in the material world. Even the granny down the street can theoretically defend her property rights by asking others to help her defend them or by paying someone. No one's rights require the violation of the right's of others to defend. There is no contradiction because those property rights actually exist......because the property actually exists. It's not property if you don't have a right to it and it can't be defended in theory (like air or the moon for example).

The contradiction of requiring the violation of property to exercise property rights shows that the theory of property rights is clearly false.

What is it then that we are discussing? We are discussing government-enforced monopolies of ideas.  

Like all monopolies this drives up prices on consumers and leaves us worse off than before. It prevents production of life saving drugs that would lower costs and save lives and improvments of other ideas and inventions that would make our lives better.

K,

An inability to ENFORCE a right does not mean it IS NOT a right.  A child of mine has the right to live, but he can't enforce it.  A little old lady has a right to her home, but if her neighborhood is populated by well-armed thugs, she will find trouble enforcing it.

Morality exists on a different plane than what IS, K.  Morality deals with the way things OUGHT to be, not with the way things are.  Lack of ability to enforce a moral concept doesn't mean that this concept doesn't exist.

[moda0306]

Now here's the thing... I don't think anyone has a "right" to something they shouldn't have expected in the first place.  I'm a HB'er when it comes to that.  If you knew working for $100k would only yield you $60k after taxes, and you did the work, don't b!tch and moan. You chose to work for $60k.  Accept the reality of your choice.

If I buy a bar knowing the bartenders will likely steal from me do I not have a right to the stolen money?

Are they really no longer stealing from me? Is it really their money and not mine?

You're argument is about how someone should approach the world, in your opinion, to live the best life possible. It's not an argument that no theft is actually occuring correct?

Morally, I believe you have a right to the money that would otherwise be stolen. 

So yes... I'm not saying theft hasn't occurred simply because someone should have known it was going to happen.  But we're all adults.  We should seek to understand the realities of the world, and act accordingly.  If you leave your car unlocked and running for 8 hours in the ghetto, you're an idiot, and are beyond my help... see what I mean?  Rights are unprovable and often unenforceable.  Why worry about trying to convince others you are in the right rather than just understanding that changing people's minds is difficult, just like lifting a boulder is difficult, and both should be treated calmly, unemotionally, as an aspect of reality rather than a moral plight to make yourself a martyr fighting

So this will sound bad, but in some ways, I have more respect for a successful con-man who aligns his actions with his goal of happiness (if he can ACTUALLY convince me that conning people out of their money will yield him true happiness) than someone who refuses to properly analyze reality when they take action, and gets "screwed over" doing so, AND THEN has the gall to approach someone else asking for their sympathy.  Think whiny women with "asshole boyfriends" complain about how men are assholes incessantly.

[Kshartle]

An inability to ENFORCE a right does not mean it IS NOT a right.  A child of mine has the right to live, but he can't enforce it.  A little old lady has a right to her home, but if her neighborhood is populated by well-armed thugs, she will find trouble enforcing it.

Morality exists on a different plane than what IS, K.  Morality deals with the way things OUGHT to be, not with the way things are.  Lack of ability to enforce a moral concept doesn't mean that this concept doesn't exist.

We've been around this before. You are missing the point of what I said. I hope it's not deliberate. You can defend your child. Others can come to his defense. The same thing with grandma. She can buy guard dogs. She can own firearms. She can ask you to watch her home. She can pay a security agency. The ability to defend her property rights exist (even if just in theory) without REQUIRING the violation of the property rights of others.

Intellectual property rights cannot be defended unless the rights of others are violated. Since it can't be my right to violate your rights IP rights clearly can't exist. The contradiction means it is a false premise. Real property (real in every sense of the term) doesn't have such a contradiction.

[Mountaineer]

An idea is not property anymore than me thinking "that was a wonderful movie" is my property.  An idea only is transformed into property when something material is made using that idea.  The material is the property.

... Mountaineer

Obviously, ideas have to be put into some sort of physical format (sound, writing, etc), so eventually a material is involved, but it is ultimately the idea that is valuable... not the paper or ink or the sound waves. 

For instance, if I write a book, the mental stimulation it offers someone is what is valuable.  The ink and paper are just ways to transmit those messages from my brain to yours.  But as soon as I've done that, you could take that book and hire a publisher to make a ton of copies.  Obviously, my idea is no longer scarce. But it was before I put it on paper.  And it truly is valuable.  Shouldn't that scarcity and value be recognized within the realm and principles of "property?"

Creativity, thought, ideas, time, etc ALL have to be combined with physical things to make up what we often think of as "property."  The only difference between a book and a gallon of milk is that the scarce, valuable thought tied up in the book is FAR more of its value than the physical properties of the book itself compared to a gallon of milk.  To use the good ideas tied up in a gallon of milk to make a profit, I would have to do a massive amount of work.  So dairy farmers know that their ability to come up with good ideas will lead to a competitive advantage for them instead of their competitors.

But a book is different.  If I write a book filled with incredible ideas applied in ways that nobody has thought of before, the actual transmission mechanism of that book could be dirt ass cheap (paper and ink)... so cheap, in fact, that all my work now is just making publishers richer, rather than myself.

Now here's the thing... I don't think anyone has a "right" to something they shouldn't have expected in the first place.  I'm a HB'er when it comes to that.  If you knew working for $100k would only yield you $60k after taxes, and you did the work, don't b!tch and moan. You chose to work for $60k.  Accept the reality of your choice.  But if we are drilling down into moral truth, I don't see how a system of property can exist without valuing the actual CREATIVE energy it takes to create an idea that is valuable to others.  Perhaps everyone should manage how to transmit that idea so they can profit, but perhaps that is simply a bit of advice to give to someone to avoid THEFT, rather than simply acknowledging the moral reality of idea creation.

You have an idea.  You put it in a manuscript.  You sell the manuscript (material) to a publisher for an agreed upon sum of money.  As far as you are concerned, case closed, you got your money for your idea.  You are no longer the owner of your manuscript, the publisher is.  Then the "material" can be duplicated and sold for whatever the publisher thinks will earn him more than he paid you for the manuscript.  If someone counterfeits the publisher's book, then we are back to dealing with enforcement of property, the physical material goods, not the idea.

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

K,

It is not "deliberate" other than it appears that reality needs to be restated to you. Perhaps I'm forgetting that we in-fact closed the lid on this topic.  For now, it appears we still disagree.  You still appear to be saying that our ability to defend property is crucial to it even being property in the first place.  This is a ridiculous assertion, IMO, and it appears to be what you are saying, even as you say I'm "missing the point."

If violent force is a reasonable response in defending your property (think a Grandma defending her home with a shotgun), then one could simply "enforce" his IP right by threatening violence to all who abuse that right.  Is this realistic?  No.  But neither is a kid trying to defend his life from would-be attackers.

If relying on societal norms (such as a parent taking on the responsibility of guarding a child) is a reasonable way to have property defended, then one could argue that "social norms" will enforce IP. 

So here are two things I'd like to get agreement on.

1) Ability to enforce a right without the help of government IS NOT a prerequisite to it being a right.  This is an invalid arguement.  The conclusion doesn't logically follow from the premises, as far as I can tell.

2) Theoretically, we would not need government to enforce IP.  Me with a gun, or social norms could both be enforcement mechanisms, just like any other property.

[moda0306]

An idea is not property anymore than me thinking "that was a wonderful movie" is my property.  An idea only is transformed into property when something material is made using that idea.  The material is the property.

... Mountaineer

Obviously, ideas have to be put into some sort of physical format (sound, writing, etc), so eventually a material is involved, but it is ultimately the idea that is valuable... not the paper or ink or the sound waves. 

For instance, if I write a book, the mental stimulation it offers someone is what is valuable.  The ink and paper are just ways to transmit those messages from my brain to yours.  But as soon as I've done that, you could take that book and hire a publisher to make a ton of copies.  Obviously, my idea is no longer scarce. But it was before I put it on paper.  And it truly is valuable.  Shouldn't that scarcity and value be recognized within the realm and principles of "property?"

Creativity, thought, ideas, time, etc ALL have to be combined with physical things to make up what we often think of as "property."  The only difference between a book and a gallon of milk is that the scarce, valuable thought tied up in the book is FAR more of its value than the physical properties of the book itself compared to a gallon of milk.  To use the good ideas tied up in a gallon of milk to make a profit, I would have to do a massive amount of work.  So dairy farmers know that their ability to come up with good ideas will lead to a competitive advantage for them instead of their competitors.

But a book is different.  If I write a book filled with incredible ideas applied in ways that nobody has thought of before, the actual transmission mechanism of that book could be dirt ass cheap (paper and ink)... so cheap, in fact, that all my work now is just making publishers richer, rather than myself.

Now here's the thing... I don't think anyone has a "right" to something they shouldn't have expected in the first place.  I'm a HB'er when it comes to that.  If you knew working for $100k would only yield you $60k after taxes, and you did the work, don't b!tch and moan. You chose to work for $60k.  Accept the reality of your choice.  But if we are drilling down into moral truth, I don't see how a system of property can exist without valuing the actual CREATIVE energy it takes to create an idea that is valuable to others.  Perhaps everyone should manage how to transmit that idea so they can profit, but perhaps that is simply a bit of advice to give to someone to avoid THEFT, rather than simply acknowledging the moral reality of idea creation.

You have an idea.  You put it in a manuscript.  You sell the manuscript (material) to a publisher for an agreed upon sum of money.  As far as you are concerned, case closed, you got your money for your idea.  You are no longer the owner of your manuscript, the publisher is.  Then the "material" can be duplicated and sold for whatever the publisher thinks will earn him more than he paid you for the manuscript.  If someone counterfeits the publisher's book, then we are back to dealing with enforcement of property, the physical material goods, not the idea.

... Mountaineer

You can't "counterfeit" what wasn't property to begin with. If I physically STOLE a book from a publisher, that would be theft.  But if your premise is true that IP does NOT exist, then the publisher does not OWN the right to sole distribution of the manuscript.  A different publisher could read it, like it, and make its own copies.

So I don't see how you can say counterfeiting the book is about the physical thing.  It's not.  I about the ideas inside.  I could go buy a book that a publisher produced, copy down every word, take it to my publishing operation, and print my own version that would sell.  So no publisher would EVER pay much for any fresh idea.  They'd just let someone else do it, and make copies of that book... which, on a macro scale, is to say that these ideas will rarely pop up, because there's no mechanism to profit from them.  People would try to control the means of distribution of any good ideas they have, but it won't work well in the information age, where our cell-phones are recording devices.

So copyright law is very much part of IP.  I'm surprised there's disagreement there.  Unless I'm misinterpreting...

[moda0306]

IMHO, ownership is inherently tied to scarcity. If something is for all intents and purposes infinite or unlimited, it makes no sense for people to own chunks of it. What advantage would they gain from it? None!

This is why I can't get behind IP. IP consists of thoughts and ideas, which are, for all intents and purposes, infinite and unlimited. One person's having the idea does not in any way diminish anyone else's capacity to have or enjoy or make use of or improve upon the idea.

To me, using the laws of private property to govern IP akin to trying to charge people for breathing despite the fact that air is basically still infinite here on planet earth.

PS,

You're right but then you seem to steer it wrong.  To me at least.  Intellectual Property is about SCARCE ideas: Good ones that provide material profit  to others.  Of course ideas are infinite.  So is matter (pretty much).  But some matter is inherantly scarce and valuable... especially when you start arranging it with other matter in useful ways.  So we can't just say "matter can't be property" because it's just made up of a bunch of energy bits that are all the same anyway (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc).

See what I mean?

When you get down to it, though, IP is simply what some arbitrary person / entity (i.e. a patent examiner) defines it to be.  This makes it, IMO, ripe for exploitation, because, let's be honest... this is what people (and lawyers) do.  In my own field, it seems there are many, many completely bogus patents awarded for things that are neither novel nor have any intention of being put into practice.

Or take Apple, for example.  When they were in the big patent brouhaha with Samsung a couple years back, I remember looking at some of the patents in dispute, and one of them was for a rectangular device with rounded corners (I might not have this exactly right... there are probably others here more familiar with the dispute).  I never understood that (and still don't).

And mathematical algorithms are considered IP.  How is that possible?

That said, if something does indeed take extraordinary time and resources to discover (like a drug), and/or is counterintuitive, I can see the merit in granting exclusive right to commercialize.  But I'm not very persuaded that much of what is commonly referred to as IP should be considered such.

Tenn,

I agree that it is ripe for exploitation in enforcement.  To be fair, though, I think the patent judges are probably trying to do the best they can with what they have... though I could be TOTALLY wrong on this.  I tend to think government employees are neither the best or the worst of us.  They tend to be more like their private sector doppelgangers than jack-booted thugs.  IE, cops are like security guards; public school teachers are like private school teachers; local politicians are like small business owners; senators are like fortune-500 egomaniacs; judges are like private arbitrators.

[Kshartle]

K,

It is not "deliberate" other than it appears that reality needs to be restated to you. Perhaps I'm forgetting that we in-fact closed the lid on this topic.  For now, it appears we still disagree.  You still appear to be saying that our ability to defend property is crucial to it even being property in the first place.  This is a ridiculous assertion, IMO, and it appears to be what you are saying, even as you say I'm "missing the point."

Perhaps Tech or TB can explain more clearly. If your property is stolen, then clearly you weren't able to protect it. That would not mean that it's not your property, and clearly not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is the theoretical ability to exercise your rights CANNOT be dependant on the violation on the rights of someone else. That is a contradiction. No contradiction exists when granny holds her shotgun. No contradiction exists when someone robs her home, this is just a violation of rights.

A contradiction exists when the government arrests me for replicating her apple pie recipie that I swiped off her hacked hard drive. The contradiction is her enforcement of so-called IP required the theft of your property to pay for the agents to come get me.

Can you see how real property rights don't require the violation of property rights to be exercised?

[Kshartle]

1) Ability to enforce a right without the help of government IS NOT a prerequisite to it being a right.  This is an invalid arguement.  The conclusion doesn't logically follow from the premises, as far as I can tell.

2) Theoretically, we would not need government to enforce IP.  Me with a gun, or social norms could both be enforcement mechanisms, just like any other property.

1. Yes it is a prerequisite. Government can only exist due to the violation of rights. Therefore, any supposed "right" that requires the government, requires the violation of the rights of others. That means some people literraly have the right to violate the rights of others. That's an impossible contradiction. We can't both simultaneously have a right to exact opposite outcomes or whatever. You can't have a right to take MY money, else it's not actually mine and I don't have a right to it.

2. Dissagree. In fact, IP isn't even fully enforceable with a government, the examples of so-called IP theft is just endless and too numerous to even list. It can't be defended except in areas subjected to the "owners" government or governments that are aligned with it. Look at the so-called IP theft that happens in China. Good luck enforcing it without a government Moda.

[Kshartle]

But that doesn't help me understand what IP is.

It's a government enforced monopoly of an idea/concept

You pay them a small fee and they promise to drag people into court and possbily rob them or kidnapp them if they profited from your idea or something very similar (even if they came up with it on their own). They do this with the threat of violence.

[moda0306]

K,

It is not "deliberate" other than it appears that reality needs to be restated to you. Perhaps I'm forgetting that we in-fact closed the lid on this topic.  For now, it appears we still disagree.  You still appear to be saying that our ability to defend property is crucial to it even being property in the first place.  This is a ridiculous assertion, IMO, and it appears to be what you are saying, even as you say I'm "missing the point."

Perhaps Tech or TB can explain more clearly. If your property is stolen, then clearly you weren't able to protect it. That would not mean that it's not your property, and clearly not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is the theoretical ability to exercise your rights CANNOT be dependant on the violation on the rights of someone else. That is a contradiction. No contradiction exists when granny holds her shotgun. No contradiction exists when someone robs her home, this is just a violation of rights.

A contradiction exists when the government arrests me for replicating her apple pie recipie that I swiped off her hacked hard drive. The contradiction is her enforcement of so-called IP required the theft of your property to pay for the agents to come get me.

Can you see how real property rights don't require the violation of property rights to be exercised?

Yes.

Two points of disagreement though:

If EXERCISING my rights creates contradiction, it seems like you're saying that this means it wasn't a right.  I can see why you would say this. EXERCISING and ENFORCING are not necessarily the same thing. Further, most REAL property rights create a contradiction.  If I "homestead" property by putting a fence around it and farming it, I am claiming exclusive use (exercising my "right"), which usurps everyone else's natural right to go where they please. Further, my farming screws with the ecology of the area, and very-well pollutes.  Pollution is damaging other people's property, is it not? This is a contradiction. Therefore, given your logic, most real private property doesn't really exist... because it creates that contradiction.  Claiming exclusive use of, and polluting with, property that you did NOT create yourself CONTRADICTS ITSELF.

But in the end, EXERCISING and ENFORCING are two different things.  I can EXERCISE my intellectual property rights by selling CD's with my song on it.  I can't ENFORCE them that way, though.  Enforcement might be a subset of exercising, but there are a lot of things under exercising that are NOT enforcement.  I drive my car... I exercise my right of ownership over it.  But I ENFORCE that right (or attempt to) by locking it, and if someone tried to steal it, I might defend it with force.

I can also see that IP rights don't require government.  Guns aren't the only mechanisms for enforcement... social norms are another.  You've used this example in the past.  Social norms take over a lot of enforcement mechanisms when government isn't present.  But if we go back to the guns, if someone is currently holding an iPod with my song on it, illegally downloaded, if IP is morally valid, it is no different than him driving around in my car, or holding my wallet.  If I have a right to forcibly take-back stolen physical property, then if IP is morally valid, I have a right and ability to go to him, and tell him at gun point to delete my song off of his iPod, or pay me 99 cents .

So your argument seems to me to be failing on a couple fronts, plus the fact that you're basically pointing out why morally valid REAL property is such a hoax.  So to sum up:

1) You don't need government to enforce IP.  Guns and social norms can do it like anything else.

2) Exercise does not necessarily mean enforcement.  There are other things I can do to validly exercise my rights of use.

3) If exercising rights requires a contradiction of the right makes it invalid, then most forms of "real property" are obviously invalid.  Exclusive use of previously travel-able land and pollution are both contradictions, as they usurp others' rights.

[moda0306]

But that doesn't help me understand what IP is.

It's a government enforced monopoly of an idea/concept

You pay them a small fee and they promise to drag people into court and possbily rob them or kidnapp them if they profited from your idea or something very similar (even if they came up with it on their own). They do this with the threat of violence.

Nope... Property is a concept that describes morally valid exclusive use of something.  A car.  Land. Etc.

Intellectual Property is the morally valid exclusive use of something non-physical.  An idea, or a creative output that is duplicatable.