9 ms·

Libertarian Party of Colorado First to Officially Support Ending IP

75 points by breck 5y ago

gowld 5y ago
> The only proper role, if any, of existing governments in the economic realm is to protect property rights, > we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws Why don't they support ending real property or chattel property?
- vidarh 5y ago
  Disagreement over property rights is basically the distinction between the original left-wing libertarians and right-wing libertarians. Dejacque, the founder of libertarianism, first used the term in a scathing criticism of Proudhon where he nevertheless expressed his agreement with Proudhons "property is theft" while suggesting Proudhons was not radical enough.
  - gowld 5y ago
    Fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque#Debate_with_Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque#Debate_wi... "For Déjacque, on the other hand, the communal state of affairs — the phalanstery 'without any hierarchy, without any authority' except that of the 'statistics book' — corresponded to 'natural exchange,' i.e. to the 'unlimited freedom of all production and consumption; the abolition of any sign of agricultural, individual, artistic or scientific property; the destruction of any individual holding of the products of work; the demonarchisation and the demonetarisation of manual and intellectual capital as well as capital in instruments, commerce and buildings."[10]" I guess Colorado LP's "2 out of 3 kinds of property are legitimate" is a middle ground? (or 3 out of 4? Not sure how to classify their position on clean air as property)
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      Maybe it's like trying to legalize marijuana but not mentioning heroin until a later election...
    - vidarh 5y ago
      It's not really a middle ground, in the sense that left-libertarianism see private property rights as inherently incompatible with liberty, and so the defence of property rights to a left-libertarian is a rejection of the most fundamental demand of libertarianism. While a rejection of intellectual property would be good, it's generally been less contested to start with. The distinction basically boils down to whether or not you see freedom as being about the possibility of doing something vs. about legal right in principle to do something. To left-libertarians, legal rights are meaningless if you are deprived of the ability to exercise them, be it by other laws or by lack of resources. And property rights flow right in the face of that, by denying access to scarce resources that enforce both the immediate lack of access, and economic inequality that prevents the exercise of other rights. To property specifically, I grew up in Norway. In Norway the freedom to roam is considered so intrinsic that until about a century ago it was the only major legal principle regularly treated as "common law" in a system otherwise strictly codified. Today it is codified, and you can hike across all privately owned uncultivated rural land as long as you leave it as you found it, and you can forage, and camp, because allowing public access to the land is seen as an essential trade-off between public liberty and private property rights. That would be closer to what a middle ground looks like - hollowing out private property rights to alter the balance of which protections a private owner has vs. the public. In Norway the balance seeks to recognise the distinction between a private dwelling, where allowing public access would be a massive intrusion vs. land holdings where public access has very limited direct effect on the owner, in e.g. setting limits on how close to private dwellings you can go or camp without asking permission. The point being similar to the libertarian socialist distinction between private and personal property - that there are substantial differences in to what extent maximising liberty requires protecting different kinds of property. If I own a forest and someone walks through it, the impact on my liberty is next to nil. But if someone wanders into my house at night, the impact is substantial. As such, denying someone access to a forest is government overreach that diminished the freedom of the public to a left-libertarian, but denying access to my house is justified because it affects me much more to be made to feel unsafe where I live than it affects others by being denied access to a given house.
brighton36 5y ago
This is a wonderful idea. The people who own the signs, direct the traffic. It's why small business is drying up. Also, 'intellectual property' is mostly just postmodern nonsense
zdw 5y ago
> Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. How? Is putting IP disputes in the court system "without government intervention?" As much as I would like to see an IP holders version of Robot Jox, I'd imagine this would turn into a "whoever has more money wins".
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > How? Is putting IP disputes in the court system "without government intervention?" Assume they’re advocating for some sort of arbitration system.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Oh awesome - so instead of an organization that is (sorta) held accountable to the public via elections we'd just let private organizations run the whole show?
    - shadowfox 5y ago
      Libertarianism tends to skew that way, often. So I wouldn't say it is surprising in the case, whether we agree or not.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I can't speak for all Libertarians and I'm not one myself - so don't take this as a blanket statement but, from my impression, a lot of Libertarians in the US support private alternatives to public services and private services as a first line of treatment. Advocating that IP claims should be forced to fail in private arbitration before being eligible for a hearing in public court is a reasonable way to prioritize the private market fixing problems on the cheap before consuming public resources - but removing the courts as the ultimate arbiter is a really big shift in my mind.
  - notJim 5y ago
    That would work if there's a contract in place, but if IP rights are abolished entirely, what is there to arbitrate? I got a hold of your song and you don't like it? Well it was never "yours" in the first place.
srl 5y ago
The entirety of the statement: > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. This is madness. Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. Now, one can argue (without being completely incoherent) that intellectual property should not exist as a concept, but that amounts to abolishing a certain marketplace, not preventing "government intervention in the marketplace". Moreover, denying property rights outright for intangible goods is a strong position, and not one I usually associate with libertarians. Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics. I'd say that applies to all the local politics, regardless of party. Some of the wackiest crap I've ever seen in politics happens locally, even under the banner of one of the big parties. Stuff they'd never say at the national level.
- wyager 5y ago
  > Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. No. Read Machinery of Freedom by Friedman for a primer on why this is not necessary.
  - notJim 5y ago
    Any chance you could summarize the argument?
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.
kstrauser 5y ago
I'm not opposed to this to some degree. For example, software patents are ludicrous and IMO hard to intellectually honestly defend. Copyrights are great but need to be drastically shortened (life+70 is an abomination). But trademarks have some customer-friendly properties: if I buy a soda with Coke's trademark design on it, I can be reasonably sure I'm buying an actual Coke product. OTOH, we also have the IOC suing people for using "Olympic" in the name of non-related businesses (eg https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/14095930099/olympics-committee-forces-oregon-restaurant-to-change-its-name.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/14095930099/olymp...), which should be a "too bad so sad" ruling for the defendant against anyone who names their organization after a physical location. As an aside, I strongly believe that entities should have to pay taxes on their intellectual properties. It's at least imaginable that you could defend your real estate without the government's assistance, even if that means hiring armed people to enforce the borders you're claiming. It's impossible to enforce IP without the government's assistance, and I think it's utterly unreasonable to expect that government to lift a finger to help protect it without paying taxes on it. I ran this by Cory Doctorow and he patiently explained why this isn't possible, but I still contend that even if it can't be, it ought to be.
- tlholaday 5y ago
  Did Cory Doctorow's explanation address valuing intellectual property via Harberger taxes?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    It didn't. The short version is that we don't currently have a wealth tax, with only a few specific kinds of things being taxable. I offered that maybe we could add IP to that list of things, and he said that this was the main gist of Piketty's plan and it had met with huge resistance, and that if we're going down that route we should probably start with stocks and bonds, etc.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      I'd like to see a copyright that was free for a reasonable amount of time, say 30 years then a fee starts at $10,000 on year+1 and doubles every year after.
vmception 5y ago
> “The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” I guess that part of the constitution doesn't require the Congress to do that
- munk-a 5y ago
  I don't agree with a full suspension of IP personally, but in response to that specific argument... If the common opinion is that the limited exclusivity window doesn't actually promote science and the useful arts then it wouldn't seem to actually mandate that that exclusivity window exists - or, if it must exist, it could be set to an arbitrarily short amount of time.
  - blowski 5y ago
    Indeed. The constitution says "it has the power to set it" not that Congress shall set it. I think that's what the OP was saying anyway.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I agree with this. I could argue that the current ridiculously long windows (like physical inventions being exclusive long after they're obsolete, or a short story outliving its authors' grandchildren) are unconstitutional in that they impede progress of science and useful arts.
    - vmception 5y ago
      Damn, do you know any judge willing to take that stance without Congress rewriting itself? Just needs a trial judge and then an appellate group of judges to agree, and for no further appeal to happen
eevilspock 5y ago
Their stance on Property and Intellectual Monopolies are in contradiction. Why is one form of "property" respected and not the other?
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  I can't speak for the definitions applied by LP of Colorado specifically but the general difference between real property and intellectual monopolies as they're currently applied is that any and all claims of real property are demonstrated through private contract and territorial defense. Intellectual monopolies necessitate the use of government force as a carrot for inventors and as a stick for everyone else (unless everything was done through blockchain).
  - eevilspock 5y ago
    You believe that private real property "rights" don't depend on government force?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > any and all claims of real property are demonstrated through private contract and territorial defense. Intellectual monopolies necessitate the use of government force a Private contract is just the kind of agreement that government has decided provides a basis for government force, so the distinction you are drawing even as you have written it is largely fictitious.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    I don't suppose you could explain how to originate a chain of title solely through private contract? In other words, what does it mean that God didn't give a title to the original owner of a property?
- breck 5y ago
  Because one it makes sense to call "property" and the other is literally the opposite of property. If you think such a thing as "intellectual property" exists, then you would also probably be fine with calling cigarettes "health pops!". If your computer is your property, but there are loads of peaceful things you cannot do with it where no one else is directly affected, then it is not your property. The term "Intellectual Property" is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
kristopolous 5y ago
IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. An effective monopoly over customers should be won through superior products in the marketplace, not by inferior products defended in the courts. Even when it's a superior product, often covetous protectors of excessive demands and restrictions hamper and kill it. Media formats, software, vehicle technology, the graveyard of brilliant products by petty tyrants zealously destroying their dreams through their own stubbornness is vast and depressing. I'm glad Apple knocked off Xerox, Tim Berners Lee knocked off Ted Nelson, and Linus knocked off a bunch of groups. I'm glad Encyclopedia Britannica didn't have IP rights to shut down wikipedia and W3Catalog, the first search engine wasn't going around knocking off Yahoo, Alta Vista and Google when they came around. I don't expect wide agreement with this, that's why I'm saying it.
- lallysingh 5y ago
  Without a brand, how does the customer know who's products they're buying?
  - blowski 5y ago
    Tangentially, it's fascinating how the opposite problem pops up on Amazon - how do I know I'm actually buying brand X on Amazon? Maybe the solutions to both problems are related.
    - bastawhiz 5y ago
      It's almost as though there needs to be an organization that's appointed by and accountable to citizens to hold companies accountable for maintaining integrity on these matters.
      - randallsquared 5y ago
        An organization like, say, Consumer Reports? I assume that if they're selected by and accountable to me, I could choose to use a competitor organization, right? Otherwise they're neither chosen by me nor accountable to me, after all...
notJim 5y ago
This seems like classic libertarian confusion about where "property" comes from. > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. IP does not exist without government intervention. Government intervenes to create IP. This is true for real property as well, but at least with real property, you could form an army and defend your property that way without a government. Since IP is so easily transmissible, and often must be transmitted to be useful, this would be very challenging. If you write some source code, intending it to be proprietary (for your operating system, for example), and I obtain it somehow, you'd be screwed under this system. I guess you could call this "resolving the dispute without government intervention" in the sense that the resolution is me telling you to pound sand, but I don't think any capitalist system would find that satisfactory.
- Analemma_ 5y ago
  A true libertarian would respond that in Libertopia, IP rights are enforced by the owners themselves, at gunpoint. i.e. if you steal someone else's IP you can expect an unfriendly visit from a private militia. But they would concede we're a little ways out from that point and we have to go one step at a time.
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    As far as I know a true libertarian wouldn't care about IP because a piece of code or song can be copied infinitely with little effort therefore isn't scarce like property or an object. I think the fact that you can pretty much download every Austrian economic book for free from the Mises Institute website makes this clear. Note: I don't want to discuss politics. I don't care if you think its wrong or you don't like left or wing wing libertarians if that's a thing. I'm just stating what I know. Please keep your opinions about "the one true anarchist" to yourself.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      Fortunately (in many ways), economists are not required to make a living from the proceeds of their writing. Do you happen to know of a libertarian economist who has specifically come out against property rights, and who has a book available from the Mises Institute? I might feel the urge to create a book this weekend.
heavyset_go 5y ago
I generally agree that IP needs to be reevaluated along with legislation like the DMCA, but I'm more in favor of making nuanced changes rather than complete abolition. I don't want to have to fight expensive legal battles in whatever private arbitration hellscape that right-libertarians have in mind in order to stop, say, SEO spammers from using my personal photos in their content. While I'm not a fan of the DMCA, I appreciate the recourse it gives me for things like that.
MattGaiser 5y ago
> > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. Ending IP laws in this case is like ending laws against theft. Without government to define what property is in this case, I could just take without any need to engage in any dispute resolution.
- ant6n 5y ago
  A true libertarian doesn't believe it's up to the government to decide what's property. It's up to the market, that is, each person individually,... and their own personal army, to decide what's theirs.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Usually Somalia is a strawman, but maybe not in this case.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It's up to the market, that is, each person individually,... and their own personal army, to decide what's theirs. The distinction between “a government” and “a private individual with an armed force to impose, by force or intimidation, their will” is...not large. Mostly a matter of time.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      You described how feudal societies came to exist.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      You begin to see the problem with Libertarianism.
FounderBurr 5y ago
Absolutely, make GPL illegal.
- kube-system 5y ago
  This is probably the most obvious example of why this would be much more radical of a change than some people would expect at face value. Copyleft literally can't exist without copyright. Corporate interests will restrict their code (and everyone else's) with NDAs instead, and they'll only distribute binaries like it's 1990 again, but worse.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    > Copyleft literally can't exist without copyright. Copyleft (probably?) can't exist without government enforcement. In principle it could be direct rather than by way of copyright.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      It would never work. To do it directly, you'd have to contract with the other party. Those who don't want to contribute would no longer be compelled to do so, they can simply not accept the contract.
      - anoncake 5y ago
        You can have state-enforced copyleft without general copyright.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Then you aren’t arguing for eliminating copyright, you’re arguing for restrictions on copyright. If an author has no right to control the use of their work, they have no right to control the use of their work.
        5y ago
avsteele 5y ago
You can only think this is crazy if you haven't dealt with the Patent Office. They just can't do the job everyone thinks they are doing, so we'd be better of without patents at all.
dzonga 5y ago
IP laws are there to protect incumbents, not foster innovation. We literally had a post last week, on how the spicy sauce was able to be successful without copyright or IP protection. on another note, though I don't know if this is a right place for this: I feel we gonna have a strong push towards libertarianism due to the repressive media freedoms we've these days. I say this as a minority bpoc.
- rytor718 5y ago
  I think I agree with you in general. Its interesting, because on the one hand these laws exist for the theft and abuse in the market that a lack of IP laws allowed in the past. Yet the current implementation is an embarrassing mockery of a system for protecting property. The current IP office and laws literally cannot do the job they're made to do. Hard as they might try. But as long as we continue to be a market economy, it seems there must still be some regulation of IP. Though I can't say with an specificity what that should look like. I personally don't like the idea of intellectual property, but I can still see the value of protections for it. I'd like to see much, much shorter time frames for exercising IP ownership and a perhaps some kind of licensing fee/tax to encourage productivity and innovation. You're not going to mess around with something you have to pay to upkeep and you're likely to actively develop your idea into a product or else sell it. This would favor incumbents in a way that's justifiable I think.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
Sounds reasonable. BTW, after a lifetime of being a Democrat, I registered as a Libertarian last year. Just my opinion, but the USA would be so much better off with 4 or 5 active political parties. Democrat and Republican parties both serve the same two constituencies: wealthy people and large corporations. I have 55 US patents and I have written 20 books, so you would think that I would support IP laws, but in general I don't. I do like Creative Commons licenses and for software GPL/AGPL, favoring them slightly over MIT and Apache (which I also use). Even with the obvious high level of corruption in the USA, I am hopeful that we can have a fair society with equal opportunity for all young people, peace, high productivity, and social justice. It is up to us as individuals on how we want to contribute to that effort.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  When your say you don't like IP Laws, do you mean you don't like IP at all, or just the way it's currently implemented?
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    I don't like how it is implemented. For example, copyrights would be fine with me if they were for short duration. Patents serve some purpose, but again, fewer patents and shorter terms would be better in my opinion.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
This has been tried, business people just stop investing in R&D and we ride out our current knowledge base.
- pochamago 5y ago
  That sounds super interesting to me, do you have a link to something about where and when that happened?
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    I would start with reading up on the BD act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act It was an interesting means to align investment that goes against seemingly intuitive notions of fairness.
deregulateMed 5y ago
I'm so apathetic to the LP. They infight, they have no power, and they aren't Republicans or Democrats. The are probably more correct than they are incorrect about things, they are like what modern Republicans should have turned into. But it's hopeless without charismatic and strong leadership, even the best candidate will get eaten by their own. See Justin Amash.
lend000 5y ago
For a while, I've supported a less extreme measure of cutting all patent and copyright durations in half (applied backwards to legacy patents), eliminating all legacy submarine patents, and requiring that a party proves it is actively using or trying to reduce a patent to practice in order to claim damages in court. But honestly, I think this would work. As long as NDA's are enforceable, which they are, that is sufficient protection for encouraging innovation as trade secrets. The downside, compared to the aforementioned idea, is that less new engineering knowledge is published into the public domain, to then stimulate further idea genesis. But either way is better than the current system. The patent office is so flooded that no one reads the garbage boilerplate that makes up 90%+ of patents.
version_five 5y ago
Happy to be corrected here, but what I understand is that what we call Intellectual Property (other than trademarks, and focusing mostly in copywriteable material) is a fleeting concept that arose between the time humans invented the printing press and the time we invented digital media where the incremental cost of copying is zero. During that time, IP mainly helped distributors make money by monopolizing physical manifestation and delivery of the IP, by running a printing press or record label or whatever. Before that, there was no distribution of e.g. music, and bands profited from live performances, much as they still do. The work to copy a manuscript set the value of books. It didn't stop writers from writing. I believe we're done with that period, and should accept it and go back to the historical standard that ideas have limited value (sorry) and the prize is in the execution. We are seeing this already I believe, with obvious things like Netflix and spotify, which are about accessibly and selection, and do not derive consumer value from the IP itself (evidence: it's easy to pirate music, why would I when I have access everywhere to a huge catalog for $10 a month from Spotify). Same with "good" cloud business models. Simple example, password managers like 1password give you access to passwords etc. everywhere, and manage security. That is how they produce value, the source code of their apps is valueless and in any event could be substituted with open source. This is in contrast with some software vendors that literally want to charge a subscription just to execute their code. I don't see that as a sustainable business model, because it wrongly assumes that the code itself has any value as property. I believe this is borne out by the way the market is heading, and by what already is open source vs what types of things people will pay for. So even if it's not mainstream, I'm happy to see anyone rethinking intellectual property.
- notJim 5y ago
  I think munificent gives a good justification for IP here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27716935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27716935 > I do not derive consumer value from the IP itself (evidence: it's easy to pirate music, why would I when I have access everywhere to a huge catalog for $10 a month from Netflix) It's imperfect and in need of reform, but IP exists to ensure that some of that $10 gets funneled back to the people who created that work. I'm a photographer, and people steal photographs and use them for profit constantly. IP enables me to force them to pay me for creating that work. Yes distributing a JPEG has essentially zero marginal cost, but producing it required me to wake up at 3 AM and hike off into the woods. Aside from my time, I had costs like acquiring equipment and gas to drive out there. I don't work with models, but if I did, they would deserve to be paid for their labor as well.

75 points by breck 5y ago

> The only proper role, if any, of existing governments in the economic realm is to protect property rights, > we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws Why don't they support ending real property or chattel property?

vidarh 5y ago
Disagreement over property rights is basically the distinction between the original left-wing libertarians and right-wing libertarians. Dejacque, the founder of libertarianism, first used the term in a scathing criticism of Proudhon where he nevertheless expressed his agreement with Proudhons "property is theft" while suggesting Proudhons was not radical enough.
- gowld 5y ago
  Fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque#Debate_with_Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D%C3%A9jacque#Debate_wi... "For Déjacque, on the other hand, the communal state of affairs — the phalanstery 'without any hierarchy, without any authority' except that of the 'statistics book' — corresponded to 'natural exchange,' i.e. to the 'unlimited freedom of all production and consumption; the abolition of any sign of agricultural, individual, artistic or scientific property; the destruction of any individual holding of the products of work; the demonarchisation and the demonetarisation of manual and intellectual capital as well as capital in instruments, commerce and buildings."[10]" I guess Colorado LP's "2 out of 3 kinds of property are legitimate" is a middle ground? (or 3 out of 4? Not sure how to classify their position on clean air as property)
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Maybe it's like trying to legalize marijuana but not mentioning heroin until a later election...
  - vidarh 5y ago
    It's not really a middle ground, in the sense that left-libertarianism see private property rights as inherently incompatible with liberty, and so the defence of property rights to a left-libertarian is a rejection of the most fundamental demand of libertarianism. While a rejection of intellectual property would be good, it's generally been less contested to start with. The distinction basically boils down to whether or not you see freedom as being about the possibility of doing something vs. about legal right in principle to do something. To left-libertarians, legal rights are meaningless if you are deprived of the ability to exercise them, be it by other laws or by lack of resources. And property rights flow right in the face of that, by denying access to scarce resources that enforce both the immediate lack of access, and economic inequality that prevents the exercise of other rights. To property specifically, I grew up in Norway. In Norway the freedom to roam is considered so intrinsic that until about a century ago it was the only major legal principle regularly treated as "common law" in a system otherwise strictly codified. Today it is codified, and you can hike across all privately owned uncultivated rural land as long as you leave it as you found it, and you can forage, and camp, because allowing public access to the land is seen as an essential trade-off between public liberty and private property rights. That would be closer to what a middle ground looks like - hollowing out private property rights to alter the balance of which protections a private owner has vs. the public. In Norway the balance seeks to recognise the distinction between a private dwelling, where allowing public access would be a massive intrusion vs. land holdings where public access has very limited direct effect on the owner, in e.g. setting limits on how close to private dwellings you can go or camp without asking permission. The point being similar to the libertarian socialist distinction between private and personal property - that there are substantial differences in to what extent maximising liberty requires protecting different kinds of property. If I own a forest and someone walks through it, the impact on my liberty is next to nil. But if someone wanders into my house at night, the impact is substantial. As such, denying someone access to a forest is government overreach that diminished the freedom of the public to a left-libertarian, but denying access to my house is justified because it affects me much more to be made to feel unsafe where I live than it affects others by being denied access to a given house.

brighton36 5y ago

This is a wonderful idea. The people who own the signs, direct the traffic. It's why small business is drying up. Also, 'intellectual property' is mostly just postmodern nonsense

zdw 5y ago

> Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. How? Is putting IP disputes in the court system "without government intervention?" As much as I would like to see an IP holders version of Robot Jox, I'd imagine this would turn into a "whoever has more money wins".

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> How? Is putting IP disputes in the court system "without government intervention?" Assume they’re advocating for some sort of arbitration system.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Oh awesome - so instead of an organization that is (sorta) held accountable to the public via elections we'd just let private organizations run the whole show?
  - shadowfox 5y ago
    Libertarianism tends to skew that way, often. So I wouldn't say it is surprising in the case, whether we agree or not.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I can't speak for all Libertarians and I'm not one myself - so don't take this as a blanket statement but, from my impression, a lot of Libertarians in the US support private alternatives to public services and private services as a first line of treatment. Advocating that IP claims should be forced to fail in private arbitration before being eligible for a hearing in public court is a reasonable way to prioritize the private market fixing problems on the cheap before consuming public resources - but removing the courts as the ultimate arbiter is a really big shift in my mind.
- notJim 5y ago
  That would work if there's a contract in place, but if IP rights are abolished entirely, what is there to arbitrate? I got a hold of your song and you don't like it? Well it was never "yours" in the first place.

srl 5y ago

The entirety of the statement: > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. This is madness. Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. Now, one can argue (without being completely incoherent) that intellectual property should not exist as a concept, but that amounts to abolishing a certain marketplace, not preventing "government intervention in the marketplace". Moreover, denying property rights outright for intangible goods is a strong position, and not one I usually associate with libertarians. Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> Sometimes local third party politics is the only thing less sane than national two-party politics. I'd say that applies to all the local politics, regardless of party. Some of the wackiest crap I've ever seen in politics happens locally, even under the banner of one of the big parties. Stuff they'd never say at the national level.
wyager 5y ago
> Without a notion of "property", there is no marketplace. Even the more extreme libertarians will generally agree that it is necessary for government to have police powers, partly to ensure that property rights are respected. No. Read Machinery of Freedom by Friedman for a primer on why this is not necessary.
- notJim 5y ago
  Any chance you could summarize the argument?
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Briefly, he argues for private courts and police companies which would prefer to settle things with money rather than force, because force is so expensive. It requires a utopia to work as described. Libertarians love it.

kstrauser 5y ago

I'm not opposed to this to some degree. For example, software patents are ludicrous and IMO hard to intellectually honestly defend. Copyrights are great but need to be drastically shortened (life+70 is an abomination). But trademarks have some customer-friendly properties: if I buy a soda with Coke's trademark design on it, I can be reasonably sure I'm buying an actual Coke product. OTOH, we also have the IOC suing people for using "Olympic" in the name of non-related businesses (eg https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/14095930099/olympics-committee-forces-oregon-restaurant-to-change-its-name.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/14095930099/olymp...), which should be a "too bad so sad" ruling for the defendant against anyone who names their organization after a physical location. As an aside, I strongly believe that entities should have to pay taxes on their intellectual properties. It's at least imaginable that you could defend your real estate without the government's assistance, even if that means hiring armed people to enforce the borders you're claiming. It's impossible to enforce IP without the government's assistance, and I think it's utterly unreasonable to expect that government to lift a finger to help protect it without paying taxes on it. I ran this by Cory Doctorow and he patiently explained why this isn't possible, but I still contend that even if it can't be, it ought to be.

tlholaday 5y ago
Did Cory Doctorow's explanation address valuing intellectual property via Harberger taxes?
- kstrauser 5y ago
  It didn't. The short version is that we don't currently have a wealth tax, with only a few specific kinds of things being taxable. I offered that maybe we could add IP to that list of things, and he said that this was the main gist of Piketty's plan and it had met with huge resistance, and that if we're going down that route we should probably start with stocks and bonds, etc.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    I'd like to see a copyright that was free for a reasonable amount of time, say 30 years then a fee starts at $10,000 on year+1 and doubles every year after.

vmception 5y ago

> “The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” I guess that part of the constitution doesn't require the Congress to do that

munk-a 5y ago
I don't agree with a full suspension of IP personally, but in response to that specific argument... If the common opinion is that the limited exclusivity window doesn't actually promote science and the useful arts then it wouldn't seem to actually mandate that that exclusivity window exists - or, if it must exist, it could be set to an arbitrarily short amount of time.
- blowski 5y ago
  Indeed. The constitution says "it has the power to set it" not that Congress shall set it. I think that's what the OP was saying anyway.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I agree with this. I could argue that the current ridiculously long windows (like physical inventions being exclusive long after they're obsolete, or a short story outliving its authors' grandchildren) are unconstitutional in that they impede progress of science and useful arts.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Damn, do you know any judge willing to take that stance without Congress rewriting itself? Just needs a trial judge and then an appellate group of judges to agree, and for no further appeal to happen

eevilspock 5y ago

Their stance on Property and Intellectual Monopolies are in contradiction. Why is one form of "property" respected and not the other?

Dracophoenix 5y ago
I can't speak for the definitions applied by LP of Colorado specifically but the general difference between real property and intellectual monopolies as they're currently applied is that any and all claims of real property are demonstrated through private contract and territorial defense. Intellectual monopolies necessitate the use of government force as a carrot for inventors and as a stick for everyone else (unless everything was done through blockchain).
- eevilspock 5y ago
  You believe that private real property "rights" don't depend on government force?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > any and all claims of real property are demonstrated through private contract and territorial defense. Intellectual monopolies necessitate the use of government force a Private contract is just the kind of agreement that government has decided provides a basis for government force, so the distinction you are drawing even as you have written it is largely fictitious.
- mcguire 5y ago
  I don't suppose you could explain how to originate a chain of title solely through private contract? In other words, what does it mean that God didn't give a title to the original owner of a property?
breck 5y ago
Because one it makes sense to call "property" and the other is literally the opposite of property. If you think such a thing as "intellectual property" exists, then you would also probably be fine with calling cigarettes "health pops!". If your computer is your property, but there are loads of peaceful things you cannot do with it where no one else is directly affected, then it is not your property. The term "Intellectual Property" is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

kristopolous 5y ago

IP has always rubbed me as preoccupied with protecting a past instead of forging a future. An effective monopoly over customers should be won through superior products in the marketplace, not by inferior products defended in the courts. Even when it's a superior product, often covetous protectors of excessive demands and restrictions hamper and kill it. Media formats, software, vehicle technology, the graveyard of brilliant products by petty tyrants zealously destroying their dreams through their own stubbornness is vast and depressing. I'm glad Apple knocked off Xerox, Tim Berners Lee knocked off Ted Nelson, and Linus knocked off a bunch of groups. I'm glad Encyclopedia Britannica didn't have IP rights to shut down wikipedia and W3Catalog, the first search engine wasn't going around knocking off Yahoo, Alta Vista and Google when they came around. I don't expect wide agreement with this, that's why I'm saying it.

lallysingh 5y ago
Without a brand, how does the customer know who's products they're buying?
- blowski 5y ago
  Tangentially, it's fascinating how the opposite problem pops up on Amazon - how do I know I'm actually buying brand X on Amazon? Maybe the solutions to both problems are related.
  - bastawhiz 5y ago
    It's almost as though there needs to be an organization that's appointed by and accountable to citizens to hold companies accountable for maintaining integrity on these matters.
    - randallsquared 5y ago
      An organization like, say, Consumer Reports? I assume that if they're selected by and accountable to me, I could choose to use a competitor organization, right? Otherwise they're neither chosen by me nor accountable to me, after all...

notJim 5y ago

This seems like classic libertarian confusion about where "property" comes from. > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. IP does not exist without government intervention. Government intervenes to create IP. This is true for real property as well, but at least with real property, you could form an army and defend your property that way without a government. Since IP is so easily transmissible, and often must be transmitted to be useful, this would be very challenging. If you write some source code, intending it to be proprietary (for your operating system, for example), and I obtain it somehow, you'd be screwed under this system. I guess you could call this "resolving the dispute without government intervention" in the sense that the resolution is me telling you to pound sand, but I don't think any capitalist system would find that satisfactory.

Analemma_ 5y ago
A true libertarian would respond that in Libertopia, IP rights are enforced by the owners themselves, at gunpoint. i.e. if you steal someone else's IP you can expect an unfriendly visit from a private militia. But they would concede we're a little ways out from that point and we have to go one step at a time.
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  As far as I know a true libertarian wouldn't care about IP because a piece of code or song can be copied infinitely with little effort therefore isn't scarce like property or an object. I think the fact that you can pretty much download every Austrian economic book for free from the Mises Institute website makes this clear. Note: I don't want to discuss politics. I don't care if you think its wrong or you don't like left or wing wing libertarians if that's a thing. I'm just stating what I know. Please keep your opinions about "the one true anarchist" to yourself.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Fortunately (in many ways), economists are not required to make a living from the proceeds of their writing. Do you happen to know of a libertarian economist who has specifically come out against property rights, and who has a book available from the Mises Institute? I might feel the urge to create a book this weekend.

heavyset_go 5y ago

I generally agree that IP needs to be reevaluated along with legislation like the DMCA, but I'm more in favor of making nuanced changes rather than complete abolition. I don't want to have to fight expensive legal battles in whatever private arbitration hellscape that right-libertarians have in mind in order to stop, say, SEO spammers from using my personal photos in their content. While I'm not a fan of the DMCA, I appreciate the recourse it gives me for things like that.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> > As we oppose all government intervention in the marketplace, we favor the repeal of intellectual property laws. Disputes between inventors, creators, authors, artists, businesses, and other such entities should be resolved without government intervention. Ending IP laws in this case is like ending laws against theft. Without government to define what property is in this case, I could just take without any need to engage in any dispute resolution.

ant6n 5y ago
A true libertarian doesn't believe it's up to the government to decide what's property. It's up to the market, that is, each person individually,... and their own personal army, to decide what's theirs.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Usually Somalia is a strawman, but maybe not in this case.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It's up to the market, that is, each person individually,... and their own personal army, to decide what's theirs. The distinction between “a government” and “a private individual with an armed force to impose, by force or intimidation, their will” is...not large. Mostly a matter of time.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    You described how feudal societies came to exist.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    You begin to see the problem with Libertarianism.

FounderBurr 5y ago

Absolutely, make GPL illegal.

kube-system 5y ago
This is probably the most obvious example of why this would be much more radical of a change than some people would expect at face value. Copyleft literally can't exist without copyright. Corporate interests will restrict their code (and everyone else's) with NDAs instead, and they'll only distribute binaries like it's 1990 again, but worse.
- dllthomas 5y ago
  > Copyleft literally can't exist without copyright. Copyleft (probably?) can't exist without government enforcement. In principle it could be direct rather than by way of copyright.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    It would never work. To do it directly, you'd have to contract with the other party. Those who don't want to contribute would no longer be compelled to do so, they can simply not accept the contract.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      You can have state-enforced copyleft without general copyright.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Then you aren’t arguing for eliminating copyright, you’re arguing for restrictions on copyright. If an author has no right to control the use of their work, they have no right to control the use of their work.
        5y ago

avsteele 5y ago

You can only think this is crazy if you haven't dealt with the Patent Office. They just can't do the job everyone thinks they are doing, so we'd be better of without patents at all.

dzonga 5y ago

IP laws are there to protect incumbents, not foster innovation. We literally had a post last week, on how the spicy sauce was able to be successful without copyright or IP protection. on another note, though I don't know if this is a right place for this: I feel we gonna have a strong push towards libertarianism due to the repressive media freedoms we've these days. I say this as a minority bpoc.

rytor718 5y ago
I think I agree with you in general. Its interesting, because on the one hand these laws exist for the theft and abuse in the market that a lack of IP laws allowed in the past. Yet the current implementation is an embarrassing mockery of a system for protecting property. The current IP office and laws literally cannot do the job they're made to do. Hard as they might try. But as long as we continue to be a market economy, it seems there must still be some regulation of IP. Though I can't say with an specificity what that should look like. I personally don't like the idea of intellectual property, but I can still see the value of protections for it. I'd like to see much, much shorter time frames for exercising IP ownership and a perhaps some kind of licensing fee/tax to encourage productivity and innovation. You're not going to mess around with something you have to pay to upkeep and you're likely to actively develop your idea into a product or else sell it. This would favor incumbents in a way that's justifiable I think.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

Sounds reasonable. BTW, after a lifetime of being a Democrat, I registered as a Libertarian last year. Just my opinion, but the USA would be so much better off with 4 or 5 active political parties. Democrat and Republican parties both serve the same two constituencies: wealthy people and large corporations. I have 55 US patents and I have written 20 books, so you would think that I would support IP laws, but in general I don't. I do like Creative Commons licenses and for software GPL/AGPL, favoring them slightly over MIT and Apache (which I also use). Even with the obvious high level of corruption in the USA, I am hopeful that we can have a fair society with equal opportunity for all young people, peace, high productivity, and social justice. It is up to us as individuals on how we want to contribute to that effort.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
When your say you don't like IP Laws, do you mean you don't like IP at all, or just the way it's currently implemented?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I don't like how it is implemented. For example, copyrights would be fine with me if they were for short duration. Patents serve some purpose, but again, fewer patents and shorter terms would be better in my opinion.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This has been tried, business people just stop investing in R&D and we ride out our current knowledge base.

pochamago 5y ago
That sounds super interesting to me, do you have a link to something about where and when that happened?
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I would start with reading up on the BD act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act It was an interesting means to align investment that goes against seemingly intuitive notions of fairness.

deregulateMed 5y ago

I'm so apathetic to the LP. They infight, they have no power, and they aren't Republicans or Democrats. The are probably more correct than they are incorrect about things, they are like what modern Republicans should have turned into. But it's hopeless without charismatic and strong leadership, even the best candidate will get eaten by their own. See Justin Amash.

lend000 5y ago

For a while, I've supported a less extreme measure of cutting all patent and copyright durations in half (applied backwards to legacy patents), eliminating all legacy submarine patents, and requiring that a party proves it is actively using or trying to reduce a patent to practice in order to claim damages in court. But honestly, I think this would work. As long as NDA's are enforceable, which they are, that is sufficient protection for encouraging innovation as trade secrets. The downside, compared to the aforementioned idea, is that less new engineering knowledge is published into the public domain, to then stimulate further idea genesis. But either way is better than the current system. The patent office is so flooded that no one reads the garbage boilerplate that makes up 90%+ of patents.

version_five 5y ago

Happy to be corrected here, but what I understand is that what we call Intellectual Property (other than trademarks, and focusing mostly in copywriteable material) is a fleeting concept that arose between the time humans invented the printing press and the time we invented digital media where the incremental cost of copying is zero. During that time, IP mainly helped distributors make money by monopolizing physical manifestation and delivery of the IP, by running a printing press or record label or whatever. Before that, there was no distribution of e.g. music, and bands profited from live performances, much as they still do. The work to copy a manuscript set the value of books. It didn't stop writers from writing. I believe we're done with that period, and should accept it and go back to the historical standard that ideas have limited value (sorry) and the prize is in the execution. We are seeing this already I believe, with obvious things like Netflix and spotify, which are about accessibly and selection, and do not derive consumer value from the IP itself (evidence: it's easy to pirate music, why would I when I have access everywhere to a huge catalog for $10 a month from Spotify). Same with "good" cloud business models. Simple example, password managers like 1password give you access to passwords etc. everywhere, and manage security. That is how they produce value, the source code of their apps is valueless and in any event could be substituted with open source. This is in contrast with some software vendors that literally want to charge a subscription just to execute their code. I don't see that as a sustainable business model, because it wrongly assumes that the code itself has any value as property. I believe this is borne out by the way the market is heading, and by what already is open source vs what types of things people will pay for. So even if it's not mainstream, I'm happy to see anyone rethinking intellectual property.

notJim 5y ago
I think munificent gives a good justification for IP here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27716935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27716935 > I do not derive consumer value from the IP itself (evidence: it's easy to pirate music, why would I when I have access everywhere to a huge catalog for $10 a month from Netflix) It's imperfect and in need of reform, but IP exists to ensure that some of that $10 gets funneled back to the people who created that work. I'm a photographer, and people steal photographs and use them for profit constantly. IP enables me to force them to pay me for creating that work. Yes distributing a JPEG has essentially zero marginal cost, but producing it required me to wake up at 3 AM and hike off into the woods. Aside from my time, I had costs like acquiring equipment and gas to drive out there. I don't work with models, but if I did, they would deserve to be paid for their labor as well.