TuringAI

I really can't give a detailed analysis, but there are two arguments I could make. If the person who owns the IP made a contract with Jones, and Jones disobeys it, intentionally or not, by abandoning it, then depending on what's on the contract, the person who abandoned it will be held liable. Furthermore, what about if someone stole a car and sold it to me? I would have no right to use it, and if I had a rational way of identifying the owner of the car it would not simply be a matter of choice whether or not I were to use it or find the owner and return it. The same thing goes for a stolen book. If there were a rational way of identifying that not only the physical book, but the intellectual contents of said book, were in fact owned by someone else, it would by my obligation NOT to copy it, or even to read it. I would have to hand it to a judge to determine to whom it really belonged. Finally, to deal with the whole commercially exploited point you just made, I imagine that any business which wanted to do so could create a membership of sorts, whereby nonmembers were not allowed to have any form of access whatsoever, and members were obliged to be careful with any products sold to them so as not to let them fall in the wrong hands. It may on the face of it seem impractical, but because the theory is sound, there must be at least SOME way to practice it. Given the proper first-conditions, anything which is theoretically possible in that context is definately do-able.

That's why we get a right of privacy/secrecy/confidentiality to go along with the right to contract. This means any third party interference with a contract is violating the rights of those who agree to it. But, likewise, the right not to disclose naturally implies the right not to be one to whom the information is disclosed, so a person can't just come around the corner and force you to accept the tenets of IP and then say "well now that it's revealed to you, you can't make one of your own" and then laugh at you. In my method of protecting IP, there is no action-at-a-distance, and information is treated as a particular unit that exists somewhere in space and time, and is also capable of having its properties replicated indefinately. Given the context, this also determines whether or not the information-similar is also the property of the originator, or wheter it is the property of the one to whom it was disclosed.

Since my convictions about sex got lost in here, let me restate them. It is specifically a HUMAN quality, that is, a quality in homo-sapiens, that the particular differences between the sexes, physically and psychologically, are manifested. The homonid part, NOT the sapiens part, is what makes this possible. I suppose I will start a new thread about masculinity and femininity in specific so as to spare those here from thread derailment, but the point still remains.

Libertarianism isn't just a political party, but the philosophy that we can and should organize together soley on the principle that our political goals are the same. Differences between the Objectivist political philosophy and the current platform of the libertarian party aside, that is a big, irreconcilable difference that is completely intolerable in Objectivism.

Actually the whole cosmos, where and when the entirety of time and space is a single unit, is itself existence and identity at once. There would be no way to distinguish between the two concepts at the big bang. It's only when and where the cosmos develops, even in the most minor of ways, that the two can be reguarded as seperate concepts. That is the cosmos of which we are presently a part.

I'm surprised that intellectual property is not mentioned here more often. I used control-f and only found one instance of its usage, and that was quite a while back and more of a side note. Thinking of intellectual property, I would apply two different and mutually reinforcing principles: specific usage rights, and rights of disclosure. Specific usage rights would be akin to renting or loaning something out to someone, except there would be no artificial time limit and it would be based on whether it was clear and evident that a particular usage of something is not given to a person, such as a realter 'selling' a house but doing so under the understanding that you don't destroy the house or make it permanently unusable. This also means that if you find oil under someone else's farm, and you have a method allowing you to use the oil without depriving the farm of its foundation, you can drill for the oil as long as you don't do it through the farm. Rights of disclosure deal with ownership specifically of information, whereby a person agrees BEFORE that information is revealed to respect the confidentiality and secrecy of such information, and assumes legal liability in case the recipitent of the information leaks it, accidentally or on purpose. We all sign contracts involving privacy, and this principle could be extended as long as which characteristics of the information are to be kept private were all specifically outlined. Trade secrets work this way, and so could many forms of intellectual property. As for enforcement, that's another issue and the details of this aspect of intellectual property would, in a free society, be sufficient if it were used in tandem with the other two principles to be used as a kind of property just as intellectual property is used today. Furthermore, it would not be a competition stifling thing and would therefore need no time limit.

I am of the firm conviction that sex itself is a kink. Not in the standard sense of the term, IE it's kinky, but in the sense that if we had evolved differently, like an alien species which only posesses one gender which is, to us, a mixture of the most important male and female traits, it wouldn't be important to us because we'd reproduce asexually. It's only important to us now because we're human. Futhermore, it is completely arbitrary that in our species the males are the heroes and the females are the hero worshippers, assuming that you accept Rand's view. For instance, if we were evolved anthropoid hyenas, the females would be the heroes and the males would be the hero worshippers. It's just something that we have to accept and make a part of our lives. That is, BTW, something I am definately willing to do!

Yikes. It kind of makes me think... shouldn't we have a constitutional amendment defining what a terrorist is, just as we have treachery defined in the constitution? I think that would have a major impact on terrorism bills, but it would probably be opposed by most Republicans and even some Democrats. But hey, it's worth a shot, isn't it?

I was VERY disappointed with the ending. I would like to discuss how I thought the series could've continued, but I'd have to do so in private because I'd need to be able to discuss it without spoiling the ending. Not like it's much of a spoil; the ending kinda sucked.