Eiuol

Fair enough, but I'll just say that even if it's just data, that won't change what I said. If it's just data about some phone number X calling phone number Y, I'd call that meta-data still because it says nothing about content, it only tells the phone numbers. I've heard of no evidence that anyone is looking for content and listening to everything you say on the phone. This is not a net - it's closer to just a police officer walking down the street observing people. I acknowledge the bit about "a camera on every corner", but a camera is a lot more intrusive than meta-data. The only difference is you use a computer. No one is presumed innocent or guilty even, since there is not anything intrusive in the first place. That is, unless you imagine it like some FBI people sitting around literally listening to your conversations. Data is useless until someone processes it quite thoroughly, and that's when your privacy may be violated. No one is listening. If there is no data collection, then the government is literally useless on the Internet. The problem is, while there is a degree of private space, there is also a degree of space that is just as open as a field in the forest. There's a difference between you as an individual and the pieces of data you send out. As an individual there are particular data points about your life, like birth dates or birth place, and information like the content of your emails, phone calls, etc. Then there is meta-data, like the time a call is placed, or how often a number receives calls. In a massive database, that says nothing at all, yet a database will establish a cyberspace landscape with which to traverse (it's digital space, not spatial territory though). If there is something really odd going on, perhaps calling to the middle of nowhere in Pakistan 20 times a day, then the data can be investigated further, as with any investigation. My only concern is if warrants are used to do further investigation. "The government has no business knowing such information." Part of my point is that *no one* knows information about you until and if you are investigated. Information is more informative than data, and requires analysis. As far as I've heard, there isn't necessarily any analysis (except presumably when a person is suspicious). Databases *have* data, but it doesn't follow that the government *knows* anything. Indeed, there is potential and scope for abuse, hence my reasoning to add an ammendment to the Constitution. I appreciate the text of the 4th Ammendment, DA. I have to think about that more. My discussion here has to do with if collecting meta-data qualifies as an unreasonable search. My position right now is that meta-data is not in any way a search, so I see neither violation of the 4th ammendment, nor any violation of rights.

Would it then be an initiation of force to disallow someone from entering you're house when you are gone? Property seems superfluous here, so I don't see how a discussion about IP could get anywhere.

Err okay. It's pretty easy to be racist. It's worse you say financially any Muslim supports violence, but really, I have no idea how you know that. One, in many places, it is illegal to do so, As in financially supporting terrorism is not acceptable and is illegal, unless you're talking about countries like Iran where it is perhaps the status quo. And secondly, you didn't back up what you said, making it as though it's plainly obvious. Again, it's easy to be racist. If you have a point, make it. Racism is no way to back up what you're saying. I don't like many religions, but "almost all" and "monster" indicates you're making a generalization without much basis to it.

Sure, if you don't want them to run through your yard, it is trespassing. What I'm getting at is that property is a right to action, not about whether a person is harmed or not. I'm simply asking if it is just for a person to wander around in your house when you aren't there while you're at work. We can't discuss IP until you point out premises about property in general! Yes, even pocketing money *could be* theft in many contexts.

Okay, so I can borrow anything without permission. If no objective harm comes to you, then I can walk into your house at my choosing. What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. After all, if it doesn't affect you, I am not causing you any kind of loss if you aren't there. You might not "like" me walking into your house, but hey, I'm bored. Why do cops have to kick me out for climbing in through the window? I like equal access to wireless Internet.

Well, we're talking about normal people in normal circumstances. We can go to borderline cases later. Bear with me here! So, while you're at work, I can enter your house without permission, watch TV while using your wireless internet, and leave when you're back?

Okay, so would you say your rights have not been violated when someone uses your bike without permission even if you weren't there?

Then please stop arguing against the premise that IP is literally and only owning an idea. IP is neither a pure idea nor a purely material thing. IP existing is dependent upon a realizable product as well as the idea and means to make/produce/create that specific product. A mind exists, and a body exists, but it's nonsense to talk about either separately. Similarly, the intellectual end of property exists just as much as a tangible end of property, for all property. That's not just a metaphor, though. I really mean that there isn't an idea to touch, but it does not mean that it's just some illusion that results from the use of property. I hoped Nicky pre-empted all this on post #5. To consider being "ripped off", start with this. Say you're on vacation for a week and leave your bike at home. Someone uses your bike without permission while you are gone; you are being deprived of nothing, since you're on vacation. Suppose further that your bike is taken care of. You return home, find a sign on your bike that says "thanks for the joy ride". Were you ripped off? Why or why not?

Geographic location is inconsequential. Bringing the fight to the enemy means engaging in the enemy in cyberspace, since there is a lot of activity online. It would be suicidal to just treat cyberspace as nonexistent or not a real place. Bad people inhabit the Internet, thus data should be used. It is not a though your presence online is all encapsulated inside a metaphorical car. Your presence online is more like walking the street, which is sensibly observable to anyone around you. If you do something suspicious, then all that observed data will be gathered and explicitly used. The only way to recognize suspicious activity is to gather data, whether it is a metal detector or an observation of strange and heavy bags. Seeing it is no violation of privacy, but opening the bags without a reason to suspect malicious intentions is. Meta data is no different than the mere observation of some action. It does not reveal anything unless someone investigates further "opening up" the meta data to make deeper conclusions that violate privacy. Understanding how data works is important to understanding how this isn't all that threatening. Indeed, guidelines and checks should be formalized and perhaps even written up as an amendment to the Constitution, but the government has a need and even justification to store meta data. The bigger question is, to what extent should the government gather information in order to be functional? If the government cannot store any data in the digital age, it is truly useless. At the same time, infinite storage is probably improper. What is the proper balance? I'm not sure.

Jeez, if you have nothing to post on the topic, don't bother posting, just PM the person you're addressing.

You lost me here. There is no central authority of Islam. The rest just follows like paranoia that Islam as a religion is inherently worse than every religion there is. Then it goes into paranoia that we now live in "1984". I'd leave this one to Glen Beck.

"You didn't need to mention "Das Kapital" to explore a position." I'm sorry for using literary flair when telling a story? No, I'm not sorry, you're just blowing it out of proportion, since it seems like we've had a misunderstanding. All I *said* is that I think anti-IP implicitly leads to a communistic standard of thought and creativity. I did not say *you* believe that the implications are *valid*. That is worlds apart from saying "DonAthos, you're a communist!". That's just saying "DonAthos, this is where the logical end goes!" If you take offense to that, I don't know what to say. And by the way, the name Sergei, it's not because it sounds Russian. I used the first names of classical composers. Same with Franz and Wolfgang. Regarding that link, how is it different, fundamentally, than what I am saying? Differences, yes, but there is more similarity with what I'm saying than what you're saying. So, I offer it to think about. And if I misunderstood it, explain it to me! I can't say anything else really, the other points you made are making it look like we've gone far off from discussion into a personal matter. Please presume my intellectual honesty here, I just can't respond to each quote bomb you make and satisfy all your questions even to my own satisfaction.

Yes, a very, very, very long time. It's really not that bad. I'm not going to address your points, but at least this case is an example of things going decently and perhaps even well. Even if you are right about how terrible the other things are (I really don't think you are right), you can't use that to show there is something wrong about punishing Bradley Manning. I understand you're point is that we've passed the Rubicon, so perhaps Manning was making a courageous decision in your view, but if that's the case, it sounds like you advocate bringing down the government indirectly right *now*. If it's not nearly as bad as North Korea, how can you say it's okay *right now* for how Manning went about this?

Uhh, no I didn't. I think overall, anti-IP is implicitly intellectual communism. That doesn't translate to you being a communist, but it does translate into you not being aware of the links between ideas in the same way I am aware. After all, I assume we don't have the same knowledge. The difference is the idea of anti-IP being bad versus you being bad. I think anti-IP is bad (in other words, incorrect as well), and for that reason, I want to dissuade you from that position. I used the "Sergei is a communist" thing to represent a position, not to represent you as some kind of communist. I do not appreciate though the sarcastic remarks about me being funny the post you made earlier. I read the link, yes. I reviewed it before I posted. There are points I disagree on - I think patents are legit, and I am undecided on perpetuity (I lean towards no perpetuity). I agree with the main idea. It's still at least agreeing that IP is legitimate, even if I disagree on what should fall under IP. That is in contrast to you saying IP is totally illegitimate.

Well, the people arguing for IP here aren't arguing for what you call IP. I tell you it's about embodied ideas, not ideas as such, then you say that it's just my version, and continue to argue against strawmen. Even then, the discussion is about the concept of IP, not about a particular theory of IP. Indeed, my version may be different than Tad's, for example, but Tad and I both believe that the concept is valid and good. I've said in simple terms that IP is about production of specific material values, and allowing the creator or inventor to have full control over how those methods may be used. Property in general is about maintaining and using what one needs for flourishing, as embodied in the world. It is also of a defined, reasonable limit, and monopolistic in the sense that one (some?) person (people?) has complete control over a piece of property. I do not think anyone here has disagreed with that, and it's really a basic framework of the concept. If I haven't said it before, I have now. Here is a link with a post I like a lot, in terms of supporting IP. I point you to 8, 12, and 13 for arguments you have made. By the way, I agree with the characterization of anti-IP as (implicit) intellectual communism. http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/13692.aspx A useful point to pique anyone's interest: "When a capitalist information industry undertakes to create specific information, it must do so with the expectation that it will be able to sell the information at a profit, and thus calculate the optimal supply of this information based on marginal revenue, from which it must subtract the costs that will be incurred during production. If it should fail, the capitalist will have to exit the information production industry. All of these prices are the result of marginal value, and thus marginal value theory is a foundation for intellectual property rights."

And IP isn't about ideas *as such*. We've been over that.

It's relevant because the context here is specific kinds of inventions/IP as opposed to the invention/IP in general. If it's not relevant, then it is context-dropping.

Indeed, that's why I asked about personal anecdotes of yours, or personal experience, that is, how you figured out what you say works. By asking that, it's not even an argument. I'm just honestly curious about your experiences, to see how this all works out for you that helps you clarify the topic of romance.

It's hard to say - it depends on why he recommended that book. There are books I'd recommend, for instance, that have principles I'd disagree with, but that doesn't mean I believe all of it. For the most part, what you can get out of what you quoted is that it's okay to be wrong, which admitting is one way to get over destructive emotions. Presuming that is related to the problem you're seeing a psychologist, at least.

This is unjust, but it's not an argument about the nature of IP. US copyright law was notoriously abused by Edison for example. In one example, Tesla held the patent for radio, but likely through Edison's and Carnegie's manipulations, was able to get the patent given to the Italian radio pioneer, Marconi. Tesla lost the patent, was screwed out of a lot of money because the US courts arbitrarily favored Edison. I wouldn't call that the truth of IP, but what happens when law is abused to favor whoever is the highest bidder. You seem to keep arguing against a form of IP no one here agrees with, and anyone saying they support IP implicitly supports bad forms of law. It's like citing feudalism as an example of how property controls one's life and freedom. I can get to that cat exercise thing, but all I really have to say about it is that for one, it's wayyyyyy too generalized, making it impossible to define who is a violator. IP is not usually like that, nor should it be - I know of plenty of examples where the limits are clear and well-defined (to come in that big post - exciting, I know!) Relevant: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html For the record, based on your quotes of Spooner, I think he starts out fine, but continues in the wrong way. He really does look to make a dichotomy out of material and immaterial.

If that happened, Floyd would be taken to court and probably lose - H was given the prosthetic legs without any agreement. And even then, IP is about the production of things like prosthetics, not about being able to use those prosthetics when one acquires the actual prosthetic. In fact, prosthetics I can assure you are patented frequently, so your hypothetical isn't a hypothetical at all - it actually happens. The only difference you presented is that H got his legs when he was asleep/unconscious, typically making a person not culpable for any legal consideration. You are assuming basically in your hypothetical that law is taken as an absolute and no one is ever taken to court. IP first has to do with property, but then we can discuss the legal concerns.

Well, that was a quote of Branden.

I do not see how this is true, as I don't see how IP could ever be *transferable*. Indeed, you may sell rights to IP in the sense a person has explicit permission to use it, but not that it can ever be transferred. Land works like that too, but it can be transferred since it is spatial (it's not exactly tangible, land is abstract still). The reason to have an expiration is because people plan around property or the status of the world right now - for practical reasons, "time of death + X years" is needed for people to be able to reasonably respond. And after that, it is just unowned. Not public, but there is no one to violate the rights of. Rights apply to people, not floating ideals which exist on their own. It appears to me that you think *all* property must have the characteristic of transferability, so you are reasoning from that about what would be the case if IP were valid.

I think it does. I wrote it, so I would know. But I'll drop that line of reasoning for now since it's not going anywhere. I see your point at the end of your post, and it's a very good one. Although, I think it's evidence that if IP is valid, then it should last at least as long as the creator's lifetime. So, Sergei quits his job in protest. Franz is happy,.until he hears about Joseph building Franz Brand pianos... (that's what I'll discuss next large post).

The irony!!!