You have got to be kidding, or think that the concept of dishonesty only applies to me. No one here doubts that my legal framwork is the positive law that exists. That is my legal framework.

You are mixing two arguments here, again, like I pointed out several times in the past. The first one is that the positive laws are written by a bunch of people. The second one is that the laws are supposed to have a purpose. I’m asking about the alleged purpose of the positive laws, and you answer me that you agree with them. That’s one of the most ridiculous “arguments” you have every produced. Your pathetic attempts to avoid a serious debate at all costs are ones of a true demagogue.

I have taken the trouble to learn the principles of AET and Ancap, so that I could participate in these discussions from an informed basis, and use the terminology of that framework to bridge and distinguish to the framework I employ to contrast principles.

You did no such thing. You fail to address some of the core principles, and it is doubtful that you comprehend them.

You, on the otherhand, make no effort to educate yourself on the principles of the legal framework, and believe you should be taken seriously because you are a software engineer. I would not presume to debate open source code development with you; I know too little to be taken seriously.

First of all, you regularly misrepresent current laws, which brings doubts to your qualifications. But that is not the actual issue. The issue is that I am not interested in the positive laws, I am interested in economics and logic. Merely because positive laws exist does not mean that the explanation that is provided for their purpose is logically correct, nor does it mean that that they are based on economics.

Let’s make an analogy. I would say that the Nuremberg laws violate private property. In order to support my claim, I would ask for an example when they do not violate private property, and for an explanation why a Jew conducting business is causing negative economic externalities that other people conducting business are not. You would avoid answering any of these questions, and instead go on a long tirade of complaining how I am not qualified to understand them. That’s the level of sophistication that you produce. It’s bullshit. You hear me? Bullshit.

Thererfore, you are not a serious spokesperson here.

No, the one who’s disingenuous is you. You avoid debate at all costs and waste other people’s time by pretending to debate.

Therefore, I decline.

Being afraid of your lies exposed, the fraudster runs away. I vote for a ban then (if it had any weight).

So I repeat, you have to be kidding…

Your behaviour is ridiculous.

Do you have the power to ban oppenents to your point of view?

I have no such power, but I have some weight in influencing people’s opinions. Furthermore, the reason to ban you is not that you have an opposing point of view, but that you are a liar, fraud, demagogue and are wasting other people’s time. In the past, I even expressed regret at you being banned. But since it’s clear that you’re a recidivist, I see no more point in having you here.

This is pure cowardice.

Let me repeat: I regularly make point by point refutations of your claims, only for them to be ignored by you. The coward is you. I’m merely someone who exposed your cowardice.

You could save yourself considerable expenditure if you would stop trolling my every post.

Let me repeat again: I regularly make point by point refutations of your claims, only for them to be ignored by you. The troll is you.

I think it would be the best to ban you from here so that you are not wasting other people’s time.

Is this your decision? Do you have the power to ban oppenents to your point of view? Is this the concept of “freedom of speech” that you believe in? Is this the kind of conduct we can expect from Ancap-heaven?

This is pure cowardice.

You seem to have more time than most to waste. You could save yourself considerable expenditure if you would stop trolling my every post.

When I ask you to confirm what your legal framework is, then your answer is that you need a legal framework in the first place.

You have got to be kidding, or think that the concept of dishonesty only applies to me. No one here doubts that my legal framwork is the positive law that exists. That is my legal framework.

I have taken the trouble to learn the principles of AET and Ancap, so that I could participate in these discussions from an informed basis, and use the terminology of that framework to bridge and distinguish to the framework I employ to contrast principles.

You, on the otherhand, make no effort to educate yourself on the principles of the legal framework, and believe you should be taken seriously because you are a software engineer. I would not presume to debate open source code development with you; I know too little to be taken seriously.

Likewise, an AET scholar would not engage in a serious debate with someone who has not studied the principles and main scholars.

Thererfore, you are not a serious spokesperson here. You do not know enough about the subject matter. I respond to your ignorant posts on the subject because it is an educational exercise for me to articulate an argument, not because you make any sense or make informed, coherent rebuttals.

Therefore, I decline. I have already invited Kinsella to do what you suggest on the subject at hand here; property rights and the operation of servitudes, and the parallels to the operation of IP in the positive law of copyright. Naturally, he declined.

If you wanted to write a serious piece defending your views against the existing legal framework, you would have to study that framework. I suggest you would not presume to write a serious economic treatise without studying the history and state of the art of the subject matter?

Yet no such presumption seems to limit you here.

So I repeat, you have to be kidding…

I cannot describe the condition without facts, and a legal framework witin which to analyze those facts.

And it is precisely the legal framework that is here under the question. When I ask you to confirm what your legal framework is, then your answer is that you need a legal framework in the first place. For months you evade answers to simple questions you coward.

I think it would be the best to ban you from here so that you are not wasting other people’s time. And to prove that the reason why I’m saying this is your cowardice, I challenge you to a public interactive debate, such as in in a web chat room. In an interactive debate, your attempts to avoid a genuine argument are only more so obvious and you can’t trail off into irrelevance for prolonged periods of time. A moderator will be selected in advance (I’m sure yet how, either by a public vote by anyone interested in the debate, or by mutual consent of the two of us).

So you admit that the assumption of IP as legitimate rights is at the bottom of all your posts?

Cause that would be, like Peter said, circular reasoning.

Well that’s just plain wrong. People own their own bodies and slavery is necessarily a violation of that ownership.

“and can be characteristic of country’s property attribution.”

No it is characteristic of a country’s violation of property rights.

“I see no reason why slavery may not return in the future.”

It never went anywhere. It’s just now imposed on the weakest and most helpless part of the population, children, and it is done “for their own good”.

I cannot describe the condition without facts, and a legal framework witin which to analyze those facts.

Don’t you hate it when the real world imposes itself on your Matrix?

There must be both actual and proximate cause.

“actual” and “proximate” is a label. What you are missing is the explanation which features must an act contain in order to be classified either as actual or proximate with respect to a violation of IP.

An act must be necessary to cause harm (violation) and sufficient (attributable to the actor).

You are avoiding the core question, which is how to determine whether harm occurred or not in the first place. The question of harm needs to be the conclusion, rather than assumption, of the argument. You are using IP to conclude that harm occurred, and then the harm to conclude that a violation of your rights occurred. Apart from not providing an answer to what either IP or harm is, it is circular reasoning.

Let me summarise how you reacted (again): after misrepresenting my question several times, when it became apparent that you can’t do that anymore, you avoided an answer. Such a blatant display of intellectual dishonesty.

It’s obvious that you’re a fraud. At no point you argumentatively react to your opponents claims. You only have three modes of expressing yourself: misrepresentation, ignorance, and arrogance. The mirrors and smoke do not work anymore.

meh….

Wildberry’s positon: X has rights.

So, your answer to my question is that causality is a sufficient condition for a rights violation?

No, Grasshopper. There must be both actual and proximate cause. An act must be necessary to cause harm (violation) and sufficient (attributable to the actor).

Is that sufficient to win a gold star? Your approval is neccessary, but my answer may not be sufficient.

Let me summarize what we have accomplished

Let me summarise how you reacted (again): after misrepresenting my question several times, when it became apparent that you can’t do that anymore, you avoided an answer. Such a blatant display of intellectual dishonesty.

It’s obvious that you’re a fraud. At no point you argumentatively react to your opponents claims. You only have three modes of expressing yourself: misrepresentation, ignorance, and arrogance. The mirrors and smoke do not work anymore.

Wildberry’s positon: X has rights.

So, your answer to my question is that causality is a sufficient condition for a rights violation?

Let me summarize what we have accomplished:

If X has rights, B can violate them by doing Y.
If X has no rights, B cannot violate them by doing any act.

As for what X’s rights are or are not, and whether any act violates them or not, we’ll have to leave for another time.

Peter’s position: X has no rights
Wildberry’s positon: X has rights

Wow, that was really worth the time. Reminds me of playing a really really bad video game.

You mean to say that everything I say can be reduced to a mathematical formulation? I wonder way people just don’t speak in mathematical notation then?

Logical formulation, not mathematical. The alternative, obviously, is illogical approach. I hope I do not need to elaborate why the alternative cannot be taken seriously.

I wonder way people just don’t speak in mathematical notation then?

People say all kinds of illogical things because it makes them feel good. But that does not make their beliefs come true.

Huh? I thought sets were collections of objects. Like, “Set X is all actions taken by X”. and and empty set was one with zero objects.

Yes. You were wondering why I mentioned “does not like” as a necessary condition for a rights violation. Obviously, the alternative is “does like it” as a condition for a rights violation. That, however, is an empty set (if you disagree, feel free to provide a counterexample). Since it’s an empty set, wondering why I neglect to consider such a situation is illogical.

There are five, since a right cannot be infringed unless it exists.

If you insist, I can go this way too. It only makes it easier for me.

Rights cover a wide range of things, so what right exists here? How can we tell if it was violated if we don’t know what “right” is?

This is the question you have to answer, rather then me. I do not claim that such an action constitutes a rights violation, nor that there is an underlying right that can be violated. However, the pro-IP position requires that there is such a right. You sometimes call it an “economic right”.

So, does such a right exist or not?

Therefore please define: “X’s rights” That is rather crucial, don’t you think?

I indeed think this is crucial. But the definition is up to you. I do not claim that such a right exists, you do. My question is a formal representation of the pro-IP position, not the anti-IP one.

If “X’s rights” is an empty set, then Y cannot violate X’s rights, which makes your premise false.

Exactly. If there are no rights in causality, then the whole argument for IP falls apart.

If “X’s rights” is not an empty set, then “Y’s act”, as a member of the set “All Acts” could be a member of the set, “all Acts which violate X’s rights”.

Correct. Since you claim that IP is some sort of right, it is up to you to explain what exactly that means, and how to determine to which set an action belongs.

Also, you are missing the causal link between X’s act (writing) and the unstated condition, “B acquires novel”?

I do not miss such a link. "B acquires novel" is a subset of causality. It is up to you to explain how to distinguish between the two, and what the terms "acquires" and "novel" mean in this context.

This missing variable might well be the cause of Y violating X’s rights, (whatever they are.)

Correct. And that is why I’m asking if causality is a sufficient, rather than a necessary condition. Without the sufficiency conditions, the pro-IP argument falls apart.

In a way, you pointed out precisely what the problem in my formulation is. At the same time, you miss that the whole purpose of the argument is to analyse the pro-IP position in a formal manner.

I guess in set theory this would be something like (B3 is all B’s acts of acquiring new property from Y, B3A is acquisition by purchase, B3B is acquisition by theft, etc. etc.)

Set theory does not seem to be a helpful too in this case, but if you insist, feel free to provide the missing definitions of the individual sets.

If this was software, it would have crashed after the first instruction.

Precisely. It is ironic that you do not comprehend that you are criticising your own position.

Yes! YOU TOO can be the subjects of Peter’s behavioral experimentation!

Behavioural experimentation is not my intention, it is merely all I can get from you.

I will remind you that the legal terms of art that encompass this distinction are “actual” (necessary) and “proximate”(sufficient) cause.

This has no effect on my claims. My claims do not require a specific legal system.

The relevance to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts, or property is?

the construct I provided to you is a formal representation of your “economic rights” nonsense, and the claims of IP proponents in general. It exposes the illogic of the
premises by eliminating the vagueness and metaphors.

You mean to say that everything I say can be reduced to a mathematical formulation? I wonder way people just don’t speak in mathematical notation then?

Despite your enlightening explanation, sorry, I don’t see it.

The sets are?

The set is related to the the alleged surprise that not liking an action is a necessary condition for that action to be a rights violation. If the condition was not necessary, then it would be trivial to refute it, by providing a counterexample. Which, of course, you will avoid at all costs. Therefore, you are basing your “argument” on an empty set.

Huh? I thought sets were collections of objects. Like, “Set X is all actions taken by X”. and and empty set was one with zero objects.

Can you please provide a real-world example, related to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts or property that illustrates the monumental insights of our question? That way, someone as stupid and dishonest as I am can try to follow along.

A writes a novel (action X). B creates a copy of the novel (performs an action Y, causally related to to action X). A does not like it (claims it’s a copyright infringement). From this you conclude that B violates A’s rights.

Your variables are:
action A – the writing of a novel
action B, causally related to action A – the manufacturing of a copy
does not like it – being a copyright infringement
Y violated X’s rights? – copyright infringement being a rights violation
(there are only four parts, not five)

I don’t know why I’m actually going through this with you, as it feels like a waste of time, like watching Ben and Jerry on a sunny Saturday afternoon. But I guess I’ve gone this far…

There are five, since a right cannot be infringed unless it exists. Rights cover a wide range of things, so what right exists here? How can we tell if it was violated if we don’t know what “right” is?

Therefore please define: “X’s rights” That is rather crucial, don’t you think?

If “X’s rights” is an empty set, then Y cannot violate X’s rights, which makes your premise false.

If “X’s rights” is not an empty set, then “Y’s act”, as a member of the set “All Acts” could be a member of the set, “all Acts which violate X’s rights”.

Also, you are missing the causal link between X’s act (writing) and the unstated condition, “B acquires novel”? This missing variable might well be the cause of Y violating X’s rights, (whatever they are.)

I guess in set theory this would be something like (B3 is all B’s acts of acquiring new property from Y, B3A is acquisition by purchase, B3B is acquisition by theft, etc. etc.)

If this was software, it would have crashed after the first instruction.

I’m curious what you’ll reply, but it’s more a curiousity of conducting an experiment and wondering how the subject will behave, rather than an expectation of an intellectual debate.

Yes! YOU TOO can be the subjects of Peter’s behavioral experimentation!

Where do I sign up?

And as to your reference to “necessary” and “sufficient” causality, since we are not writing software, I will remind you that the legal terms of art that encompass this distinction are “actual” (necessary) and “proximate”(sufficient) cause. Your reference gave me reason to revisit what I wrote to Kinsella on the subject here:
http://blog.mises.org/15867/the-fight-against-intellectual-property/comment-page-1/#comment-763220

Time to turn off the TV and play some baseball, a truly American sport.

The relevance to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts, or property is?

the construct I provided to you is a formal representation of your “economic rights” nonsense, and the claims of IP proponents in general. It exposes the illogic of the premises by eliminating the vagueness and metaphors.

The sets are?

The set is related to the the alleged surprise that not liking an action is a necessary condition for that action to be a rights violation. If the condition was not necessary, then it would be trivial to refute it, by providing a counterexample. Which, of course, you will avoid at all costs. Therefore, you are basing your “argument” on an empty set.

Can you please provide a real-world example, related to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts or property that illustrates the monumental insights of our question? That way, someone as stupid and dishonest as I am can try to follow along.

A writes a novel (action X). B creates a copy of the novel (performs an action Y, causally related to to action X). A does not like it (claims it’s a copyright infringement). From this you conclude that B violates A’s rights. Please explain how this logically fits together.

Your variables are:

action A – the writing of a novel
action B, causally related to action A – the manufacturing of a copy
does not like it – being a copyright infringement
Y violated X’s rights? – copyright infringement being a rights violation

(there are only four parts, not five)

Thank you.

I’m curious what you’ll reply, but it’s more a curiousity of conducting an experiment and wondering how the subject will behave, rather than an expectation of an intellectual debate.

A liking an action of another person B makes that action a violation of property rights of A?

The sets are?

The relevance to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts, or property is?

You asked this:

If X performs action A, and Y performs action B, causally related to action A, and X does not like it, is this a sufficient condition to conclude that Y violated X’s rights?

Can you please provide a real-world example, related to IP, easements, servitudes, contracts or property that illustrates the monumental insights of our question? That way, someone as stupid and dishonest as I am can try to follow along.

Your variables are:

action A,

action B, causally related to action A,

does not like it

Y violated

X’s rights?

Thank you

The only thing relevant to my message to you is the following:

The only coherent reaction to my claims that you provided is this:

Yes, exactly, it’s nothing. At no point did you demonstrate a genuine interest in argumentation. It’s all just mirrors and smoke.

Can you tell me what theory, any theory, that claims that the crucial distinction in law is whether someone “does not like it”? What cause of action would that be, I wonder?

again, you completely evade the question in a pathetic attempt to confuse. The crucial distinction, of course, is not the “does not like it”, rather the question of causality. In the IP theory, the “does not like it” is a necessary condition, whereas the causality is a sufficient condition. You can read about it on wikipedia. But obviously in order to comprehend that you would need to stop denying elementary logical constructs.

Let me turn your cowardly act against you and demonstrate the fraud you are perpetrating: can you show me an example where A liking an action of another person B makes that action a violation of property rights of A? If yes, then your objection might have some merit, albeit still being deceptive since it’s unrelated to the debate at hand. However, it if the answer is no, that proves you’re again fabricating constructs based on empty sets.

You’ve informed us you have an opinion, but neglected to say what it is.

You also said this was interesting:

If X performs action A, and Y performs action B, causally related to action A, and X does not like it, is this a sufficient condition to conclude that Y violated X’s rights?

Can you tell me what theory, any theory, that claims that the crucial distinction in law is whether someone “does not like it”? What cause of action would that be, I wonder?

This is a logical problem that might have been formulated by Billy Madison (thanks, Kinsella)

This logical construct is irrelevant to anything that has been discussed here, as far as I can tell.