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IP once more, with feeling

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Harrison Danneskjold

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Suppose I have a bike which creates bikes, ad infinitum- anytime I please I can snap my fingers and cause it to divide into a pair of bikes.

The real question is, if you were to steal one of the copies (which costs me nothing, doesn't affect me at all and deprives me of nothing except POTENTIAL money- from you) then have my rights been violated?

This post exemplifies your position perfectly. You're not interested in reality at all, all you want is meaningless debates about empty logical constructs.

You're not gonna get that here. Patents and copyrights are defined in terms of the real world, not in a pure theoretical system in which snapping your finger makes bikes divide and multiply. You're right, in your world, patents and copyrights would absolutely be useless. There would be no need for them, they would help no one.

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See, hers's my querky take on all things IP in an idealistic form.

 

Using the example of a Mercedes from another thread, I think if I were to build an exact copy of a Mercedes product it should be considered my property just like the rake in my garage, in that I can do with it whatever I choose.

 

In my admittedly ideal version of LFC, I do not believe Mercedes Benz Corp should have legal recourse as it concerns the existence of my property. But if I were to trade the copy, they would then have the right to stop the sale or be able to gain restitution from me equal to the profit they would have made, had their product been sold (but not the costs involved in production).

 

They own the specific design of the car, they should enjoy all the rights enjoyable from the disposal of that property(the design). If I made a hundred copies of their design and sold them they would be entitled to compensation equal to the profit they would have realized had they sold their products.

 

If the design can be objectively recognized as their creation, what in this admittedly thin example is wrong as far as a principled recognition of property rights is concerned?

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 If it doesn't affect me in any way, shape or form.  Mission: Impossible.

 

What I want is consistency.

I think I've found a flaw in Objectivism with IP (I've been actively looking for them- and this is all I've found) and furthermore I think I've solved it; I am out to tell everyone about it so that either I will realize that I'm wrong (and consequently reevaluate this) or they will.

 

You are looking for inconsistencies with a system of thinking or just a beef with Objectivism? 

 

Either way knowledge is suppose to serve you, not smash something else. What are horrible starting point. 

 

I detest Marxism for it's child-like contradictions but I didn't go into it with an agenda for that one "A-HA!" moment so I could... actually I don't know what you think to gain from that.  It's not clarity since your objective is proving falsehood, not gaining certainty. 

You want to understand how relationships amongst men work you need to start with the perceivable, think to principle and spiral back to the perceivable, and apply the requirements of your individual life from the bottom of man and his life on up. 

 

 

 

What I am after is no less than philosophical perfection, which I intend to reach through ruthless scrutiny.

 

No, what you are doing is following the  empiricist approach of trying to find a case example to invalidate a system of thought. 

 

I assure you that if I wanted to violate someone's IP rights, I would not be here attempting to justify it to the rest of the internet; I would be figuring out a way to do so, alone.

 

Men feel better about looting when they can justify it as morally OK.

 

Not saying that is what you are doing, but that is the rabbit hole this process goes down and I have seen it plenty in progressives and conservatives I have debated. 

 

Both sides scream bloody murder about their right being violated by the other but then find case studies to justify violating the rights of people.  Thus the ugly spectacle of liberals justifying violating my rights on gun ownership and  conservatives wanting to violate my rights on drug ownership while both scream at each other without realizing it is that same damn think - property rights.  They are both advocating criminal looting and control of their fellow man.

 

And how do they get away with this contradiction?  Because they look in the mirror and think they have the moral sanction, the justification to do so. 

 

So yes, justifying an argument is the quickest way to pretend your good when your actions say otherwise.  It provides plausible deniability for your self-esteem. 

 

 

 I am NOT advocating any sort of redistribution of ideas; I am ONLY saying that ONCE someone else understands it you CANNOT prevent them from acting on it.

 

If I'm right then any inventor could still protect his ideas from any and all competitors- by preventing them from learning about it!  Like I said, contractual obligations (such as nondisclosure).

 

I am NOT demanding freely publicized and freely given ideas; ONLY the right to ACT on what I ALREADY UNDERSTAND.

 

 

Non-disclosure will not protect someone from others looking it other and discovering the thought process you achieved. 

 

Basically you are advocating a "free" market society based on utilitarian grounds, the market process will provide the equivalent of laws to protect rights. 

 

I get the anarchist dream of utopia but it is no more practical the Marxist magic Walt Disney world where people own nothing and everything at the same time and should not save but get the products of savings as needed. 

 

 

 Why can you replicate it for yourself, then?

 

What I innovate on the privacy of my home for myself is no big deal. 

 

Rights are violated when you act and do something, which means when I sue the idea and capitalize on it. 

 

If I distribute it then I am cashing in on someone else's mind.  You cannot have your mind and eat someone else's too. 

 

I can only imagine the drain brain that would happen under such a monstrous system of public looting of innovation. 

 

 

If one accepts IP as given then that makes no sense; to be consistent you wouldn't be able to reproduce, reverse-engineer or any such thing without the inventor's consent.

Again, since these rights are supposed to predate the government's sanction, how many geniuses must each of us harm on any minute of any day?

 

If one accepts IP in its current form then we are ALL looters and thieves.

 

So, I'm not a thief if I have unrestricted access to someone's ideas but if we protect people's innovations I am a thief?

 

 

 

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If the design can be objectively recognized as their creation, what in this admittedly thin example is wrong as far as a principled recognition of property rights is concerned?

 Well, I don't see the reason why you could own something without permission but not sell it, as per your example, so I would extend it slightly further than that- unless there is some critical difference between owning it and selling it.  (?)

I would say that you don't have to give Mercedes-Benz part of your profits unless there was a prior contract (or unless there is said crucial difference).

 

So in my ideal view of LFC, if you invented some new design like that, instead of patenting it you would only tell a few specific people about it, after they signed the proper documents.  Something like: A agrees to pay B $X, upon hearing about his awesome new idea, if it could truly do what B claims.  (Otherwise you'd get a catch-22 where nobody wants to buy an idea until they know the specifics, but you can't tell them the specifics or they don't have to pay you.  But that would solve it)

 

This post exemplifies your position perfectly. You're not interested in reality at all, all you want is meaningless debates about empty logical constructs.

 

 There may be something to this.  I have, for quite some time, had trouble differentiating between possible and impossible and I do have a tendency towards empty logical constructs.

 

But it is NOT intentional.  I AM very much interested in reality and IF I am no longer discussing any aspect of it THEN I will emphatically drop it!

 

 

You are looking for inconsistencies with a system of thinking or just a beef with Objectivism? 

 I was looking for inconsistencies because I hadn't found any!

I have no beef with Objectivism; I think it's by far THE most profoundly true philosophy IN existence (if not the truest one POSSIBLE) and I was trying to verify that; much like a scientist tries to invalidate his own hypothesis!

 

Please don't misunderstand, I am not attacking Objectivism!  I am pointing out a perceived flaw in order to either correct the misperception or to point it out to everyone else!!

 

It's not like I'm disputing the primacy of existence or man as a rational animal; in the grand scheme of essentials and abstractions what I'm really doing is nitpicking with punctuation.

 

 

I detest Marxism for it's child-like contradictions but I didn't go into it with an agenda for that one "A-HA!" moment so I could... actually I don't know what you think to gain from that.  It's not clarity since your objective is proving falsehood, not gaining certainty.

 That's not it, either!

 

I've said- numerous times throughout this entire thread!  That I think there is a perfectly viable alternative, that the differences between these two are minute and (again!) that the alternative would leave everything else perfectly intact, exactly the way it should be!

 

 

No, what you are doing is following the  empiricist approach of trying to find a case example to invalidate a system of thought. 

 Does the whole of Objectivism rest on this?

 

If I'm right, does that REALLY invalidate ALL of Objectivism???

 

 

 

Please review my earlier posts.

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So yes, justifying an argument is the quickest way to pretend your good when your actions say otherwise.  It provides plausible deniability for your self-esteem. 

Yes, it does.

But do you really believe that I am here, on Objectivism Online, pouring time and energy into this exercise so that I can guiltlessly build my own iPod or plagiarize massive swaths of Atlas Shrugged?  Do you REALLY think that I have put all of this mental effort into this so that I don't have to THINK, anymore?

 

Non-disclosure will not protect someone from others looking it other and discovering the thought process you achieved. 

 

Basically you are advocating a "free" market society based on utilitarian grounds, the market process will provide the equivalent of laws to protect rights. 

 

I get the anarchist dream of utopia but it is no more practical the Marxist magic Walt Disney world where people own nothing and everything at the same time and should not save but get the products of savings as needed.

 "Others looking it over and discovering the process you achieved."  No, nondisclosure would not protect you from that.

And that, my friend, is the point.  I do not think that anyone should be legally immunized to that.

 

I am not advocating "free" anything.

Nondisclosure would take contractual form, making it fully consentual among everyone involved and tying it neatly to the principles of personal responsibility.

Nondisclosure would protect anyone's idea just as much as patents and copyrights, except in cases where the idea is blatantly obvious, and except against reverse-engineering; all of the things which are defined arbitrarily by patents would be naturally and cleanly delineated.

A system of contractual nondisclosure agreements would retain the essential purpose of patents and copyrights but without any ambiguity.

 

Please explain to me how this is demanding "free" anything at all, except perhaps the FREEDOM (political freedom; freedom from guns) to act on the ideas I understand.

 

 

So, I'm not a thief if I have unrestricted access to someone's ideas but if we protect people's innovations I am a thief?

 

 Of course not; that would be absurd.  But we are not discussing DO or DO NOT, are we?

 

And if we SHOULD "protect people's innovations" in the way in which you mean it, which is that you SHOULD NOT act on other people's ideas and that to do so is theft, then you are indeed a thief.

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What I innovate on the privacy of my home for myself is no big deal. 

 Exactly my point.

Well, not that it's irrelevant as such, but that it's nobody else's business.

 

Rights are violated when you act and do something, which means when I sue the idea and capitalize on it. 

 Isn't copying someone else's idea an action?

 

If I distribute it then I am cashing in on someone else's mind.

 So it's fine to copy someone else's idea for yourself, so long as you don't sell it.

 

What's the difference?

Yes, if you sell someone else's idea then that inventor in a way caused the sale; ergo (by your reasoning) they caused that sale and own at least some of the money; ergo if you don't give them some then it's theft.

But what about the sale that they never made to you?

 

I do understand the distinction there but I think it's arbitrary; here's why:

If I build myself an iPod then I can listen to music on it, helping me to enjoy my own life just slightly more.  We've agreed this would be fine?

If I build myself an iPod and then sell it, I have money which also exists for the same purpose but not necessarily the same means to achieve it.

If I build myself an iPod, sell it and use the money to buy an iPod from the inventor, would that be moral?  Because point A is moral, B is not (because you've converted iPod into money); would C be okay?

 

Money is nothing but a symbol; symbolic of labor performed and goods to be enjoyed.  If I have the right to a certain piece of property then, by logical necessity, I think that I MUST have the right to sell it.

 

I'm tired and having trouble articulating this at the moment; I'll come back and clarify this some more, tomorrow.

 

I can only imagine the drain brain that would happen under such a monstrous system of public looting of innovation. 

 1:  Nondisclosure agreements would constitute a monstrous system?  Really?

Is it better to know all about some tantalizing possibility, which you are forbidden to enact, or to wonder about it and be told "go figure it out, yourself!"?

 

Because that's what I'm advocating, here; if you want to do something, but not to pay the inventor, then that's fine- invent it yourself!

 

2:  By what mechanism does one loot innovation?

Would torturing some inventor's secrets from him by unspeakable means do it, or is it simply an elementary-schooler's complaint of "He's copying me!"?

 

3:  Once defining how one would go about looting innovation, please explain its relation with what I have actually said, here.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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Harrison in #56 said

 

 

Money is nothing but a symbol

 

Believe me , I am not trying to nitpick here, but given what you may have gleaned from ITOE (and perhaps any other of Rand's nonfiction as it concerns politics/economics), re-evaluate this particullar statement word for word to see if it actually articulates an o'ist position.

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"Money is nothing but a symbol"

 

Believe me , I am not trying to nitpick here, but given what you may have gleaned from ITOE (and perhaps any other of Rand's nonfiction as it concerns politics/economics), re-evaluate this particullar statement word for word to see if it actually articulates an o'ist position.

 True.  I would say it was pretty close but, no; it's not truly accurate.

 

"Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. . .  When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. . .  Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. . .  "

Et cetera, et cetera.  Money is a tool; a placeholder which allows the exchange (and, more importantly, the savings) of goods and services.

 

What I was trying to get at is this:

If you own something which you are legally forbidden to sell, it is just as if you owned something which you were legally forbidden to use; a car you were forbidden to drive, a house you "own" but are forbidden to enter, et cetera.

 

If I told you that Earth has a second moon, you would demand proof; you would declare that such is impossible because we see only one in the night sky.

If I told you that it's an invisible moon you would (if you continued the conversation) point out that the tides rise and fall in synch with the conventional moon, and no other; if I declared that it's both invisible and massless you would suggest we send a rocket there.

 

If I told you that Earth has a second moon, which cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, you would likely ask me then in exactly what sense it exists.

 

That is what I'm getting at with property you can't sell.  You can do anything you want with your property, unless it violates the rights of others.

 

This directly contradicts some of my earlier statements; I'd like to retract them.  I was attempting to drop the issue of idea-ownership momentarily, so that we could continue more productively.  That was a mistake.

If you own an idea, which someone else knows about, then you have the right to do whatever you please with it.  But that's not a constructive line of reasoning, so I'll rephrase it this way:

 

I wholeheartedly agree that an inventor has the right to benefit from his labor; the issue is not with that but with implementation.

Patents and copyrights consist of figuring some problem out or finding some unique solution, running out and ensuring that everyone else hears about it and then declaring that nobody may actually act on it without your permission.  Obviously, I think this is immoral.

What I think would be completely moral would be if an inventor found some novel solution and simply acted on it, himself; he has no obligation whatsoever to tell anyone else about it.

 

No, this doesn't protect a single person from having their ideas reverse-engineered or from subsequent inventors reaching the same idea, independently.  And THAT is the reason why I think it would be moral.

I prefer this implementation precisely BECAUSE I agree that an inventor has the right to the product of his mind. . . ANY inventor, regardless of whether someone else thought of it first.

 

Inventors A and B both arrive at the same idea, independently, but A gets to the patent office first; doesn't B have an equal right to the idea?  If we implemented something like nondisclosure, instead, there's no reason for any dichotomy; A and B can both enjoy the profits of the mental labor they both performed, independently.

Patents and copyrights necessarily entail "You can't sell that to anyone; I thought of it first and if you have my cake then I can't eat it!"

 

Nondisclosure, quite simply, nips that entire issue in the bud; it allows everyone to bake their own cake so that nobody has to fight over one.  (Don't like the terms of using my idea?  Then I won't tell you; invent it, yourself!)

Isn't that Lassiez-Faire at it's finest, when everyone is able to succeed or fail on their own?  When everyone is allowed to bake their own cake and eat it, too?

 

As to whether or not this applies to artwork, as well, I think there's a further distinction required (I don't see a problem with treating artwork as intellectual property).  But I'm still working on that one; I'll come back to it at some point.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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What about 'artwork' would make it a special category?

 

Is 'artwork' not produced a human mind?

 

If an idea or a design is created by a human mind and can be objectively recognised as that particular individual's achievement, how or why would there be different principles concerning that individual's ownership?

Edited by tadmjones
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 I was looking for inconsistencies because I hadn't found any!

I have no beef with Objectivism; I think it's by far THE most profoundly true philosophy IN existence (if not the truest one POSSIBLE) and I was trying to verify that; much like a scientist tries to invalidate his own hypothesis!

 

Please don't misunderstand, I am not attacking Objectivism!  I am pointing out a perceived flaw in order to either correct the misperception or to point it out to everyone else!!

 

It's not like I'm disputing the primacy of existence or man as a rational animal; in the grand scheme of essentials and abstractions what I'm really doing is nitpicking with punctuation.

 

 

 That's not it, either!

 

I've said- numerous times throughout this entire thread!  That I think there is a perfectly viable alternative, that the differences between these two are minute and (again!) that the alternative would leave everything else perfectly intact, exactly the way it should be!

 

 

 Does the whole of Objectivism rest on this?

 

If I'm right, does that REALLY invalidate ALL of Objectivism???

 

 

 

Please review my earlier posts.

 

Whoa, hold on.  Didn't mean to imply anything I was just confused at the approach and thought the answer you were looking for was elsewhere.  Got it now. 

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Yes, it does.

But do you really believe that I am here, on Objectivism Online, pouring time and energy into this exercise so that I can guiltlessly build my own iPod or plagiarize massive swaths of Atlas Shrugged?  Do you REALLY think that I have put all of this mental effort into this so that I don't have to THINK, anymore?

 

I was generalizing in my answer to this.  In the context of your case it is obviously not that but for many people it's the answer I gave. 

 

 

 "Others looking it over and discovering the process you achieved."  No, nondisclosure would not protect you from that.

And that, my friend, is the point.  I do not think that anyone should be legally immunized to that.

 

I am not advocating "free" anything.

Nondisclosure would take contractual form, making it fully consentual among everyone involved and tying it neatly to the principles of personal responsibility.

Nondisclosure would protect anyone's idea just as much as patents and copyrights, except in cases where the idea is blatantly obvious, and except against reverse-engineering; all of the things which are defined arbitrarily by patents would be naturally and cleanly delineated.

A system of contractual nondisclosure agreements would retain the essential purpose of patents and copyrights but without any ambiguity.

 

Please explain to me how this is demanding "free" anything at all, except perhaps the FREEDOM (political freedom; freedom from guns) to act on the ideas I understand.

 

I honestly am failing to grasp how non-disclosure of contracts will do the same thing.

 

At any rate you're basically saing you agree that the interest of the inventor should be pretected but your just looking for a market force to do it instead of the Government.  Right?   

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At any rate you're basically saing you agree that the interest of the inventor should be pretected but your just looking for a market force to do it instead of the Government.  Right?   

 Yes.

Not simply for the sake of marketplace-governance, as such, but because I think an inventor's right to profit from his own ideas should naturally follow from the physical fact that he alone knows about this idea (this fact immediately stemming from his claim to the idea, at all- that he put in the time and effort to think of it, himself).

 

So from that principle, contractual nondisclosure agreements would be the most obvious implementation but there may well be others I haven't thought of yet; just not patents and copyrights.  And if we went with such contracts they would still need to be enforced, somehow.

 

What about 'artwork' would make it a special category?

 

I'm not sure if I pointed it out or not, but you'll notice a common pattern throughout this thread- My primary concern with patents and copyrights is that I don't think anyone else has the right to tell me which ideas I can or can't act on.  It removes ideas from actions, into two different categories when there should only be one; this is why keeping your idea a secret would solve the whole issue (ideas and actions stay in the same arena- you simply don't let people into yours, in the first place).

 

So the problem stems from the fact that inventions are a type of idea which necessarily entail a certain, very specific action; namely to build it.  Not so with art.

Art can do many things for people, it can affect people profoundly and wonderfully, but the concept of an invention is a verb while an artistic concept is a noun; there's nothing in particular to do with it except observe.

 

So the issue that applies to copyrights and patents, in the manner which I've been criticizing them this entire time (specifically inventions, innovations; physical possibilities) does not apply to artwork.

Again, I'll have to give it more thought.  I really have yet to analyze it at length but, off the top of my head, I don't see any such problem with copyrighting Anthem or Ebeneezer Goode.

 

Well, maybe if a different band wanted to play the song as a sort of a cover-thing, then that might fall into the same problem.  Otherwise not.

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I honestly am failing to grasp how non-disclosure of contracts will do the same thing.

 Both involve an inventor's right to profit from his ideas.

 

With patents, you make your idea public and are then given a unilateral monopoly on it, for a given number of years, which is enforced at governmental gunpoint.  This assumes that, once you explain your idea to someone else and help them understand how it works, you have the right to prevent them from actually using that knowledge (which is what I'm disputing).

 

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that you do NOT have any such right, then how would any inventor actually profit from his idea?  (Wouldn't others swoop in and build it, first?)

I would suggest that he simply be careful with whom he explains it to.

So imagine a factory where they make something, for instance Coca-Cola, of which the formula is this big secret.  So all of the employees have signed waivers which promise that they'll never tell anyone how it works, and if they do they're liable for millions and millions of dollars.

Same idea.

 

So it would accomplish the same thing (the inventor of a product gets a monopoly on it for a while) but by different means; the difference is one of forbidding someone to do X or simply not telling them how they would do X, in the first place.

And yes, then they would retain the ability to sit down and figure X out themselves, if they truly wanted to.  But do we really want to declare that they legally aren't allowed to figure it out?

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You do not make the idea public and then forbid its use, as much as you register your unique creation(your property) with an objective agency , or third party so to speak.

 

The example of trademarks and such(Coca Cola) is not about the patentability of the secret formula as much as selling products of similar characteristics as one and the same product.

If I were to figure out their recipe and manufacture my product for distribution, as long as I did not try and sell it as "Coke" by this I mean  using their logo and bottle design to intentionally make it appear to be their product , I would see this as kosher.

 

It would violate their rights to their property if I were to sell my manufactered goods as theirs in order to take advantage of their product's prestige.

 

The protection of their rights would have to come from the government( in the form of a recognised right to be compensated for theft) because otherwise what would stop a storeowner from selling my bogus Coke in place of the Real Thing, if I offered him a higher margin?

 

Which I could do (most likely) given I would spend zero dollars on marketing because I am ripping off Coke by piggybaking on their established and hard won market share.

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The example of trademarks and such(Coca Cola) is not about the patentability of the secret formula as much as selling products of similar characteristics as one and the same product.

If I were to figure out their recipe and manufacture my product for distribution, as long as I did not try and sell it as "Coke" by this I mean  using their logo and bottle design to intentionally make it appear to be their product , I would see this as kosher.

 As would I.

 

And if you figured out how to make something very similar to Coke, put it in an identical bottle with the Coca-Cola logo, that would be wrong and illegal- regardless of patents or copyrights.  It would be fraud.

 

The protection of their rights would have to come from the government( in the form of a recognised right to be compensated for theft) because otherwise what would stop a storeowner from selling my bogus Coke in place of the Real Thing, if I offered him a higher margin?

 

Which I could do (most likely) given I would spend zero dollars on marketing because I am ripping off Coke by piggybaking on their established and hard won market share.

 Yes. . .

I'm not sure if Coca-Cola would've been stolen from; maybe, maybe not.  I think the victims there would be the people who were sold "Coke" and intentionally defrauded at large.

It might make sense to conceive of Coke as having a percentage of their market share stolen (that's the bit I wasn't sure about; "theft of market shares" strikes me as a rather fishy concept) iff we bear in mind that the primary victims were the customers and Coke is secondary.

 

Like inheritance; if I leave something to someone after I die, they have no right to receive it (after all, they have no right to my things) but everyone must recognize MY right to dispose of it. . . Which, in that context, just so happens to mean the former.

I think something along those lines would be more applicable to the scenario above; the customers' rights were violated by false advertising and oh, by the way, X number of dollars should rightfully have gone to Coca-Cola (as per inheritance). 

 

Either way, I doubt the hypothetical Pseudo-Soda Baron would be able to enjoy his fortune for long.

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You say fraud here, so if I sell TadCoke as if it were Coke , that is fraud because I claimed to be selling Coke while in fact it was TadCoke, would Coke not have to be a recognised Real Thing in order for me to defraud the public by selling them TadCoke instead? So isn't Coke the Real THING?

Edited by tadmjones
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You say fraud here, so if I sell TadCoke as if it were Coke , that is fraud because I claimed to be selling Coke while in fact it was TadCoke, would Coke not have to be a recognised Real Thing in order for me to defraud the public by selling them TadCoke instead? So isn't Coke the Real THING?

I assume you're referring to my earlier assertion that patents and copyrights cannot be enforced objectively?

 

The answer to your question is yes.  The difference between this recognition and the other is the difference between identical and approximate.

 

With patent infringement, one must discern whether or not a certain design was inspired by or based off of another- which necessarily means attempting to discern the thought process which led to it and thusly cannot be done objectively (assuming the judge is not a close friend or family member of the accused).

 

With implicit fraud, one must discern whether something's appearance (the packaging) is identical to another product's and if its contents are identical.  If the first is while the second is not then it is fraud.

I believe we now have computers which can do this; that is how simple it is.

 

You look at the bottles; are they the same?  If so you taste (more likely chemically analyze) the sodas; are they the same?  If not, fraud.

 

This would, however, imply some sort of third party (such as a government); there would be no way for a competitor to do so without discovering your secret formula.

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You look at the bottles; are they the same?  If so you taste (more likely chemically analyze) the sodas; are they the same?  If not, fraud.

Huh? It's not IP violation and/or fraud if they're not the same? You don't make sense. Also, I don't know what your point is about government and competitors discovering formulas. No way for a competitor to do what?

 

I haven't found any of your posts in this thread very sensible. I've been meaning to do a big post on IP, but I lost steam on doing that after the previous thread ended badly.

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Huh? It's not IP violation and/or fraud if they're not the same? You don't make sense. Also, I don't know what your point is about government and competitors discovering formulas. No way for a competitor to do what?

 

I haven't found any of your posts in this thread very sensible. I've been meaning to do a big post on IP, but I lost steam on doing that after the previous thread ended badly.

You should still write that post, I'm still interested in critiquing actual arguments for or against, at least...

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Huh? It's not IP violation and/or fraud if they're not the same? You don't make sense. Also, I don't know what your point is about government and competitors discovering formulas. No way for a competitor to do what?

 

I haven't found any of your posts in this thread very sensible.

 1:  If you take a bunch of Coke bottles, fill them with cat urine and sell them to innocent bystanders, it should be considered fraud- because the packaging of a product is a statement about what it contains.

Therefore, if you take the outer appearance of any product that exists and put anything inside EXCEPT that product, it is implicit fraud.  Above I was describing the methodology for proving this, which would be necessary for it to be law (as it would be replacing aspects of IP which I'm arguing against) and attempting to show the difference in their respective requirements.

2:  If one takes implicit fraud seriously and projects this proposed methodology for proving the accused guilty or innocent of it, then it is a logical necessity that this would have to be executed by some sort of government- by process of elimination.  (The accused can't run these tests, nor can the victim, nor can the public at large- if you've accepted my whole nondisclosure bit)

This isn't strictly relevant to this thread but I'm still trying to work out that particular issue for myself (government vs. anarchy; I've been leaning towards the latter) and it bears enormous significance to that- namely that I should check some relevant premises of my own.

 

3:  Some of my posts here haven't been the slightest bit intelligible.  I'd prefer to think that the majority of them have been but, if that's your evaluation, I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Feel free to ask for any further clarification; I'd be more than happy to help.  Or at least to try.

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 3:  Some of my posts here haven't been the slightest bit intelligible.  I'd prefer to think that the majority of them have been but, if that's your evaluation, I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Feel free to ask for any further clarification; I'd be more than happy to help.  Or at least to try.

I will also chime in here, as a neutral third party in the IP debate, I have to agree with Eiuol here. I don't know, it may be something like a language barrier at work, but I have a hard time finding the majority of what you write to be intelligible. Sometimes, after staring at the sentences in a few posts for a while, I am able to glean something that may be interpreted as intelligible to me, but the level of profundity hasn't seemed to outweigh the effort required (which is why I refrained from input, and I don't think it's right to commit to an interpretation without knowing what you mean.) For instance, I still don't even know what your stance is. Maybe you could post a re-summarizing of your argument regarding IP, in basic syllogistic form?

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Maybe you could post a re-summarizing of your argument regarding IP, in basic syllogistic form?

 Sure: Patents and copyrights are nonobjective and immoral practices, stemming from the fact that they're unrealistic.  They are the ownership of ideas, as such, but earlier I realized that this is a sloppy and somewhat vague description of the actual issue.

 

There are two parts to this and the first is the problem:

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1:  All volitional action is the result of ideas; this causation being specific to each thinking/acting person

2:  All property is the result of volitional actions

     2a:  Both ideas and action are necessary for the creation of wealth (either one, without the other, accomplishes nothing)

3:  All patented innovations must be actively produced in order to exist; a patent in isolation is worthless

C:  A patent, itself, is the claim to ownership of an idea

 

  Now, iff we accept our current conceptions of P&C to be valid, then:

 

1:  Each inventor has the right to dispose of his own ideas

     1a:  Specifically the right to patent them for this explicit purpose

2:  The first person to patent an idea is its one and only owner

3:  Multiple people may (but won't necessarily!) reach the same idea completely independently

     3a:  Some ideas are invented multiple times, by multiple innovators

C:  Each inventor has a right to his own ideas, but the same idea cannot be shared

     Ca:  Some inventors do not have any right to their own ideas

            c:  Anyone else who also thinks of X is screwed; they have no right to their own ideas

            c:  Anyone who could improve upon X is screwed; they can invent nothing without permission

            c:  Anyone who knows about X and could begin producing it is screwed without permission; they have no right to act on their knowledge

 

These aren't apocalyptic problems (I pointed out somewhere earlier that I'm sort of nitpicking) but they shouldn't be overlooked; if any of our ideas don't match reality or dictate that we do bad things then we need to check them.

 

And these problems arise from a single aspect of this concept.  It is not the ownership of ideas, as such, but that's incredibly close.

 

This deeper problem, which is the cause of all of the others, is the REIFICATION OF CONCEPTS.

Patents and copyrights imply that an inventor, after perfecting his innovation, puts that idea somewhere out there in the world- as a sort of quasi existent- which he then owns as if it actually existed.

In my bastardized attempts at some syllogisms above, this reification took place in the premise "the first person to invent X is its one and only owner" or (perhaps again?) in the later conclusion "the same idea cannot be shared".

 

The premise that only one person may think of one idea is this reification; treating ideas as if they were physical objects.  And that is also the root of my solution, which is the second part of this:

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

1:  To own a part of something is to have a voice in its disposal, as negotiated with its other co-owners

2:  Ideas are held by volitional minds, which cannot be owned

     2a:  Else slavery is moral [and should be legal]

C:  No man may own any instance of an idea, in anyone else's mind

3:  EVERY inventor has the right to dispose of his own ideas

     3a:  NO inventor may dictate how others use them . . .

          3b:  Unless they have a prior contractual agreement

C:  In order to profit from his invention, an innovator should sell his idea- i.e. profit from telling others about his idea

 

The only difference in these two approaches is to take ideas from "somewhere out there", where they are treated as physical objects, and return them to inside our skulls- legally.

In actual implementation, this alternative would be much like our standard nondisclosure contracts:

 

"Person B agrees to pay inventor A $xxx.xx upon hearing about his great idea, iff it matches his grandiose claims about it. . . "  followed by anything and everything else an inventor could wish to add, including all of the benefits that would conventionally have been granted by patents.

 

And if this is not coherent then I officially no longer care to try.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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You should still write that post, I'm still interested in critiquing actual arguments for or against, at least...

I'm writing it up now. I'll probably post it tomorrow. =] It's a different take than usual, related to the ship of Theseus.

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 Sure: Patents and copyrights are nonobjective and immoral practices, stemming from the fact that they're unrealistic.  They are the ownership of ideas, as such, but earlier I realized that this is a sloppy and somewhat vague description of the actual issue.

 

There are two parts to this and the first is the problem:

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1:  All volitional action is the result of ideas; this causation being specific to each thinking/acting person

2:  All property is the result of volitional actions

     2a:  Both ideas and action are necessary for the creation of wealth (either one, without the other, accomplishes nothing)

3:  All patented innovations must be actively produced in order to exist; a patent in isolation is worthless

C:  A patent, itself, is the claim to ownership of an idea

 

  Now, iff we accept our current conceptions of P&C to be valid, then:

 

1:  Each inventor has the right to dispose of his own ideas

     1a:  Specifically the right to patent them for this explicit purpose

2:  The first person to patent an idea is its one and only owner

3:  Multiple people may (but won't necessarily!) reach the same idea completely independently

     3a:  Some ideas are invented multiple times, by multiple innovators

C:  Each inventor has a right to his own ideas, but the same idea cannot be shared

     Ca:  Some inventors do not have any right to their own ideas

            c:  Anyone else who also thinks of X is screwed; they have no right to their own ideas

            c:  Anyone who could improve upon X is screwed; they can invent nothing without permission

            c:  Anyone who knows about X and could begin producing it is screwed without permission; they have no right to act on their knowledge

 

These aren't apocalyptic problems (I pointed out somewhere earlier that I'm sort of nitpicking) but they shouldn't be overlooked; if any of our ideas don't match reality or dictate that we do bad things then we need to check them.

 

And these problems arise from a single aspect of this concept.  It is not the ownership of ideas, as such, but that's incredibly close.

 

This deeper problem, which is the cause of all of the others, is the REIFICATION OF CONCEPTS.

Patents and copyrights imply that an inventor, after perfecting his innovation, puts that idea somewhere out there in the world- as a sort of quasi existent- which he then owns as if it actually existed.

In my bastardized attempts at some syllogisms above, this reification took place in the premise "the first person to invent X is its one and only owner" or (perhaps again?) in the later conclusion "the same idea cannot be shared".

 

The premise that only one person may think of one idea is this reification; treating ideas as if they were physical objects.  And that is also the root of my solution, which is the second part of this:

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

1:  To own a part of something is to have a voice in its disposal, as negotiated with its other co-owners

2:  Ideas are held by volitional minds, which cannot be owned

     2a:  Else slavery is moral [and should be legal]

C:  No man may own any instance of an idea, in anyone else's mind

3:  EVERY inventor has the right to dispose of his own ideas

     3a:  NO inventor may dictate how others use them . . .

          3b:  Unless they have a prior contractual agreement

C:  In order to profit from his invention, an innovator should sell his idea- i.e. profit from telling others about his idea

 

The only difference in these two approaches is to take ideas from "somewhere out there", where they are treated as physical objects, and return them to inside our skulls- legally.

In actual implementation, this alternative would be much like our standard nondisclosure contracts:

 

"Person B agrees to pay inventor A $xxx.xx upon hearing about his great idea, iff it matches his grandiose claims about it. . . "  followed by anything and everything else an inventor could wish to add, including all of the benefits that would conventionally have been granted by patents.

 

And if this is not coherent then I officially no longer care to try.

Okay, I think I get it. So in the first part, what you seem to be saying is basically (putting minor disagreements over wording aside) that you disagree with the first-discoverer doctrine. If A and B both invent something indepentently, but A beats B to the patent office, then B is denied his right to own his IP/invention. But your stated conclusion of "Patents and copyrights are nonobjective and immoral practices" hardly follows from this. There are plenty of IP theorists who grant independent discovery, and certainly we can conceive of a system of IP law wherein it would be protected.

 

In the second part, I'm not sure I know of a single proponent of IP that asserts that IP means we can "own any instance of an idea, in anyone else's mind." Just that we own the product of our mental labors. This doesn't prevent an innovator from selling their ideas at all, so I'm not sure what the significance of your last conclusion was.

 

Either way, this doesn't seem to answer the big picture of why IP is or isn't justified. Also you said "They [patents and copyright] are the ownership of ideas, as such" and, though did say this is imprecise wording, lest you be accuse of attacking a straw man, it's always helpful to have a good idea of the theory, as advocated by specific people. So which specific advocates of IP say something like it involves "the ownership of ideas, as such"? Or, are you trying to make an agrument like "the advocates of IP don't say this, but the theory of IP is tantamount to ownership of ideas, as such." If the latter, then it requries an argument.

Edited by 2046
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