Property law is an artificial, state-enforced restriction on competition. In a free market, people should be able to compete.

Intellectual Property is a concept that tries to put ownership on ideas/abstract concepts. How does one 'own' and idea? In the physical sense, one can 'own' a physical object through possession.

It's easy. You write some text, then you own a number representing the text (probably a number between 10^2400 and 10^240000) and all encodings of that number (some of which might be as small as 10^120). Now whenever you see anyone else using that number or any encoding of that number without giving you money, you tell them to give you money, and if they don't you get the government to threaten to kidnap them or steal their money if they don't give you money. However, if you pick a number around 7, I don't think you'll be able to pull it off.

In the same way, owning a physical object is ridiculous. Quantum mechanically, you can't tell the difference between an electron in your object and an electron somewhere else. So you end up owning an particular arrangement of electrons and protons, not the electrons and protons themselves. We can then apply the same reductio ad absurdum by examining somebody who claims to own a very small object, say a single electron.

The sensible way to define property is defining it by those cases where the state protects your rights to it. One defines intellectual property in exactly the same way.

Right. What I'm saying is less like an assertion that you can't own an idea and more like an explanation of how you go about owning ideas (but mostly ideas that are bigger than 7). I suppose my opinion is pretty easy to guess, though...

In what sense do you own a physical object, and how is it fundamentally different than having the copyrights to a work? What's stopping me from taking the object from you? The same entity that's stopping me from copying and selling a book that you wrote.

There are many good arguments against copyright law, but that copyright is somehow fundamentally different than property law is not one of them.

Property rights and copy rights are different beasts. Unlike theft of property, copying does not disenfranchise the originator of his asset.

I find Thomas Jeffersons quote instructive: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." http://movingtofreedom.org/2006/10/06/thomas-jefferson-on-pa...

This is why the term intellectual property is not, in my mind, the right term and one can even argue that it has the word 'property' to get us thinking along the lines of 'physical property'. Theft vs. copying.

You are making the mistake of thinking that copy right is somehow the right to own your own book, say. If you think that then of course somebody copying and distributing it doesn't take your book away. Copy rights protect your ability to sell your book, not to own a physical copy of your book. Somebody else who is copying and distributing your book does hamper your ability to sell your book. Copy right protects your ability to use your intellectual property (again, NOT a particular copy of that intellectual property), just like property rights protect your ability to use your physical property.

I am not making any such mistake.

I fully grasp that copyright is applied to an idea. You assign the term intellectual property to it.

I can copy a wine making recipe without dispossessing you of the ability to make wine. The process is still in your head. This process is an idea. I cannot steal a bottle of wine and still leave you in possession of it. The bottle of wine is property.

The copyright process attempts to provide short term protection to 'ideas' to reward inventors by dissuading copying (penalties). That does not suddenly convert the 'idea' to 'property', since any copying that happens, still does not dispossess the inventor of the idea. In assigning copyright the market has tagged the 'idea' as removed from the public domain for a short period. The natural order is restored when the period of protection ends and the idea falls back into public domain.

To come back to the reason for my original post... and repeating myself... Copying a copyrighted item does not dispossess the owner of the underlying asset. A property theft does dispossess the owner of the underlying asset. That is a significant difference.

That's the same straw-man I already answered. I repeat, when you copy and distribute, you don't rid the maker of the recipe from the ability to make wine, you rid him of the ability to sell the recipe.

I can see what you're getting at with natural order. You are saying that he didn't have the ability to sell his recipe in the first place, because in a 'natural world' (i.e. without special enforcement by the government) he wouldn't be able to do that in the first place.

What do you think the world was like centuries ago? If I'm stronger than you, I can take your axe. THAT is the natural world. You could argue that that's bad, since previously he owned the axe and now he doesn't. In the same way that you argue that the recipe maker didn't have the ability to sell his recipe in the first place without law enforcement, I argue that the axe wasn't his in the first place without law enforcement. He never really had this axe, because I was always strong enough to take it from him.

But all of this is completely beside the point. We don't make laws because they are right or wrong. We make laws from an utilitarian perspective: do they improve the world? If you want to successfully argue against copyright law, you have to argue that these laws make the world a worse place.

  > you rid him of the ability to sell the recipe.

Copyright controls the ability to copy/distribute. It says nothing about selling. Are you going to tell me that if I copy a movie, I've deprived Hollywood of the ability to sell that movie? Are they not still able to sell DVDs in parallel with the operation of The Pirate Bay? "rid him of the ability to sell" seems rather strong language for an issue that's more nuanced that you seem to want to admit to.

Selling is the most important intended use case for copy right, just like using is the most important intended use case for property right.

If you copy and distribute a movie, then yes you are depriving Hollywood of some of its ability to sell the movie. Of course not all of it, just like I don't rid you of your use of your car if I steal it for one day and then put it back.

Anti-trust law is an artificial, state-enforced restriction on competition. In a free market, people should be able to compete.

Wait, tell me how a writer having a Copyright on his, say, crime fiction book prevents any other writer from doing his or her own crime fiction book and competing? This I need to hear.

If a publisher pays a writer some money to license the writer's copyright, then the publisher can print and sell copies of the books. But if a different publisher can do a better job, customers might buy that other publisher's nicer books, and the writer might not get any money. Or, more likely, another publisher makes the books cheaper and everyone buys those. The customers are still getting the same text, maybe an exact duplicate of the licensed copies, but without copyright the original author might not get any money at all.

That is life. When I rent an apartment, I lock out all others who competed for it.