DJ QBert, shown in the trailer, is one of the most fantastic examples of the artistic use of previously recorded sounds. Check out his “Wavetwisters” album.

Do we have to resort to kowtowing to PC norms by stating a wrong is especially wrong because it targets “minorities,” whatever the heck that is. (Last I checked whites are an absolute minority in the world, hands down, second-to-none.)

Just debunked again Bala:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/7285#comment-83504

Now repeat after me: file sharing theft. File sharing is theft … You’ve got to embrace your human, Bala. We are all individuals with the ability of unique expresssion.

Mark Hubbard,

” We are all individuals with the ability of unique expresssion. ”

And unique expression is not sufficient justification for treatment as “property”.

Mark Hubbard,

You couldn’t answer the hardest question of all:
Where is the error in Bala’s inductive chain of reasoning that demonstrates that intangible entities should not be considered a form of property?

You ignore the critical point and go off on wishy washy utilitarian arguments for IP. You ignore pure logic and instead wish to engage in mud-slinging and slander.

You want to have a wishy-washy debate? Ok let’s have one!

Here is an argument I made months ago (with a few changes) that puts severe doubts on your “copying is theft” position:

You are making the assumption that “ideas” are a form of property. One cannot “steal” something which cannot be owned. It is therefore crucial to clarify the definition of “idea” before one can decide whether or not it can be classified as property.

Let’s look at a common definition and work from there. Idea:
- any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.

Given the above definition, how can one claim ownership of an idea? Let’s say that person A forms an idea. That idea is a conception that has formed in the mind of person A. The moment that idea is communicated to person B, the idea is then a conception in person B’s mind. If you declare that the idea is the property of person A, then you are also declaring that a conception in the mind of person B belongs to person A.

But person B owns his own mind. Person A does not own it. To claim ownership over certain workings of person B’s mind is to claim partial ownership over person B’s mind. You have therefore assigned the material property rights of person B’s mind to two different individuals.

If you don’t see the problems with this, maybe an example will help. Let’s say I bought and just finished reading a Harry Potter book.
1. Can I photocopy the book and give it to someone else?
2. Can I hand-write the entire book and give it to someone else?
4. Can I recite the book on audiotape and give it to someone else?
5. Can I translate the book into Italian and give it to someone else?
6. Can I translate the book into Ancient Hebrew and give it to someone else?
7. Can I translate the book into a made-up language and give it to someone else?
8. Can I copy the first 4 chapters and give them to someone else?
9. Can I copy one chapter and give it to someone else?
10. Can I copy a single passage and give it to someone else?
11. Can I copy a single paragraph and give it to someone else?
12. Can I copy an individual sentence and give it to someone else?
13. Can I compile every second word into a book and give it to someone else?
14. Can I copy the remaining words into a second book and give it to someone else?
15. Can I create 5 small books each containing every fifth word and give them to someone else?
16. Can I create 76944 separate books, each only one word long, and each being a consecutive word from the original Harry Potter book, and give them to someone else?
17. Can I create an extensive, paragraph-by-paragraph, summary of the book and give it to someone else?
18. Can I create a passage-by-passage summary of the book and give it to someone else?
19. Can I create a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book and give it to someone else?
20. Can I create an eight-page summary of the book and give it to someone else? 21. Four-page summary? 22. Two-page? 23. One-page? 24. Half-page? 25. Two-sentence? 26. One-sentence? 27. Four-word? 28. Two-word? 29. One-word?
30. Can I tell a friend what happens in the book during lunch?
31. Can I paint a picture of Harry Potter based on the descriptions of him in the book?
32. Can I paint an abstract picture of Harry Potter loosely based on descriptions of him in the book?
33. Can I draw a stick-figure of Harry Potter?
34. Can I create a piece of music capturing the emotional feel of the book?
35. Am I even allowed to ever communicate the words, “Harry Potter”?

If you take idea-ownership its logical extreme, the answer to all these questions is no. I need J.K. Rowling’s express permission before “stealing” her ideas and expressing them to someone else in any way shape or form. She owns the idea, whoever’s mind it should be in. Therefore all actions I partake in which require use of this idea can only be performed with her permission. If the story inspires me to write my own book, develop a new invention, write a new piece of music, develop a new dance routine or write an new piece of program code then doesn’t J.K. Rowling have partial ownership over all these new things I developed? I used her idea without permission to develop something. She has partial ownership of my mind. I am not allowed to use my mind in any way which uses her idea.

Maybe you draw the line somewhere. But where? How do you decide where that line is? To what extent does an individual own an idea? What actions can they prevent others from performing? Does J.K. Rowling only have a partial-partial ownership of my mind rather than a partial ownership of my mind?

This goes even further. Is it justified to say that J.K. Rowling owns the idea of the Harry Potter books in the first place? We don’t know what ideas she “stole” to inspire her to write her novels. It’s also very clear that she must of based her novels on previous ideas. She certainly didn’t invent the idea of wizards, magic, goblins, wands, flying-brooms, etc. And she didn’t write the book in a made-up language using made-up symbols and a made-up system of grammar. It’s clear that J.K. Rowling has used a plethora of previous ideas in the creation of her novels.

Every idea is simply an extension of previous ideas. By assigning ownership of ideas to individuals, you are placing a road-block on the natural evolution of ideas. This clearly must result in the deterioration of the rate at which new ideas will be generated. If the ideas of “wizards”, “magic” and “flying brooms” had previous owners assigned to them, then the Harry Potter books may never have been written.

It seems impossible to justify classifying “ideas” as a form of property. To do so is to promote partial slavery. The holder of a copyright can prevent me from thinking and doing anything related to their idea. Not only do they have a partial ownership of me, but also a partial ownership of all my physical property, seeing as I cannot use it in anyway that infringes on “their” idea.

Mark Hubbard, it should be obvious from the above line of reasoning that this issue is not as clear-cut as you make it out to be. You need to specifically define what a “copy” is before you can rightfully proclaim that “copying is theft”. But how exactly can we possibly tell what is and is not a “copy”? The boudaries are subjective. How do we define exactly what “idea” is owned by an individual? Ideas are also subjective. Are you an Objectivist or a subjectivist?

Jay,

Great one. But don’t expect anything other than ad hominem from Mark Hubbard.

Bitterly disappointing to see this kind of PC-mongering here.

Beefcake, this is a good video. Did you watch it? Raises very important questions. As to your remark, the only close competitor to the tedium of a PC attitude is a the tedium of consistent anti-PC attitude. At some point, a person should release himself of the limits imposed by pre-set political categories.

If there was a list of objective rules regarding property, detached from the consent of the owner, property rights would lose all its meaning.

This is completely false.

I agree with you, Mr. Tibuk, that property rights emanate from the individual, that they are extensions of the self-owned person.

But where you go wrong is when you fail to understand that the boundaries and limits of those rights are not purely subjective. They are limited by the existence of other people, and thus by the existence of their property rights.

Ethics are derived from our social nature. It is an inescapable conclusion, derived from reason and reality, that the ONLY defensible ethical assertions are the ones that are expressions of universality, that they embody principles that are equally applicable, up, down, sideways, left, right, backward and forward, to everyone all the time.

This fundamental principle of universality is the only possible source of ethics. They cannot be derived from what is.

The result is that even though property rights begin as self-ownership, the definition of the rules defining property rights are, ultimately, entirely objective. Any assertion of a supposed property right that is not universal (and therefore objective and knowable) is, by definition, false.

Your assertion of so-called IP rights infringes on my rights to use my own paper and ink, in the privacy of my own home, in a way that aggresses on no one, and commits no fraud on anyone. My use of my pend and ink, even if I were to perfectly replicate your novel’s pattern of letters and words, in no way prevents you from using your pen, ink or other materials.

This is what it means when we say that ideas and intangible patterns are non-rivalrous.

Only rivalrous conflicts can be the basis for a property infringement.

In the context of so-called IP, the only “infringement” that IP protectionists can point to is that copying reduces the author’s potential market share.

And, as any free-market person with half a brain can tell you, no one has a right to maintain his preferred market share by force. There is no such thing as a property interest in fetching the market price that you think you ought to get. You do not own your customers. You do not have the right to exclude third parties from selling stuff to your potential customers. That’s the essential principle of a free market, really.

Thank you Jay for an excellent post. It illustrates well how IP, conceived of as property of an individual, is vulnerable to reductio and therefore requires modification if it is to hold up.

Peter,

” The question isn’t about the uncertainty of J.K. Rowling’s wishes. ”

Every question regarding property is about the owners wishes.

“The question is about whether the non-following of her wishes in the enumerated cases, should they arise, constitutes a property right violation.”

If that is the question the answer is easy. Yes it does constitute property violation.

“. In other words, it shows the inability of an IP theory to determine objective rules with regards to immaterial goods.”

This is just and assertion.

” You might recall that in past I said several times that if the knowledge of all facts is insufficient to determine property boundaries, it means the rules are subjective and arbitrary. ”

If that was the case you might have had a point but that is not the point. We have sufficient knowledge that Jay is in fact associating himself with Harry Potter which which was created by another human being called Rowling and that is all the fact you need to make an ethical judgement.

“So you admit yourself that even the knowledge of all facts is sometimes insufficient to determine boundaries of immaterial goods? ”

No, we have all the sufficient knowledge. We know Jay copied Harry Potter and he shouldn’t have. What we may lack is knowledge regarding enforcement, which I repeatedly stated is not the justification for rights. Otherwise there would be no place for ethics and rights are about ethics.

The objective fact is Rowling gets to decide regarding those questions. She is the sole and absolute sovereign regarding Harry Potter.

No, that is not an objective fact. It’s not a fact at all. That is your ethical conclusion. It is the abstract proposition that you are asserting, and trying to justify, not an objective fact that you can merely assume.

Rowling’s wishes do not ultimately decide this issue. What is at issue is the proper scope of her rights — what are the limits to which she can legitimately use force to fulfill her wishes?

I might “wish” to be the sole remaining human being living on planet earth, but that wish does not determine the scope of my right to exclude the rest of humanity from living here. (The failure to understand this point is the same error that Silas Barta has been making for the last 1000 times he has rambled on about IP — the “desire” of the putative holder of a right means nothing, ultimately, in terms of defining the proper scope of that right.)

The wishes of any particular author vary from time to time, and from person to person. Those particular wishes don’t ultimately matter when we are trying to elucidate the principle behind the ethics of IP rights (and their enforcement). As I said, the answer to that question must be universal, and applicable to everyone, and not dependent on the wishes of any one person.

As for Crusoe and Friday, your hypothetical scenario is not analogous to the question of IP. It describes only genuine property.

The analog to the IP issue would be that Friday comes to the island, and Crusoe invites him to stay for a few days, then expels him. Let’s say that the island is small enough that Crusoe can legitimately claim to have homesteaded the entire thing. Since Crusoe owns the island, he can legitimately use force to eject Friday. So, Friday gets on his raft, and goes to the next island, and starts trying to make a living there, and homesteads that other pile of dirt, growing coconuts and fishing.

If this were an issue involving IP, then Crusoe would supposedly have the right to go over to Friday’s island, determine if Friday is COPYING any of Crusoe’s unique, creative methods for fishing, making and repairing huts, farming vegetables, and ALL the methods of survival that Crusoe came up with on his own. Friday could not copy those methods, even if he came up with them independently (but later in time), and even if he only learned them by being invited to observe them by Crusoe.

Friday could not write out a calendar the same way that Crusoe did, even if Friday sold his calendar to no one. Friday could be forcibly stopped from writing out a sacred (or even entertaining) text that he read (and memorized) while he was staying with Crusoe.

And, what’s more, Crusoe would have the right to go over to Friday’s island and forcibly prevent Friday from ever doing these things, simply because he copied them from Crusoe, regardless of whether Friday sold those ideas to third parties or merely for his own enjoyment and benefit.

Let’s say that Friday left Crusoe’s island with all of this supposedly forbidden knowledge, but instead of homesteading his own island, he met up with an inhabited island, occupied with people who welcomed him with open arms. Friday then recites from memory everything he learned from Crusoe — the economic productivity methods, and all of the texts he read that Crusoe wrote, etc. Then Friday leaves or dies.

You are saying that IP rights would ethically allow Crusoe to go to this other island, inhabited with people who never knew Crusoe personally, and forcibly prevent THEM from using any farming methods, or transcribing from memory any copies of anything that Crusoe created.

Seems sort of silly.

Magnus,

You claimed that there can not an objective rule regarding IP but only arbitrary and subjective ones.

That is not true. You may not agree but there can be an objective and non arbitrary rule regarding IP.

And that is “the producer is the sole and absolute sovereign over his/her product”

This is a simple enough objective rule and it applies to all property tangible or not. You may argue that the rule is false, but you can not argue that it is not objective or non universal.

And by Crusoe/Friday example I am not making an analogy regarding only IP. I am setting the foundation of a complete theory of property without making arbitrary distinctions like tangible or intangible.

Property is property and there can not be contradictions as in the case of IP socialism.

Kerem,

You are not clarifying anything with non-argumentative assertions. “Property is property” is quite true, but does nothing to help define property. You say you make no distinctions between tangible and intangible property, but how can you claim that such a distinction does not affect what constitutes property? And as Kinsella made abundantly clear a long time ago, creation (or production) in itself is not sufficient for the development of property rights. It must be a particular type of creation resulting in a particular type of product. You could spend a lot of time putting up a building on some land, but if it isn’t your land to start with, you may have no rights to the building, notwithstanding your efforts, or your wishes.

“the producer is the sole and absolute sovereign over his/her product”

This is a simple enough objective rule and it applies to all property tangible or not. You may argue that the rule is false, but you can not argue that it is not objective or non universal.

It’s an objective and purportedly-universal assertion, I suppose, but it’s rather “fluffy” and not altogether complete or definite.

It also fails to provide an answer to the whole tangible vs. intangible question.

I would agree that the author IS the “sovereign” over her product, but that her “product” consists of the pile of notebook paper with her handwriting on it that Ms. Rowling reportedly scribbled out while sitting in a coffee shop. Her rights in this “product” do not extend to being able to legitimately prevent anyone and everyone from manipulating THEIR ink, paper, images or spoken words in a way that roughly approximates the pattern of ink that she wrote out.

The distinction between tangible and intangible is not arbitrary. It’s the difference between property and non-property.

Also, you are wrong when you assert that my anti-IP position is based on the proposition that “property is a social convention.”

Property is a social phenomenon, but not a social convention. It arises only as a matter of social interaction, not isolated action. It is universal and therefore objective, so it is not a “convention.” But property is inherently social, as opposed to solitary.

This understanding of property does not eviscerate the philosophical underpinnings of property rights or homesteading, or the individuality of rights, or anything else promoted here. There is nothing contradictory in recognizing that rights arise from self-ownership, and that the right of homestead can be acquired over previously-unowned property, while also acknowledging the inherently social nature of property rights.

Excellent post Jay. I don’t usually post here, but it has to be said that that’s a complete takedown of IP law in a few paragraphs.

Okay, can we all agree that this is over the top? I mean, come on, we disagree about IP here all the time. But to criticize it on the grounds of being “racist” because of this tenuous connection? As others have mentioned, this is just kowtowing to the PC crowd that wants to add “enhanced penalties” to anything with disproportionate impact on anointed groups.

I’m relieved to see people on both sides recognizing this as a cheap shot against IP.

Let’s keep the IP debate at a high intellectual level.

(And if you want to do an “IP = racist” angle, at least do something creative like that video showing that HP’s facial recognition software hates black people…)

Rollings made the ultimate choice of what to do with her property: She sold it.

Now it’s mine. I do what I want with it, because this volume in my library is not her book, it is my book.

Whatever I do with it does not, and cannot, intrude in whatever JK wants to do with her own volumes. It cannot be theft because nothing has been taken from her.

Peter,

There is no need to respond. Someone who consistently supports IP rights ought to just shut their hole, for they are surely violating someone else’s “intellectual property” just by speaking. After all, they didn’t invent the English language! Also, most of the knowledge that they have is from various IP-rights “violations”, so they ought to purge these IP-violating thoughts from their minds.

I have spent much time reading through these two articles on IP here at Mises, and the link that Mr. Hubbard supplied to the SOLO site.

And I now understand where Rothbard was coming from when he wrote “Mozart was a Red”. It is uncanny how the Objectivists argue against the Anti-IPer’s (Bala, Jay, and Peter) and Rothbard’s depiction of Rand and her followers.

“Atlas Shrugged” was a great book. However, I could never call myself an Objectivist, (I don’t like to label myself anyway) because most of them seem unable to think for themselves. They might as well chant “the word of the lord” every time they quote Ayn Rand.

Clearly, anti-IP has different morality than pro-IP.
Some anti-IP are offended by being called thieves so they resort to accessory to theft and find relief. I don’t know if it is better. Some just don’t care.

I have a general question though. Do these huge differences in morality make a stateless society impossible? I admit anarchy might work with uniform morality but would it under our diversity, our reality?

Andras,
“I admit anarchy might work with uniform morality but would it under our diversity, our reality?”

You don’t need uniform morality for anarchy to work. That is actually one of the reasons why a statist society is inferior to anarchy, because of the difference in morality among people. No one can repress others on the basis of morality.

“Uniform morality”; sounds like a tyrant. As if that was the problem with society.

All you have to do to know that sampling is right and honest is to listen to the music that is created by those who sample. The hip hop artists and various dj’s that use sampling are innovators and have revolutionized modern music as we know it. The music they create is unique and incredible anyone trying to silence them is harming the forward progress of human culture.

Jay,

“Please, demonstrate to all of us how to derive the action axiom from the concept of self-ownership.”

How can you derive action axiom from anything else?

What is the subject of action? Who is the one acting?

A human being.

What is a human being?

Is he a puppet with no control over his actions, having no free will and/or ability to make decisions?

No.

Is he an organism incapable of rational thought, so that he can not choose ends and means, but only moves instinctively?

No.

You keep talking about action axiom, probably borrowed from Bala’s half ass Randianism, but you don’t even know what action is. And you are at this site, honoring a mans name who wrote a book called “Human Action”.

Self ownership is more fundamental axiom than the axiom of human action and self ownership is a prerequisite for human action.

Property is the result of human action. It is the extension of self ownership to the external. Homesteading is the action of making something external as if it is internal. Picking an apple from the tree is making the apple yours as your kidney is your. Writing a novel is making the novel yours as your mind is yours.

There is no other justification for private property.