That fact is that our rights to act are always constrained by the rights of others.

Rights are not constrained. Acts are constrained. Stop making stuff up.

I like to have some privacy, so I assert my right to privacy.

You said a couple of months ago that disliking something does not mean that someone violated your rights. So, stop contradicting yourself, and stop making up stuff.

Our rights conflict

No, rights do not conflict. Actions conflict.

We are both asserting legitimate rights, yet they cannot co-exist without this conflict.

There is no “right to privacy” as such. If there was, it would contradict the right to private property.

One approach is to follow a “reasonable person” standard.

One approach, which you are taking, is to make up stuff. The other one is to provide a coherent argument.

conflicts over the fuzzy boundaries of rights.

There is no issue over fuzzy boundaries here, rather the issue is you making up stuff. Receiving photons that you reflect is not a violation of your rights, there is nothing fuzzy about it.

I can disclose it and forego my rights to own my work

Disclosing does not forgo any rights. The rights remain exactly the same regardless whether you disclose something or not. Stop confusing the issue. What you forgo is an opportunity, and there are no rights in opportunities.

Of course, we all know that you are not really making errors. You’re deliberately lying. But for the sake of scientific approach I’ll address them as errors.

you’re missing a fundamental point. If there is a right, then the legally relevant question is not how it is violated, but if it is. That is why all your incoherent claims should be rejected outright, even withing having to discuss what they actually mean.

I am unable to pick words that you understand, since I don’t know you.

…..

Second, I think you forgot what we were arguing about. Property rights are not absolute.

A perfect example of a demagogue. You complain that the other party may have problems understanding you correctly, and subsequently you use vague language and repeat a phrase that has been criticised already for this reason in the past. If other people were not attempting to debate seriously, this might be considered funny.

OK, in addition to the normal communication problems associated with discussing such a difficult topic, we have a language issue. It might have been helpful to indicate that. At least take some responsibility for the possibility that this is causing some of your difficulty, rather than to impute the difficulty solely to me, who is a native speaker.

I know an old Lebanese woman who doesn’t speak a bit of English. She was being cared for by a Philippina who spoke broken English. They had difficulty communicating, naturally, and the old woman was becoming frustrated. She was asked in Lebanese what the problem was. She said in Lebanese, “This woman can’t speak English at all!” We laughed for a week.

That said, no matter what language is your first, I’m sure I would be at a much greater disadvantage if we were conversing in yours.

I am not sure I agree with you, even though I am not propertarian anarcho-capitalist at all. I think NAP is necessary but not sufficient principle. But again, what this has got to do with arguing what those property rights are? Saying that they are not “absolute” only can mean, that you can violate them to achieve your desired ends. Am I right? What else could that mean?

I cannot understand what you believe and why you believe it because you use some incomprehensible labels you use to describe yourself.

What I mean is exactly what I said. One of the issues with all property rights is that, depending upon the specific property, the boundaries are more or less fuzzy. Land boundaries are “fixed” except for the island that “floats” down the river or the airplane that files overhead, or the mine that crosses under. They are not absolute in their boundaries. Rights may be bundled in some cases (land) but not in others (chattel).

If you do not understand that, you cannot intelligently discuss one of the most difficult concepts in property rights, IP.

I am not anti-IP, I just don’t believe in it. I find lack of evidence in support of necessity and even existence of such property rights. Actually I haven’t heard any consistent theory of IP (even if we decided, that it is necessary to invent them), that’s why I don’t believe in it, but I am open to possibilities that maybe somehow this gap between physical property and digital information can be bridged (if that’s correct chosen words

To be honest, I have no idea what this means; you are not against IP, you just don’t believe it exists? What evidence have you considered? How much have you studied the various theories or proposals for the legitimacy of the concept of IP?

The more you ask and think about it, the more difficult it becomes. Insisting that it stay simple and elementary is just being naïve.

Nothing personal, I am just speaking plainly and directly.

It isn’t my native language. But you can’t pretend that you don’t understand what I am saying and ignore my clarifications of your own wordings (interpretations of my situations). Which are confusing, to say the least.

“Property rights are not absolute”

I am not sure I agree with you, even though I am not propertarian anarcho-capitalist at all. I think NAP is necessary but not sufficient principle. But again, what this has got to do with arguing what those property rights are? Saying that they are not “absolute” only can mean, that you can violate them to achieve your desired ends. Am I right? What else could that mean?

I am not anti-IP, I just don’t believe in it. I find lack of evidence in support of necessity and even existence of such property rights. Actually I haven’t heard any consistent theory of IP (even if we decided, that it is necessary to invent them), that’s why I don’t believe in it, but I am open to possibilities that maybe somehow this gap between physical property and digital information can be bridged (if that’s correct chosen words).

First, I cannot take account of the fact that English may be a second language for you. I am unable to pick words that you understand, since I don’t know you.

Second, I think you forgot what we were arguing about. Property rights are not absolute, even if you want to make them appear that way by trying to project the simple case of physical trespass to any and all other issues affecting property rights.

If you want to know more about what I’m talking about, read up on the nuisance problems in property law. Coase was inspired by this area of the common law, and had some rather important things to say about externalities and the economics of law. David Friedman’s book is one of the best recent books on this subject.

If you don’t deal with this issue in IP, you are simply assuming away the problem, which is common, so I don’t expect you to respond any differently than you have, although I would find it a pleasant surprise.

Regards,

hahaha, that’s very ambiguous way to put it. Better say if you are initiating FORCE against me or my property or not? You dishonestly and clearly on purpose keep confusing simple words with such sentences so that I always have to nitpick like that and translate it in English.

If you “restrict” this freedom in your OWN property, then it’s never an act of aggression, come one, this is libertarian blog, we are not newbies here. If you did this on MY property, my house or in my sight (followed every my step and holding an umbrella in front of me, two inches from my nose), that would be an act of aggression and violation of my rights. But no “freedom to sight”, but rights against my property, my body or my house.

“If you penetrate my private space, that is a violation of NAP.”

Penetrate how? Try using normal words. Is that penetration physical or just imaginary, for example, you feel discomfort of me simply living near you? If you mean physical penetration, then yes, I agree with you here. Also, private space is another double speak invented by you to confuse the discussion and avoid talking about principles. Is that private space on your property or maybe it extends into my own house and my own binoculars? haha. Funny, isn’t it.

I won’t answer to the rest of your post. You managed to confuse it already so now first you need to understand all that is above before we may continue discussing your imaginary “rights to privacy”. Try again inventing similar “right” and I am seriously done arguing with you.

I spent some time thinking about your position and recent contributions to this thread during the holiday break. I even went & asked a few associates what they thought. In the end I decided to make the effort to point out that you are treating enquiry into this topic in erroneous fashion (right from inception) and illustrate a few of the problems with the approach you have chosen. There is a bit to consider.

The transaction between me and Siotu is simple enough. I’ve related it as clearly as possible. It isn’t complex and shouldn’t be difficult to grasp and understand. He offered to tell (tell, not sell) me information so long as I agreed that I would not tell it to other people. He owns his body. I own my body. He contracts with me to behave in a certain manner (tell me some stuff) with the proviso that I behave in a certain manner (do not tell other people). We voluntarily agree to act according to this arrangement. Contract is made. Now each acts according to the contract he has made with the other. No IP-regime required. Simple.

Notice that there is no need to impose the notion of IP upon Siotu or me or anyone else. We voluntarily agreed what we were going to do and did so. The contract was made and it exists in a non-IP regime. There is no contradiction. This completely rebuts your stated position. Simple.

Now you’ve since invested in some little effort insisting that such agreement as exists between me and Siotu is not “enforceable”, the implication being that it need not be honoured because of an insisted unenforcability. According to you the parties can’t be adequately “punished” for transgressing the terms of contract. Somehow punishment (as adjudged by you to be adequate else it doesn’t count, one surmises) is a necessary and fundamental attribute of contracts and agreements. Punishment as a necessary component of contract… Crikey Dick! Bring out Madam Lash! Non-presence or inadequate presence of punishment according to your assessments somehow invalidates contracts. Andras, you can insist on what you like all you like but you’ve already been shown to be wrong. Read again what I wrote previously. Seriously, go read it.

Remember, were I to break contract there would be consequences. They would impose upon me a high cost indeed. I’d rather not have to deal with such consequences. I’d rather not lose Siotu as someone I can work with and trade with and associate with. I’d surely not want him as an enemy and I’d definitely not want the loss of trust and reputation I’d suffer all round the show were I to cheat him- expensive opportunity costs would accrue against me for a very long time to come… No thanks!

First point to realise is that your position is already void. Contracting between parties for the purpose of information exchange can and does occur in a non-IP environment. There are not contradictions.

Now, expending greater and greater effort to hold onto your erroneous position is analogous to the attempt to gain firm purchase on a turd. See, turds are not very solid. As you increase your efforts to get a tight grip on one what is going to occur is that it is going to extrude through your fingers, squirt onto your clothes and dribble onto your shoes. You are going to end up covered in….. turd. Everyone will see (and smell)! It is a far better idea to drop your turd into the can long before you get to that squirty, dribbly stage. Do the same with faulty notions- into the can with ‘em, IP and all.

Second point for you is that the contract between me and Siotu is a trade contract. I am trading a freedom to act in a specific manner for the provision of some information. Further, the information Siotu reported was in regard to his business- an important trade related matter for which I can now appreciate the reasons he did not want it spread about. He sought advice from me.

Third point, when you introduce the term “MEANINGFUL” you are discussing an arbitrary. It’s a slippery wet term (remember you can’t grip on a turd). One asks, MEANINGFUL according to whom? To Siotu? To me? To some non-participant in the contract? To you? What about the government of Tuvalu? The Pope? The Great Council of Chiefs of Fiji? The World Intellectual Property Organisation? Prime Minister Putin? Madam Lash? Who is it that has the glorious right to power to impose their subjective evaluation of what is MEANINGFUL and impose it across all other people? The correct answer is that no-one does. No-one should have such a power either. For a start none are omniscient, omnipotent and all good.

Forth point, and this is a real biggie, you are assuming what you are setting out to prove. That’s an invalid approach. It is not possible to validate a contention as true by simply assuming that it is true. Circularity alert! Circularity alert! In this case the pretense is that the transaction is a purchase with a buyer and a seller exchanging an ownership in property. What you are assuming is that what was exchanged is actually property. The rest follows from that sneaky wee unjustified step. What you actually need to set out to do is to prove your contention in the first instance. Of course, you haven’t done that. Likelyhood is that you can’t.

The forth point is a critical one. For some reason, assuming the contention is a popular means IP promoters like to employ when attempting to argue the pro-IP position. You should never engage in such as it suffers from significant drawbacks such as these. It is obvious to the reader and it fails to validate the position. It can’t. So, don’t engage in it.

Fifth, this contract was not a sale and purchase. There was no buyer and no seller. This was an agreement where two free men, owners of their own persons, agreed how each would behave. One agrees to pass information on to the other. The other agrees not to tell it to anyone else. Then the one passes information to the other and the other keeps silent. Both retain ownership and hence control over themselves. The contract is about what each will do with his own property- his body. Simple stuff. By the way, this is a common commercial arrangement and it does not require an IP-regime to operate successfully. Again, this voids your stated position.

Sixth, the value of the information exchanged between Siotu and me is determined by Siotu and me. It’s a subjective valuation. As it happens, Mises writes about valuation and also about subjectivity in relation to valuation. Do go take a read.

Note that it is not available to you or anyone else to claim a right to control the passing of information between other people on the basis of your necessarily arbitrary valuation of the information being conveyed- information that you do not even know the substance of. Look, you do not know what subjective valuation Siotu made of the information and you also do not know his subjective valuation of the consequences upon him of it becoming widely known. You do not know his valuation and reasons for imparting the information to me. You do not know my valuation of the information. You do not know my valuation of the consequences of receiving it or of my valuation of the consequences likely received as the result of breech of contract with Siotu. You don’t know the any of it….. and yet, you madly crash on, ravin’ about punishments, value, proportionality and so forth and so on- all constructs of arbitrary self-serving rationalisation and nonsense. Watch out! That turd is about to be high-pressure-a-squirting from between your fingers. Pooh!

Seventh, the clear implication of your latest post is that you require a powerful third party to all contracts as a necessary. This party is to be granted the privilege of controlling them all, also controlling all participants and non-participants alike. It is to hold the power to enforce terms according to its opinions and its arbitrary regulations and its rulings and its interests and it is to do all this by force of punishment (something of a socialist fetish, this imposition of force and punishment of other people stuff- why does it appeal so?). What you really should consider is that no such uncivil nonsense is necessary at all. As demonstrated, people can and do make arrangements to deal with sensitive matters and information in the absence of the notion of IP and of IP regulation. Often they do it in spite of such things. They do not require compulsory socialist impositions by non-involved third parties.

–

An aside-
REGARDING TRUST

Some things for your future dealings in life. You do not want to be learning these the hard way.

No matter how clever the lawyers you instruct, no matter how densely fine-grained and prescriptive regulations and laws might be, no matter how sophisticated any contract that can be generated, in the end what holds a relationship together, especially a commercially successful one, is trust. If there is lack of trust, then a contract won’t hold for long.

Always come to a contract negotiation with clean hands. That is, do not set out to cheat the other party. Don’t void contract from inception.

Whatever you do, someone knows & others soon can find out. Upon such your reputation is built. Upon such others determine how they will treat you.

A negotiation is about achieving a meeting of the minds, a situation where we both say, “YES”. It is a process to achieve a deal we can both benefit from, not one where one party sticks it to the other. I’ve heard many people boast about how they screwed someone else in a business transaction (funnily enough, I’ve not heard anyone say the same thing about their marriage contract- there is a lesson in that) and I’ve discovered that such people are either full of piss and bad manners (big noters, wide boys and spivs) or deceitful fraudsters (rorters and crooks) or incompetent. Not trustworthy. Best avoided.

Worrying about punishments and the like at the start of a relationship means that you’ve already lost it- there parties are not aligned, the relationship is not good and is unlikely to succeed in its stated endeavours and goals. The vast majority of contracts that fail do so, not for reasons of poor contract drafting etc, but because the parties fail to act to keep their relationship intact and their interests aligned. They fail to act to attain that which they originally represented they wished to attain.

If trust is not enough, nothing will be.

Over thirty years in commercial activity confirms what I’ve written about trust and contract here. There is something else to bear in mind as well. You have but one life to lead and to perfect. It is yours. Understand that people will judge you and treat you according to how live your life, in other words according to how you act. Keeping your word is a part of what they’ll evaluate you upon. They award their trust to you according to what they understand you to be likely to do and according to what they perceive you to be. The consequences of people judging you to be untrustworthy and not someone worthy of their confidence are very serious penalties to suffer.

End of aside. Now, to conclude.

–

Our exchange was initiated with your statement regarding a so-called contradiction with contracting to the behaviour of parties privy to confidential information in a non-IP regime. As explained to you at the time and since, it requires no IP-regime (or notion of “IP”) for such contracts to exist & for them to be honoured. There is no contradiction.

Arguing by insistence, which is what you have been doing, does not justify the imposition of an IP-regime upon all of us.

Assuming what you need to prove does not validate your position.

What you are ultimately arguing in favour of is the imposition of a socialist interference into everyone else’s business, trade, personal life, privacy etc. That is unjustifiable.

Sione

Not so fast, quick draw.

If I restrict your freedom of sight, wouldn’t that be an act of aggression? So if you insist in putting things in terms of NAP, that works.

If you penetrate my private space, that is a violation of NAP.

So, what are you so thrown by?

For your information, not that it’s that relevant, I don’t think NAP alone is adequate, but who cares? NAP is secondary to the existence of rights; rights are primary and msut be understood before you can apply the principle of non-aggression.

But for our purposes here, it is sufficient, since all rights are human devices, and are fundamentally derived from right to self, from which follows rights to life, liberty and property.

Perhaps you can try a little harder to see more than the least in what I’m saying.

Ther is no such thing as absolute liberty. Even a man alone must conform his acts to the laws of nature.

So if you don’t like this, ““Our rights conflict; the boundaries of my rights to privacy and your right to see are in conflict. ”, then give me your own rendition. It was your analogy.

That fact is that our rights to act are always constrained by the rights of others. That is the boundary of absolute liberty. Isn’t that pretty obvious?

There is no such thing as “right to see”, why you keep confusing the matter and talking in double speak? I thought you agreed, that the only right there is is not to be aggressed upon. You can put it in few other ways, but everything comes down to NAP (even though I don’t believe, that NAP is sufficient principle for free society to flourish, but that’s beside the point now)

But you keep inventing those mystical rights… It’s confusing. There is no right to privacy, again, you with your own language. I am actually wouldn’t be surprised if you advocated “right to education” at this point. You really don’t seem like a libertarian at all.

“Our rights conflict; the boundaries of my rights to privacy and your right to see are in conflict. ”

Gibberish.

Consider this, you have a house with big windows. I like watching other people, so I buy binoculars to watch you from my house. I am being an “ass”, but I do not violate your property rights. You know this, so you buy cotton curtains, to shield the view from the outside. But hey, I am smart, I buy special binoculars that can see through your cotton curtains (some X-Ray technology). Now I “broke” your “security”, but did I commit a crime again? No. I am again being an ass and I should be probably avoided and blacklisted in the internet or whatever, but no damage was done to your property. Privacy haven’t become a property just because you tried to secure it. Same with patterns and ideas. Just because you try to protect it, breaking that protection down is not a violation, unless it is done on your private property (breaking into your house or computer).

First, didn’t we agree that analogies have limits? But let’s see if we can squeeze any more meaningful information out of this one.

There are legal and ethical rules that are “bright lines”, and those that are fuzzy. In the case of fuzzy lines, some arbitrary decision must be made. Hopefully that decision while arbitrary, is rational, and attempts to strike some reasonable balance between conflicting rights of the parties.

In your scenario, you like watching other people, so you are asserting your right to “see”. You are free to see anything in the public domain, and no one can restrict you.

I like to have some privacy, so I assert my right to privacy. In part, this right is protected by the rights of private property. I can retreat to my house and you cannot trespass. I am free to withdraw myself from the public domain by enclosing myself in private property.

But I like to see too, so I put windows in my house. And I look out, and see that you have binoculars focused on my every move. I’m creeped out so I put up curtains. You find a way to defeat these means. We have an “arms race” with me taking more and more elaborate steps to insure my privacy, and you take more steps to defeat my every move.

Our rights conflict; the boundaries of my rights to privacy and your right to see are in conflict. How do we resolve this? We are both asserting legitimate rights, yet they cannot co-exist without this conflict.

One approach is to follow a “reasonable person” standard. If we say we each have the rights we claim, then the boundaries of those rights must be reasonable in relation to what a reasonable person in similar circumstances would view as reasonable. This is an objective standard, meaning that most people, given the facts, would be able to recognize what is reasonable. In other words, it is common sense.

This kind of thing drives mathematicians, (and natural rights advocates) nuts, but it is a common approach in resolving just these kinds of conflicts over the fuzzy boundaries of rights.

At some point, you are just being an ass, as you say. For example, staring at someone on a bus may be annoying, but not illegal,(it is prudent not to annoy someone predisposed to kicking your ass, though). If you grope someone, you have crossed a “reasonable” line. Accidentally bumping into them is not over the line. Common sense.

In our analogy, it is a concept of reaching a balance between a reasonable expectation of privacy, and a reasonable freedom of movement (seeing). Of course, you don’t need to go to court to make someone understand you don’t like to be groped or stared at, but at some point, it may be necessary in order to assert your legitimate rights, which can be violated on either side of this issue; I can insist on privacy that is unreasonable, and you can insist on freedom of movement that is likewise unreasonable. Cooperating humans have a way of working these things out.

Fundamental to this issue of fuzzy lines is the bright line rule that I have a right to privacy (to withdraw) and you have a right to see all that is not private.

By analogy, all this discussion about IP really comes back to the bright line distinction as to whether the producer of an intellectual work (copyrights and patents) has legitimate ownership rights to his product. If the answer is yes, then we can proceed to the fuzzy line issues of the boundaries of those rights in relation to the rights of others, i.e., there is a right to “privacy”. If the answer is no, then there are no fuzzy issues; there is an absolute right to “see” or “privacy”.

In reality, just like the privacy analogy, IP is an attempt to trade off the conflicting rights of ownership (i.e. exclusive use and possession) to the rights of access, (i.e. non-exclusive use and possession), both of which have reasonable support in common sense.

So after all of this, we arrive back where we started. 1) I own my work and may choose to keep it secret, in which case my ownership is undisputed, or 2) I can disclose it and forego my rights to own my work, or 3) something else that is a blend of these two options.

According to Kinsella, there are only 1) or 2). I disagree.

This is all very interesting, really. But I wonder if you aren’t missing the fundamental point? You know, the forest-for-the-trees thing?

Isn’t the issue here a private property issue, not the technology scheme deployed to protect it? I mean whether you use a wooden fence or hi-tech lasers to enforce the perimeter of your property, the justifiability of you methods still rests on the right to exclusive use and possession, right?

So doesn’t all of this just beg the question of whether there is a right underlying these methods?

Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.

Basically albums and singles were created with the intention of using them for promotional material for selling tickets to artist performances.

It’s still that way, more or less. Music artists make (as a general rule) almost nothing from copyrights. They make more money from T-Shirt sales.

So if you really want to support a artist, by a ticket, go to the show, and purchase a t-shirt. They will make more money from that then anything.

Unless they are their own publisher, of course.

Earning money through “mental labour” without the use of IP is all around us

Exactly.

A easy example of this is music. Country Western, Bluegrass grew up on a tradition of doing covers. Well known songs reinterpreted over and over again. A strong tradition of music dating back to even before America with their music history rooted deeply in Irish folk songs.

New songs are created from old ones, repeated, changed, reinterpreted. New meanings and new art developed created by leveraging established memes and common/popular musical experiences that are filtered through new experiences and new interpretations garnered from the gradual changes in our culture.

This American tradition of doing cover songs and reinterpreting songs created some of the most beautiful, deep, and enjoyable music ever created. There are as many different interpretations of a song as there are people willing and able to play it.

This American tradition completely and utterly decimated by IP law.

Looking at art through history it’s just gradual evolution. Artists taking ideas, reinterpreting, leveraging new innovations created by their peers and then creating new works based on old ones.

All this is gone. Legally denied to us for the sake of the various publishing industries.

Music artists still make their money the same way as they always have: Through live performances. Even very popular bands make almost nothing on record sales. With a few exceptions of bands that lasted a long time and were able to afford to hire quality lawyers to renegotiate new contracts… they would make more money working as a manager at a 7-11 then they would from selling albums. Even if they get platinum.

The whole system is a scam. They rip of artists and they rip of customers.

A big example of this is Merle Haggard:
(The numbers reflect the peak in US Country Studio Albums)
Strangers – 1965 #9; Swinging Doors – 1966 #1;I’m a Lonesome Fugitive – 1967 #3;Branded Man/I Threw Away the Rose – 1967 #1;
Sing Me Back Home – 1968 #1 ;The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde – 1968 #6; Mama Tried – 1968 #4;Pride in What I Am – 1969 #11;Same Train, A Different Time – 1969 #1;

A Portrait of Merle Haggard – 1969 #3;A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (or, My Salute to Bob Wills) – 1970 #2; Hag – 1971 #1;Someday We’ll Look Back – 1971 #4;Let Me Tell You About a Song – 1972 #4;It’s Not Love (But it’s not bad) – 1972 #1;I Love Dixie Blues – 1973 #1;If We Make it Through December – 1974 #4;
Merle Haggard Presents His 30th Album – 1974 #1;Keep Movin’ On – 1975 #1;

It’s all in the Movies – 1976 #1;My Love Affair with Trains – 1976 #7;The Roots of My Raising – 1976 #8 ;A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today – 1977 #28;My Farewell to Elvis – 1977 #6;I’m Always on a Mountain When I Fall – 1978 #17;Serving 190 Proof – 1979 #17;The Way I am – 1980 #16;Back to the Barrooms – 1980 38;Big City – 1981 #3;
Going Where the Lonely Go – 1982 #3;That’s the Way Love Goes – 1983 #8;
It’s All in the Game – 1984 #1;Kern River – 1985 #8 ;

Out Among the Stars – 1986 #15;A Friend in California – 1986 #2;Chill Factor – 1987 #8; 5:01 Blues – 1989 #28 ;Blue Jungle – 1990 #47;1994 – 1994 #60; 1996 – 1996 (did not place)

Those are his studio albums up until the year 2000.

Do you know how much he received from IP royalties from those albums?

$0.00.

He didn’t make a dime directly from record sales until he signed with a independent punk rock record label.

From:
http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html

Courtney Love’s letter warning new artists about the crooks.

RECORDING ARTISTS DON’T GET PAID

Record companies have a 5% success rate. That means that 5% of all records released by major labels go gold or platinum. How do record companies get away with a 95% failure rate that would be totally unacceptable in any other business? Record companies keep almost all the profits. Recording artists get paid a tiny fraction of the money earned by their music. That allows record executives to be incredibly sloppy in running their companies and still create enormous amounts of cash for the corporations that own them.

If he is going to be surprised at the outcome of the transaction he was intending to make because he misunderstood his property rights, for example, then next time he would act differently. Do you agree?

Exactly. That’s the argument against IP from the point of view of catallactic efficiency: it makes it less predictable which actions are legal and which not, and increases the time preference.

You do not know how an IP-free world would operate, you have to speculate.

Earning money through “mental labour” without the use of IP is all around us. Some of us IP opponents do it deliberately even: we’re finding new ways of satisfying customers better than our competitors.

It is you who is speculating. You make up a fairy tale about what IP should be and should do, which is on one hand illogical and on the other completely different from the one that exists. The truth is out there for everyone to see. There is no magic in it, no metaphysics, no ivory-towers-armchair-philosophing. Just open your eyes! If IP was a crucial component of our society, we’d all be extinct by now.

for all the examples you mentioned, I provided a example of medium where the “immaterial” is stored, and explained that it must be stored somewhere for the whole duration of its existence. So please, stop making stuff up. Also, you phrase your posts in a very confusing way.

If you got what you bargained for; as long as you got the benefit as you intended to receive them, the fact that others also benefited is immaterial.

So, as long as an author can sell his manuscript or copies thereof, it is immaterial whether he can exclude others from competing with him? Well then, bye bye IP.

Consider this, you have a house with big windows. I like watching other people, so I buy binoculars to watch you from my house. I am being an “ass”, but I do not violate your property rights. You know this, so you buy cotton curtains, to shield the view from the outside. But hey, I am smart, I buy special binoculars that can see through your cotton curtains (some X-Ray technology). Now I “broke” your “security”, but did I commit a crime again? No. I am again being an ass and I should be probably avoided and blacklisted in the internet or whatever, but no damage was done to your property. Privacy haven’t become a property just because you tried to secure it. Same with patterns and ideas. Just because you try to protect it, breaking that protection down is not a violation, unless it is done on your private property (breaking into your house or computer).