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Interesting you consider copyright to be a regulation rather than a definition of a property right. To the extent that private property is an essential compone

Interesting you consider copyright to be a regulation rather than a definition of a property right. To the extent that private property is an essential component of capitalism, and that intellectual property is a component of private property, your classification of copyright as a regulation rather than capitalism itself makes little sense.

pdonis 4y ago
> intellectual property is a component of private property That is precisely the question that is disputed in discussions of copyright. "Intellectual property" in itself is an ambiguous term: does it mean the ideas themselves, or particular expressions of them? Copyright law says the latter: ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted (or patented), only particular expressions of them can. That is because ideas are non-rivalrous: people can give them to others without losing the use of them themselves. That takes away the justification for private property rights, namely, to avoid conflicts over who gets to use the property. Prior to computers and the Internet, one could argue that particular copies of a particular expression of an idea, such as a book, were rivalrous: I can't both give a book to you and read it myself at the same time. But with digital copies that is no longer true. So the same logic that makes ideas themselves not private property, now pushes us towards not treating copies of digital works as private property either. The original justification for copyright law was to encourage people to create works. But that was always a questionable claim, because nobody creates works in a vacuum. From the standpoint of creation, the Internet has made clear that many more works get created when there is free sharing of digital copies. And the Internet has also enabled other ways of paying people whose creative works you like, besides having to pay for individual copies; that's what systems like Patreon are for. So that original justification for copyright law has now lost whatever validity it once had. The best piece of evidence for who really benefits from copyright law, though, is who is pushing hardest for draconian enforcement of it. Is that content creators, i.e., actual authors and artists and musicians, etc.? No. It's the media companies, whose business model depends on being able to, not to put too fine a point on it, exploit content creators by convincing them that working through the media companies is the only way to get them a large audience--and then siphoning off most of the profits for themselves instead of paying them back to the creators.
- comte7092 4y ago
  I agree with many of your points, but my original point still stands. Supporters of capitalism typically private property as innately good. Copyright isn’t a perversion of capitalism, nor is it a regulation that bends the shape of some pure form of capitalism, it is capitalism. What’s notable about intellectual property is the fact that it is a relatively recent concept in the history of property, so we can trace its original justifications. It is however, not all that different from other forms of property.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > It is however, not all that different from other forms of property. As I said, this is precisely the point that is disputed in discussions of copyright law. You certainly can't just assume it as a fact. But the capitalists who are exploiting copyright law to their own benefit would certainly love it if everyone would just take it as given that "intellectual property" is private property. That's an example of the general pattern I have described elsewhere in this discussion, that capitalists want people to think regulations are for the people's benefit, instead of for the benefit of the capitalists. That is the capitalists' ideal state of regulatory capture.
    - comte7092 4y ago
      I don’t see how you can’t consider this to be the case for all forms of property. Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit. There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward. You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. I’d posit that is not how the system is structured nor is it how it is intended to be structured. That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is. You can’t just take out the parts you don’t like and treat them as a separate entity.
      - pdonis 4y ago
        > all forms of property The problem is that you are assuming that "intellectual property" is property. You cannot assume that. > Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit. Enclosure of parts of the commons that are rivalrous--only one person can use that part at a time--was, yes. But as I have already said, "intellectual property" is non-rivalrous, so this argument does not apply to it. > There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward This is quite true; it's why we have a complex system of private property common law for physical property, and some kinds (such as real estate) have even more complexity in the law attached to them. But "intellectual property" is not physical property, and you can't just assume that all of the law that has been developed for physical property is automatically applicable to "intellectual property" as well. > You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. I am doing no such thing. Indeed, the feature of capitalism I have been describing, namely regulatory capture, is not for the benefit of society; it is a net loss to society. But it is a benefit to the capitalists who buy the regulations they want. That's why they buy them. > That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is. In the sense that regulatory capture is a common end state of capitalism (where "capitalism", as I have said elsewhere in this discussion, is not the same thing as "free markets", although capitalists would love for people to think it is), yes, it is "inherent" to capitalism. That still doesn't mean it's a net benefit to society. It isn't.
JohnFen 4y ago
Copyright is explicitly not a property right. It is a a deal between the creators of a work and the public in order to benefit society. In exchange for a temporary monopoly over the work, it becomes public domain.
- comte7092 4y ago
  What you’re talking about flies in the face of the entirety of the western legal tradition. It is explicitly a property right. Hence the phrase “intellectual property”.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    This isn't quite correct. Check the history of copyright, it's really fascinating. There was a lot of debate about it in the US because of a fear that it would be interpreted as a property right. In many ways it resembles a property right, but it is missing fundamental aspects of property rights. What copyright actually is is a limited-time monopoly right. When it expires, the creator of the work loses that "right". It exists not for the benefit of the creators of a work, but for the benefit of the public. Copyright is a temporary restriction on the rights of others. As a society, we deem that acceptable because it's temporary and because it encourages people to make their works publicly available, thus enriching culture and society. If it were a property right, then it would make no sense that you lose that property at the expiration of copyright.
    - comte7092 4y ago
      You’re placing an artificial requirement on the definition in order to support your argument. Copyright may be owned, bought, sold, transferred or otherwise discharged in the same manner that any other form of property is. Nothing about property inherently implies such claim exists in perpetuity.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Ok, I'll grant you and dragonwriter that. I was interpreting "property right" at a different level of abstraction than you. I was thinking it was referring to the thing that is copyrighted as being the "property", not the copyright itself. Changing my frame of reference up a level of abstraction puts us in agreement, I think.

pdonis 4y ago

> intellectual property is a component of private property That is precisely the question that is disputed in discussions of copyright. "Intellectual property" in itself is an ambiguous term: does it mean the ideas themselves, or particular expressions of them? Copyright law says the latter: ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted (or patented), only particular expressions of them can. That is because ideas are non-rivalrous: people can give them to others without losing the use of them themselves. That takes away the justification for private property rights, namely, to avoid conflicts over who gets to use the property. Prior to computers and the Internet, one could argue that particular copies of a particular expression of an idea, such as a book, were rivalrous: I can't both give a book to you and read it myself at the same time. But with digital copies that is no longer true. So the same logic that makes ideas themselves not private property, now pushes us towards not treating copies of digital works as private property either. The original justification for copyright law was to encourage people to create works. But that was always a questionable claim, because nobody creates works in a vacuum. From the standpoint of creation, the Internet has made clear that many more works get created when there is free sharing of digital copies. And the Internet has also enabled other ways of paying people whose creative works you like, besides having to pay for individual copies; that's what systems like Patreon are for. So that original justification for copyright law has now lost whatever validity it once had. The best piece of evidence for who really benefits from copyright law, though, is who is pushing hardest for draconian enforcement of it. Is that content creators, i.e., actual authors and artists and musicians, etc.? No. It's the media companies, whose business model depends on being able to, not to put too fine a point on it, exploit content creators by convincing them that working through the media companies is the only way to get them a large audience--and then siphoning off most of the profits for themselves instead of paying them back to the creators.

comte7092 4y ago
I agree with many of your points, but my original point still stands. Supporters of capitalism typically private property as innately good. Copyright isn’t a perversion of capitalism, nor is it a regulation that bends the shape of some pure form of capitalism, it is capitalism. What’s notable about intellectual property is the fact that it is a relatively recent concept in the history of property, so we can trace its original justifications. It is however, not all that different from other forms of property.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > It is however, not all that different from other forms of property. As I said, this is precisely the point that is disputed in discussions of copyright law. You certainly can't just assume it as a fact. But the capitalists who are exploiting copyright law to their own benefit would certainly love it if everyone would just take it as given that "intellectual property" is private property. That's an example of the general pattern I have described elsewhere in this discussion, that capitalists want people to think regulations are for the people's benefit, instead of for the benefit of the capitalists. That is the capitalists' ideal state of regulatory capture.
  - comte7092 4y ago
    I don’t see how you can’t consider this to be the case for all forms of property. Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit. There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward. You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. I’d posit that is not how the system is structured nor is it how it is intended to be structured. That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is. You can’t just take out the parts you don’t like and treat them as a separate entity.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > all forms of property The problem is that you are assuming that "intellectual property" is property. You cannot assume that. > Enclosure of the commons was certainly for private benefit. Enclosure of parts of the commons that are rivalrous--only one person can use that part at a time--was, yes. But as I have already said, "intellectual property" is non-rivalrous, so this argument does not apply to it. > There are numerous aspects of physical property ownership that we just take for granted that are not at all straightforward This is quite true; it's why we have a complex system of private property common law for physical property, and some kinds (such as real estate) have even more complexity in the law attached to them. But "intellectual property" is not physical property, and you can't just assume that all of the law that has been developed for physical property is automatically applicable to "intellectual property" as well. > You seem to be using a “is it for the benefit of society” test to determine whether something is an intrinsic feature of capitalism. I am doing no such thing. Indeed, the feature of capitalism I have been describing, namely regulatory capture, is not for the benefit of society; it is a net loss to society. But it is a benefit to the capitalists who buy the regulations they want. That's why they buy them. > That’s not regulatory capture, that is inherent to what it is. In the sense that regulatory capture is a common end state of capitalism (where "capitalism", as I have said elsewhere in this discussion, is not the same thing as "free markets", although capitalists would love for people to think it is), yes, it is "inherent" to capitalism. That still doesn't mean it's a net benefit to society. It isn't.

JohnFen 4y ago

Copyright is explicitly not a property right. It is a a deal between the creators of a work and the public in order to benefit society. In exchange for a temporary monopoly over the work, it becomes public domain.

comte7092 4y ago
What you’re talking about flies in the face of the entirety of the western legal tradition. It is explicitly a property right. Hence the phrase “intellectual property”.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This isn't quite correct. Check the history of copyright, it's really fascinating. There was a lot of debate about it in the US because of a fear that it would be interpreted as a property right. In many ways it resembles a property right, but it is missing fundamental aspects of property rights. What copyright actually is is a limited-time monopoly right. When it expires, the creator of the work loses that "right". It exists not for the benefit of the creators of a work, but for the benefit of the public. Copyright is a temporary restriction on the rights of others. As a society, we deem that acceptable because it's temporary and because it encourages people to make their works publicly available, thus enriching culture and society. If it were a property right, then it would make no sense that you lose that property at the expiration of copyright.
  - comte7092 4y ago
    You’re placing an artificial requirement on the definition in order to support your argument. Copyright may be owned, bought, sold, transferred or otherwise discharged in the same manner that any other form of property is. Nothing about property inherently implies such claim exists in perpetuity.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Ok, I'll grant you and dragonwriter that. I was interpreting "property right" at a different level of abstraction than you. I was thinking it was referring to the thing that is copyrighted as being the "property", not the copyright itself. Changing my frame of reference up a level of abstraction puts us in agreement, I think.