If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or own a digital copy is because society decided that it would punish you for doing so – and that's unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.
On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted – it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance.
On the other hand, the exact same spatial arrangement can be in two places at once (e.g. the state of bits on a disk, or the idea of a shovel, i.e. the pattern of a shovel as exemplified by two distinct shovels).
All of that's obvious. All I was trying to say was "I think the thing that OP was trying to suggest is:
"Despite the obvious difference between physical things and ideas, we often treat them similarly (specifically, we treat ideas like physical objects). And perhaps that would seem a bit strange if we weren't so used to it."
I will just note that characterization is a very American one, and that different cultures have different characterizations.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US constitution states:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
The whole constitutional purpose of IP law is to spur creative activity. The interests of the creator are only a means to this end. This has, unfortunately, been perverted by regulatory capture.
I'm skeptical that "encouraging creators by offering protections" is much more than a rationalization. (And I'm not sure whether it's historically accurate, although that's beside the point.) It doesn't seem like the concept of intellectual property and its protection under the law have been effective at encouraging people to create things; they seem to be more effective at encouraging rent seeking. If we want to enable and encourage people to create things, we should pay them to create – not pay them to share something after they've already created it.
For example, we can pay someone to perform the labor to create something we want (contracts), we can finance their endeavours or subsidize their living expenses if we like their work (the patron model), and so on. In fact, we already do these things, but their effectiveness is limited because our current laws favor other business models.
And there's a wonderful reciprocity: if I pay someone to create something, not only do I get what I want, but everyone else gets to benefit from it too. And the things that other people pay to have created I also get to enjoy (and there are a lot more "other people" than there are "me").
[This is the visualization of a goal (or at least an alternative way of going about things) and an argument for its possibility. Unfortunately I can't claim to know its feasibility, how to get there from here, or even which tactics would be effective, but I hope to have good answers some day.]
The idea that patronage isn’t dominant because… it can’t compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.
And there’s an astounding burst of human creativity in the last 300 years. There are several factors you can attribute that to but the correlation with ip laws means you’re not going to have evidence that they inhibit rather than incentivize progress in the useful arts and sciences.
If there’s any empty rationalization in play, it’s yours.
I didn't say that I thought incentives don't matter. (I was trying to say that I thought IP law isn't an especially good way to incentivize creativity, and that there might be better ways.) So I might be misunderstanding what you mean by this.
> The idea that patronage isn't dominant because... it can't compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.
Could you explain why it's not-even-wrong? I can definitely accept that I'm wrong, but I don't see why it's so misguided that it can't even be discussed, affirmed, or denied.
Today, I can (usually) make more money as a software developer writing proprietary software than I can writing libre software. If software couldn't be copyrighted, it doesn't follow as a matter of course that demand for software would plummet. If the demand remains, in this alternate world I ought to still be able to make a living writing (libre) software.
In this alternate world, I would necessarily be paid for the labor I perform (writing code) rather than making money by selling licenses or copies. So, if the only difference between our world today and this alternate world is the existence of software copyright, and in our world today I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies but in the alternate world I'd be paid for my labor per se, it seems fair to say that the reason I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies – and the reason why e.g. patronage isn't more dominant – must be "because we recognize and protect copyright the way we do".
That was my line of reasoning.
At some point you have to move away from physical requirements. The barter system simply doesn't scale.
Since intelectual property rights do not reflect a democratic process and were rather restricted because they threatened the power of the estate, their merrit is questionable.
ok but they way that we treat them the same are both constructs, we don't treat them the same in that if A has the idea you can't have it (in the same way that if A takes the bite of bread you cannot have that bite of bread), we treat them the same that if A has the idea they have a right to profit from it by selling you the idea in the form of a book etc. just as if A has the bread they have a right to profit from it by selling you a bite. And you don't have the right to take the bread from A just because you can.
As noted while it is physically impossible for an object to exist in two places at the same time it is the social construct of ownership that we transfer from physical objects to non-physical objects.
Calling out all property ownership as arbitrary doesn't mean IP suddenly deserves more protection. If anything, it gives more permission to be skeptical about its value to society. An IP law that prevents digital libraries isn't an outcome we desire, so... case closed, let's change the law.
You're arguing about whether natural rights exist, but regardless of whether or not there is such a thing as a natural right -- intellectual property is not a natural right. And getting rid of the entire category category of natural rights just makes IP even more obviously not a natural right. It's not something that people are universally entitled to regardless of the social impact.
> In the natural world ownership is defended purely by force or guile
There is a third view which is that human law is a continuum ranging from things we are genetically predisposed to expect as members of a social species to constructs which are mostly cultural.
For example, almost every human civilization has some prohibition on killing and stealing from other members of the community. These are more foundational than laws about how to dress or speak. Even communities of non-human primates recognize stealing as a transgression and may collectively punish a thief. So the idea of personal property has deep roots and is not exclusively human.
"Property" which includes constructs like probhibitions on copying what someone else has done without paying them tribute is an abstraction of personal property, which is much closer to an innate human concept.
What if you’ve hoarded all the food or all the water, and I need it to survive? Would that be compelling?
I’m with the other guy. These distinctions are arbitrary. They may be useful for a society that attempts to maximize “happiness@ (also arbitrary), but it remains that they are not universally obvious.
Tons of thing compel someone to get the thing another has - them being hungry, just fancying it, mere greed, etc. All of those are natural feelings. In nature the stronger getting what they wont is the norm. There are no property rights.
>On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance.
So? Physics is not the basis of law in a society. Just a hard limit of what can be done.
But one can e.g. just kill you by hitting you with a rock, and physics is 100% fine with that, as is biology. Physics doesn't care either way. It's just a bunch of equations that describe how matter interacts, not a legal or moral code, and it doesn't get into the baseline state of animal behavior in nature...
We still have laws against it though.
No more than nothing compels you to take exclusive ownership of something that comes from the land!
Example: my friends and I have a massively western-masculine internal culture. At parties people would ask if we were "ok" because a minute earlier we'd have been shouting at each other how smooth brained and stupid each other was. Of course we'd be fine, that's how we talk to each other. We'd get frustrated if someone tried to talk through implication - one time I asked my friend to put his seatbelt on and he said "wtf just tell me to put my fucking seat belt on don't be all soft about it."
But if we turned that culture on someone else we'd be the most horrible of bullies. Not everyone wants to be "talked to straight" like that, and that's fine.
I'd get mad if someone let me walk around with a booger on my face. "do unto me" is to say to me "lol saving that for later?", But to someone else a much more polite method is probably desirable.
"Do unto me" might mean literally not talking to or approaching someone. It might mean feeling spurned or like someone thinks you're disgusting if a hug or handshake is avoided.
Do unto me is far too simple a rule. We need more communication involved.
Sounds to me like you just have "teenage boy" culture.
It's really like the semantics of "walk this way".
The one constant as you move through human history objectively is that might makes right... the best you can hope for is a philosopher king who is willing to put his iron gauntlet in a velvet glove and then use that hand to guide society into a better place... and apply pressure when necessary, as opposed to crushing.
Depending on the definition of having, which goes begs the question.
The parent was asking which laws are not constructs, and your example I don't think works as an answer to that question. In what sense do you "have" that physical object? For example, what does it mean to say "I have a phone"? "Having" in that sense is a construct, not a natural thing. You might be holding the phone, you might put it down, I might hold it while you are holding it, I might pick it up when you put it down, I might look at it while you aren't, etc. But there's nothing in any of those real natural world descriptions that correspond to having, until you start to include our social constructs around possession.
I don’t think we can have a conversation about free distribution of IP without considering the original creator.
The creator depends on getting remunerated for each copy of their work. How are they to live?
the unnatural, made up construct is that your property is recognised and respected by law, so that you don't have to physically defend it and potentially lose it to someone or some group stronger, perhaps more violent, than yourself
if you only recognise physical ownership, you only own objects as long as you can physically protect them yourself and you explicitly deny any further rights not to have them robbed, as that is also an "unnatural, made up construct" - you were not robbed, there is a just different physical ownership going on now
We can simply say IP is a concept that we need to bust. And that's fine. No need to invoke weird "reasoning" like that.
I don't see how that continues without IP.
You can't spend hundreds of millions making GTA6 if the first person you sell it to can give away copies.
To a large extent we also see that today (because let's be honest, current copyright law is not enforced very consistently) and there are still big-budget movies and games being released.
I pay for Tidal and buy 99% of my games despite having access to safe private trackers. On the other hand I pirate 100% of my TV and movies. Make of that what you will but for me it's always a service issue (or lack thereof).
Why would anyone pay for HBO when Netflix could just put up The Last of Us without paying a cent.
Why would AMC theaters pay Disney for Avengers 5 when they can just pay some Disney employee to send them a copy for free?
In that timeline there's a comment chain:
>> So this dev lost his job because he couldn't work during covid after getting Internet banned for pirating some movie. Doesn't that seem excessive?
> Okay, yes, maybe a little. But let me ask you this: How could Disney-XBox Studios have afforded the $2.3T Iron Man vs. Master Chief sequel if they weren't able to protect their investment? I just don't see how that movie gets made without strong IP law.
The Benedict Cumberbatch from their side could probably transport you over, if you want. They're pretty accepting of immigrants, as long as you're willing to get The Implant.
People should get paid to create things, and get paid what the work is worth.
Right now, people get paid a small fraction of what it's worth, while the bigger fraction goes to execs who have had no hand in creating anything of value. And those execs get paid for selling something that their workers have made, not for making it.
Big-budget movies should get made because people democratically decided that we want to collectively spend resources on making such a movie, not because unelected company execs say so who have exclusive control over a huge amount of capital and who can use IP laws to extol more capital from innocent people who just wanna watch a decent movie.
This is literally how it works today though. No one is intentionally paying employees more than they have to, and if they pay less than they have to, they lose employees.
Basically this is just an anticapitalist rant. Not useful even if one agrees with the premise.
If it did, then by definition, companies wouldn't be making profit for the shareholders.
Communist countries make weird propaganda films all the time. You can go watch them and see what that looks like.
This is a very questionable statement.
For example it was moral and ethical (and you were considered a good person regardless of whether you did it) to own slaves when that was the prevalent morality of a societies.
So, there are actions that are unethical based on made up human constructs of morality. Nature and physics doesn't care either way.
Which is the parent's point: what laws and ethical norms aren't "unnatural" and aren't made up? All are. Doesn't mean they are not useful and good for being that.
There are tons of old articles, books, and treteases on the matter, describing it as perfectly moral and ethical, and how its beneficial to the slaves, who lack agency, are animal like, and are offered "useful work" from their masters who know better, how they are beastly and need the whip to get sense into them, and so on.
That's of course, on top of the fact that slave owners were among the most respected good-standing members of society, and only controversial figures considered them imoral and unethical for owning slave. In fact abolitionists were considered bad people, not unlike today's terrorists and activists.
Theses idea of the morality of being a slave owner, and the superiority and natural right of the owners vs the slaves, is universal in societies that held slaves (as was in societies were royals and lords were above folks reduced to peasants).
Regarding the South, for example:
"What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious leaders telling their flock? Southern clergy defended the morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which they held up as the universal and objective standard for moral issues.
(...)
Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures. A fellow reverend from Virginia agreed that on no other subject “are [the Bible’s] instructions more explicit, or their salutary tendency and influence more thoroughly tested and corroborated by experience than on the subject of slavery.” The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, asserted that slavery “has received the sanction of Jehova.” As a South Carolina Presbyterian concluded: “If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not what they do justify.”
As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case: “Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy, never could authorize the practice of a moral evil. But god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of his Providence, but the express provision of his word. Therefore, slavery is not a moral evil.” Since the Bible was the source for moral authority, the case was closed. “Man may err,” said the southern theologian James Thornwell, “but God can never lie.”
The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was a “religious character to the present struggle. Anti-slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.”
During the 1850’s, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit became especially strident. A preacher in Richmond exalted slavery as “the most blessed and beautiful form of social government known; the only one that solves the problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a beneficent patriarchate.” The Central Presbyterian affirmed that slavery was “a relation essential to the existence of civilized society.” By 1860, Southern preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners that “both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time.”
Same for politicians:
William Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, explained that Lincoln’s election had made the North more defiant than ever. As Harris saw things, “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.” Lincoln and his followers, he stated, aimed to “overturn and strike down this great feature of our union and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.” For Harris, the choice was clear. Mississippi would “rather see the last of her race, men, women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.”
More to the point, he noted, abolition meant “the turning loose upon society, without the salutary restraints to which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in idleness over the country until their wants should drive most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to the bolder crimes of robbery and murder.”
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slavehol....
(Am agreeing point that, unfortunately, slave holding was considered morally good once upon a time… a biological fact, even!)
IP allows authors to require values of content to be preserved, recognized, and financially rewarded(in one-time or recurring payments).
In the absence of IP, printing companies can take manuscripts and contents to profit off of copies free-for-all style, bankrupting manuscript writers.
However, it was NOT designed to protect interest of multinational megacorporates, causing individual contributors to be ignored and paid for presence in its making than input in the product; such use of IP is basically a polar opposite of its intent.
We should stop allowing corporates to take ownership of IPs.
J.K. Rowling enjoying her life is fine, that is intellectual property as intended. “(C)Disney” or “(C)2023 Electronic Arts. All Rights Reserved.” is not. Those latter cases is how and where IP laws are not working as intended.
Was Amazon being a patent troll patenting single-click-to-purchase? Was Apple a troll in patenting Swipe to Unlock? They were using those patents in their products.
On the other hand is the Tolkien Estate patent trolls? They're not producing anything new.)
If I have a dozen patents, and some company wants to buy them from me, is that any different to me selling my company? Surely I can sell my assets?
The root issue are not "patent trolls". Being sued by Amazon is no less disruptive than by Trolls r US.
The root issue is the nature of the patents being issued.
The root of copyright issues are (mostly) not about actual copyright, but the length of copyright.
Which isn't to say that established players don't also use them to create moats around technology of interest, or that the nature of certain patents doesn't lend them to abuse. They could, for example, require that the thing which makes the patent 'novel' also be 'patentable subject matter' for example, rather than letting one patent some novel software running on a non-novel computer and meet the standard one piece at a time.
Also I wasn't aware that Tolkien or his estate had any patents. Copyrights, surely, but patents? That's surprise me.
The other issues are getting worse over time. Lack of first sale doctrine. DRM preventing fair use. That Aereo thing where you're not allowed to rent a preconfigured antenna and recorder from someone else.
It seems like a good balance between private monopoly and public interest for the shirts of artistic works copyright protects.
Just on that example. I think Amazon were fine to get a monopoly (in USA) on commercial implementation of one-click. But realistically it's worth a couple of years at most of monopoly for something which arises naturally out of the progress of the web, which Amazon rode the wave of (and contributed to). Locking that up for 20 years doesn't serve society; it's clearly anti-democratic [ie against the best interests of society as a whole] to have that extended term for business methods/software.
In this case it's trivial to work around, but that's not true of all 'small idea' patents.
This is if course my personal opinion, unrelated to my employment.
But who benefits from that other than Amazon when, as you say, it arose naturally. Does anyone think one-click purchase is something that would never have existed if not for Amazon?
Later it was expanded to keep poor countries and people from affording medicine.
Reading on the history of copyright would be a good start before perpetuating misconceptions.
In reality (c)opywrong and patent law does the opposite. It promotes the collection of money and power to the 1% to the detriment of the progress of science and useful arts.
Without copyright, and especially century long Mickey Mouse copyright, it's easier to open your own smaller amusement park that competes with Disneyland, this will employ a lot of people outside LA or Orlando area. Plus I will still buy my games and movies from reputable sources that are fair to content creators. If some poor college students can't afford that, maybe it's good they can get a break.
Is anything humans do natural? The only thing that can make something unnatural, so far as we understand it, is human intervention. Insofar as we conceive of unnaturalness as a recognizable quality of phenomena, it is more acute when the humans responsible are more sophisticated in their methods. We can easily observe a very large difference between the primitiveness of human society when it created the ownership of things and the much more advanced culture that devised what we now call intellectual property. From this construction of what is natural and what is not, we clearly find that intellectual property is much less "natural", though there is still the necessity of accepting that "natural" can be a meaningful idea at all.
Off the top of my mind, with a solely European view the Venetians moved glass production to Murano in the 13th century at least partially to make a monopoly on luxury glass. World History was awhile ago but other restrictions on technology transfer existed by at least 800 CE and probably in a limited sense well before 1000 BCE.
Patent was invented to break the guilds. A guild member could reveal a technology publicly, and get a 10 year right to use it. This was to make progress go faster, as guilds kept technology secret.
If someone says something in public then I have the right to say it. A way to get around this is by making every viewing of copyrighted material a private contract. e.g. "You can only own a license for personal use of this movie if pay and agree not to share it." But, if somebody does break that contract and shares the movie publicly, going only by natural rights everyone who watched it would be able to share. Since book publishers didn't like this they lobbied for our current "unnatural" copyright laws.
Why people don't like this now generally falls into three camps with some overlap 1) People who want free books, movies and software. 2) People who want all books, movies and software to be libre. 3) People who don't want the government to create a protected class of license holders, for various reasons (anticommunism, traditionalism etc.)
Imagine a world where every human has access to all ideas, papers, books, thoughts. That’ll empower every human being who has access to it.
We need to find other ways to compensate authors and creators.
So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?