tadmjones
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Posts posted by tadmjones
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32 minutes ago, Robert Romero said:
An inherent characteristic of LFC is free market entry. Laws that prohibit market entry by competitors are fundamentally anti LFC.
Uniqueness has nothing to do with the loss of use of something if someone else uses it. That's the crucial distinction between the beach house and an idea. A can't use his beach house if B is using it. If B could make a copy of A's beach house simply by having knowledge of it, then B could use the copy without infringing on A's use of his beach house. The same applies to ideas.
Why would A need to be punished for withholding his idea? He's no under obligation to share it. However, once the idea is in other people's minds, he cannot take the property of others simply because others use the idea. An analogy would be someone with an oxygen cylinder. The owner of the cylinder is under no obligation to share the cylinder with anyone. However, if the cylinder leaks, and the oxygen escapes into the atmosphere, it would be absurd for him to demand that no one in the vicinity use "his" oxygen.
Your statement that disputes were settled via “arbitration” sidesteps the fact that Watt’s competitors were forced to respond to the court orders. Such orders are enforced by the threat of violence. So yes, the competitors were indeed forced to deal with Watt at the point of a gun.
The fact is that Watt made more money, steam engines improved, and they became more available after his patent expired. It defies reason to say that was a bad thing.
Watt made more money post 1800 , and you claim the cause was the expiration of the patent? Nothing to do with the capital accumulation and therefore more capital available in the aggregate to provide more customers,for his machines, the growth of the industrial revolution wasn't a link in the causal chain? You know the one that grew leaps and bounds from the efficiencies gained from improved steam engines? You have claimed innovations in the biotech industries haven't grown since the 'impositions' of IP to that industry, have they slowed because of it ? Not that I believe IP validity rests on an utilitarian premise, just questioning your logic and analogies.
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4 hours ago, Robert Romero said:
Competition is the nature of LFC. The potential for A to make less money because of the presence of Ax in the market is not a justification for the prohibition of Ax. To advocate such prohibition is to be opposed to LFC.
That is not the only way. A can simply implement the idea better than his competitors, outcompeting them. Again, this is the nature of LFC. This is not "mere theory". It's exactly what happened with the steam engine. When his patent expired, Watt made more money by emphasizing quality over his competitors. Also, the fact is that innovation thrived in the biotech and software industries prior to patents being imposed on them, and did NOT increase after they were. This refutes the claim that IP is "needed" for innovation.
Because it is theft. A is taking the property of the others by force, at the point of a gun. If you take what is in my wallet, I cannot use that money. This is fundamentally different from using an idea gained via peaceful means, because ideas are not scarce.
A’s beach house is a scarce good. That makes it completely different from an idea, which is nonscarce.
I believe private property is more fundamental to the nature of LFC and competition a consequence of trade/markets between/among owners of property.
A's idea and its implementation via Machine A are as unique and concrete as his beach house, they are equally scare.
If B paying A for use of A's idea is theft, then A withholding his idea would be a punishable act committed by A on B and the rest of humanity?
My understanding of Watt's patent for the steam condenser is that he improved on an existing technology , applied and received a patent for the improvement and began selling and installing his machines. His customers eventually began withholding payments after others infringed on the patent and began selling and constructing similar machines calling the validity of the patent into question. He sued and the court found for Watt, though his "competitors" were not forced at gun point to reimburse stolen or misappropriated royalties the disputes were settled through arbitration between the parties involved. It also seems efficiencies and improvements to his designs came from Watt not wanting to participate in partnerships or co-license agreements eg sun and planet gearing, so innovation sparked by purposeful non infringement.
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The only harm relevant to Man A in use of his Machine A as a service to his life by the trade he can garner in the market for Machine A is Machine B, or more rightly labelled, Machine Ab.
To say that Man B can take Man A's idea then incorporate and manufacture it into a machine and leave Man A still in possesson of his idea for the Machine A due to the 'copyableness' of ideas, may be true. But it is also true that when B brings the Machine Ab to market it becomes a harm/threat in the form of competition to the trade of Machine A, as would any Machine Ax.
It would seem the only way for Man A to protect himself from such threat would be to not bring Machine(s) A to market because so doing would allow B(and C, D ect.) to take and incorporate his idea and use it against his use of the idea as a service to his life in the trade of his Machine. Without protection of his property in his marketable idea, what other than recreation or curiousity would make it worthwhile to create innovation?
What harm has come to Man B if IP requires that Man B pay A for use of A's idea incorporated into anything B brings to market? or C or D ect? Is it that the gift of innovation was supposed to given freely by A to all comers, because without A's idea B or anyone else would be able to garner no trade in Machine Ax , without A there is no Machine A let alone an Ab, Ac or Ad. The copiers are not being punished , harmed or being put at any disadvantage by having to pay for use of A's property on A's terms any more than if they were paying him rent for use of his beach house.
Anti- IP certainly seems to want to have the view for free.(and the towels) -
I would add that preventing someone, via the threat of violence, from using what he has learned in the service of his own life is absolutely immoral.
hyperbole
IP , at least how I understand the principles involved, is not about granting special protections "in the marketplace" as much as trying to develope a system that recognizes and protects rights to property " in the marketplace". As stated it is a very complex topic and trying to keep or identify the proper context proves to be difficult.
How could suing over patent infringements be tantamount to the threat of violence? It's akin to saying that filing a police report about a burglary is an act of vigilante justice.
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To me the anti IP argument usually boils down to the physical ability to make "copies" and equating the practical with the moral.
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I fail to see paying a royalty to an inventor as being forced to live for the inventor's sake.
Copiers should have ,at least , the decency to ask before enjoying benefits conferred on them by those who create.
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Repairman , but what about Lincoln or Obama? I assume Lincoln views on slavery were known prior to his being elected, and Obama had been trumpeting the passage of the ACA in two election cycles.
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Egoism is also not challenged by identification of objective facts. The acts of identifiying and recognizing discrete, unique and concrete entities are products of rational thought. If I build a house there is no reason to suppose I could force you to use it and charge you a fee for it. But every common sense expectation that if I allow you access to its use that I would not be prohibited from charging a price. Nor would it be considered that simply becasue my house exists, you have a right to its use. The fact my house exists is no threat to your ability to build a house and use it as you see fit: rent it out, live in it or simply give it away, heck my house in no way interferes with your ability to build as many houses as you can or want.
Does the idea that a LFC society would recognize my ' house monopoly rights' and incorporate a legal sytem that works to protect and provide a mechanism for settling grievances and possible compensation for any infringement of my 'monopoly' , mean that that monopoly was created or granted to me by the legal system ? Or is it a recognition of rights I possess, notwithstanding the system? I don't think 'monopoly' is actually the best term to describe the rights in property I hold in regard my house(an actual house), let alone what rights it may be termed I ' have' in acting to precur any potential houses.
An invention , song, or novel are identifiable discrete entities , no? In the largest picture , an LFC society would be an 'artifical' and to whatever degree or more or less arbitrary construct. With a foremest emphasise on being grounded in and founded on moral principles, yes?
So when the commitee meeting is called to draw up the one bestest LFC handbook, I 'm going to propose the legal recognition of the right of the inventor to 1% , in perpituity or death whichever comes first, of the gross sales of his/her legally validiated patented widget, and lets say 97% of gross sales for the copyright holders of novels and songs for 8 years and 1% thereafter in perpituity or death of the first generation of the holders of those rights. -
Well stated, and I think better than I have been trying to do
This presumed right in the form of IP is, I think, fundamentally at odds with a free and unregulated market place. The production of a marketable product cannot be stolen, as from a store, without paying for it, and that makes sense morally. But where is the moral imperative that knowledge gained by window shopping, e.g., via advertising or general awareness (gained without contract), must not be used to create a competitive or improved product, or one that is simply recreated for personal use?
Where is the argument that laissez-faire capitalism cannot exist without an artificial monopoly in place?
How is 'patentless' capitalism any less artificial? Or capitalism for that matter.
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re watts example
So it wasn't really Watts' gaining a patent that harmed himself and society at large , economically, just his enforcement of it ?
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Wright's , Count To A Trillion was great, have yet to get any more of his , but plan to.
Neal Stephenson is fantastic.
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re second-handedness
The idea of being second- handed, as I understand it, is centered around how one values or picks values. A secondhanded person will look to others for the things to value. Right , wrong or indifferent they will value that which others do. They will not choose their own values but rely on what others think and adopt them seemingly unquestionably. Secondhanders lack discretion , they not only 'go with the flow' but actively pursue the flow and and mimic it. Secondhandedness is less than virtuous based on the idea of its lack of integrity, not from any socio-economic status.
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DonAthos
When reading your post I heard Col Jessup in the back of my mind , "You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall". Granted the context was a defense of the warrior 'class' and its function of protecting citizens of a nation from enemies of the nation and not domestic law enforcement, but I think it may speak to what could be meant by 'our present context'. The thin blue line , the policemen 'class' , the idea of an ongoing perpetual war of us vs them and the police as only guardians of civility and that 'they' should be granted certain leeway.
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And like Bubba says , it ultimately rests on the meaning of what 'is' is, right Frank?
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Are you asking if writing fiction is or is not a worthwhile pursuit, or if the genre is "acceptable "?
I think the answer to the former is obvious, and to the latter maybe don't ask who will let you just let them try and stop you
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3450~ pages a day read and analyzed, some feat.
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Words like "dash" would make sense. I haven't heard anyone say "he charged me", it just sounds very weird and sketchy when used for something besides a bull or something like an ostrich. Seems to me a euphemism for big black guys running, or at least for Wilson it might be. If it's a normal term for people, I never heard it.
"It was reported that one of the reasons he was not given CPR by the police was that he was still breathing while he lay there."
The guy REPEATED "I can't breathe". Was he breathing normally? Barely breathing? If it was because he was "barely breathing", then that's plenty actually, and that's why he died - died from a choke indirectly. Why do the chokehold? Garner was obese. Seems like a case of "whoa, big black guy! Scary." He was an obese guy. He wasn't going anywhere...
From my recollection of the coverage the word charge or charging was the word used by a witness to the shooting and was probably reported to show corroboration of the Wilson's account. In the testimony Wilson says he returned to the station without having contact with any of the witnesses, are you suggesting he planted that word with the witness somehow , it seems more likely that that term was the one used by witness.
Do the Staten Island police have any connection with the police force in Fergeson, or is it that all cops in the US are scared of black guys( including the supervising officer in the Garner case)?
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How did Wilson assertain that Brown was unarmed, without a search of his person and given his voilent confrontation isn't reasonable for Wilson to at east entertain the possibility that Brown may have been armed? The fact he was unarmed was only determined after the altercation.
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Well to be fair, jaywalking shoplifters who assault armed police officers, break contact and then re-engage a police officer who is armed and firing in their direction.
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This assailant was fatally shot in the head 10 ft from the officer he was charging, what does that say about the officer's valid options. For that matter, what of the assailant's 'valid options?
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"The video often played following its release in August by the Ferguson police department shows Michael Brown grabbing a handful of Cigarillos and heading toward the exit without paying. As Michael Brown and his companion left the store, somebody inside called the police." ~ (from linked post #71)
Seriously
So your contention is that had Brown sat down on the curb and admitted that he in fact had just committed a robbery, Wilson would have shot him dead?
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DA
Just don't forget to factor in the time it takes for a target that is advancing toward the shooter. And the characteristics of firing a pistol multiple times in a specific time period.
My understanding of the event was that the officer was reacting to a person who had assualted him and tried to gain control of his weapon , who just happened to be someone who also recently committed a strong arm robbery. Are you trying to characterize the officer's reaction to cigarello thievery, seriously ?
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Good philosophy didn't seem a strong enough antidote. Even in the media hype there were messages of 'shouldn't' and mustn't', the woman and those like her lost their property because there werent enough people there saying "Don't"
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Being long time married and attending a large family gathering my odds seem fowl at breast.
Intellectual property
in Political Philosophy
Posted
I am finding Spooner's arguments to be very interesting and credible, especially how far he extends and follows his implications to their logical conclusions. Thanks to those in these threads who have brought exposure to his ideas.