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Intellectual Property vs. Private Property Rights

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First a disclaimer. I understand that Ayn Rand held the respect for intellectual property as a basic tenement of Objectivism. I understand that it is a conviction of Objectivists here (by definition). I don't wish to ruffle feathers by "trolling" or even trying to change your convictions, necessarily. The purpose of this post is to understand how intellectual property and private property rights can be reconciled, because the inconsistency in my understanding is what prevents me from claiming myself to be an Objectivist also. If I can't understand how to reconcile the two, I will let sleeping dogs lie, and not try to stir up a further storm, so to speak. I don't mean to be confrontational although it is easy to be perceived as such when questioning a core conviction. My intent is to be amiable, pleasant, and in search of new insights from people I respect a lot!

My question is, in practice, how can intellectual property exist without interfering with private property rights?

Definitions as I understand them:

intellectual property : property that is immaterial and intangible, and is the result of original creative thoughts, such as patents and copyrights

private property rights : a resource that an individual has exclusive control over its use, deriving from his physical claim over an unclaimed resource, and his improvements on it, or a voluntary trade of such to him

My definition of private property rights is a little weak, but it's the best I can come up with for the moment. I assume that the rights you hold over your property include manipulating it how you see fit, without actual harm to others. You can build a house on your property but you can't build a dam that floods your neighbors.

I want to get trademarks and plagiarism out of the way, also. The way I view their regulation is that they are covered under fraud. Using someone else's trademark or ideas and claiming it as your own is fraudulent, just like misleading someone into signing a contract they don't understand makes the contract void.

That aside, the problem that I have with the very existence of intellectual original creative ideas as a form of property is that by definition it implies a reduction in the rights of the owners of physical private property. For example, suppose the nursery song "Mary Had a Little Lamb" is the copyrighted material of person A. Person B hears the song, but copyright prevents him from writing down the words and selling piano sheet music using the song. Person A is making a claim over person B, preventing him from putting his ink on his paper, even if it acknowledges that the lyrics are by person A. In the real world, in this case for practical reasons the legal restriction in the United States would be on the selling of the sheets of music, but if economics and state were separated, the restriction would necessarily be on the use of person B of his private property.

Another more relevant example is downloading music. (Another disclaimer: I actually don't listen to any music, so I don't do this, but I currently don't see a moral reason not to. I have indeed done so with books.) My hard drive is a magnetic disc with hundreds of billions of individual magnetic sections. Each section can be magnetized one of two ways to represent either 0 representing off, or 1 representing on. The specific patterns of 0's and 1's in sequence are used by the computer as information to do things, such as playing music with all of the sounds of the song represented by that specific pattern.

Copyright law makes it illegal for me to arrange my hard drive into specific, copyrighted patterns. The copyright holder is exerting a claim over my private property. This is where I take issue with copyright because all of a sudden someone else is making a claim on my property. Downloading music is the reception of electric or (or optical) signals through my modem and recording them on my hard drive. There is no physical loss of any other party, and no physical gain for me.

A final example is regarding patents. If someone creates an original invention or method of doing something, I am prevented from inventing it myself, or from incorporating it into what I do with my own property. The patent holder has prevented me from performing specific actions with my property. He is making a claim over my property as well.

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I have seen two arguments in favor of the existence of intellectual property and of laws enforcing respect for them. The first is utilitarian, which I understand but which I don't agree is a moral reason. The second is the purely moral argument, which if I'm not mistaken is the argument Ayn Rand put forth, but I don't really understand it.

First, the utilitarian argument is that society is better off as a result of patents (and to a lesser degree, copyrights). Society here must mean everyone else except the potential violators of patents because if everyone were truly better off, it would be in the best interest of everyone not to violate patents. I therefore don't accept the utilitarian argument as a valid moral argument because I don't care about everyone else, I care about myself. My morals guide me in my own best interest, not society's. Further, I distrust utilitarian arguments as a source of morality. Specifically, I put forth the example of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. He uses utilitarian arguments to construct a very nice and neat morality in favor of liberty that is very much in agreement to myself and to Objectivists; but at the end of his book, when he puts his utilitarian arguments in practice in Applications, he finds justification for very anti-liberty state controls on prostitution, gambling, trade of certain products, etc, as well as social controls on things like marriage.

The purely moral argument put forth by Ayn Rand is, in her own words from Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, page 130: "Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/patents_...copyrights.html

However, my understanding of this breaks down completely at the following point: "...law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent..." I thought the source of value was not innate but subjective, and that this is what allows trade to be profitable for both parties in the first place. This seems to argue that an idea has an innate value, set and controlled by the author, but only for an arbitrary amount of time..? :)

(I haven't read that particular work of hers yet; it is on my extended reading list in the future, but if it contains the complete answer to the contradiction in my understanding then I will make it the next book I read.)

A man obviously has the right to the product of his own mind, but how does that right allow him to deny me the future use of the products of my own mind, as demonstrated above? In other words, how does it allow him to dictate through the force of government the terms on which I am allowed to sell piano sheet music, arrange the magnetism of my hard drive, or to use my property to build things?

My argument is that physical property is matter which the law of conservation of energy requires that the gain of it between one of two parties requires the equivalent loss of it from the other party; and knowledge cannot be property because the gain of it requires no loss anywhere whatsoever. Therefore its gain and use implies there will never be harm done to another party in and of itself (assuming the actions using it it are not a harm), and furthermore there is no moral reason for exclusive control of it to any party at the limit of any other party. Specifically, if I can freely observe knowledge through the viewing of copyrighted material or reverse engineering a patented technology, it seems to me that no one else may lay a claim on what I do with my own property using my own mind. There is certainly the loss of potential income derived by exclusive control and enforcement of intellectual property by government, but I don't see the moral rationale for either restricting my use of my property or requiring me to give up some of my property to you through forceful extortion for information that I was able to get freely.

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Thank you for reading (and I hope this does not get me banned!). I'm looking forward to reading more in detail about the Objectivist position and how it handles the necessary limits on private property rights in a moral way. At the very least I hope to gain a real understanding of the argument, and I may even be led to change my mind on this as a result. Rand was not one for making fallacious or inconsistent arguments, after all.

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However, my understanding of this breaks down completely at the following point: "...law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent..." I thought the source of value was not innate but subjective, and that this is what allows trade to be profitable for both parties in the first place. This seems to argue that an idea has an innate value, set and controlled by the author, but only for an arbitrary amount of time..? :)

All the quote is suggesting is that the value comes from a person's mind because that's how the thing was even created. How *much* an individual values it is another story. Any kind of property can only be controlled by a person as long as they are alive. Rand does suggest rights to IP should be the person's lifetime + some number of years after their death, although I think that is unnecessary, since the IP owner's rights cannot be violated if he is dead.

I certainly do agree and understand that IP is valid, but your question about reverse engineering is something I'd want to know too.

The question isn't so much "can intellectual and physical property be reconciled?" but "how does one properly define and protect IP so right to life is not being violated?"

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Rand does suggest rights to IP should be the person's lifetime + some number of years after their death, although I think that is unnecessary, since the IP owner's rights cannot be violated if he is dead.

Property rights are transferred to heirs after death. What is the reason that makes intellectual property different? Why should a patent be limited to 20 years and a copyright to the author's death? Why can't they be transferred like all the rest of the property, indefinitely? The only arguments I've seen against that are utilitarian, in that it would be absurd for Ayn Rand to have to pay the intellectual property heirs of Aristotle in order to publish Atlas Shrugged, and be prevented from doing so if they refused.

(I don't mean that as a straw man, but as an absurd example. A more realistic one would be, if Mickey Mouse is intellectual property, what is the reason that eventually he will be in the public domain instead of indefinitely transferred to Walt Disney's heirs for the next ten thousand years?)

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All the quote is suggesting is that the value comes from a person's mind because that's how the thing was even created. How *much* an individual values it is another story.

I forgot to say, that I still don't understand how that gives it value from a source other than the valuer. I am under the impression that the source of any value in an object is the object's usefulness to me, not the manner in which its usefulness was created (natural or man-made). The difference in value between pure water and patented Coca-Cola is everything in how I feel about them and nothing about how one is the product of a genius.

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Property rights are transferred to heirs after death.

Intellectual property is different because it is IMPOSSIBLE to pass on to another person. There cannot be an heir to intellectual property. It is mentioned in the C:UI essay too.

I am under the impression that the source of any value in an object is the object's usefulness to me, not the manner in which its usefulness was created (natural or man-made)

I meant that the thing that is a value would not exist if the creator didn't make it. A thing that does not exist could not be a value. A thing that does exist may or may not be a value. If it is a value, it is made possible by the fact that someone created it by using his mind.

Edited by Eiuol
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Intellectual property is different because it is IMPOSSIBLE to pass on to another person. There cannot be an heir to intellectual property. It is mentioned in the C:UI essay too.

Well, Disney Corporation is still benefiting from the copyright to Mickey Mouse as if it were the person of Walt Disney. That seems to make it less than impossible.

Isn't Atlas Shrugged still copyrighted material? I've read that Leonard Peikoff is Ayn Rand's legal intellectual heir. Is he receiving royalties?

Editted:

If it is a value, it is made possible by the fact that someone created it.

Okay, it's a semantic mix-up in terms of what value means. Granting what you say, however, I still don't understand how the fact of an objects existence gives the creator control over any replica elsewhere in existence, whether for one second or twenty years or forever.

Edited by Romantic Hero
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Well, Disney Corporation is still benefiting from the copyright to Mickey Mouse as if it were the person of Walt Disney. That seems to make it less than impossible.

Doesn't mean Disney Corporation can, it only means government says they can. But of course, just because someone says an idea is valid doesn't make it so. It is at best an example of why the existing patent system is bad and arbitrary.

Isn't Atlas Shrugged still copyrighted material? I've read that Leonard Peikoff is Ayn Rand's legal intellectual heir. Is he receiving royalties?

The intellectual heir part I always assumed to be some informal remark, as in after Rand died, he was the "go to" guy regarding Objectivism. Not that he owned any of Rand's IP. Rand did support having the property be permitted to be taken care of by a sort of steward until the patent or whatever is in question wore out.

Edited by Eiuol
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Example with physical property:

I dedicated a year to create some furniture. I've spend u$s5000 month, and my time.

The furniture has a cost of 60000 + my time.

I was planing to exchange the furniture for others values for my existence. (food, clothes)

Then, you steal the furniture from me.

You've taken my property (the product of my mind+my time), without earning it or by exchange, and by that, you're destroying my means of subsistence. It's immoral. I'll defend my property by force.

Example with IP:

I dedicated a year to create a new design for an electronic calculator. I've spend u$s10000 month, and my time.

The design has a cost of 120000 + my time.

I was planing to a.) sell the design, b.) manufacture and sell the calculators

Then, you steal the design from me (let's say by reverse engineering). Other's do. I cannot do neither a.) or b.) (market is saturated)

You've taken my property (the product of my mind+my time), without earning it or by exchange, and by that, you're destroying my means of subsistence. It's immoral. I'll defend my property by force.

Edited by Lucio
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However, my understanding of this breaks down completely at the following point: "...law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent..." I thought the source of value was not innate but subjective, and that this is what allows trade to be profitable for both parties in the first place. This seems to argue that an idea has an innate value, set and controlled by the author, but only for an arbitrary amount of time..? :confused:

The source of rational value is relative, not the same thing as subjective. Recognizing a property right is not equivalent to determining comparative value, and the time limits are debatable within a range but that is not arbitrary.

A man obviously has the right to the product of his own mind, but how does that right allow him to deny me the future use of the products of my own mind, as demonstrated above? In other words, how does it allow him to dictate through the force of government the terms on which I am allowed to sell piano sheet music, arrange the magnetism of my hard drive, or to use my property to build things?

Objective law is the answer. I'll see if can find an older thread here where I went into that.

Your definitions are inaccurate, your understanding is flawed, your questions are largely answered (or least the foundations of the answers) in the "Patents and Copyrights" essay of C:UI. Read that. Also read this.

A recent thread from just days ago: An Objectivist Recants on IP??

I am former patent examiner from the US PTO, and user aristotlejones works as a patent agent (I think?). We can get into specifics of distinguishing how the law works from how it ought to work. It works pretty well, as is.

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Example with physical property:

I dedicated a year to create some furniture. I've spend u$s5000 month, and my time.

The furniture has a cost of 60000 + my time.

I was planing to exchange the furniture for others values for my existence. (food, clothes)

Then, you steal the furniture from me.

You've taken my property (the product of my mind+my time), without earning it or by exchange, and by that, you're destroying my means of subsistence. It's immoral. I'll defend my property by force.

Example with IP:

I dedicated a year to create a new design for an electronic calculator. I've spend u$s10000 month, and my time.

The design has a cost of 120000 + my time.

I was planing to a.) sell the design, b.) manufacture and sell the calculators

Then, you steal the design from me (let's say by reverse engineering). Other's do. I cannot do neither a.) or b.) (market is saturated)

You've taken my property (the product of my mind+my time), without earning it or by exchange, and by that, you're destroying my means of subsistence. It's immoral. I'll defend my property by force.

The main problem I have here is that there is no aspect of reality that corresponds to market saturation other than the fact that there are people who will potentially pay you money or a product you are willing to sell to them who wouldn't if someone sells them a competing product. Saying that you own the potential for people to pay you money for your product is ludicrous, but that's what people who support IP believe, at least according to your argument.

Furthermore, the key to property is that it cannot be taken by force. Substituting "without earning it or through exchange" for "by force" is invalid, since the two are not equivalent. Regardless of how this affects the IP situation, this is an invalid way of approaching the situation.

Edited by TuringAI
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Furthermore, the key to property is that it cannot be taken by force. Substituting "without earning it or through exchange" for "by force" is invalid

There are three ways to get something that did not exist previously:

1. Making it.

2. Trading for it.

3. Taking itfrom someone who made it.

The third option involves force (breach of contract). The first two don't. So substituting "without creating it or through exchange" for "by force" is valid. (if by earn one were to mean make, then your version is valid too).

This thread is not among the better ones, as far as the posters' addressing the Objectivist position goes (and therefor both the pro and con arguments seem pretty much unrelated to Objectivism), so I would respectfully suggest that the OP and those interested in arguing against IP read some of the other threads, and post their objections there, and they might receive more detailed and to the point asnwers than in this thread. I don't see too bright a future for this thread, there's just been too many recent threads on IP, and most people are probably bored with explaining the same basic points.

Besides the threads Grames linked to, I posted on the subject recently as well, in this thread. The person debating against IP (in that thread) also showed that he read and understands Ayn Rand's position on the subject, and he addressed her writing directly. (the OP in this thread does not, all his arguments rest on the strawmen of what both property in general is, and what IP is, in Objectivism)

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You've taken my property (the product of my mind+my time), without earning it or by exchange, and by that, you're destroying my means of subsistence. It's immoral. I'll defend my property by force.

In the physical property example, I have taken something you had away from you. You don't have it anymore. In the intellectual property example, we both have it. You still have everything that you had before I copied your design. Destroying someone's means of subsistence in and of itself is not immoral, otherwise creating a backhoe that replaces ditch diggers would be immoral. I could be in China and never physically be closer to you than 5,000 miles, so to "defend your property by force" you would, physically speaking, need to be the aggressor and invade and attack me. However, is that really morally justified?

Grames, thank you for the links and I apologize for making a duplicate thread. I looked through this sub-forum but not that one. I will read Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal in the near future.

Jake Ellison, thank you also for the link to the other thread. I realize my understanding of the Objectivist arguments in favor of IP is flawed, and that is why I looked and posted in "Questions about Objectivism". I did not mean to misrepresent it as a strawman argument, my representation of it at all was only to explain the limits of my understanding of it. In retrospect I should have searched the other sub-forums besides this one. I did not realize that this had been already addressed to the point of people being tired of talking about it. I didn't see a thread about it at all on the first couple of pages in this sub-forum. I am sorry for the mistake. Should I delete this thread?

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Should I delete this thread?

Of course not. It's not my place to moderate the forum, I'm just informing you about the other threads.

If you don't get satisfactory answers in this thread, you should know that you might get them in those threads. A lot of people already made their case for and against IP there, and they're not likely to repeat themselves here, but would probably want to add to the discussion there, if it's necessary.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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Of course not. It's not my place to moderate the forum, I'm just informing you about the other threads.

If you don't get satisfactory answers in this thread, you should know that you might get them in those threads. A lot of people already made their case for and against IP there, and they're not likely to repeat themselves here, but would probably want to add to the discussion there, if it's necessary.

After reading Greg Perkins essay, I can only say two things. First, he is much more eloquent than I am in framing my own arguments at the beginning, and second, I disagree with the basic premises of his arguments, and a disagreement over premises doesn't lend itself to a good debate because you're just talking past each other.

I do wonder if Objectivists feel they would be justified to for example, invade a country like China that doesn't protect intellectual property and to destroy the means of the people who are infringing on IP there, for example by distributing boot leg Western movies within China with Chinese subtitles?

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I do wonder if Objectivists feel they would be justified to for example, invade a country like China that doesn't protect intellectual property and to destroy the means of the people who are infringing on IP there, for example by distributing boot leg Western movies within China with Chinese subtitles?

Causus Belli usually have to be more serious than that, and I certainly would be against it. First, ethically it would not be a proportional response to the harm. Second, it would be hard to win making the cost/benefit ratio poor. Third, this is the kind of dispute that can be resolved by negotiation and time. Eventually there will be a critical mass of chinese people advocating for intellectual property out of self interest.

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I do wonder if Objectivists feel they would be justified to for example, invade a country like China that doesn't protect intellectual property and to destroy the means of the people who are infringing on IP there, for example by distributing boot leg Western movies within China with Chinese subtitles?

No, Objectivists don't think a nuclear holocaust that would end the world as we know it is the way to solve Chinese copyright infringement. It would however be justified to deal with China on terms that would include the Chinese gov. cracking down on that infringement, as much as possible.

What premise do you disagree with, and why?

P.S. The premises I disagree with in your posts are your idea of what rights are in Objectivism, and that a patent or copyright causes physical property rights (or trade for that matter) to be restricted in any way.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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There are three ways to get something that did not exist previously:

1. Making it.

2. Trading for it.

3. Taking itfrom someone who made it.

The third option involves force (breach of contract). The first two don't. So substituting "without creating it or through exchange" for "by force" is valid. (if by earn one were to mean make, then your version is valid too).

This thread is not among the better ones, as far as the posters' addressing the Objectivist position goes (and therefor both the pro and con arguments seem pretty much unrelated to Objectivism), so I would respectfully suggest that the OP and those interested in arguing against IP read some of the other threads, and post their objections there, and they might receive more detailed and to the point asnwers than in this thread. I don't see too bright a future for this thread, there's just been too many recent threads on IP, and most people are probably bored with explaining the same basic points.

Besides the threads Grames linked to, I posted on the subject recently as well, in this thread. The person debating against IP (in that thread) also showed that he read and understands Ayn Rand's position on the subject, and he addressed her writing directly. (the OP in this thread does not, all his arguments rest on the strawmen of what both property in general is, and what IP is, in Objectivism)

Well if you invent something and I invent something, and they happen to be the same by some coincidence, that's 1. Yet under current IP laws it's illegal. Just because two things, when compared, turn out to have no essential differences, doesn't mean one was copied from the other. The problem I have is when item 1 happens but people treat it as item 3. The argument "Well it wasn't in existence before but now it is when I did it, but when you did it it was already in existence" ignores the context of the invention. Anything brought into being is brought into being sometime and somewhere. While the fact of the invention happens to be true, a person would not know that fact and should not be treated like a criminal for it. All you're doing is inventing on your own and not using another person.

Also, you forgot option 4: They give it to you. It could be either on purpose because they want to or expect something from you, or by accident, through carelessness or a belief that they haven't really done so. Saying there's three options without proving those are the only three options is sloppy. For example, you could be giving it out to all takers. How are they supposed to know you're retaining the rights to it before they took it? What if they wouldn't have taken it if they'd known it would make it so they can't build off of it? I mean, take software for example. A person might not want to use software that they know they won't be able to use in their projects so why force it upon them, even if they are choosing specifically not to copy it but to recreate what they need themselves, even if their product's essentially similar to others?

Edited by TuringAI
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Well if you invent something and I invent something, and they happen to be the same by some coincidence, that's 1. Yet under current IP laws it's illegal.

Your claim that current IP laws allow for that to happen requires proof. (an actual example of a simultaneous invention, where one inventor just beat the other to the patent office.) Otherwise, if that never actually happened, then current laws do not actually do that.

Patent rules should be carefully crafted not to allow the registration of "inventions" that are so banal that several simultaneous inventions are possible. (and unless you provide evidence to the contrary, they don't allow that)

Also, you forgot option 4: They give it to you. It could be either on purpose because they want to or expect something from you, or by accident, through carelessness or a belief that they haven't really done so. Saying there's three options without proving those are the only three options is sloppy.

IP laws allow giving up copyrights and patents. Look into that.

As for "giving away copyrights or patents by accident", the same exact principles apply as in the case of "giving away a fifty ton locomotive by accident". There's fraud involved. Either way, I don't see a relevant point on the horizon, so I'll just ignore your comments and move on. It would be nice if you spent some time chewing on these posts and whether they help your argument though.

For example, you could be giving it out to all takers. How are they supposed to know you're retaining the rights to it before they took it? What if they wouldn't have taken it if they'd known it would make it so they can't build off of it?

Ignorance of laws is not a permit to steal. If you're not playing dumb, but are really interested in whether there's a way to know if something is coprighted/patented or not, the answer is yes.

A person might not want to use software that they know they won't be able to use in their projects so why force it upon them, even if they are choosing specifically not to copy it but to recreate what they need themselves, even if their product's essentially similar to others?

If a person writes their own software, they can do that, there's no laws against it. Copying and cracking others' work is what copyright laws are targeted at. I suggest you look into some actual facts about these laws before deciding that they are a bad thing based on these false assumptions.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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I don't mean a disproportional reaction, so my example wasn't a good one. I meant, would the use of force be justified as a reaction to patent or copyright infringement that occurs outside of an Objectivist society? Let me set up a fanciful example.

City A is set up on Callisto as the perfect Objectivist society. City B is set up on Ganymede that is mostly Objectivist, except that it has no intellectual property. If members of City B are able to copy intellectual property from City A, and then sell replicas within City B, or use it in technology in City B, do you believe City A has the moral right to use (judiciously applied and proportional) force to stop it? Why not? What makes it different than a policeman within City A imprisoning a member of City A for doing the same thing? If the difficulty is the practicality of taking force to another society, then imagine that City B is also perfectly pacifist with no military defenses and no way to stop a small raid. It's not about if you could (like with China, you can't without creating bigger problems), it's whether you would assuming that you could.

What premise do you disagree with, and why?

I disagree with the source of rights. To me, they derive from how it is rational to agree not to cause harm to others so that they won't cause harm to me. It's the Golden Rule. Greg Perkins wrote, "...the essential basis of property is not scarcity-- it is production." Again, to me, if we lived in a Star Trek universe and I could duplicate your orange without causing you to lose yours, then you have no right to exclude me from the duplicated orange. Since we don't, and since the only way to gain your orange is to harm you by taking yours away from you, then it's in my rational interest not to do so (so that someone else doesn't steal my apple). It has nothing to do with production, so the entire theory of Perkin's on how to set up the duration of IP doesn't exactly resonate with me. Finally, to me, I don't really see a difference between information that I come across from natural sources (discoveries) versus information that I come across from man-made sources (the internet).

Maybe you would call me a pure narcissist because the only morals I recognize are those that are in the interest of what I value. Anyway, I don't think disagreement over premises will lead to anything productive, so it's probably best if I don't participate here. I am still interested to know, however, if my hypothetical society would have to defend itself from your hypothetical society!

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City A is set up on Callisto as the perfect Objectivist society. City B is set up on Ganymede that is mostly Objectivist, except that it has no intellectual property. If members of City B are able to copy intellectual property from City A, and then sell replicas within City B, or use it in technology in City B, do you believe City A has the moral right to use (judiciously applied and proportional) force to stop it?

Of course it would be. By force I mean the copyright owners of city A could sue citizens of city B who steal their stuff, and any property those citizens might onw in city A would be subject to confiscation. Same with China, by the way: if instead of using trade talks to push American debt and protectioninst tariffs on them, we would push Americans' legitimate right to their patents and copyrights, the problem could be easily solved. This issue is so much less significant in the eyes of the Chinese than the trillion dollar debt and the massive tariffs against Chinese manufacturing the West has in place.

I disagree with the source of rights. To me, they derive from how it is rational to agree not to cause harm to others so that they won't cause harm to me.

Maybe you would call me a pure narcissist because the only morals I recognize are those that are in the interest of what I value.

No, our disagreement does not lie in the realm of ethics, it lies in the realm of epistemology. Your definition of rights is defined as a negative: not to cause harm, and it isn't based on anything fundamentally the naure of man and reality. Anyone with even a slight understanding of philosophy would deconstruct it as nothing more than the product of blindly following cultural tendencies, and substitute his own brand of slightly deeper running abstractions, be they Marxism or Pragmatism. It cannot work.

I am still interested to know, however, if my hypothetical society would have to defend itself from your hypothetical society!

Your hypothetical society could not exist, because men are rational and moral creatures, and your rule has no rational and moral basis for them to consider and accept.

For members of some other society (such as Chinese citizens) who wish to trade with an Objectivist nation, they should know that their property in that Objectivist nation is subject to Objectivist Justice, meaning that if they don't respect IP rights they can be sued, same as everyone else. For China overall, their formalized trade treaties with an Objectivist nation would depend on the level of commitment they have to the rights of the Objectivist nations' citizens, both physical property they hold in China, and patents and copyrights.

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I guess my main question is why patents and trademarks exist and we don't handle everything by a combination of trade secret, copyright, fraud prohibitions and privacy legislation (where there exists both personal and economic versions of privacy) or however well they combine, since some are essentially equivalent to others. In all truth, the only difference between current IP and ideal IP is that current IP punishes simultaneous creation as well as other forms of original creation, and ideal IP would only punish those who use other people's works as their own.

The way IP works now is to push people to think of the short term benefits at the possible expense of long term benefits. The issue shouldn't be whether we can get some universal right to a type of thing, but whether we've got all bases protected for our ideas and our implementation of our ideas. If you want to know WHAT it is I am arguing for, then read on. I have been stewing over this situation and I can give two extreme examples where people still have the ability to function, but only if the government recognizes their rights.

Suppose I exist in a society where copying isn't prohibited. Now I invent something. It is mine, and the easiest way to keep it mine is to not let anybody else know. Now suppose I realize there are other people as intelligent as I am and they might be doing the same thing. I have no way of knowing, since they won't even let me know whether or not they're being secretive. I make a deal with them: They are not to expose any inventions which I share with them, as long as I don't expose any inventions which they share with me. We have created a contract and the combination of my privacy with theirs makes an entangled privacy right situation. Now the only way a person can copy me or this other person is to violate our rights first, and thus anything gained, regardless of its form, is in violation of our privacy along with our subsequent loss of potential for US to reveal what we want of OURS. So long as it is within our privacy zone it is no different than what is IN OUR OWN HEADS.

Suppose now someone else exists in a society where copying is prohibited. This means if you so much as see or hear a work of art you cannot create your own based on that. That someone else has it in their best interest not to see or hear anything new, unless they choose to do so in advance based on information which they know the originator has decided to allow to see or hear, and whether it is worth it to give up unrestricted creation to somewhat restricted creation. Nobody should be able to make them see or hear anything, though they end up at least seeing and hearing banal, though unprotected, things in the course of living their lives. The reason is because their unrestricted potential should be theirs alone, and nobody has a right to claim what ultimately ends up IN THEIR OWN HEAD as if it was owned by a person who doesn't own their mind. It would of course make it easier if we could just erase what's in our heads that we don't want, but that's something else altogether.

So both of these examples are examples of our right to our mind. With no IP protection for anything or with IP protection for everything our rights are in jeopardy.

This is undesirable. But rather than trying to balance the two against each other, there is a common principle that if exercised resolves the situation.

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I guess my main question is why patents and trademarks exist and we don't handle everything by a combination of trade secret, copyright, fraud prohibitions and privacy legislation (where there exists both personal and economic versions of privacy) or however well they combine, since some are essentially equivalent to others. In all truth, the only difference between current IP and ideal IP is that current IP punishes simultaneous creation as well as other forms of original creation, and ideal IP would only punish those who use other people's works as their own.

You already said that, and I already asked for proof. It is becoming less and less likely that you have any. And yet, you seem to be running with this assumption that the same art and technology is created by more than one person at a time, writing pages upon pages based on it.

I'm unaware of any piece of painting, scupture, music, significant invention or piece of technology that was created twice, by two people not copying each other. And no, copying is not creation, and creating based on someone's work without permission is theft. (both in the case of physical and intellectual property)

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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You already said that, and I already asked for proof. It is becoming less and less likely that you have any. And yet, you seem to be running with this assumption that the same art and technology is created by more than one person at a time, writing pages upon pages based on it.

I'm unaware of any piece of painting, scupture, music, significant invention or piece of technology that was created twice, by two people not copying each other. And no, copying is not creation, and creating based on someone's work without permission is theft. (both in the case of physical and intellectual property)

If this was true, then what's your objection to basing patent law on copyright that applies to inventions/technology and other things?

Current law forbids someone to create twice whether it was copied or not. If what you say is true why do you still support such a flawed system as exists today?

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If this was true, then what's your objection to basing patent law on copyright that applies to inventions/technology and other things?

Because copyrighted materials are published, making the author easy to identify, inventions/technology is not. The patent office is an alternative way of keeping track of ownership.

Plus, ownership of copyrights also has to be maintained over time, and can be lost, so we already applied patent laws to copyright whenever that proved to be necessary. (it is necessary when the copyright status of something is less than crystal clear) Applying copyright back to patents is a meaningless exercise.

Current law forbids someone to create twice whether it was copied or not. If what you say is true why do you still support such a flawed system as exists today?

It's your claim that it's flawed, you're yet to prove it. I'm not sure it's worth asking for proof the third time, I think it's pretty clear by now that your opinion that patentable things are created more than once is baseless.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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