I can’t get into this in detail right now, but for my purposes I fail to see the conflict.

Rothbard simply dismisses Mises’ first connotation of “Property monopolyas “absurd” but fails to acknowledge that he is really calling private property rights “absurd”.

Rothbard’s second definitin is one of the ways Mises said that resource monopoly can be attained, and is the just another basis for Rothbard to line up against the State.

That leave the concept of monopoly pricing, which both he and Mises agree cannot be maintained within a competitive market, since even resource monopoly results in substituting resources, i.e. wheat for corn.

As Armentano clearly states, Rothbard obviosuly prefers the “State” issue, and as such is merely a corollary of “We have IP because we have the State” argument.

Monopoly in the absence of State grant of privilege is not really much of a concern for free markets. To the extent the State intervenes, it is not free.

That leaves us exactly where I started; State granted “monopoly” in IP, specifically copyrights, is simply state-enforced private property monopoly, adn to make it into anythng else is at attempt to argue for Ancap by classifying IP as a monopoly of the state variety.

I argue that it is not necessary to pre-determine the method of coerscion employed to enforce private property rights, adn that IP is simply an example of private property monopoly.

The more I learn about Rothbard, the more it seems that he contributed very little original thought except, perhaps, in elaborating on Ancap. I don’t depend on that arguement to justify IP.

Are you saying that the emergence of technologies transforms what was once a legitimate right into a non-right?

No, he’s saying that the emergence of technologies affects peoples’ imagination. But since you lack a brain in the first place, you’re unaffected.

So, if technology emerges which makes stealing a car easier, you are saying that this might be sufficient to revise the “wrongness” of car theft?

There is no right not to have your property copied in the first place.

Make up some new lies, the old ones are boring.

Sorry.

Remember, too, Mises and Hayek wrote in a pre-Internet age. The cases they point out as being difficult to imagine happening without copyright–laborious things like encyclopoedia–if they had known of Wikipedia who could imagine they would not revise their predictions here?

Are you saying that the emergence of technologies transforms what was once a legitimate right into a non-right?

So, if technology emerges which makes stealing a car easier, you are saying that this might be sufficient to revise the “wrongness” of car theft?

The “laborious things” you seem to be thinking of, is a capital investment in a product. It is the investment needed to produce the first instance of a given work, whether poem or encyclopedia. Clearly the producer is the rightful owner of that product. What property theory requires that that property right magically vanish the moment he lets anyone actually read it buy a copy to take home?

Hayek explicitly said:

it is not obvious that such forced scarcity is the most effective way to stimulate the human creative process. I doubt whether there exists a single great work of literature which we would not possess had the author been unable to obtain an exclusive copyright for it; it seems to me that the case for copyright must rest almost entirely on the circumstance that such exceedingly useful works as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.

http://blog.mises.org/9247/hayek-on-patents-and-copyrights/

Hayek appears to be making a distinction between literary works of art, to which Mises refers to as the work of the “creative genius” [ Human Action, Scholar’s Edition; p. 657]

Hayek explicitly said:

it is not obvious that such forced scarcity is the most effective way to stimulate the human creative process. I doubt whether there exists a single great work of literature which we would not possess had the author been unable to obtain an exclusive copyright for it; it seems to me that the case for copyright must rest almost entirely on the circumstance that such exceedingly useful works as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.

http://blog.mises.org/9247/hayek-on-patents-and-copyrights/

In fact as Salerno notes, Hayek thought copyright stimulated the wrong kind of production – http://blog.mises.org/17228/hayek-contra-copyright-laws/

Mises also recognized that all creative work and invention is derivative http://blog.mises.org/13202/misesian-vs-marxian-vs-ip-views-of-innovation/

Mises also recognized that creators do not create b/c of articifical stimuli provided by IP: “The problem involved has nothing to do with the activities of the creative genius. These pioneers and originators of things unheard of do not produce and work in the sense in which these terms are employed in dealing with the affairs of other people. They do not let themselves be influenced by the response their work meets on the part of their contemporaries. They do not wait for encouragement.”

He thinks that some things that might go away without copyright, we should not bemoan: “We may disregard the problem of second-rate authors of poems, fiction, and plays and second-rate composers and need not inquire whether it would be a serious disadvantage for mankind to lack the products of their efforts”

He does think some laborious things like encyclopedia would be unlikely absent copyright, but as noted above, this was pre-Wikipedia.

He aslo explicitly notes IP is controversial: “Patents and copyrights are results of the legal evolution of the last centuries. Their place in the traditional body of property rights is still controversial.” And he explictily says he takes no stance: “It is beyond the scope of catallactics to enter into an examination of the arguments brought forward for and against the institution of copyrights and patents.”

I agree the implications are obvious. In the digital age that profit opportunity window is rapidly closing, therefore the entrepreneurs have much less incentive to create those goods.

Right, because as the ability to share information increases, there are less digital goods being created each day … DERP DERP DERP HURRRR HURRR HURRRR

First, is it an argument to claims that because IP does not protect every written word, it should not protect anything?

Second, these things you cite happen to co-exist with IP. If IP was such a freedom-buster, as you would claim, then how is it the things you reference manage to exist at all?

The section of Mises that Per quotes argues directly against what you just said. Mises is not wrong, and if I was going to have the gumption to dismiss his work for some reason, I would at least feel somewhat compelled to offer some kind of specific rebuttal.

If you want to quote Mises on economics, I suggest you quote him in some kind of context.

You missed his discussion on monopoly, and why monopoly is normal and all around us and not something that is contrary to the operation of a free market; all private property rights secure a monopoly to that property. This understanding is not the same connotation of monopoly as that of a theoretical market monopoly, and he warns against conflating those different connotations.

Second, you have to address his conclusion, which is that without secured property rights in IP, producers of intellectual products are producing for external economies.

And despite Mr. Kinsella’s praise to you here, he has never addressed this obvious contradiction between his position on IP and that of Mises.

And despite your admonition to me that this is an economic site based on the work of Mises, IP is at some level an economic question that intersects with the principles of private property, privately owned means of production, and free market operations. This is why, no doubt, Mises found it necessary and/or important to mention IP at all in his most famous treatise on economics.

You selectively quote him out of context, use his words to support a position that is contrary to the one he takes, and then deny the obvious validity of an objection.

Andras captured all of this in his one-line comment. You pulled something from Mises out of context and tried to make it support your party line. I object.

The most someone may be able to say is that some high budget movies and games might not be possible without IP, but even that’s unlikely.

My post was primarily on the economics of IP (which I tried to make more interesting through adding a kind of sweeping comment on the nature of privilege). This is, after all, the Mises Economics Blog. I let others make normative conclusions (including policy suggestions) based on the economic issue.