So for example if you author a story and contract with Joe that he can read a copy of the story given he does not share it or make a copy fine he is contractually obligated to honor this. But what happens when 3rd party Tom sees a copy of the story? He has not entered into any contract with you the author and is under no obligation to refrain from sharing the story or reproducing it on his own paper with his own ink.

Finally, the idea that boundaries of property *should* (this is a normative statement you are making) delineate the boundaries of enforceable legal action doesn’t follow from any cohesive theory. Clearly we should have limits on actions which do not cross “physical boundaries” (such as putting others at unreasonable risk) and we have limits on consent (such as the consent to be a slave). I really think Mises.org should stick with Mises.

No need to appeal to Mises here. He wasn’t anarchist in pure modern sense.

It is not true that if something has a price it is a rivalrous (scarce) good. If I pay you $100 to teach me how to whistle, I value the knowledge you are imparting to me, which is why I am compensating you for htis knowledge. But the knowledge is not itself thereby rendered rivalrous, because a million people can possess and use this knoweldge at the same time without diminishing my ability to employ it as part of successful action.

Many ideas command positive prices, even ideas that are in the public domain (!). Some ideas are economically scarce.

Public-domain works are scarce because privately-owned media containing them is scarce. When the author’s copyright expires, no property becomes transferred to “the public” in general – only the owners of existing copies are relieved from restrictions on reproduction, while outsiders can’t break into a private library and demand their copy of a 19th century book. For that reason there’s always a price and there will be not a trace of communism / calculation problem absent IP.

BTW while in English the word “property” means both “ownership” and “feature”, enabling a rudimentary IP theory to be built on confusing the two, it is impossible to play this trick in Russian. We have different terms, “sobstvennost’” for “ownership” and “svoystvo” for “feature”, both derivatives of an old reflexive but different nonetheless.

Kinsella comments, “how horrible! competition!”

But one can use this line of reasoning to attack private property in all of its variations.

Nonsense. Only a randroid can think this.

For example, Jones buys a large lot on a busy street and builds a tire shop on one end. Smith moves in without Jones’ permission and establishes a used car lot on the other end. When Jones angrily confronts Smith–who has been reading Kinsella–Smith points out that he is overturning Jones’ wrongful grant by the State of “mercantilist privilege” and providing badly needed “competition” by appropriating unused value.

Are you saying the libertarian should support the state outlawing Smith’s used car lot? If so, are you a fascist? If not, what is the relevance?

Why limit theft to “information” products?

Same reason Rand talked about initiation of PHYSICAL FORCE. HELLOOOOOOOOO

All products–including Jones’ selection of a particular location–contain useful information.

products “contain” information? Really. I did not konw this. Is there are property right in information that products “contain” this? Wow, this is so rigorous I don’t know how to respond.

The distinction between “information” property and “non-information” property is spurious. All property involves the application of intelliogence to physical reality.

All nonsense involves nonsense. now what.

This is a non-sequitur.
Ideas are not scarce at all.
The ability to use them and implement them is a market skill that is rewarded in the marketplace. Some individuals are more effective than others via aptitude or maybe even circumstance.
And this is where Kinsella’s argument is strongest — deriving a profit from an idea does not deprive you of the idea. You’re still welcome to employ, invoke, and manufacture something based on that very same idea.

Anyone willing to pause and reflect can easily see that Kinsella has not provided a valid fundamental distinction between what he calls “intellectual property” and other forms of property.

It is unfortunate that the Mises Institute has promoted Kinsella’s attack on private property in the name of Ludvig von Mises who defended private property, patents and copyrights. I consider this to be dishonest.

“Information property”–the label preferred by Kinsella–is not “property in abstractions and universals.” It is physcial property created by the inventor or writer or artist or breeder. Thinking involves the use of abstractions; reasoning involves the use of universals. But reasoned thinking is necessary to the creation of every kind of property, with no exceptions.

The owner of an original painting or poem doesn’t own the abstract ideas that were used to create the original property. Ideas are the product of individual minds and cannot be owned by anyone. The creator owns the physical product made by applying a series of ideas and enacting them within physcial reality. The creator has the right to restrict sales to those who contractually agree not to make unauthorizede knockoffs of the creators production.

This right is upheld–perhaps imperfectly–by copyrights and patents.

Kinsella seeths with resentment of reasoned criticism,

It’s “seethes,” you illiterate.

as for example his sarcastic implication that I’m stupid.

Well it may be a coincidence that you are so wrong, and that you are (obviously) stupid. But I dunno, I’ve seen this correlation many times.

1)” if you steal his horse he doesn’t have it any more. that is not the same with information.”
But what if he steals “use” of the stallion, breeds his mares and then returns the stallion to its owner?

Then he didn’t have the use of the stallion while it was gone. There was a conflict. Sort of like if A rapes B while she is passed out after a drunken party, and the next morning B notices the telltale signs, even though she didn’t remember it–she was raped. Hellooooo.

This is the same as with information, because in both cases unauthorized knockoffs are made to the benefit of the thief–fraud artist, with the cost of this wrong doing to be borne by the proper owner.

In other words,you think the original artist is deprived of “benefits” he “owns” or is entilted to, namely profits he could obtain from selling things to customers under a condition of monopoly. I.e. he has a property right in the money in his prospective customers’ wallets. Intersting “theory,” that.

In the case of “information”, unauthorized reproductions involve fraud, because the copy from which knockoffs are illegitimately made was acquired with the contractual condition that knockoffs were NOT to be made.

Nonsens. If I sell you a copy I printed of Dickens’ Great Expectations or Obama’s latest kiddie book, that is not fraud–I am not misrepresenting what you are buying.

You are completely confused, Humphrey