Yes. Occasionally I have suffered the misfortune to see a bit of that stuff. Sheer emptiness…

Thanks for the update on Narby. I’d originally guessed he might be merely young and inexperienced. Seems like the evasive politician characterisation is more likely to be the accurate assessment. Oh well.

Sione

“Those who oppose IP do so in order to justify their own actions to themselves. This fact alone means their positions do not need to be rationally considered.”

And welcome to the polylogism of Marxism. There is no absolute truth, only “bourgeois” truth or “proletariat” truth. Nevermind the status of polylogism itself, which would only mean anything if it were absolutely, universally true. This is what Marxists don’t bother themselves with, because it distracts from their dazzling cartoon narrative that is human existence (I’ve always wondered why the proletariat were automatically the good guys!).

Of course if poor Marxists weren’t stuck in their labor theory of value (which is apparently true no matter what class you come from) they would see that the “proletariat” standard of living rises with the “bourgeois” standard of living. That the gap between them grows wider does not mean they are moving in the opposite direction.

Prove that you’re actually Dave Narby. Considering that you are about as far away from libertarianism as one can get, and yet link to a website with that very word plastered all over the background, I have a very good reason to believe you are someone else ghostwriting under Narby’s name.

I am flat out accusing you of lying about who you are.

“Frankly, this isn’t an intellectual exercise for me at all.”

You don’t need to tell us that.

“It’s a practical one, and I don’t need the approval of academics to make my case to the public, quite to the contrary.”

Yep, you’re not interested in truth, you’re interested in getting votes so you can stay in office and continue to leech off of productive individuals. You apparently have no problem preaching false doctrines, as long as you can do it as a demagogue, wow the masses and get a big fat stolen paycheck for it.

I honestly never expected you to admit that you have no interest in approaching this rationally.

Dave Narby is a politician. He makes a living off of doing stuff like this. Attacking people’s “credibility”, portraying his opponents as satanic morons, etc. He asks irrelevant questions and when people refuse to answer them because it’s pointless, he just repeats the same question and quips, “What’s the big deal”. He also litters multiple threads with the same irrelevant and pointless question in some childish attempt to defame these threads. Standard politicking.

Ever watched a debate between candidates or seen a campaign ad?

My name is Sione Vatu and you owe me an apology and a retraction. You have debased yourself as a rude person of low intellect.

The fact of the matter is that you can accuse whomever you like of whatever you like. Such accusations are irrelevant to the subject of enquiry here. In the end all you are doing is engaging in an evasion.

You have now provided first hand evidence to any reader of the blog that you lack the capability to deal with the topic of IP in a rational, logical manner. Rather you prefer to smear and make personal attack. Fine, that’s your personal attribute and your self-debasement. Nevertheless, the challenge of deriving and presenting your “system” of thought (regarding IP) remains one for you to face up to. That you can’t is a sign of your intellectual failure.

Sione

Ah communism, nothing for the common people, everthing for the leaders…

“It would certainly help your credibility.”

Your credibility just went to the moon. ROFL

Only a stupid person could only think about it that way. There are millions of reasons why anyone wants to pick a nickname and use it.

But who am I telling this. You also find communism attractive…

“…Communism. It’s actually a fine system of government, if practiced according to it’s principles. The problem is in it’s application.”

You said about IP: “That all depends depends on whether or not they formed a government and passed a law about it.”
http://blog.mises.org/15290/copyright-promotes-the-progress-of-arts/comment-page-1/#comment-750928

My question:

“IP depends on the existence of governments and government-regulated laws? Without them there is no IP?”

Answer that and try not to avoid it cowardly.

first of all, apologies for abbreviating your name in my previous post, that was an error on my part.

Apparently you didn’t read the part where I said I did like the idea of delimited fair usage.

Which you do not define. Let’s see what you say:

It is a utilitarian decision that says that so long as the use of part of a copyrighted work is educational or isn’t a significant enough part to adversely affect the market value of that work, it will be considered that the property owner is going to allow this as a courtesy to the public–whether that owner likes it or not.

You vaguely refer to “educational”, and “significantly affecting market value”. What is that?

Nevertheless, let’s say that I wrote a highly emotional, for example humourous (=non-educational) critique of your works and in the consequence of this, people will stop buying your works (=significantly affect their market value). According to your own, however vague, references, this is not fair use because it does not fulfil any of the criteria you specify. Add to it that it is impossible to know in advance how the critique will affect the market value of your work, and once the critique is out, I have no control over how other people react to it. Should I be responsible for acts of other people then? How come?

It has been my observation that IP proponents typically spent an enormous amount of time on justification of IP, but preciously little on the definition thereof or elementary logic.

You begin, for example, by defining logos by referencing patterns, but do not define what a pattern is. You show examples of patterns, but not a definition. You say instead:

By logos I mean exactly: an order, array, pattern, or form of information which can be imposed upon or observed in a material substance: specifically, a thing’s material identity.

So, taking this very vague sentence, can you provide me an example of something that is not a logos?

And this has *what* to do with the validity of IP (copyright/patent) as such, again?

So I guess in your eyes James Randi is also a loser, because his debunking efforts cannot disprove magic as such.

Most people on the Internet “hide” behind a pseudonym…as they’re recommended to do by all the so-called experts on TV, etc.. If he called himself “David Johnson” instead of “sweatervest”, would that make a difference? Would he be less likely to be a sock puppet? (Not that there’s any reason to believe he is in the first place, aside from paranoia).

[And, no, we can't find out who you are in a click. Maybe we can find out something about someone calling himself "Dave Narby", but we can't easily verify that that is in fact his real name, or that the person posting here using that name and web site is in fact the person referred to by the web site; anyone can type any name and URL they like. If I assume you really are the Dave Narby named at that site, I suppose there's enough information there for me to track you down if I really wanted to...but then I'd probably be inclined to strangle you or something, so it's probably better if I don't...which is why you're advised NOT to give out identifying information to random psychos on-line!]

Thanks for posting these. I’m not sure that I agree with all the points you made.
If I understand your position, you say that when you write a novel, you imprint a stack of paper and ink with your “logos”, but that stack of ink and paper is still your property, and you are still free to sell the rights to that stack of ink and paper as you see fit. In this case, you choose to divide up the rights to use that stack of ink and paper as follows: Your publisher and no-one else is, for a fee, allowed to copy that “logos” onto other stacks of ink and paper, and sell them. However, when the publisher sells these copies, all of which contain the same “logos”, they are only allowed to sell the rights to, say, absorb the “logos” in these stacks into their brains for personal entertainment purposes (specifically, reading), but not to use that “logos” in their stacks of paper or their brains for any other purpose. Is that a fair assessment?

If so, I don’t think I agree with your division of the rights argument – it’s not that I think you are not allowed to do so, I doubt your (or anyone else’s) ability to do so. It seems that you think you have made one piece of property into two, the stack of ink and paper, and the pattern they incorporate. I see it as one piece of property – a mixture of ink and paper, made (subjectively) more valuable to the publisher by your work in arranging the ink in a particular pattern. I don’t think it follows that that pattern is in itself a piece of property, separable from the ink and paper. By illustration, if you do not copy or memorise the pattern, and you sell the paper and ink to me, have you not lost the pattern as well? You can’t ask me to take the ink and paper, but leave the pattern behind.

Therefore, as I see it, when you “sold the pattern” to your publisher, you actually only rented the manuscript out for the purposes of copying the pattern onto other stacks of ink and paper, for a fee. When that manuscript was returned to you, and the fees paid, your rights in the patterns of the copies ended, as those new stacks of paper were never yours, they belonged to the publisher. If the publisher failed to pay you your fee, or return your manuscript to you, then I feel that just restitution would allow you to claim those books, but this is a matter for contract law, not logorights.

I hope I have understood your position, and also that I have not insulted you. These are just my first impressions upon reading your articles – I will reread them at a later stage and see whether I missed anything. Please feel free to correct me if I have mischaracterised your position.

Stephan Kinsella
why should I be penalized because you opened your trap?

Your productivity is penalized every time Silas opens his trap aka trolling the Mises Blog, which seems to be his full time, every day project.

I also wasn’t making fun of your name. I was pointing out that you are hiding behind a pseudonym for no known good reason. Seems as if you were proud of your anti-IP stance, you wouldn’t mind your name showing up in a search or two related to it.

Frankly, this isn’t an intellectual exercise for me at all. It’s a practical one, and I don’t need the approval of academics to make my case to the public, quite to the contrary.

“Communism could work” cries the “libertarian”!! Dear lord…