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Don't we have an obligation to follow the laws of the land we live in? I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual pro

by b1daly 9y ago

Don't we have an obligation to follow the laws of the land we live in? I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. In the same way that we have some folk intuitions about the validity of ownership of property, we have them about intellectual property. Namely, we (the citizen of the western world) have an intuition that creators of intellectual works should have some say in how their work is exploited. When it comes to the abstraction required to create a system of property, the one that strikes me a the most bonkers is the concept that people can "own" a geographic section of the earth.

gvx 9y ago
We don't really have those folk intuitions. That is just our cultural baggage. No form of property is universal. No form of intellectual property existed until the 17th century, and it took until the 20th century before it IP worked the way we think about it today and became commonplace in the majority of the world. Guam in the 16th century didn't have a concept of personal property, leading to Magellan to dub it the Island of Thieves. Ownership of land was also a non-existent concept in many societies, famously many Native American ones. Laws and ideas about ownership and property don't exist as some Platonic Ideal, but they change and morph to fit the societies they exist in. IMHO, IP law today, especially but not exclusively in the United States, does not serve content creators but publishers, and it is my belief that it is time to adjust the laws to fit the society we want to live in. With the obligation to follow the law comes the right to demand changes in the law.
Ace17 9y ago
> I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. TL;DR: physical property="who gets to have this", 'intellectual property laws'="who gets to make money from this". Physical property isn't natural, but it's an answer to physical scarcity, which is natural. You and your friend can build identical houses, they can't be both exactly at the same location. Physical property creates a non-volatile answer to the question "Who gets to build his house there?". All working societies must address this problem (even societies in which money doesn't exist), hence "property" (which I don't claim is the only answer). Texts, recordings, etc. are a completely different issue. Original works might be rare, however, there's no scarcity in using them : you and your friend can both listen to your copy of a recording without interfering. So there's need to answer "who gets to listen to this recording?", as there's no scarcity, and thus, no conflict. The conflict lies between distributors, because the only scarcity that remains, when works can be copied for free, is in the exploitation. For distributors, money is scarce, so question becomes: "who gets to make money from this recording?". This is a very different question, which already presupposes the existence of money, and exploitation.
- b1daly 9y ago
  My point is that both of these problems, who gets to occupy a spot of land, who gets to exploit an intellectual creation, are solved through the abstraction of laws. Arguments that the concept of intellectual property serves no purpose are refuted by the increasing role it plays I our economy.

by b1daly 9y ago

gvx 9y ago

We don't really have those folk intuitions. That is just our cultural baggage. No form of property is universal. No form of intellectual property existed until the 17th century, and it took until the 20th century before it IP worked the way we think about it today and became commonplace in the majority of the world. Guam in the 16th century didn't have a concept of personal property, leading to Magellan to dub it the Island of Thieves. Ownership of land was also a non-existent concept in many societies, famously many Native American ones. Laws and ideas about ownership and property don't exist as some Platonic Ideal, but they change and morph to fit the societies they exist in. IMHO, IP law today, especially but not exclusively in the United States, does not serve content creators but publishers, and it is my belief that it is time to adjust the laws to fit the society we want to live in. With the obligation to follow the law comes the right to demand changes in the law.

Ace17 9y ago

> I see no more philosophical justification for physical property than for intellectual property. TL;DR: physical property="who gets to have this", 'intellectual property laws'="who gets to make money from this". Physical property isn't natural, but it's an answer to physical scarcity, which is natural. You and your friend can build identical houses, they can't be both exactly at the same location. Physical property creates a non-volatile answer to the question "Who gets to build his house there?". All working societies must address this problem (even societies in which money doesn't exist), hence "property" (which I don't claim is the only answer). Texts, recordings, etc. are a completely different issue. Original works might be rare, however, there's no scarcity in using them : you and your friend can both listen to your copy of a recording without interfering. So there's need to answer "who gets to listen to this recording?", as there's no scarcity, and thus, no conflict. The conflict lies between distributors, because the only scarcity that remains, when works can be copied for free, is in the exploitation. For distributors, money is scarce, so question becomes: "who gets to make money from this recording?". This is a very different question, which already presupposes the existence of money, and exploitation.

b1daly 9y ago
My point is that both of these problems, who gets to occupy a spot of land, who gets to exploit an intellectual creation, are solved through the abstraction of laws. Arguments that the concept of intellectual property serves no purpose are refuted by the increasing role it plays I our economy.