4 ms·

I know it's well-enshrined in law, but I don't know that I'll ever wrap my head around the bedrock principle that supposedly keeps "intellectual property" from

by smeej 4y ago

I know it's well-enshrined in law, but I don't know that I'll ever wrap my head around the bedrock principle that supposedly keeps "intellectual property" from being an oxymoron. Someone else gets to tell me that I can't arrange bits on my computer in the same pattern as the bits on someone else's computer, just because they arranged their bits in that order first? It just doesn't compute for me. Property laws exist because if I take your shoe, you don't have your shoe anymore. If I arrange bits on my computer in the same order as the bits on yours, you still have yours, and you can still do all the same things with them that you could before. I don't see why you should have a right to tell me how I can or can't use my property just because you came up with a specific way to use yours. This is especially true if we're talking about ideas and not digital copies, like with NDAs. Telling me I can't tell anybody else about the thoughts in my brain because someone else prompted me to think them just boggles my mind. I think "intellectual property" is a contradiction in terms.

harshreality 4y ago
It's a bad term. It's a monopoly privilege artificially granted by government to encourage more people to create useful works (hopefully actually useful, not just a theoretical possibility of being useful). That conflicts with the natural rights that people would otherwise have to do what they want with atoms or bits they possess.
- mcv 4y ago
  > It's a bad term. It's a monopoly privilege artificially granted by government To publishers who want to equate violation of that monopoly privilege with theft, it's a very good term.
- EntrePrescott 4y ago
  > That conflicts with the natural rights that people would otherwise have to do what they want with atoms or bits they possess not natural rights but natural possibilities - which by the way are totally disjoint from "rights" which are a legal/moral/civilizational construct/convention. And property (be it about physical or "intellectual" goods) is exactly one such right i.e. a legal/moral/civilizational construct/convention. Outside of the individual's own life and body (and very few subjects directly related to that), it quickly becomes very muddy and subjective at best to argue with "natural rights", especially when it comes to property rights. Whether or not my property claim to my PC or my garden is more justified than the property claim of some IP creator or publisher to their works, they both have in common that the property right, for as much as it exists, is a legal/civilizational norm that exists by virtue of being defined and enforced by the civilizational system we live in. So at the end of the day, like so often in legal matters when there is a conflict of interest and priorization between two rights or legal principles (i.e. legal/moral/civilizational construct/conventions), it all comes down to how the legal system is set up to balance and prioritize the conflicting principles/rights depending on the case configuration.
alphanullmeric 4y ago
Few people that claim to believe in intellectual “property” do so consistently. For instance, most of these artists claiming they’re being stolen from by AI would not support arresting people over copying NFTs, pirating, etc. IP is just a sorry excuse for getting state sponsored rights to thoughts and ideas.
Hermitian909 4y ago
> Property laws exist because if I take your shoe, you don't have your shoe anymore. This is a common misunderstanding about property law, and speaks to a broader misunderstanding about law in the tech community. In practice law in the US is not based on first principles thinking, though first principles thinking lays out some of its corner stone ideas. The law should be thought of as being primarily consequentialist. A tool to uphold the legislative spirit of the constitution and bills passed by the legislature. You can get some pretty wild readings of the law in order to uphold the law's "spirit". Note that the bias towards adhering to older rulings is also consequentialist, the preference is a stable if slightly interpretation of the long than many small refinements over time. It's natural to wonder why the law isn't made to be based on first principles, the answer is that no one will accept the consequences! All legislative bodies move slowly and people who find loopholes move fast. Truly strict interpretation of the law is bedlam. (Which is not to say you can't move the needle)
userbinator 4y ago
That's why those who oppose it like to call it imaginary property.
abracadaniel 4y ago
I often wonder if you could take any arbitrary bytes as input to something like an image generator, and then copyright your image, thus giving two people copyright on the same bit string. You’re then free to distribute your image string which also happens to be able to be interpreted by VlC as something else completely.

by smeej 4y ago

harshreality 4y ago

It's a bad term. It's a monopoly privilege artificially granted by government to encourage more people to create useful works (hopefully actually useful, not just a theoretical possibility of being useful). That conflicts with the natural rights that people would otherwise have to do what they want with atoms or bits they possess.

mcv 4y ago
> It's a bad term. It's a monopoly privilege artificially granted by government To publishers who want to equate violation of that monopoly privilege with theft, it's a very good term.
EntrePrescott 4y ago
> That conflicts with the natural rights that people would otherwise have to do what they want with atoms or bits they possess not natural rights but natural possibilities - which by the way are totally disjoint from "rights" which are a legal/moral/civilizational construct/convention. And property (be it about physical or "intellectual" goods) is exactly one such right i.e. a legal/moral/civilizational construct/convention. Outside of the individual's own life and body (and very few subjects directly related to that), it quickly becomes very muddy and subjective at best to argue with "natural rights", especially when it comes to property rights. Whether or not my property claim to my PC or my garden is more justified than the property claim of some IP creator or publisher to their works, they both have in common that the property right, for as much as it exists, is a legal/civilizational norm that exists by virtue of being defined and enforced by the civilizational system we live in. So at the end of the day, like so often in legal matters when there is a conflict of interest and priorization between two rights or legal principles (i.e. legal/moral/civilizational construct/conventions), it all comes down to how the legal system is set up to balance and prioritize the conflicting principles/rights depending on the case configuration.

alphanullmeric 4y ago

Few people that claim to believe in intellectual “property” do so consistently. For instance, most of these artists claiming they’re being stolen from by AI would not support arresting people over copying NFTs, pirating, etc. IP is just a sorry excuse for getting state sponsored rights to thoughts and ideas.

Hermitian909 4y ago

> Property laws exist because if I take your shoe, you don't have your shoe anymore. This is a common misunderstanding about property law, and speaks to a broader misunderstanding about law in the tech community. In practice law in the US is not based on first principles thinking, though first principles thinking lays out some of its corner stone ideas. The law should be thought of as being primarily consequentialist. A tool to uphold the legislative spirit of the constitution and bills passed by the legislature. You can get some pretty wild readings of the law in order to uphold the law's "spirit". Note that the bias towards adhering to older rulings is also consequentialist, the preference is a stable if slightly interpretation of the long than many small refinements over time. It's natural to wonder why the law isn't made to be based on first principles, the answer is that no one will accept the consequences! All legislative bodies move slowly and people who find loopholes move fast. Truly strict interpretation of the law is bedlam. (Which is not to say you can't move the needle)

userbinator 4y ago

That's why those who oppose it like to call it imaginary property.

abracadaniel 4y ago

I often wonder if you could take any arbitrary bytes as input to something like an image generator, and then copyright your image, thus giving two people copyright on the same bit string. You’re then free to distribute your image string which also happens to be able to be interpreted by VlC as something else completely.