A good point, and it's not a crazy position. A sort of middle ground is the georgist position which (iirc) says that you can own land in perpetuity, but all taxes revenues should come from taxation on land.

But what's true for land in my original example is also true for more mundane physical goods.

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Occupy Babel!

So you're paying for Kombilo, licensing the proprietary HTML format to use with your encyclopedia that people view in the web browsers that they pay for, and giving the Nihon Ki-in, et al. their cut for each game?

I support the decision of authors and database compilers to charge for their work as they see fit, and I'm currently importing a brand new legal copy of the most recent GoGoD onto my hard drive. I wouldn't ever think of redistributing that content because I want to support you.

But it sure seems like the free information crowd has done some cool things too.

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Occupy Babel!

The underlying assumption is that one would not be able to get paid for his work, unless he made it into government-protected monopoly.

But that is simply not true. Market provides many different modes of support. I already described the system of voluntary donations. Another example: there is the Groupon model, about which I just read here.

- The world is full of fantastic works. I don't know who built the house I live in, but it was a group of people. I'm not sure who provided this service for me to type my thoughts, but somebody did it. I think these things build gradually and iteratively throughout generations. The mind doesn't exist in aether, contrary to what many philosophers thought. No man is an island, but that doesn't stop somebody with dominant quality of mind of stamping their foot on the ground, building a fence and claiming "this is mine". They need not wonder how every flower inside their fence came to be. Foolish thoughts distract from building fences.

Flying Axe, your position seems to be that intellectual property rights are not only a bad idea/worthy of being limited, but absurd.

Now, suppose that I write a book, and keep it in my house. I allow others to see it on the condition that they sign a contract stating that they will not reproduce any portions of it, unless those portions are sufficiently small and/or meet other conditions ("fair use" under our current law).

If that contract is valid, then it doesn't really matter whether the book sits at my house or I give you copies--we can sign the same contract.

Now, one can say that the current copyright regime makes such a contract the default for books and other information. So for intellectual property to be absurd (as opposed to merely bad idea), such a contract must be invalid. That's a remarkable position, and quite contrary to your apparent libertarianism.

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Occupy Babel!

That's a good way to limit the first buyer's copying of the original work. But suppose I give the book as a present to someone who has never signed the contract? What is binding him or her from making copies? Suppose someone has broken the contract and made (illegally) some copies. Someone else made copies from those copies. The second person was not breaking any contracts. (Indeed, the first pirate, once he broke the contract once, was not breaking it anymore while making copies of the first copy.)

Lastly, imagine that I listen to a song on the DVD that I bought. The contract accompanying the sale of the DVD said that I may not make copies of the DVD's contents into any format and share them and that if I do, the DVD publisher owns those copies. So, if I memorized the song, does it mean that the publisher owns select circuits in my brain where the song information is stored? Do I have to forget the contents of the song, since remembering it (let alone singing it in the shower) would break the contract?

One can write a license/contract that stipulates the conditions under which the first buyer may dispose of the property. Whether that will hold up in court varies, afaik. Such a method is precisely how the GPL works.

Of course the "any format" is based on a sort of folk conception of what "copying the DVDs contents" means, one which doesn't include memories. The law would not support an effort to prosecute/sue individuals for memories, as opposed to digital/tape recordings, and no one would attempt to prosecute it. It could become an interesting issue if there's some sort of future device that records everything you see and hear.

You keep making this error, and it is a bit silly. If the law denies me the ability to do something with an MP3 on my hard drive, that is not saying the copyright owner "owns" my hard drive. That's just a sloppy confusion. Compare: only I own the household cleaners in my laundry room, even though I'd be legally prohibited from mixing them to produce chlorine gas that disperses into my neighbor's apartment.

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Occupy Babel!

It's not ridiculous at all. The difference is that physical property is scarce, but information is not. For instance, taking the apple from you would be stealing because it would deprive you of the apple. But someone copying the information contained in a book you wrote does not deprive you of the book.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Ah, but land doesn't work this way! Look up "adverse possession."

Ok, to save the Wikipedia/Google search: If Bob uses land owned by George (for example, builds a house), and his use is "continuous, open, and notorious" for a certain period of time (often 25 years, depending on the jurisdiction), and George doesn't do anything to stop Bob, the land becomes Bob's.

I'm not sure whether that changes the issue, Judicata. Doesn't that just establish that in some cases, continued possession of tangible goods is not guaranteed? Whereas with copyright (in theory--since there are the Mickey Mouse laws), continued possession is not even possible.

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Occupy Babel!

This is an important distinction, and it is tremendously important to the economics of the issue, but I have some free complications for you.

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Occupy Babel!

I don't have a dog in this fight. I leave it to others whether it changes any analyses, I just like chiming in with interesting legal tidbits on occasion. And this concept (rather, the policies underlying it), definitely plays a role in IP law. It is not quite "use it or lose it" but "use it or take some action to protect it, or lose it."

Sure. One can write a contract that forbids people to give books that they buy as presents to others (or lend them). First, who would buy books under such contract? Second, if I have violated the said contract and lent a book to my wife, who distributed it online, she hasn't broken any contract, since she never agreed to one in the first place.

What the law would support or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether any time I copy information to any medium, you can be said to own the medium. Brain circuits is a way of disproving that using argument ad absurdum.

If you don't own something, then you have no right to tell me what to do with it, unless by doing something with it I am violating your rights to something that you own.

The reason it should be illegal to produce chlorine gas that invades your apartment is not because this is a "regulation", but because chlorine gas invades your property without permission and causes damage. It's a case of violation of your property rights in a form of trespass and damage.

You can prohibit me from plunging a knife in your chest because you own your chest. You can't prohibit me from doing anything with my knife that in no way invades your property.


So, going back to information, the reason you can't prohibit me to do whatever I want with the information on the DVD that I bought is because I own the information and I own the DVD. Now, certainly, I cannot throw the DVD at you. I cannot blast music from my apartment such that the sound waves invade your apartment and cause you disturbance or damage. But whatever I do with the music and the DVD in the privacy of my home provided I am not violating anyone's property rights is my business.

Nagano, I think you should give this some more thought. The skill to write a novel can easily be claimed to be as scarce as an apple. Also, your approach to the argument is rather immediate in nature.

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North Lecale

I think the analogy made between counterfeiting and copying works in that article is interesting, but ultimately ALSO flawed.

In counterfeiting, money is "stolen" by changing the value of the dollar. The value of a dollar is dependent on the number of dollars in circulation. They relate back (in an eldritch and arcane way) to the value of the U.S. Economy.

In copying creative works, money is "stolen" by reaching potential customers prior to the originals. The value of a work is not dependent on the number of copies in circulation but rather on the number of BOUGHT copies in circulation. There may or may not be a correlation between increase of copying and decrease of book sales. I haven't seen strong evidence one way or the other.

I think that a certain amount of theft is taking place... BUT, I also don't think the scale of the monetary damage is anywhere near what artists claim.

To some degree, lost sales are balanced by increased awareness. Awareness in a world of a large number of choices is key. Not every pirated copy IS a lost sale. (By which I mean that lots of people will get something for free, but will not pay money for it. And that some who pirate the copy, end up buying the book).

On the other hand, when it comes to movies, we have an industry getting "hit hard" by pirates. it could just be that increased awareness lets me know beforehand that Indiana Jones 4 was a steaming pile of Lucas's Leftovers.

So awareness can be a double-edged sword.


Basic econ says that when the cost of a good greatly exceeds its value to produce and publish, we create a black market. That's all that's happening here.

People like digital copies, they can take them with them and easily pass it between their laptop/desktop/Kindle/phone. Publication is cheap these days, but publishers are still trying to get the equivalent value of physical copies from digital ones. I'm sorry, but paying the same price for a digital copy is by definition overpriced.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Barnes and Noble staff can certainly prohibit me from holding on to a book that they own while standing in their store (usually they don't because there is a chance I may buy it, and because they want to create a nice atmosphere for their customers).

But think about this: imagine I bought a book from B&N for $30. Then I realized that it's not the book I had wanted to buy, and for whatever reason I cannot return it to B&N (let's say 30 days have passed, I damaged the book, whatever).

I go and stand outside of B&N in the mall and offer to sell this book to passersby for $20. Someone is on his way to the store to buy this exact book, sees me with the book and buys it. What just happened? I cost B&N a customer.

But I haven't stolen anything from them, have I? In fact, if I open another store in the same mall (or online), I am also costing B&N customers. To prevent such things from happening, governments back in the day would issue... patents. Grants of monopoly to selling particular goods. They figured: "Joe is selling wood. If you come in and also start selling wood, you're hurting Joe's business. Joe was there first." So, the governments would create a monopoly on wood production to "protect" Joe's business. (And it still does that today for many businesses in many areas, from medicine to electricity to food safety inspection.)

The flaw in the logic here (and why this is immoral) is not only that it reduces competition thus having adverse affect on prices and quality of product, etc., etc., but that competition is a victimless crime! How can I say this? Certainly Joe lost some of his customers when I moved in to town and opened a similar type of business. That's true. But Joe never owned the customers or their money to begin with (until they decided to part with it in his store). On the other hand, I did own my store, so if the government came in and closed it down, it made me a victim of its regulations.

So, if I were interfering with Barnes and Noble's use of the book in a way of actively restricting the sales from happening (for instance, by running into the store and grabbing books out of the customers' hands), I would be violating B&N's rights. But if I am interfering by providing competition, I am not violating B&N's rights at all.

And yet, you could spend a lifetime in the Library of Congress and never have need for a new story...

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

The article is interesting, but it goes wrong in its focus on rivalry. This is trying to decide whether or not IP is legitimate from a utilitarian perspective (though it fails to address the issue even in that regard), rather than focusing on the all-important question of whether or not it is a natural property right. It is true that in order to do this, you must first answer the question, "What is Property?". For a more exhaustive explanation than I could possibly give here, I refer you to Kinsella. I will attempt to summarize here.

Scarcity occurs when not everyone can have access to a particular resource. Therefore, it must be determined who has the strongest claim. This is the individual who first homesteaded (occupied and/or improved the resource) or purchased it. Therefore, the right is assigned to them. Any attempt to take it away from them is an unjustified use of force. But with information, there is no scarcity; it can be copied infinitely without depriving the discoverer or creator of it. Any law that changes this situation uses the threat of violence to create a false scarcity, which infringes on the physical property rights of everyone except the creator, and harms the economy as a whole.

Consider this analogy: Your neighbor has just invented the rocking chair, and you observe it on his front porch. You want one, so you wait until he's not looking and then you take it for yourself. Obviously you are the aggressor here, you have committed theft. But suppose instead you decide that you will make one just like it, and you go and cut down a tree on your property, and fashion the wood with your own tools, and make your own chair. Your neighbor is enraged and goes to the government, demanding that your chair either be destroyed, or that you pay him a hefty fee, because it is his "intellectual property". Clearly, it is the neighbor, and the government by accessory, rather than you who is the aggressor in this case.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Scarcity in the economic sense only refers to the availability or reproduciblity of a good. I therefore must conclude that you are arguing from a utilitarian position, implying that authors deserve government protection because their work has value, and assuming that they would not be properly compensated without IP. There are two flawed assumptions here:

1) That content creators are entitled to compensation. In the free market, no one is entitled to anything. All economic activity rests on the hope that others will find the product useful or enjoyable, and therefore be willing to adequately compensate the creator for it. If this is not the case, their economic model is flawed or they are producing a good which people do not want, and they should alter their strategies and production rather than clamor for government protection.

2) That content creators will not be able to make money. This is patently false. For example, a popular author could write a book, but refuse to release it until fans had donated a certain amount of money. Musicians already make most of their money on live events, while the recording companies take most of the profits from album sales. There are many, many more examples that could be given. A good book that touches on these issues with regards to software (and some other areas), though the author does not advocate total abolition of IP, is After the Software Wars.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Ok, lets place this analogy in the context of go databases.

Say I live next door to T Mark Rockingchair, and I see him toiling away, entering games and building a database. He shows it to me while I am trimming the hedges, and I decide I would like one just like it. So I go and find a go record tree on my property, and I enter the data, one by one, with my own tools, and I make my own database, just as he did - years later. T Mark Rockingchair sees what I did and says, "Nice job, you know you could have saved yourself years, I would have sold you a copy cheap" He might have enjoyed the idea of being a good neighbor, and having the choice of letting me have one for free. I do not think he gets outraged.

People do not get outraged when you cut down trees, work hard with tools, and fashion your own versions of things, for your own private use.

People get upset when you simply press copy and get all the benifits of their work for free. People get outraged when you press copy and then sell it yourself.

I have officially considered your analogy. It is not analogous.

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My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle