4 ms·

All property is a monopoly. Is it slavery that I can't grow some crops on your lawn.

breck 7y ago
No, because if you were to do that you preclude me from using my lawn. It is intellectual slavery that you are telling me I can’t copy your book that i bought from you on my lawn, even though you are not affected.
- tathougies 7y ago
  You are allowed to copy other's books. You just can't derive a revenue from them.
  - breck 7y ago
    > You just can't derive a revenue from them. I wish this were the case, but you cannot distribute them either. I would love to collaborate with a team on an app that let's you instantly query all books ever published and revenue from that is the least of my concerns and it would be easy to do if we weren't forbidden from doing that by intellectual slavery laws.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      You seem to be under the strange assumption that it's morally acceptable to use knowledge others generated to claim an advantage for yourself over other people. If your friend did research, and found a great house for him and his family, at a great price, told you about it, and then you went and bought it, most people would consider that highly unethical. Your friend did all the work to generate the knowledge, and you used it against him. Certainly you could demand that if you pay someone for knowledge, then it ought to be yours, but I think you undervalue knowledge at that point. The idea you could pay a few tens of dollars and be entitled to someone's perhaps decades of research is absolutely ludicrous. Be willing to pay thousands upon thousands for that privilege (which by the way, you can certainly negotiate).
      - breck 7y ago
        > You seem to be under the strange assumption that it's morally acceptable to use knowledge others generated to claim an advantage for yourself over other people. If your friend did research, and found a great house for him and his family, at a great price, told you about it, and then you went and bought it, most people would consider that highly unethical This is a bizarre argument. I am not claiming any such thing. What I'm saying is if my friend writes a book, and publishes it to the world, I should be free to copy and benefit of the knowledge in my friend's book. I'm not saying if my friend tells me a secret I should use that secret against him. That's bizarre. I believe in the right to privacy and secrets. I don't however, believe in the right to restrict what people do with knowledge that's been intentionally and willingly made public. > I think you undervalue knowledge at that point I think you overvalue the incremental knowledge generated in our time, and greatly undervalue the hard won knowledge of the past thousands of years (which was almost entirely generated without intellectual monopoly laws). The words we are using? Invented and given away freely. Even the letters. Even the concepts of words and letters! These computers? They are running on binary notation (330 years old—the 330 is written in Indian-Arabic numerals from over 1k years ago). The current contributions of all our best scientists, engineers, authors, musicians, etc, are trifles compared to the body of work we are building upon.
        tathougies 7y ago
        > I don't however, believe in the right to restrict what people do with knowledge that's been intentionally and willingly made public. But it's not been made public. It's only available to the group of people that buy the book. As evidence of the fact it's not intended to be public, I cite the fact that the author has sought out legal mechanisms to potentially prosecute those who share what he or she has published. > The words we are using? Invented and given away freely. Even the letters. Even the concepts of words and letters! These computers? They are running on binary notation (330 years old—the 330 is written in Indian-Arabic numerals from over 1k years ago). The current contributions of all our best scientists, engineers, authors, musicians, etc, are trifles compared to the body of work we are building upon. The good news is that intellectual property expires after a while. There is no danger the next binary is going to be patent encumbered. Firstly, because it's likely 'obvious' (although I recognize this has been exploited due to asking patent clerks to go above and beyond the fields they are familiar with) and secondly because it's unlikely to be encumbered for thousands of years.
- rhino369 7y ago
  You are just defining harm using your preconceived notions about rights. How are you any more harmed by me preventing you from growing crops, than I am harmed by you preventing a sale of copy of my book because you sold it to them first.
  - breck 7y ago
    One system is grounded in physical laws (you can’t “git clone” land), and the other is a manmade restriction on the mind’s natural ability to grow. Depriving you of a future sale is just saying you are not entitled to some unnatural profit that you feel entitled to, even though your book is worthless in value compared to all of the intellectual products that you so freely use from prior generations. Anyone who thinks their ideas are so precious and important that they should be able to control how people use those is oblivious to their true negligible contribution.

No, because if you were to do that you preclude me from using my lawn. It is intellectual slavery that you are telling me I can’t copy your book that i bought from you on my lawn, even though you are not affected.

tathougies 7y ago
You are allowed to copy other's books. You just can't derive a revenue from them.
- breck 7y ago
  > You just can't derive a revenue from them. I wish this were the case, but you cannot distribute them either. I would love to collaborate with a team on an app that let's you instantly query all books ever published and revenue from that is the least of my concerns and it would be easy to do if we weren't forbidden from doing that by intellectual slavery laws.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    You seem to be under the strange assumption that it's morally acceptable to use knowledge others generated to claim an advantage for yourself over other people. If your friend did research, and found a great house for him and his family, at a great price, told you about it, and then you went and bought it, most people would consider that highly unethical. Your friend did all the work to generate the knowledge, and you used it against him. Certainly you could demand that if you pay someone for knowledge, then it ought to be yours, but I think you undervalue knowledge at that point. The idea you could pay a few tens of dollars and be entitled to someone's perhaps decades of research is absolutely ludicrous. Be willing to pay thousands upon thousands for that privilege (which by the way, you can certainly negotiate).
    - breck 7y ago
      > You seem to be under the strange assumption that it's morally acceptable to use knowledge others generated to claim an advantage for yourself over other people. If your friend did research, and found a great house for him and his family, at a great price, told you about it, and then you went and bought it, most people would consider that highly unethical This is a bizarre argument. I am not claiming any such thing. What I'm saying is if my friend writes a book, and publishes it to the world, I should be free to copy and benefit of the knowledge in my friend's book. I'm not saying if my friend tells me a secret I should use that secret against him. That's bizarre. I believe in the right to privacy and secrets. I don't however, believe in the right to restrict what people do with knowledge that's been intentionally and willingly made public. > I think you undervalue knowledge at that point I think you overvalue the incremental knowledge generated in our time, and greatly undervalue the hard won knowledge of the past thousands of years (which was almost entirely generated without intellectual monopoly laws). The words we are using? Invented and given away freely. Even the letters. Even the concepts of words and letters! These computers? They are running on binary notation (330 years old—the 330 is written in Indian-Arabic numerals from over 1k years ago). The current contributions of all our best scientists, engineers, authors, musicians, etc, are trifles compared to the body of work we are building upon.
      - tathougies 7y ago
        > I don't however, believe in the right to restrict what people do with knowledge that's been intentionally and willingly made public. But it's not been made public. It's only available to the group of people that buy the book. As evidence of the fact it's not intended to be public, I cite the fact that the author has sought out legal mechanisms to potentially prosecute those who share what he or she has published. > The words we are using? Invented and given away freely. Even the letters. Even the concepts of words and letters! These computers? They are running on binary notation (330 years old—the 330 is written in Indian-Arabic numerals from over 1k years ago). The current contributions of all our best scientists, engineers, authors, musicians, etc, are trifles compared to the body of work we are building upon. The good news is that intellectual property expires after a while. There is no danger the next binary is going to be patent encumbered. Firstly, because it's likely 'obvious' (although I recognize this has been exploited due to asking patent clerks to go above and beyond the fields they are familiar with) and secondly because it's unlikely to be encumbered for thousands of years.
rhino369 7y ago
You are just defining harm using your preconceived notions about rights. How are you any more harmed by me preventing you from growing crops, than I am harmed by you preventing a sale of copy of my book because you sold it to them first.
- breck 7y ago
  One system is grounded in physical laws (you can’t “git clone” land), and the other is a manmade restriction on the mind’s natural ability to grow. Depriving you of a future sale is just saying you are not entitled to some unnatural profit that you feel entitled to, even though your book is worthless in value compared to all of the intellectual products that you so freely use from prior generations. Anyone who thinks their ideas are so precious and important that they should be able to control how people use those is oblivious to their true negligible contribution.