Name brands are trademarks, not copyright. Even then, you don’t need trademark law to stop someone from claiming that a product was made by someone else. That’s fraud. If someone says a bag was made by Gucci, and the customer truly thinks he’s getting a handbag made by Gucci (not usually the case), and the handbag is a knockoff, that’s fraud.

For a modern example, see the fashion industry. They have no copyright protection, anyone can copy a design, yet designers come out with new fashions every year and still make money in spite of rapid copying by the rest of the industry.

True, a considerable amount of effort and sometimes physical resources goes to create an intellectual work. However it costs nothing to infinitely replicate it over and over again so as to create a situation where the good is in infinite supply. This is why material property can’t be dealt the same as physical property. The crux of my anti-IP position lies in the fact that the government and the hardline IP proponents in the industry want to create a draconian system of copyright enforcement which maintains the status quo while inconveniencing the customers and stifling progress. To the aged executives running the media companies, it would be better to shut down the internet altogether, or at the very least hose it down to a medium for commercial propaganda like public TV has become. None of them seem to be interested in diverting time and money to seek new entrepreneurial solutions. Such a thing would require an abandonment of modern misconceptions on IP and a move towards practices which implement the peer to peer nature of file sharing in place of the traditional “enterprise to customer” relationship. I have examined some of the ways individual filesharing can actually benefit, or at the very least, diminish the costs associated with product distribution. I’m sure that a free market in intellectual property would offer many opportunities for profit to be made from new ways to distribute digital content.

Saying that humanity will go back to the dark age unless something is restricted or outlawed is awfully familiar. Indeed, every argument against the free market is based on this notion. It been touted so much in our face by “public choice” intellectuals, drilled in our heads at our schools, and propagandized every day in the airwaves, that we have come to recognize it as an irreplaceable part of the interventionist mentality.

I like open source software. I like open source science, where every scientist can freely build on the discoveries of others. Doing it any other way would hold back progress painfully, and we all would lose thereby.

I like Wikipedia, an open-source resource that has become truly impressive, nay, miraculous in its extent and accuracy. The editing process works remarkably well in this age of ideological sabotage, resulting in balanced articles that steer clear of virtually all distortion.

But I do not like theft of artistic works. If Amazon ‘kindles’ a book they should pay the author what he or she is due. It’s only fair.

Nor do I buy black market DVDs, or download torrents of free music. I have no qualm about buying a movie, a book or a piece of music in a used book store. The fee has already been paid once, and I feel an insistence on a secondary fee would be quibbling.

Carlos: Here’s an example of a well written law, meaning succinct and unambiguous:

The authors of any artistic piece may insist on restricting its reproduction or showing before an audience without authorization. They have the right to receipt of a royalty in exchange for extending that authorization.

See? No more than 36 words. Conveys the entire spirit and letter of a workable copyright law.

Not too hard to do after reading as much as I could stand from this latest swarm of government rent seekers.

What the hell is “allowed use” if not an intangible???

Imagine the first caveman inventor of the wheel going around
with a club beating the hell out of anyone who copied “his” idea
claiming that they are not complying with his “allowed use”.
It’s absurd.

I stopped bothering to read your posts a long time ago.

A contract is a promise on the conditions of exchange of property.

So if I promise to stay still for a hour, which does not involve an exchange, such a contract is not enforceable? Or, alternatively, does it mean that someone has a property claim on “movement” or “one hour”? I am sorry, this makes no sense at all. Exchange of property is not a necessary component of a contract. In fact, property is not a necessary component of a contract either.

So it is not possible to enforce a contract before any exchange.

Since an exchange is not a necessary component of a contract, this makes no sense to me.

But they always have to be related to a property exchange.

No, they are not, see above. Non-compete agreements, non-disclosure agreements, any sort of agreement where you commit to refraining from an activity. Or where a third party, rather than the party to the contract, is the beneficiary. The only thing required for a contract is that both parties are more happy when the contract is performed than if it didn’t take place. Evidently you miss that you can consider yourself better off even without gaining new property.

In the case of labor, it i a bit different because labor is not alienable. For the exchange to start you first have to perform the labor.

Do you notice you contradict yourself? If labour is not alienable, how come you can sell past labour? Or did you want to say that “future labour is not alienable”? Of course, I am aware that future labour and past labour are fundamentally different concepts, but I want to hear an explanation from you.

But this is not the case for labor for we can only keep labor in our possession and do nothing else. Only when we perform labor we can sort of alienate it from us, through the result of the labor.

But you just said it is not alienable, and now you explain how to alienate it. Prefixing “sort of” does not make the contradiction go away, it makes the argument into a metaphor. Notwithstanding this inconsistency, why is the relative position of these two time points relevant?

The act of performing the exchange is not labor.

Why?

Just like IP is not externality.

Ah, so after many months, you finally agree that my attempt to explain how IP proponents define property is correct. Which brings me back to the question: why is IP not externality? If A is not B, there must be a distinguishing factor. What is it?

Stop confusing these concepts already.

But Kerem, it is you who insists they are different, while failing to explain why. This is my whole point.

You and I made an slavery contract, and you sold your self to me. I paid you a generous one thousand dollars. Who owns the proceeds from your sale? Who owns the one thousand dollars?

You dilute the contents of a contract to confuse the underlying transactions. The money can be agreed to be paid to a third party, or to the slave after the condition (e.g. time period or a project completion) in the contract is fulfilled. I assume your confusion is caused by your unfounded assumption that all contracts involve an exchange of property.

Mises has barely said anything about property rights, let alone contracts.

Mises has however explained about sequence of actions, and that the same physical good at two different points in time is from a perspective of a consumer actually two separate goods.

“To impose something like a structure of production on them is to profoundly misunderstand their nature and the possibilities. The spreading of ideas is not in any way analogous to the way a computer is built or a factory turns out cars.”

Ideas, creations, whatever you want to call them have a definite structure of production. They take time to develop, and can consume physical resources as well. An author spends months at a typewriter, Pfizer spends years collecting data on Bob Dole’s boner – This is no different than the production process of any physical good.

The difference is that this production process only occurs once. After this, a different process, which uses the “idea” as a capital good, is able to produce copies indefinitely (it is not really even correct to call this a capital good, since it cannot be consumed). It is now a free capital good.

The entire pro-IP argument is based on utilitarian incentivisation of the capital good production process (“Development”). If we don’t have socialized protection of IP, we will live in a world of de-facto socialism, because everyone will be able to use ideas whose creators are unwilling to pay for their own protection. So bring on the guys with guns.

Among the inputs to the development process, particularly for “patentable” inventions, are prior works. If inventors have to pay royalties to access these inputs, the cost of their development goes up. Many new patents are workarounds to avoid infringing old patents. This is not progress.

Productive capital reduces the real costs of producing new capital. The more intellectual capital that is available, the cheaper it is to produce new ideas. Does this mean that eliminating patents will instantly produce more innovation? Or less? Who knows. That’s the problem with utilitarian arguments.

Maybe there is some sort of “Laffer Curve” where too little IP protection reduces incentivisation, and too much stifles progress. However, just like the real Laffer Curve, this point cannot be known or measured in any meaningful sense.

A market process, which allows creators to protect their IP at their own personal cost, is the only way to dynamically price IP protection for heterogeneous new ideas. This does not require the state.

The incentivisation problem can be solved by new business models that are more closely suited to compensating a creator for the actual value of the produced idea. This probably means contracting someone to develop a new idea without expecting to profit from the quantity of copies produced.

This is done all the time in custom software, web design, architecture… Generally in these cases, the creator retains the idea and is able to apply it to similar projects in the future at little or no additional cost. He is now the expert. For this reason, he may even discount the price of the initial commission. This is a win-win-win – the first client gets their new idea – possibly at a discount to the actual costs required to create it, the creator has valuable capital and expertise, and his future clients get the benefit of the idea, probably at a discounted price as well since it does not require redevelopment.

If one of these parties wants to protect this idea, they can enter into a contract with the other. The first client may wish to restrict his competitors from accessing it, and include an NDA or non-compete in their terms of the contract. The same scenario could also be initiated by the creator with each of his clients. This is how non patent-trolling companies do business now, and no patents, copyrights, or state is required.

However, a creator who is restricted by an NDA will charge full price for his services since he will gain no useful capital from his work. This, and the unseen lost future clients, is the cost of IP protection.

The argument between pro-IP and anti-IP here is who should bear this cost. Pro-IP says everyone should (through socialized enforcement and arbitrary statutes). Anti-IP says whoever values this protection is free to pay for it – which forms the basis for market calculation of IP protection.

I know you guys get some nastiness directed at you too, but I really think you’re behaving badly. Instead of the vitriol and all the Commie idiocy, couldn’t you just admit that we have a different opinion of what exactly property *is* than you do? Some other people that had and have different ideas of what property can consist of: Antebellum Georgia plantation owners; Detroit autoworkers. They believe they own their jobs, and that we owe them their pensions, if you don’t know what I’m getting at. And I really think you’re not far from that. So many “creative people” believe they are owed a living in a lot of traditional ways (albeit very new traditions). Not too creative.

And with the State, like with Vito Corleone, it’s an all-or-nothing kind of deal.

I’m sorry you see it that way. Obviously, I do not. I suppose we are at an impasse.

“But all exchanges happen in the future with regard to the decision to participate in it. The individual actions cannot be completely simultaneous. Also, all activities, even the act of performing the exchange, involve labour of some kind, without which they cannot happen. If you insist on this, you effectively deny that any transactions whatsoever can happen.”

A contract is a promise on the conditions of exchange of property. It is a tool for conditional exchange. If exchange hasn’t happened yet, or if there is no exchange a contract is meaningless.

So it is not possible to enforce a contract before any exchange. But if the exchange has started, and it doesn’t have to be simultaneous, the contract is valid and has to be followed.

The simplest contract is the verbal or implied contract that is used to handle the delays in the exchange. Since almost always exchanges happen with a time gap, the simplest contract is,

“I am giving you this and in a few seconds I expect to receive that”.

People get into these contracts all the time.

If there are more and different conditions regarding the exchange of property, contracts can be complicated. But they always have to be related to a property exchange.

In the case of labor, it i a bit different because labor is not alienable. For the exchange to start you first have to perform the labor.

For other alienable property, lets say I own apples and you own oranges, and we can make contract to exchange them at a future date while keeping them in our possessions. Since they are alienable, us currently having the possession, me still possessing apples and you oranges, is not a problem. The exchange has already happened. It is our choice to have the option of keeping the already exchanged properties.

But this is not the case for labor for we can only keep labor in our possession and do nothing else. Only when we perform labor we can sort of alienate it from us, through the result of the labor.

The act of performing the exchange is not labor. Just like IP is not externality. Stop confusing these concepts already.

“I have no problem with voluntary slavery. There is no logical reason to treat it differently. The difference is in metaphors, just like it is the case in IP.”

You and I made an slavery contract, and you sold your self to me. I paid you a generous one thousand dollars. Who owns the proceeds from your sale? Who owns the one thousand dollars?

“I suggest you read Mises.”

I know Mises and Rothbard are the great thinkers of the Austrian tradition but only an ignorant person would bring up Mises in a discussion regarding contracts. Mises has barely said anything about property rights, let alone contracts. Rothbard on the other hand is not only an economist. Really, try to learn a little.

What you can not comprehend is “selling labor” is not the same thing as “promise to sell your future labor based on a contract”.

So, it is impossible to make a contract for labour before the said labour is performed? Is that really what you claim?

In the other it doesn’t, it is just a promise to a future exchange.

But all exchanges happen in the future with regard to the decision to participate in it. The individual actions cannot be completely simultaneous. Also, all activities, even the act of performing the exchange, involve labour of some kind, without which they cannot happen. If you insist on this, you effectively deny that any transactions whatsoever can happen.

Just like with IP, you fall prey to metaphors, and use the words “future” and “labour” in a metaphoric way rather than the strict scientific one.

If this wasn’t the case, voluntary slavery would be possible with contracts. But since human labor is inalienable this would cause absurdities conflicting with the human nature.

I have no problem with voluntary slavery. There is no logical reason to treat it differently. The difference is in metaphors, just like it is the case in IP.

I suggest you read Rothbard,

I suggest you read Mises.

instead of trolling around IP socialism. That would do you more good.

Also, I suggest you respond to my questions, because that will make you realise what unfounded assumptions are present in your claims.

“Human Action” is a unique product.

Not only that, every copy of Human Action is also a unique product. They can only be considered “the same” if you introduce the subjective factor of utility: are they both equally suitable for a specific purpose? The theory of “objective copies” fails on this. “Copy” is a metaphor for a utilitarian perspective on abstract concepts.

What you can not comprehend is “selling labor” is not the same thing as “promise to sell your future labor based on a contract”. One is a factor of production that even Marxist know about. The other is an invalid contract.

In one an exchange happens. Labor for money. You provide code, you get the money. If one party receives his share but doesn’t provide for it, it is aggression. Like if you provide the code but not get paid. Or if you get paid and do not provide the code.

In the other it doesn’t, it is just a promise to a future exchange. You promise to provide code in a future date, for a future payment. If no money or code has been provided there is no partial exchange and no aggression. The deal would be off with no consequences.

If this wasn’t the case, voluntary slavery would be possible with contracts. But since human labor is inalienable this would cause absurdities conflicting with the human nature.

I suggest you read Rothbard, instead of trolling around IP socialism. That would do you more good.