Jeffrey, you are on the right track when you take aim at “intellectual-property laws,” but you veer off track and over the cliff when you abbreviate such laws as IP and speak of intellectual property as if it was the same thing as intellectual property laws. The rational abbreviation of intellectual-property laws is IPL, not IP. What one says about intellectual-property laws does not apply to intellectual property. You are conflating two very different things. IP is the product of a person’s mind, an idea, and it is exclusively that person’s property until he or she shares it or disposes of it. IPL, on the other hand is legislation, and the many negatives things you say about intellectual-property laws hold true. But, again, IP is not IPL.
You mean a person’s ideas are fundamental attacks on sharing and the functioning of economic life? Utter nonsense! In a stateless, free society there would be plenty of IP but no IPL.
“Attribution doesn’t require intellectual property, ownership is impossible as regards ideas, and no one has a right to profit as such. ” Having veered off track by conflating the two different concepts–laws and ideas–you crash into the Grand Canyon by extending a valid criticism of legislatively established monopolies to make the obviously erroneous assertion that ideas cannot be owned. As a matter of fact, ideas only come about because they are somebody’s.
The question of how ownership of ideas might be shared, protected, sold, etc. in the absence of the violent state and its coercive laws is a great subject for libertarians to cogitate, but we won’t get very far in a cooperative mode if we aren’t more precise in our speech.
There is an assemblage of articles on IP and IPL, pro and con over at the Voluntaryist.com website. (http://voluntaryist.com/property/index.html) It should be noted that most of the attacks on IP are really directed at IPL, although some crash into the Canyon by attacking the idea of IP ownership.
IP? IPL? Sematics I’ll not get into.
An idea or concept only exist in a conscious mind. If you know something you know it, no matter how you gained that knowledge–whether you learned it from someone else, discovered it yourself, or invented the idea. It cannot be taken away from you and your having the idea deprives no one else of having the same idea.
The idea of, “owing,” an idea is not only wrong, it is silly.
Seems to me the idea of not owning your own ideas is not just wrong. It is impossible.
IP versus IPL and their distinction has little to do with semantics, except as regards the word property, which is laden with legal meanings as decreed by legislators. It is this fact that I believe has led folks like Tucker and Kinsella to condemn IPL and then extend their condemnation of IPL to IP itself. Doing that is no different than condemning a local merchant because you happen to disagree with some aspect or rule of the Law Merchant.
It is awful hard for us to escape thinking we may unconsciously imbibe for constantly living within the claimed “jurisdiction” of states, with their ubiquitous laws and the incessant babbling of their agents and those inhabitants who are in thrall to the state as if it is their god.
It’s not actually the concept of ownership I would object to, but the nature of ideas being something that can be owned.
Things that can be owned are tangible and indivisible. If you own something, then give it away or sell it or destroy it you no longer have it. If you give something you own to someone you cannot give it to anyone else. If you sell something you own you cannot sell it to anyone else, because you no longer have it to sell.
You can give an idea away to as many people as you like and as often as you like and you still have the idea. You can sell an idea to someone else and you still have the idea. What you cannot do is destroy an idea, at least short of destroying your own brain.
It also does not matter how you acquire an idea–by learning it from others, descovering it by research, or inventing it–once you have an idea it is your idea and anyone or anything that would limit how you use the content of your own mind is evil.
It really has nothing to do with government, or laws, or definitions. It’s simply confusing abstract ideas (which cannot be owned) with actual concretes which can be.
Who has decreed that things that can be owned are tangible and indivisible? Who sez abstract ideas cannot be owned, that only actual concretes can be?
By no means that I can imagine does the concept, intellectual property (viz., my ideas, my ownership of my ideas), limit how you use the content of your mind (viz., your ideas). Only laws can do that, or rather IP laws do indeed attempt to do that. So it seems to me our difference depends entirely on what the meaning of own is, which implies we are reduced to dabbling in semantics, and, like you, I’m not eager to get into that. I am as much a foe of IP laws as anyone, but I see the crux of the problem as laws, not IP. I am opposed to all laws written by human legislators and enFORCED by government agents.
I do. I don’t know if anyone else does or would agree with it, nor do I care. I’m not trying to convince you to either. Since you reject all man-made laws (as do I), what is the point of calling ideas something you own? Of course your ideas are your ideas, just as your feelings are your feelings, and your imaginations are your imaginations, and your beliefs are your beliefs. I suppose you could say you “own” them, but what would be the point?
I don’t care if you want to call such things your property but I think calling the abstract property dilutes the meaning of the word as it applies to actual concrete property (or wealth).
We may not like the question being reduced to a semantic one, but I think it is important epistemologically. I went back to your original comment to see if I could understand exactly why you think an idea ought to be thought of as property, i.e. IP.
I agree that ideas only exist as concepts in human consciousness. For the life of me, I cannot see why that would make ideas property (although it is probably harmless enough if you think so.) I cannot see anything that changes the status of an idea (its actual nature) if one does not regard them as property. In fact it is only regarding ideas as property (IP) that makes the concept of IPL possible, isn’t it? If no one thought ideas could be property ( owned or belonging to someone exclusively) there could be no IPL.
We’re probably not going to agree, which is not as important as being able to exchange differences agreeably, which I’ve enjoyed.
@saunders Good day to you, Randy. I hope it is as good a day wherever you are as it is here in Memphis. After several weeks of oppressive heat and humidity, it cooled yesterday and today is beyond beautiful, weatherwise and otherwise.
I don’t know who came up with the concept of intellectual property, but as I know it, it includes not only ideas but the creative works of authors, poets, writers, sculptors, inventors, etc. While these are ideas, sorta, before they become novels, wingbats, songs and such, when they do become a song or an invention they can acquire one important characteristic in common with some concrete property, that is to say they can become valuable to the owner under certain circumstances. I suppose IP laws came about to give those owners state protection of their valuable creations. And like everything the state touches, those IP laws turned IP into an arena for intellectual combat among libertarians–of all people–and others to the general detriment of all people. Now the arena battle among libertarians is at least as old as the 19th century when Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker squared off. I’m guessing you are aware of the two camps “for” and “against” intellectual property RIGHTS. Rights, of course, are fertile grounds for semantics, and those who refer to IP rights almost always mean, or conflate IP rights with IP law.. On this Liberty.me site, Jeffrey Tucker and Wendy McElroy have written articles against IP, but, if my memory serves, unlike Jeffrey, Wendy is careful to distinguish that it is IPL, not IP, that she is against.
If you will take the time to read Boren’s article, he (or Galambos, really) may persuade you that ideas are property, but more importantly that the world’s leading authority–ask him, he will tell you–on IP, one Stephan Kinesella, was dead wrong in his arguments in his very popular essay, “Against Intellectual Property.” Had you known him, I suspect from reading some of your writings you would have found in Galambos a fellow travel well met. I think somewhere I read that when asked why he did what he did on behalf of freedom, his response was that “he wanted to make the world safe for astrophysicists.” So I’ll leave it in Boren’s and Galambos’ able hands to try to persuade you that good ideas are valuable property.
Idea’s like all other kinds of property are derived from the efforts of a person’s life. With small everyday ideas, it matters not at all who thought it first. Consequently, there would be no reason to protect them. With significant ideas and innovations that have the potential to benefit all of mankind, however, there is every reason to incentivize their creation and find a moral way to protect their use.
Hi, Lou, I’m Ned, Mr. Netterville is dead. With all of the bright minds among libertarians, I’m confident one of them will come up with a brilliant idea on how to incentivize the creation and widespread use of ideas and innovations by moral means without the necessity of state violence, which is entwined in all of its laws.
It’s actually a lovely day here in Greenville, SC, thank you. By the way, please call me Randy, only my mother ever called me Randall.
That obfuscation is intentional. I don’t mean on your part, but by those who promote IPL. It intentionally conflates two metaphysically different things: ideas and physical existents.
Certainly a painting, a sculpture, a book manuscript or published book, a model or actual machine, or a tool are the property of whoever owns them. Are you suggesting they are in some way intellectual property?
I’m familiar with Galambos who at least was original. I have no use the Kinsella’s ideas.
So I only have one question. Based on this quote: “I hope to demonstrate that we have no rational choice but to treat ideas as property,” what possible negative consequence could there be if ideas are not regarded as property?
Randy, true of my brother Randy’s name as well. When mom named the last of her five boys Randall, we older ones accused her of being addicted to the horses–betting that is. When my bros and friends were in our early teens and couldn’t get a loop as caddies at Canterbury Golf Course, we’d head up the road to the horse barns at Randall or Thistledown in hopes of earning a buck or two walking horses. http://www.horseracing-tracks.com/tracks/oh/homeRan.html Unfortunately, we often ended a buck or two poorer for having tried picking a winner.
Hi Ned. My name came about a bit differently from your brother’s. Randall was my mother’s maiden name. My mother would have been mortified to thank that name was associated with horse racing. One of my favorite uncles, however, spent a good part of his life at the track. He used to take me to Boston, to the Old Oyster House where we’d have a stout and raw oysters when I was fifteen.
I was actually more interested in your own thoughts and whether you think not regarding ideas as property has any consequences, and if so, what you think they might be.
Hi Randy, it has been almost a year since you asked and I failed to answer your question. Lou Abbott posted a comment recently (see above), which brought me back here to see that I left your question hanging.
Do I think not regarding ideas as property has any consequences? Indeed I do. And I offer as proof Kinsella’s essay, ‘Against Intellectual Property.” Now let me turn the table: Do you think regarding ideas as property has any consequences, aside from those resulting from the state meddling in the concept?
It can’t possibly matter how any individual regards ideas, so long those views are not used to actually interfere in anyone else’s life. People have all kinds of odd views of ideas from things injected in their minds by some supernatural sources to “little pictures in the mind,” ala David Hume. If someone wants to regard their ideas property, it does no one any harm. Personally I have no idea what it means to say an idea is property or how it could possibly make any difference. If I have an idea, no one can take it away from me or destroy it, as they could anything else I regard as property. How could regarding ideas as property change my ideas or what I do with them in any way?
I responded by linking to the OED’s definition of “own” in English. (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/own) I thought that might prove to be dispositive of your contention that owning an idea is “not only wrong, but silly.” I also thought it would reveal that your comment was implacably getting into semantics. And I’m afraid were still there.
If you have an idea, someone can possibly steal it. They might surreptitiously observe you in your laboratory experimenting on your idea or obtain your idea in some other way you were unaware of and capitalize on it. If your idea isn’t property, of course, that wouldn’t be stealing. If it was property, it would be. In either case it would be immoral. So morality is on the side of treating ideas as property. Not doing so invites immoral behavior. Man-made laws seldom have anything to do with morality, and when do they are inevitably redundant, for such good laws were already manifest in the Decalogue.
A problem also is created by conflating IPL and IP. Simply put, laws are statist, ideas are not.
If you want to regard ideas as property, then do. By any reasonable definition of property, however, they cannot be because they do not exist except in individual’s consciousnesses.
According to your OED, the definition of, “steal,” is, “Take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.” I submit, then, anything that cannot be taken away or returned cannot be property. How would it be possible to take away someone’s desires, feelings, shadow, or ideas (they are all theirs), and if they were taken, how could they be returned. If something is taken from you, you no longer have it. How would it be possible to take away someone’s ideas, so they no longer have them?
If someone discovers an idea you have by invading your privacy or stealing documents in which the the ideas are recorded, that is breaking and entering or plain theft. The addition of the following to your description, “… and capitalize on it,” is what is wrong with treating ideas as property. No idea is worth a penny unless it is used to actually produce a physical product or perform a service with market value. No idea has any value at all in itself.
I think you are making the mistake of assuming an idea will automatically have some market value. Pharmaceutical companies spend millions every year to discover new drugs (or the ideas for them) that never earn them a penny. If I write the best novel ever written and no one is interested in reading it, it is worthless. There is no guarantee that any idea will be able to be capitalized on.
Perhaps our discussion is “quibbling over semantics ,” but I’m a philosopher a fussy about the meaning of words. I can certainly justify using the word “property” when it pertains to anything an individual has produced or earned by his own effort or purchased by exchanging his own property for it.
You are aware that his happens. Though it had no particular market value, (it certainly had a prestige value) Leibniz and Newton simultaneously had the same great idea called the Calculus. So the question is, which (Newton or Leibniz) owned the idea of the calculus?
Isn’t being a grandfather grand! And I agree with your rules. I live by them myself.
I’ve said all I intend to say about IP. I’m certainly not interested in convincing you to adopt my views. Just thought you might be interested in what they are.
Have very much enjoyed the conversation. Enjoy your grandchildren, and life.
Thanks for engaging, Randy, it has been fun. While I haven’t changed my mind on the efficacy of treating ideas as property, you injected a different perspective I hadn’t considered, which was not proffered by Kinsella in his monograph, AGAINST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. And clearly you do not think that some folks treating ideas as property will result in all of the negative consequences Kinsella envisions. Shalom.