This is one of the stupidest propaganda pieces I’ve ever seen. Pathetic. But it does a good job of mimicking the typical glassy-eyed brainwashed arguments given for intellectual property.
[TLS]
I’ve noted before a central error of arguments for intellectual property (IP) is the idea that creation is an independent source of rights (see Libertarian Creationism; Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and “Rearrangement Rights”; Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value; this comment to “Trademark and Fraud”; Elaborations on Randian IP; Objectivists on IP). As I noted in “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism“:
… creation is an important means of increasing wealth. As Hoppe has observed,
One can acquire and increase wealth either through homesteading, production and contractual exchange, or by expropriating and exploiting homesteaders, producers, or contractual exchangers. There are no other ways.[26]
While production or creation may be a means of gaining “wealth,” it is not an independent source of ownership or rights. Production is not the creation of new matter; it is the transformation of things from one form to another — the transformation of things someone already owns, either the producer or someone else.
Using your labor and creativity to transform your property into more valuable finished products gives you greater wealth, but not additional property rights. (If you transform someone else’s property, he owns the resulting transformed thing, even if it is now more valuable.) So the idea that you own anything you create is a confused one that does not justify IP.
There are two ways to acquire rights to property: homesteading unowned property; or contractually acquiring title to property held by a previous owner. It is wealth and value that is created or produced, by rearranging already-owned scarce resources. But no new property emerges from an act of production, from labor, from creation: new wealth is created, by making existing property more valuable. By being careful here about the distinction between “creating value” and acquiring property rights, by avoiding overuse of the creation and labor metaphors, we can avoid the mistake of thinking that we have rights in whatever we find, whatever we buy, and whatever we create, as if this latter is an independent, third category. We have rights to the value we create only as a by-product of owning the resource that we have made more valuable by rearranging it. And once we see that this third category does not exist, we see that the creationist case for IP evaporates. Creation never was a source of ownership at all. [continue reading…]
Starts at 8:20 in video 6 of 7, and continues to about 2:49 of video 7 of 7. He says that IP is one of the issues, along with abortion, he gives as sharply dividing libertarians. I haven’t yet watched the rest of the videos (linked below), but a friend assures me it’s a riveting, great lecture.
My contention in “There are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property” has been shored up with the latest weak attempt, by “AssassinatorGirl,” who “doesn’t own a table,” in her video Kinsella Fails On Intellectual Property Arguments. She (a) agrees with my critique on utilitarianism and (b) agrees with my critique of the state, leaving her with only (c) an inept contract-based argument, which she fumbles around after admitting she doesn’t know all those legal terms. Ummmmmm…
I’ve moved to libertarian scholarship full-time. Quit job, well mostly–working 1 day a week, mostly remotely. Rest of the time: full time libertarian and legal speaking, lecturing, publishing. Very pumped up. No more patents. Starting a new anti-IP center. More details forthcoming…
Seth King of The Daily Anarchist, in ?Intellectual Property And Libertarianism, does a nice job of summarizing why the legitimacy of IP has been taken for granted in libertarian circles (it’s in the Constitution), why the issue is becoming ever more important (in recent years “software and file sharing really kicked into high gear” and there’s been an at least apparent increase in obviously absurd and unjust patent and copyright infringement lawsuits), his own enlightenment on IP (influenced by some of my writing), and why a compelling case against IP needs to be informed by Austrian economics and not by leftist anti-property assumptions.
Collecting previous posts and other links about IP imperialism (efforts by the US and other western countries to strongarm developing or other nations into adopting US-style IP laws:
- Hatch’s “International IP Piracy Priority Watch List”;
- IP Imperialism (Russia, Intellectual Property , and the WTO);
- Russian Free Trade and Patents, Mises Blog (Sept. 22, 2006);
- Bush Wants More Jailed Citizens in Russia and China;
- China, India like US Patent Reform, Mises Blog (Dec. 10, 2007);
- Stop the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement);
- Cory Doctorow, How ACTA will change the world’s internet laws;
- Mike Masnick, Canadian Recording Industry Claims That Canadian Copyright Proposal Is A $5k License To Infringe (regarding US diplomatic pressure on Canada to adopt DMCA-style provisions)
I appeared yesterday on Ernest Hancock’s Declare Your Independence radio show for about two hours (hours 2 and 3 of his show) discussing intellectual property. It was a pretty wide-ranging, radical discussion, but I think I made progress with Ernie. The MP3 files are on the show’s page for that day; local files: hour 1; hour 2; hour 3.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Douglas Carswell, M.P.
Related:
- Musings on Fractional-Reserve Banking in a Bitcoin Age; Physicalist Shock Absorber Metaphors
- On Coinbase, Bitcoin, Fractional-Reserve Banking, and Irregular Deposits
- Am I a Bitcoin Maximalist?
- The Great Fractional Reserve/Freebanking Debate
[Cross-posted at Mises Blog (archived comments below]
Austrians and others interested in fractional-reserve banking (FRB) will find of interest a banking reform about to be proposed in the UK. Douglas Carswell, an Austrian economics-informed member of the UK parliament for Clacton, is planning to introduce a so-called “Ten Minute Rule Bill” after Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept. 15) that could have significant implications for current centralized FRB practices. The Bill will be supported by Steve Baker, the Member of Parliament for Wycombe, who also serves on the Advisory Board of the Austrian/classical liberal Cobden Centre. [continue reading…]
Jock Coats, who did the audio narration for my Against Intellectual Property, has posted a good reply to Cathy Smith’s pro-IP comments and confusions in his article Copyright – buying your time? (responding in part to her Time—Going, Going, Gone).
Jock is right to guess relation between Cathy and L. Neil Smith: she is his wife; she was involved in the debate about the Shire Society Declaration on the FreeKeene board. Some suspected L. Neil was speaking through her. She denied it, and said she was speaking for herself. All I know is they have both presented similary sketchy, incomplete and flawed arguments for IP. Their argument basicaly amounts to calling copying theft–i.e., assuming their conclusion; question-begging.
From Jan. 1996, when I lived in Philadelphia (related stories: Breakin’ the Law; Poodles Bite; Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me; also Ben-Gay and Things not to say to a first-time mom):
Tonight, Wednesday night, around 1 1 : 30 p.m., I took Muffy [our Cocker Spaniel] out the basement door to walk her before going to bed. It was very dark out, as you can imagine, and was very quiet, and there was white all around, since the yards have been covered with snow since the last snowfall a couple weeks ago, which hasn’t yet melted. Well, I’m down there waiting inside the door (since it’s cold out), and Muff’s not back yet. So I peer outside and see her sort of straining and clambering on the snow just a few inches from the patio, but on the sloping incline of the yard, as it starts its pretty steep slope way down to the fence at the treeline about a 100 feet down. She was slipping on the surface of the (hardened) snow, and was trying not to slide downhill, and couldn’t make progress uphill even over the little flower bed (itself also covered with icy snow) to the patio. The Muff was stranded.
I was in my flannel pajamas–new green-blue plaid ones Skid and Smidge got me this Xmas–and only my socks, so I couldn’t go out to get her and help her in. So I called to her, and she tried a couple times to climb up but failed, and finally gave up, just standing there. So I went upstairs and put on these snow boots I tramp around in when I need to run outside, and went back down to the basement to get her. And as I got to her, my feet started to slide. It seems like my entire back yard has turned, this afternoon and evening (perhaps with a light freezing drizzle) into a solid sheet of ice. Not snow, but ice. So here I am, 11:30 pm, with a bad cold or perhaps bronchitis, freezing outside, dark, in Yankeeland, in my fucking flannel pajamas, and I land on my ass and start sliding down my back yard. I am rolling and twisting, trying to upright myself, but every time I do this I try to use my hands, which are subjected to very rough treatment by that hard ice zipping by. I knock down a small treelet sticking up out the snow. The ice surface is sort of rough, like very rocky sandpaper, and I could feel it through my PJ’S on my butt and back. I finally give up and sort of ball up and slid all the damned way down the yard like a turtle on its back till I almost hit that fence at the bottom, at least 100 feet from the top.
So I get up and think to myself, “look at this shit.” Muffy ‘s standing up there on the ice still, by the patio, probably looking down at me, thinking “and you’re gonna rescue me?” I consider yelling for Cin–’cause I, too, am stranded now–but it won’t work, it won’t help, and plus my chest hurts too much to yell. Plus I might attract the neighbors: “Evenin’, Mistah Spitzah! Might ye be so kind as to fetch that boy with the wench and fo’ wheel drahv and haul me up outta mah back yahd? ” “Eric, darling, it’s that poor Southern boy confounded by our Northern snow again.” No way!
So I considered walking way ’round the perimeter of the low area at which I was in till I got to some perhaps travelable area. Or, yes, maybe, I could sneak over there to that corner with the woods, and follow the woods up, and maybe dash across the short relatively level part of the yard up by my air conditioner unit, and then grab Muffy and hop onto the patio.
But I wasn’t ready to admit yet that I couldn’t just walk up that damned hill. The ice had cracked a little under me where I stood, leaving a rough footprint. So, I stomped my left heel real hard, made an indention, and advanced a step; and repeated this with the right, left, so forth for a few steps. I got about half way up the hill, the ice getting harder to break with each step, more like stomping on plywood. Finally the ice got hard enough or my stomping legs got tired enough, and I stomped but made no indention–just my flat boot on slippery ice, and again! I slid down that fucking yard. Arms flailing wildly–say , that’s a pretty, dark sky above, look at all the stars–cold Yankee wind in my ears, hands flayed by the icy bumps and pits rushing by. The palms of my hands and tips of my fingers are almost bleeding now, and I can barely feel these keyboard keys as I type this.
So then I tried my alternate route–up by the woods, by the a/c, and that finally worked. I grabbed the Muff–still waiting patiently for rescue–almost slipped but jumped to the patio, and after furtively looking around to make sure no neighbors had spied me, I dashed inside. Muffy can wait till the morning to crap.
See: Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Right.
***
My comment to a Cobden Center post (see also Rothbard’s Utilitarian Free-Market Economics):
@Bryan Niblett:
“The reason for private property is that a man is morally entitled to that which he brings into being and property laws are necessary to give him freedom of action in the domain of the property he has created.
“I recommend that you read John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government(a great work) where he explains all this.”
The problem is the assumption that creation is an independent source of property rights. It is not. Creation is merely rearranging already-owned property into a more valuable configuration. Thus creation presupposes the things modified are already owned–and adds wealth, but not property rights. The only legitimate way to acquire property rights is by homesteading (appropriation) of unowned resources, or contractually from a previous owner.
The fallacious “creationist” approach to property is mixed up with Locke’s imprecise and overly metaphorical comments about the “ownership” of labor–labor is just action; it’s something you do with your body, i.e. with your property. If I own my body and other this the ownership of these scarce resources gives me the power to use them–to act with them–as I see fit. To say I own this action (labor) is unnecessary and double-counting, and leads to confusion. Lockean homesteading works simply because by transforming and using an unowned resource first you establish a better claim to it; there is no need in this argument to assume that labor is “owned”. And thus, there is no basis for the creationist view that if you labor to make an information pattern that you own that pattern. Labor only serves as part of homesteading in that it is just the way human action transforms and thus emborders a previously-unowned scarce resource. That is, it presupposes we are talking about ownable things–that is, things that need property rights to prevent conflict over their use–that is, conflictable things, or sometimes as they are called, rivalrous, or “scarce.” Information is not an ownable thing at all. It may not be homesteaded at all. It is not “transformed” or embordered. Rather, information is what guides human action; by acting with respect to (laboring on) a scarce good, following information that guides one’s actions, one transforms that scarce good and emborders it, thus appropriating it to one’s estate. But the information only guides action. If you think of a new way to manipulate or use your property that is useful to you but you in no wise gain ownership of the information itself. Human action is use of scarce means to achieve ends, where the means selected and the manner in which they are employed, is guided by ideas or information. The means used are scarce and thus have to be owned by the actor in order to use these means; but it makes no sense, and there is no need, for the ideas that guide his actions to be “owned” by him–only I can use my eggs and bowl to make a cake, so I need to own these means; but I am not prevented from making my cake if a thousand other people simultaneously use the same recipe to make their own cakes.
I discuss all this in my various IP writings at https://stephankinsella.com/publications/#IP; see also Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value http://blog.mises.org/13064/lock-smith-marx-and-the-labor-theory-of-value/ and What Libertarianism Is, also http://blog.mises.org/11042/rand-on-ip-owning-values-and-rearrangement-rights/
Current writes:
“I think that from a utilitarian standpoint though there is a good argument for it. If there is no way to be rewarded for the creation of software (for example) then less software will be created.”
The problem is this is always asserted by IP advocates but never proven. Forget for a moment that utilitarianism is methodologically flawed (value is ordinal not cardinal and not interpersonally comparable) and morally bankrupt (it’s immoral to steal from A to give to B even if A is richer, even if the money taken “means less” to A than it does to B).
IP advocates have no proof that the marginal benefit of IP systems is greater than the cost of those systems. In fact they have no proof that there is marginal benefit at all. Studies so far tend to be inconclusive or to conclude that innovation is on net diminished by IP law.
See my comments in this respect to David Friedman here:
see also :
http://blog.mises.org/10217/yet-another-study-finds-patents-do-not-encourage-innovation/ and Reducing the Cost of IP Law, and There’s No Such Thing as a Free Patent
Update: Carla Hesse, “The Rise of Intellectual Property, 700 B.C.-A.D. 2000: An Idea in the Balance,” Daedalus 131, no. 2 (Spring, 2002): 26–45, 26: “The concept of intellectual property—the idea that an idea can be owned—is a child of the European Enlightenment. It was only when people began to believe that knowledge came from the human mind working upon the senses—rather than through divine revelation, assisted by the study of ancient texts—that it became possible to imagine humans as creators, and hence owners, of new ideas rather than as mere transmitters of eternal verities.” (emphasis added)
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