GoodOrigamiMan

Yes, but this sort of monopoly is more a fact of physical reality. I cannot have it if he has it (someone said they could share my girlfriend ). The proper government recognizes that people survive by production and creation, by changing the world around them as opposed to changed themselves to the world, the fact that we need our products and our creations is rationally derived from knowledge of our nature and of physical reality. Having a right to act on your best judgment is also a fact in terms of survival, you have a right to your ideas as far as they are yours which means you must be able to act on your ideas to survive. Ideas do not fall into the monopoly category however because you can not have an idea at the expense of another person.

No, I reprimanded you because you guessed and you didn't have to. My position does not depend on the specifics that you want me to provide. In other words you could have it either way, if you only want to argue only for legal monopolies of 'created' ideas (as opposed to 'discovered' ideas) that is fine by me; I am arguing that no legal monopoly is proper for any idea (to save you from guessing I mean - discovered and created). If you have two answers depending on which meaning I might be using why don’t you have a third answer for the meaning I am using?

This is a good point, however... I am not arguing that stealing a blueprint isn't theft and I don’t see how anyone else someone is going to get it if it’s worth anything. I will return to this after I return from Team America.

You still don't get it. You don't have to guess because it doesn't matter. I can use a concept generally without specifying more specific instances of it. If it mattered which instance I was referring to then I would specify it, but since it doesn't matter I have no reason to. It is not my job to provide you with extraneous information. If you accepted that I know that I am saying you will have a better chance of understanding my position - even if you still disagree with me. You are spending too much time attacking the specifics that you add to my view yourself, the result of which is that you don’t understand my position. The rest of your post is a good example. It might matter to you, but it doesn’t matter to me. If you ask yourself “why?” you might get somewhere.

If you think the law should enforce monopolies on ideas, then they better distinguish between the creators and the parasites... or else it would defeat the purpose would it not? We agree that a person has a right to whatever they create; we disagree how ‘rights’ are applied to ideas. That is why our disagreement/issue/whatever is ownership of an idea, not of ownership of a creation. As I have said you have a right to your ideas as far as you keep them to yourself, you cannot shout out an idea then claim no one else can use it (even if you have a working model of your idea in the basement and a patent in the office). If you think a bunch of idiots that didn’t understand a thing about aerodynamics or planes would be able to produce wonderful copies of one, that is your opinion. If you think Glen Curtis would have produced replicas of the Wright brothers’ plane if he was allowed to, that is your opinion. Curtis... is that the same Curtis that designed the Curtis Piper Cub? If so I wouldn’t call him a second hander. You think it would be possible for anyone to make a fortune providing copies of airplanes without any intellectual contribution? I keep hearing about the Wright brothers, but no one is proving anything, so enough already. As far as advocating goes that is more divided then you might think, when patents were first introduced the main advocate was Alexander Hamilton (for the system as you would have it), James Madison was for a government system that would proved rewards and prizes for inventions, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were opposed to limited monopolies to inventors (source). Let me state again that there are tons of monstrous injustices that the government can not do anything about, the question is whether or not the government should provide legal monopolies for inventors, aka: the ownership of an idea.

Who said my first usage of the term was discovery? 50 of the ideas could be creations and other 50 could be discoveries for all I care... you assume too much and are just leading people away from what I am trying to say. When I say “ideas” I mean ‘ideas’, unless I specify an idea as a *discovery* or a *creation* then as far as you are concerned it could be either. You are right that a method or application implies a *creation* but I never disagreed with that now did I? *creation* vs. *discovery * seems to be your favorite thing to talk about, but it isn’t anything that I haven’t considered. How is, ‘Is how to apply an abstract idea not an idea?’ a super equivocation? Do you think you can apply abstract ideas without thinking? The problem is your assumptions not my statement. I am not acknowledging your posts in whole because either I have already answered the question or I don’t think what you said was important. If you think I missed something essential then please point it out directly.

Is how to apply an abstract idea not an idea? Is a particular method not an application of a collection of abstract ideas? The fundamental issue is the ownership of an idea. If you think you can own a combination of 100 ideas, then obviously you are presupposing you can own one. Application, method, etcetera - are all ideas themselves. If you think you can own the physical products of your ideas or if you think you can own the equipment that performs the process, I would agree with you. Since you think you can own the ideas that shaped the equipment however (to the point that you can practice you method in plain sight and lawfully prohibit people copying your process), I do not.

I am not going to defend it because it was not a package deal. I am not reducing to whole concept of property to possession, stop equivocating my context (which I defined) with your own - and then basing your criticism off of that. Then maybe I should let you think of your own way to implement intellectual property rights before I continue defending my way.

The fundamental issue is the ownership of an idea. You might think this is a straw man, I think it is the essential. I don't see why you want to ignore this issue then jump into the pragmatic problem of deciding what kind of ideas can be patented. Gold, air, electromagnetic radiation and satellite orbits can all be property. Anything that exists physically can be property and claimed. But with ideas not so, no pragmatist is silly enough to claim that ideas should be owned indefinitely by their inventors (the rights could be passed down), no pragmatist is smart enough to consider not trying to own ideas at all (which would hurt all the inventors)... the result is the usual pragmatist compromise.

Sorry, forgot to reply to this one, here goes Haven’t you realized I’m accepting your terms yet? Do you think the fundamental issue of owning an idea is dependent on whether or not you build a working model? So what are you requirements for the model? Does it have to be to scale? Made of gold perhaps? Specifically your understanding of my position, nothing more. Whether or not it was immoral would depend very much on context. First off did you independently discover/invent the idea or are you copying it from someone else? If you are copying it from someone else what type of investment did they put into discovering it? Are you going to use the idea in full or part of it? Is your idea an innovation on their invention? How will your market affect their market? A good man would recognize the value other man’s ideas take the above questions into consideration. These are questions a moral man might ask himself before using another man’s idea for his own purposes. These are considerations however that can only be moraly taken into account by individuals in context; a committee or absolutist stance would not be more just. Once again you forget I’m not accepting your terms. If I am arguing against the validity of patents why do you think my code of morals would be dependent on whether something is patented or not?

If such an implementation was possible I would consider it, but I have reason to believe it is not possible. Rights are moral principles sanctioning action that must be protected to keep people safe from each other. The whole point to rights is that they never conflict with one another; ergo they can be enforced without causing any injustice. The case of the second inventor is an injustice if he is not allowed to use his idea; I find it hard to believe that anyone disagrees with that. The difficulty in implementing intellectual property rights seems to reflect the difficulty in implementing any other moral principle that is not a right by nature, which says to me it cannot be enforced properly and moreover any attempt to enforce it will do more harm than good. Because you cannot force people to think, the government has to draw a clear line between protecting people and forcing people, that line is was divides rights from other moral principles; it is the line between people hurting themselves, and people hurting other people. You cannot protect people’s right to productive actions based on their ideas and put a prohibition on ideas at the same time. When you are born you have no physical property rights, you have no right to any object, product, or material value. However you have every right to every idea you can grasp, every concept you can integrate, every principle you can discover. As you grow you get every right to every object, product, or material value that you produce. However you do not get a state run monopoly of your new idea.

There isn’t much to respond to actually… I agree with everything (except what Ayn Rand said because it presumes that patents are the correct implementation of a person’s right to their ideas). Your next step presumably is to ask how I can claim that a person has the “rights to the fruits of their labor” but not a right to prohibit another persons use of their ideas? Anyways, I'll save my answers for questions you ask.

Judging by your post in "Objectivists Rides" thread I believe you that you would be quite capable of surviving. If the world ever does go down the tubes get in touch with me, I will also be surviving. Bush did win though, so good times.

So now you are equivocating the Japanese art of paper folding with a fruit? You are right about one thing, there was no reason to start a new thread (the UAA has spoken!). So if no one else objects I will continue our discussion in this thread. I have no intention of letting you get away with your sham, much less a grin and a nod. My next response will be the post #32 as you suggested.

Out of respect for the original topic of this thread and the people that wish to discuss it I am going to continue the discussion the validity of intellectual property rights in the new thread Andrew created. I'll be happy to respond to any posts in that thread (If you want me to respond to your last post Mark, then re-post it in that thread [if you do then add a little context, even though most people are probably already familiar with this thread]).

Rights are absolute moral principles that by nature cannot interfere with each other when practiced by many people (I can not claim a right something that would violate the rights of another person). My rights are designed to protect my means to existence: my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As far as living is concerned I have a right to the product of my actions, this is from the truth that I can not keep my values if they are taken away, that I can not have my food if somebody else eats it. A right to property is rational induced from physical reality. I see the argument for intellectual property rights as follows: I have a right to the product of my actions + Ideas are a product of my actions = I have a right to my ideas. This is an equivocation of product, in the first sense material values, in the second sense invention. An idea is not an apple; stealing one is not the same as stealing the other. One is punishable by burning at the stake - the other is punishable by shunning.

That depends on the conceptual relationship between 'property' and 'rights'. You are correct that any property has a rights protection, but that doesn't make my point invalid. An idea can be called property in the sense of possession. So You have a right to any idea you hold and you have a right to act on every idea you hold, that is why I don’t mind using the concept intellectual property, rights are still involved. However the rights I am referring to are not the full sense of the term used when applied to physical property. For the two fundamentally different types of property I think two different applications of rights are appropriate.

I knew that Jefferson helped implement the first national patent system in 1790, but after what Charlotte said I double-checked. Here is a paragraph I overlooked: Anyways, before getting into intellectual property it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to cement our understanding of the Objectivist base of property in general. Also an overview of the concept of ‘rights’ might be in order, since it is their application to property that I think I’m having issues with. In other words I’m not denying the existence of intellectual property, I am at odds with the notion that you can have a right to intellectual property farther than the choice to keep it to yourself. But we can save that for later if people want to review the basics first. PS: you two might want to try trimming your quotations a little... it is really not necessary to quote everything, especially superfluous sentences like "I'll answer this with a quotation:” Trimming will make your responses easier to understand.

Rights are moral principles, but not all moral principles are rights. One important quality of a right is that it cannot under any circumstances negate the rights of another. I do not think that you can shout out an idea then say that no one else can use it, which is negating my right to act on my judgment. It would be immoral to copy someone else idea if they were actively producing it, however it is not something that can be considered a 'right' because it cannot be protected without taking away the rights of others. Racism is also immoral, but any government use of laws (backed with force) to stop it is worse. ****Sorry about the confusion I just created. When I said "Intellectual Property" I should have said "Intellectual Property Rights". I'm trying to watch my step on this issue... sorry for slipping. ****

I was just wondering if Marc confused your position with Nimble’s position. As far as my understanding of everyone’s positions goes: I do not think intellectual property is valid (Brent might agree… and maybe a few others). Andrew and Nimble seem to be for shared rights (if it can be proved that inventors reached an idea independently). Everyone else seems accept the first come first serve rule and probably wants to move on to discussing the original topic of this thread (grr ).

Nimble wasn't contradicting himself. He was against intellectual property because, "...who has the right to stop either from producing the products of their minds?" Andrew said it was possible to honor independent inventors by granting them both intellectual property rights to the same invention, which cleared Nimble’s problem. Were you mixing up Nimble with Brent?

They might now because of other references in other threads. You are also the only person with “Andrew” built into you member name. It’s not that hard.

This is a private thread… the moderator has every right to kick people off if you steal their ideas! So be careful. As I said earlier, I do not think anyone is better off as a second-hander trying to spend his life copying other people. Anyone with integrity would not. The Wright brothers did everything to protect their idea before it was patented. Protect from whom? Did they succeed? They protected their idea for a long time by keeping it private. There was a large number of people interested in their work and others working along the same lines themselves. Just because they had patents at the time doesn’t mean the time couldn’t have happened without them. It was a race to invent the first airplane, a race that would have happened independent from patent laws (patents made it more of a race in a sense because were very clear winners and losers). You did bring up something though, patents vs. copyrights, which Brent actually touched on, “just as an author sells her idea (the book) to the publisher (the taker of the commercial risks).” I think that is part of it but there are other parts of the system that would work in the authors favor. Fraud is an initiation of force and does not rely on patents and copyrights, an artist would be able to authorize or condemn any use of her works (a seller lying about the product would be a crime). Anyone who valued the Artist would support her by buying authorized copies, I doubt there would be much of a market for the contrary. We all quote each other in this forum because we have integrity and are honest, and since this forum is private, people who violate this code can be dealt with. No one would have lost anything they had a right to in the first place. Patents are against the self-interest of every rational man. You have your own assessment and I disagree with you for reasons I have stated.

When you say property you mean – intellectual and physical property, when I say property I mean, physical property. You are equivocating our differences and making it sound like I am pro thieves and robbers. Anyways, I agree with you on my terms. Yes, ‘litigation’ was the wrong word but I noticed it too late to edit it (“legislation” or just “laws” would have been appropriate). I think the government should protect property rights and all the other rights of its citizens. The question is whether or not a person can have property rights to an idea. Without intellectual property rights we would not have “anarchy,” and I don’t think anyone opposing me believes that. My question is how anyone can claim to “own” and idea once they have shouted it out.

Or re-read Atlas Shrugged like I am doing. But yes, no reason for anyone to get down now. We have a president for the next four years and we should do everything we can to make the best of it, regardless who we voted for. If you were sad there weren't any good candidates donate money to ARI... getting some influence into the educational system now might help our choices in the future (they are having a fundraiser now, there was a thread Andrew started that I can't find ).