Philosophy of copyright and libertarian arguments against intellectual property

Maybe bezos n mackenzie can build up more libraries / ebook kiosks through their charitable non profits....

Libraries are nothing but glorified fences for wholesale thievery...

 

Because these aren't censorship. As already stated copies of the books and questions are still available through multiple sources and platforms.
Here are several inks of where you can still get "And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street"
https://www.google.com/search?ei=UN...hUKEwiugcbH9aXvAhXbVs0KHVJyBFsQ4dUDCA4&uact=5

Now if we're talking about having a book burning of that book or laws being passed banning ownership or distribution of that book then I would agree. We're not anywhere near close to that.

Regarding the other cases brought up if your argument is that Warner Bros isn't putting Pepe Le Pew into the next Space Jam is censorship. I think that's a pretty good example of how ludicrous the argument is.

Except If people don't like something generally that means they won't buy it and will encourage others not to. Whether the publishers felt that the Dr. Sues books were offensive or not they weren't good sellers with essentially no prospect for cross marketing. Further bad publicity regarding one product can financially negatively effect an overall brand. Your argument essentially goes to that private businesses financial decisions should be subsumed to cultural ideologically issues. A very bizarre argument to be made from the right and one that is antithetical to Libertarian views and far more Marxist in nature.

I don't know who Jazz Shaw is so as an appeal to authority I'm not sure what this matters but the argument they are making is even more bizzarre.
"Cuomo still has a right to earn a living" first off Cuomo is still earning a living and given that tens of thousands of copies of "American Crisis" have been bought and are in circulation Cuomo has earned money already. Further if the argument is that a publisher must publish because an author has a right to earn a living that would mean then that any of us should demand that a publisher keep on publishing. As someone who has been published I don't know if my writings are still in print but I know for sure I can't go to the publisher and demand they keep on publishing so I can earn a living.

And again if people are offended by Cuomo chances are they won't want to buy his book. Your argument amounts to more than just copyrights but that a private business should be forced to continue to publish not because of public support but in spite of public support.

Also that Cuomo is owed "Due Process" yes he is but not by Crown publishing. Not publishing his book isn't a crime and as such isn't a matter of due process. This is again a conflation of Constitutional rights onto the actions of private business. Something that the NCAC that you posted about specifically said was problematic. Now if Cuomo's contract with Crown is that his book has to be published no matter what but that would be a matter for civil courts to decide and just speculating I doubt Crown books would've signed a contract that says they have to publish his book in perpuity.

That writers for The Federalist and The Reason, publications that are Right leaning, are arguing now against property rights is an abandonment of fundamental principles. There is a good reason that the main plot of Atlas Shrugged is a creator who doesn't allow his creation to be widely distributed and for reasons that aren't financial. The argument presented against intellectual property would amount to that John Galt was self-censoring and cancelling himself so he should've been compelled to license off his engine design.

A non-fictional example is why Chapelle quit the Chapelle show. The Chapelle Show was wildly successful but he left it at it's height and knowing it would cost him because it was important for him to retain creative rights over his intellectually property.

This is why property, including intellectual, is fundamental to freedom. How a person decides to dispose of his property is a fundamental right as stated by thinkers like John Locke and Edmund Burke. For John Locke it was "Life, Liberty and Property" that were the inalienable rights granted by the creator.

 

Sure you're entitled to your opinion. I'm not going to argue that you have to share it or that you don't it's your right what you do with it.

 

On a personal note why I'm even spending time arguing this issue.
First is that work is really really slow. Second though is as someone who is involved in a creative work the issue of intellectual property are important. I'm obviously not as successful as Chapelle or Theodor Geissel and probably never will be. That said it still matters as creators what rights we have to the use, or not use of our material.

 

I think those 2 books cover it pretty well. For me personally, I have a much simpler approach (because I am simple): property implies scarcity. If everything was superabundant then there would be no such thing as property. Declaring a superabundant resources as yours is meaningless. Ideas are not scarce resources; you and I can simultaneously hold the same idea.

Tbh I stopped thinking about political theories a long time ago (shortly before kid #1 arrived), but iirc I got a much better understanding of what property is after reading stuff from Hans-Hermann Hoppe. (Note: saying I find Hoppe's theory of property to be sound does not necessarily mean I agree with everything he has ever said; again, I haven't paid attention to this stuff for a long time.)

In my more politically passionate days, I thought of being anti-IP as being one of the baseline items for a libertarian. If you are pro-war, for example, then you cannot be a libertarian no matter what else you believe. And I thought IP was also a dividing line. Nowadays I could give a ****...

 

I haven't read the books you're citing and might take a look but I find it very odd that libertarian would be anti-IP. (presuming IP is "Intellectual Property")

The importance of intellectual property is that it is scarce and as such as value. If we remove protections for it then it no longer has value. Consider again the case with Dave Chapelle. If we say, "well anyone could come up with the jokes Chapelle did?" While yes theoretically anyone could but they didn't. He did. The fact is that there funny jokes that people are willing to pay money to hear is a scarce resource. As such there is value to them. To say that Chappelle shouldn't be over to exercise property rights over his creation at that point is to deprive him of his ability to earn a living. If everyone can just deliver Chapelle's jokes without his permission and under no obligation to reward him for it then that would be removing the scarcity of those jokes and as such they would have no value, especially not to the one who created them.

Libertarian as the view that individuals should be able to freely exercise their rights based more on their individual interests rather than states depends on the ability to control one's property. It would be meaningless to a Libertarian system if one's property could be taken away or rendered valueless without your own control. For example if the state decided that people couldn't actually own their own houses.

There are certainly good arguments towards how long copyrights last and a good argument whether the heirs of the creator can hold onto those copyrights but that isn't the quite the same as saying that creators shouldn't consider those creations to be property.

Also let's be clear regarding what we've been debating. We're not debating the formula for an AIDS vaccine or a design for an engine that is non-polluting. We're debating content that is already widely in distribution and if for whatever reason it was an issue of life and death that someone get a copy of "And to Think I saw it on Mulberry Street" they very easily could.

And to reiterate again even leaving aside the issue of intellectual property whether a publisher wants to publish a material or not is still a matter of whether a private business should be compelled to publish something that they don't want to and there really isn't a financial reason to do so. Again this would be forcing a private business to publish not because they public supports it but in spite of the public supporting it.

I was thinking it was a Marxist argument as production decisions are being taken out of private hands for the use of people but it's even more bizarre than that as it's production decisions are being taken out of private hands not for the people but to counter popular opinion.

 

Ideas are not scarce. I think we're using the word differently, is all. I don't mean "scarce" as in infrequent.

I mean scarce as in a finite thing, and one for which there could be a contention over its use. A scarce resources is one where my ownership and use excludes your ownership and use. For example, my truck is a scarce resource. You cannot use my truck to go north while I am using it to go south. We can co-own the truck of course, but we have to come to an understanding on how to share it - when you have control and when I have control.

A non scarce resource is one that can be duplicated without limit - an idea, for example. We can both have the same idea for a cookie recipe. You having that idea does not exclude me from also having that idea.

 

If Mozart had copyright laws and left the property to his decendants then yes you would have to pay them. Classical music composers just didn't have that benefit

 

I'm not a patent lawyer. Do have couple co workers who hold their own patents, so I pick their brain; on their experience and the application process. My current stance is that copyright laws while good intent is overboard in this country, and at the cost of public good and simplicity. Pendulum needs to swing back to the middle.

There's a lot of things that have no business of being copyrighted. But the courts lack the domain specific knowledge to assess. For things that are copyrighted, it's way too long.

But hey, the copyright beauracy keeps the courts and patent lawyers busy. That's jerbs for the economy.

 

Everyone has ideas but successful ideas are scarce. Again if Chapelle comes up with a joke just because other people have jokes doesn't mean that those are the same or as funny as Chapelle's jokes.

In my field I can design a house and so can a lot of other people and most people can just draw some lines that look like a house. The house I design though is a unique solution to an a particular problem and is based upon my training and expertise. It is a creation the same as if I actually went out there and cut lumber and swung the hammer. As such my house design is copyright protected and someone can't just take that house design and build another house without my permission.

The argument put forward essentially states there's nothing unique about the intellectual or artistic creation. Under this argument Dr. Suess is no more relevant or unique than the instructions that came with my toaster. Going back to prehistory when some individual bothered to put his handprint on a drawing of a bison in a cave shows that humans recognize the value of intellectual creation and that such things are unique and represent individual achievement.

 

Also to add even though Mozart didn't have copyright protections it was still important to acknowledge that it was Mozart who wrote Don Giovanni. Taking the argument that ideas aren't unique as everyone has one and can duplicate it then there would be no difference between Salieri and Mozart.

"Amadeus" could've just been called "Antonio" and no one would've cared.

 

I understand that argument that some should be public domain and your example of classical music is a great example of the point you're making but music and other products of pop culture today are produced to make money. Certainly artists have altruistic motives also.

The complexity of patent laws is above my head but I'm pretty sure pharmaceutical products have patent limitations for public good but I could be wrong

 

I'm going to go even further and say that good ideas aren't just scarce they are the most valuable things in history of humanity.

If good ideas weren't scarce Francisco Pizzarro shouldn't have been able to conquer the Incas because the Incas could've come up with the idea of guns, steel weapons and how to ride animals.

 

Cheap generic drugs is a good example. And a tough one to preside between recouping the expensive reasearch cost vs saving lives.

But for things like insulin, and what it costs in this country. For how long it's been around... borderline shameful.

https://www.t1international.com/blog/2019/01/20/why-insulin-so-expensive/

 

not sure if this has been mentioned ... but Mozart was an employee, paid to produce music

Mozart was either staff of the court or commissioned for all of his famous work. Argument can be made that he never owned it, any more than songwriters/musicians who were paid by Motown to write pieces for others to perform.

Unlike novelists, composers need a team to produce work (the performers). And they were paid to be part of the team, back then.

 

Do you have any idea of how that music was passed around as it relates to this discussion? Certainly music and even theatrical productions now can be mass produced through recording and before recording technology there was no reason for owners of those properties to think about it as property as it was not easy to reproduce

 

Yeah you're still using scarce to mean rare, whereas I am using it differently. I defined my use of it above. The definition says nothing about the uniqueness of artistic creation or whatever feelings it may inspire.

Again, a scarce good is a finite thing; one where my ownership, control, and use negates your ownership, control, and use. This is the definition I am using because it's the one that follows the libertarian theory of property, and that's what this thread is about. An idea is not scarce, but the pencil and paper I used to write down the idea? Those are scarce goods.

If I want to use your pencil tomorrow morning in Texas then you cannot use it during that time in Minnesota; on the other hand, if we both decide to recite Ozymandias from memory at the same time, we can both do so. That is because the pencil is scarce - that is, a finite thing whose control could lead to contestation - and the memory of Ozymandias is nonscarce - that is, a skill or idea that can be used or replicated infinitely without contest.

Nothing about this is a statement of value, by the way, which is subjective and marginal.

If I'm still not being clear enough and you want to better understand what I am trying to say, I recommend reading that PDF I linked earlier. It's not too long and is pretty clear. I am not an expert on this matter and am really just trying to paraphrase the items I linked to earlier, so they are better sources.