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"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to

"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?

agalunar 4y ago
If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or own a digital copy is because society decided that it would punish you for doing so – and that's unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.
- encomiast 4y ago
  Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.
  - agalunar 4y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's not physical law in the same sense – nothing compels you to take something from me (or prevents you from taking something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as you said). On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance. edit: I should clarify that you and I can share something in the sense that we can freely give it back and forth, but if we have one shovel, we can't both be shovelling at the same time (and can't share it at all if we live far apart). And if we're talking about food, well, we can't both take the same bite of bread.
    - anikan_vader 4y ago
      Well, collective ownership and communal property are arguably just as “natural” as private property.
      - robobro 4y ago
        Rather than "private property" do you mean "personal property" ?
    - travisgriggs 4y ago
      > nothing compels you to take something from me What if you’ve hoarded all the food or all the water, and I need it to survive? Would that be compelling? I’m with the other guy. These distinctions are arbitrary. They may be useful for a society that attempts to maximize “happiness@ (also arbitrary), but it remains that they are not universally obvious.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - encomiast 4y ago
      My point is that you are picking and choosing which parts of nature you value. The idea of "having", of ownership, is not natural. Many people like Locke have tried to connect it nature, but with limited success — it's still a human construct. In the natural world ownership is defended purely by force or guile. So you are taking this idea of ownership, protected by human constructs of law, and then adding a caveat that it only applies to physical objects. But that's not a natural consequence of the idea of ownership. We make up laws based on the outcomes we desire. One of those outcomes, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, is explicitly called out in the US Constitution. Maybe you don't think promoting those things are important, or maybe you don't think copyright is effective at doing that, but you are not making that argument. You are making some novel, unsupportable argument about natural law and physics that frankly doesn't stand up to any sort of rigorous argument.
      - 4y ago
  - mushbino 4y ago
    The golden rule is pretty universal for human.
    - komali2 4y ago
      The golden rule fails as soon as you introduce someone of one culture to another. Example: my friends and I have a massively western-masculine internal culture. At parties people would ask if we were "ok" because a minute earlier we'd have been shouting at each other how smooth brained and stupid each other was. Of course we'd be fine, that's how we talk to each other. We'd get frustrated if someone tried to talk through implication - one time I asked my friend to put his seatbelt on and he said "wtf just tell me to put my fucking seat belt on don't be all soft about it." But if we turned that culture on someone else we'd be the most horrible of bullies. Not everyone wants to be "talked to straight" like that, and that's fine. I'd get mad if someone let me walk around with a booger on my face. "do unto me" is to say to me "lol saving that for later?", But to someone else a much more polite method is probably desirable. "Do unto me" might mean literally not talking to or approaching someone. It might mean feeling spurned or like someone thinks you're disgusting if a hug or handshake is avoided. Do unto me is far too simple a rule. We need more communication involved.
      - brabel 4y ago
        > my friends and I have a massively western-masculine internal culture. Sounds to me like you just have "teenage boy" culture.
        komali2 4y ago
        Sure, you can call it that, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it, I was just talking to my gf about how despite its toxicity, it was a pretty viable social training ground. My theory is that it allowed all of us grown up in it to much better handle awkward, uncomfortable, or dangerous social situations, by giving us the tools to defuse most situations. Meanwhile she was bringing up tools for defusing situations because she heard it from a twitch streamer. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, I'm just saying, it was how we learned, and led to us very rarely feeling uncomfortable in any social situation.
  - yucky 4y ago
    Except in that instance you would be depriving him of that thing. Making a digital copy of what he has would no more deprive him of that thing than taking a picture of his painting on the wall.
  - johnnymorgan 4y ago
    You've misconstrued natural law with might is right, which is a concept not a law.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object Depending on the definition of having, which goes begs the question.
- Winsaucerer 4y ago
  > If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. The parent was asking which laws are not constructs, and your example I don't think works as an answer to that question. In what sense do you "have" that physical object? For example, what does it mean to say "I have a phone"? "Having" in that sense is a construct, not a natural thing. You might be holding the phone, you might put it down, I might hold it while you are holding it, I might pick it up when you put it down, I might look at it while you aren't, etc. But there's nothing in any of those real natural world descriptions that correspond to having, until you start to include our social constructs around possession.
  - pookeh 4y ago
    He means owning the phone.
  - agalunar 4y ago
    This was imprecise on my part; I apologize. I explained what I meant by "having" in a daughter comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299668) and made a clarification regarding sharing in another (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299420).
- hurril 4y ago
  Sure I can. The one you were just holding. You are relying on the meaning of the concept of having or owning, thinking that you don’t have to either define that or rely on a preexisting definition. Whoops.
- uxcolumbo 4y ago
  How do we ensure that creators are well compensated for their creations that are enjoyed by thousands or millions of people, so they can continue creating without ending up having to flip burgers and not creating at all?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  But you’re depriving the person that originally created the original digital something of the proceeds from their hard work. I don’t think we can have a conversation about free distribution of IP without considering the original creator. The creator depends on getting remunerated for each copy of their work. How are they to live?
- muyuu 4y ago
  > f I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). the unnatural, made up construct is that your property is recognised and respected by law, so that you don't have to physically defend it and potentially lose it to someone or some group stronger, perhaps more violent, than yourself if you only recognise physical ownership, you only own objects as long as you can physically protect them yourself and you explicitly deny any further rights not to have them robbed, as that is also an "unnatural, made up construct" - you were not robbed, there is a just different physical ownership going on now
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
If people always beat me up and snatch my stuff the moment I am not looking, that's not very good living. Even if I am wealthy enough to hire guards, they can turn on me at any moment and get all my stuff rather than just what I am willing to pay. So we opt for a peaceful, honest society where people are not allowed to hurt each other, steal or break contracts. On the other hand, if I learn from other people and they learn for me, we all become smarter and more productive.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
I agree with you. We can simply say IP is a concept that we need to bust. And that's fine. No need to invoke weird "reasoning" like that.
- pfisch 4y ago
  I personally like that movies and videogames exist and can be made with large budgets because that generally makes them better. I don't see how that continues without IP.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    There will still be a first to market advantage.
    - ChrisKnott 4y ago
      I don't see how that works in a world truly without copyright. You can't spend hundreds of millions making GTA6 if the first person you sell it to can give away copies.
      - burnished 4y ago
        Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy things from people who make things they like.
        pfisch 4y ago
        If there is no IP I can just download your game and sell it on the epic store. In fact, Steam doesn't even need to pay the developers royalties at all.
        ChrisKnott 4y ago
        I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it put around HL2.
Thorrez 4y ago
Is there a such thing as morality or ethics? Is there any action that is unethical?
- coldtea 4y ago
  There is, but not one imposed by the laws of physics or some universal given. ] For example it was moral and ethical (and you were considered a good person regardless of whether you did it) to own slaves when that was the prevalent morality of a societies. So, there are actions that are unethical based on made up human constructs of morality. Nature and physics doesn't care either way. Which is the parent's point: what laws and ethical norms aren't "unnatural" and aren't made up? All are. Doesn't mean they are not useful and good for being that.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    It was accepted as an economic reality but it was never considered moral or ethical to own slaves any more than it’s considered ethical to own a tool shed today.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Of course it was absolutely considered moral and ethical. There are tons of old articles, books, and treteases on the matter, describing it as perfectly moral and ethical, and how its beneficial to the slaves, who lack agency, are animal like, and are offered "useful work" from their masters who know better, how they are beastly and need the whip to get sense into them, and so on. That's of course, on top of the fact that slave owners were among the most respected good-standing members of society, and only controversial figures considered them imoral and unethical for owning slave. In fact abolitionists were considered bad people, not unlike today's terrorists and activists. Theses idea of the morality of being a slave owner, and the superiority and natural right of the owners vs the slaves, is universal in societies that held slaves (as was in societies were royals and lords were above folks reduced to peasants). Regarding the South, for example: "What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious leaders telling their flock? Southern clergy defended the morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which they held up as the universal and objective standard for moral issues. (...) Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures. A fellow reverend from Virginia agreed that on no other subject “are [the Bible’s] instructions more explicit, or their salutary tendency and influence more thoroughly tested and corroborated by experience than on the subject of slavery.” The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, asserted that slavery “has received the sanction of Jehova.” As a South Carolina Presbyterian concluded: “If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not what they do justify.” As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case: “Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy, never could authorize the practice of a moral evil. But god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of his Providence, but the express provision of his word. Therefore, slavery is not a moral evil.” Since the Bible was the source for moral authority, the case was closed. “Man may err,” said the southern theologian James Thornwell, “but God can never lie.” The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was a “religious character to the present struggle. Anti-slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.” During the 1850’s, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit became especially strident. A preacher in Richmond exalted slavery as “the most blessed and beautiful form of social government known; the only one that solves the problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a beneficent patriarchate.” The Central Presbyterian affirmed that slavery was “a relation essential to the existence of civilized society.” By 1860, Southern preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners that “both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time.” Same for politicians: William Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, explained that Lincoln’s election had made the North more defiant than ever. As Harris saw things, “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.” Lincoln and his followers, he stated, aimed to “overturn and strike down this great feature of our union and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.” For Harris, the choice was clear. Mississippi would “rather see the last of her race, men, women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.” More to the point, he noted, abolition meant “the turning loose upon society, without the salutary restraints to which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in idleness over the country until their wants should drive most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to the bolder crimes of robbery and murder.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slaveholding-southerners-fought#:~:text=As%20Southerners%20became%20increasingly%20isolated,they%20owned%20slaves%20or%20not https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slavehol....
numpad0 4y ago
It’s kind of true that idea of IP is entirely made-up, but it’s also important to recognize that it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living. IP allows authors to require values of content to be preserved, recognized, and financially rewarded(in one-time or recurring payments). In the absence of IP, printing companies can take manuscripts and contents to profit off of copies free-for-all style, bankrupting manuscript writers. However, it was NOT designed to protect interest of multinational megacorporates, causing individual contributors to be ignored and paid for presence in its making than input in the product; such use of IP is basically a polar opposite of its intent. We should stop allowing corporates to take ownership of IPs. J.K. Rowling enjoying her life is fine, that is intellectual property as intended. “(C)Disney” or “(C)2023 Electronic Arts. All Rights Reserved.” is not. Those latter cases is how and where IP laws are not working as intended.
- encomiast 4y ago
  “it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living”. That’s not really true. It least in the US, its stated purpose is to promote the useful arts and sciences. Incentivizing authors is a means to that end. If incentivizing corporations achieves those ends as well, it would seem to be consistent with the original purpose. Of course, there are probably valid arguments that corporate ownership of IP doesn’t always promote the useful arts and sciences (for example patent trolls).
  - bruce511 4y ago
    "patent trolls" is an unhelpful term because it is in the eye of the beholder. Was Amazon being a patent troll patenting single-click-to-purchase? Was Apple a troll in patenting Swipe to Unlock? They were using those patents in their products. On the other hand is the Tolkien Estate patent trolls? They're not producing anything new.) If I have a dozen patents, and some company wants to buy them from me, is that any different to me selling my company? Surely I can sell my assets? The root issue are not "patent trolls". Being sued by Amazon is no less disruptive than by Trolls r US. The root issue is the nature of the patents being issued. The root of copyright issues are (mostly) not about actual copyright, but the length of copyright.
scythe 4y ago
The most obvious distinction between intellectual property and ordinary property is their history. Ownership of things has existed for longer than reliable records are available. Copyright and patents, by contrast, were created during the late Renaissance in response to the particular economic circumstances of the time. They have since become the tools of entrenched interests who would rather suggest that things have always been this way and we couldn't live without it. Is anything humans do natural? The only thing that can make something unnatural, so far as we understand it, is human intervention. Insofar as we conceive of unnaturalness as a recognizable quality of phenomena, it is more acute when the humans responsible are more sophisticated in their methods. We can easily observe a very large difference between the primitiveness of human society when it created the ownership of things and the much more advanced culture that devised what we now call intellectual property. From this construction of what is natural and what is not, we clearly find that intellectual property is much less "natural", though there is still the necessity of accepting that "natural" can be a meaningful idea at all.
- canibal57 4y ago
  Nearly everything humans do is natural. We have just made up clever ruses to hide the vulgarity of much of it and to dissuade ourselves that the disparity caused by the natural order has no chance to be solved.
- generj 4y ago
  I’d argue intellectual property existed earlier than that, as soon as states (or guilds) considered certain techniques and skills exclusive to them. Off the top of my mind, with a solely European view the Venetians moved glass production to Murano in the 13th century at least partially to make a monopoly on luxury glass. World History was awhile ago but other restrictions on technology transfer existed by at least 800 CE and probably in a limited sense well before 1000 BCE.
  - mymythisisthis 4y ago
    Guilds would get the right to do something by the government, to the exclusion of others. Such as the haberdasher guild, that had the right to sew and no one else could sew commercially. Patent was invented to break the guilds. A guild member could reveal a technology publicly, and get a 10 year right to use it. This was to make progress go faster, as guilds kept technology secret.
casey2 4y ago
>What laws? All natural rights, life (bodily functions e.g. the right to eat not to have something to eat), speech, association etc. Broadly defined as anything a person can do that doesn't require violence or compulsion. If someone says something in public then I have the right to say it. A way to get around this is by making every viewing of copyrighted material a private contract. e.g. "You can only own a license for personal use of this movie if pay and agree not to share it." But, if somebody does break that contract and shares the movie publicly, going only by natural rights everyone who watched it would be able to share. Since book publishers didn't like this they lobbied for our current "unnatural" copyright laws. Why people don't like this now generally falls into three camps with some overlap 1) People who want free books, movies and software. 2) People who want all books, movies and software to be libre. 3) People who don't want the government to create a protected class of license holders, for various reasons (anticommunism, traditionalism etc.)
submeta 4y ago
Physical objects cannot be shared. I can’t create a copy of my car. But ideas can and will be shared. Our societies try to criminalise it. That’s not right. It does not help humanity in making advances. Imagine a world where every human has access to all ideas, papers, books, thoughts. That’ll empower every human being who has access to it. We need to find other ways to compensate authors and creators.
concordDance 4y ago
It's a scale. Laws against murder and theft of food are highly natural (e.g. most social cooperative animals will have something like it), zoning laws are more unnatural.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
Real physical scarcity is that law. Intellectual property is logically reducible to ownership of numbers. Some numbers are illegal for man to know. You can't write down some numbers on a piece of paper without someone else's permission. Or maybe you can but you can't give the paper to someone else. That's how stupid all of this is.

agalunar 4y ago

If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or own a digital copy is because society decided that it would punish you for doing so – and that's unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.

encomiast 4y ago
Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.
- agalunar 4y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's not physical law in the same sense – nothing compels you to take something from me (or prevents you from taking something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as you said). On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance. edit: I should clarify that you and I can share something in the sense that we can freely give it back and forth, but if we have one shovel, we can't both be shovelling at the same time (and can't share it at all if we live far apart). And if we're talking about food, well, we can't both take the same bite of bread.
  - anikan_vader 4y ago
    Well, collective ownership and communal property are arguably just as “natural” as private property.
    - robobro 4y ago
      Rather than "private property" do you mean "personal property" ?
  - travisgriggs 4y ago
    > nothing compels you to take something from me What if you’ve hoarded all the food or all the water, and I need it to survive? Would that be compelling? I’m with the other guy. These distinctions are arbitrary. They may be useful for a society that attempts to maximize “happiness@ (also arbitrary), but it remains that they are not universally obvious.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - encomiast 4y ago
    My point is that you are picking and choosing which parts of nature you value. The idea of "having", of ownership, is not natural. Many people like Locke have tried to connect it nature, but with limited success — it's still a human construct. In the natural world ownership is defended purely by force or guile. So you are taking this idea of ownership, protected by human constructs of law, and then adding a caveat that it only applies to physical objects. But that's not a natural consequence of the idea of ownership. We make up laws based on the outcomes we desire. One of those outcomes, to promote the progress of science and useful arts, is explicitly called out in the US Constitution. Maybe you don't think promoting those things are important, or maybe you don't think copyright is effective at doing that, but you are not making that argument. You are making some novel, unsupportable argument about natural law and physics that frankly doesn't stand up to any sort of rigorous argument.
    - 4y ago
- mushbino 4y ago
  The golden rule is pretty universal for human.
  - komali2 4y ago
    The golden rule fails as soon as you introduce someone of one culture to another. Example: my friends and I have a massively western-masculine internal culture. At parties people would ask if we were "ok" because a minute earlier we'd have been shouting at each other how smooth brained and stupid each other was. Of course we'd be fine, that's how we talk to each other. We'd get frustrated if someone tried to talk through implication - one time I asked my friend to put his seatbelt on and he said "wtf just tell me to put my fucking seat belt on don't be all soft about it." But if we turned that culture on someone else we'd be the most horrible of bullies. Not everyone wants to be "talked to straight" like that, and that's fine. I'd get mad if someone let me walk around with a booger on my face. "do unto me" is to say to me "lol saving that for later?", But to someone else a much more polite method is probably desirable. "Do unto me" might mean literally not talking to or approaching someone. It might mean feeling spurned or like someone thinks you're disgusting if a hug or handshake is avoided. Do unto me is far too simple a rule. We need more communication involved.
    - brabel 4y ago
      > my friends and I have a massively western-masculine internal culture. Sounds to me like you just have "teenage boy" culture.
      - komali2 4y ago
        Sure, you can call it that, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it, I was just talking to my gf about how despite its toxicity, it was a pretty viable social training ground. My theory is that it allowed all of us grown up in it to much better handle awkward, uncomfortable, or dangerous social situations, by giving us the tools to defuse most situations. Meanwhile she was bringing up tools for defusing situations because she heard it from a twitch streamer. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, I'm just saying, it was how we learned, and led to us very rarely feeling uncomfortable in any social situation.
- yucky 4y ago
  Except in that instance you would be depriving him of that thing. Making a digital copy of what he has would no more deprive him of that thing than taking a picture of his painting on the wall.
- johnnymorgan 4y ago
  You've misconstrued natural law with might is right, which is a concept not a law.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object Depending on the definition of having, which goes begs the question.
Winsaucerer 4y ago
> If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. The parent was asking which laws are not constructs, and your example I don't think works as an answer to that question. In what sense do you "have" that physical object? For example, what does it mean to say "I have a phone"? "Having" in that sense is a construct, not a natural thing. You might be holding the phone, you might put it down, I might hold it while you are holding it, I might pick it up when you put it down, I might look at it while you aren't, etc. But there's nothing in any of those real natural world descriptions that correspond to having, until you start to include our social constructs around possession.
- pookeh 4y ago
  He means owning the phone.
- agalunar 4y ago
  This was imprecise on my part; I apologize. I explained what I meant by "having" in a daughter comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299668) and made a clarification regarding sharing in another (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299420).
hurril 4y ago
Sure I can. The one you were just holding. You are relying on the meaning of the concept of having or owning, thinking that you don’t have to either define that or rely on a preexisting definition. Whoops.
uxcolumbo 4y ago
How do we ensure that creators are well compensated for their creations that are enjoyed by thousands or millions of people, so they can continue creating without ending up having to flip burgers and not creating at all?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
berniedurfee 4y ago
But you’re depriving the person that originally created the original digital something of the proceeds from their hard work. I don’t think we can have a conversation about free distribution of IP without considering the original creator. The creator depends on getting remunerated for each copy of their work. How are they to live?
muyuu 4y ago
> f I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). the unnatural, made up construct is that your property is recognised and respected by law, so that you don't have to physically defend it and potentially lose it to someone or some group stronger, perhaps more violent, than yourself if you only recognise physical ownership, you only own objects as long as you can physically protect them yourself and you explicitly deny any further rights not to have them robbed, as that is also an "unnatural, made up construct" - you were not robbed, there is a just different physical ownership going on now

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

If people always beat me up and snatch my stuff the moment I am not looking, that's not very good living. Even if I am wealthy enough to hire guards, they can turn on me at any moment and get all my stuff rather than just what I am willing to pay. So we opt for a peaceful, honest society where people are not allowed to hurt each other, steal or break contracts. On the other hand, if I learn from other people and they learn for me, we all become smarter and more productive.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

I agree with you. We can simply say IP is a concept that we need to bust. And that's fine. No need to invoke weird "reasoning" like that.

pfisch 4y ago
I personally like that movies and videogames exist and can be made with large budgets because that generally makes them better. I don't see how that continues without IP.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  There will still be a first to market advantage.
  - ChrisKnott 4y ago
    I don't see how that works in a world truly without copyright. You can't spend hundreds of millions making GTA6 if the first person you sell it to can give away copies.
    - burnished 4y ago
      Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy things from people who make things they like.
      - pfisch 4y ago
        If there is no IP I can just download your game and sell it on the epic store. In fact, Steam doesn't even need to pay the developers royalties at all.
      - ChrisKnott 4y ago
        I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it put around HL2.

Thorrez 4y ago

Is there a such thing as morality or ethics? Is there any action that is unethical?

coldtea 4y ago
There is, but not one imposed by the laws of physics or some universal given. ] For example it was moral and ethical (and you were considered a good person regardless of whether you did it) to own slaves when that was the prevalent morality of a societies. So, there are actions that are unethical based on made up human constructs of morality. Nature and physics doesn't care either way. Which is the parent's point: what laws and ethical norms aren't "unnatural" and aren't made up? All are. Doesn't mean they are not useful and good for being that.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  It was accepted as an economic reality but it was never considered moral or ethical to own slaves any more than it’s considered ethical to own a tool shed today.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Of course it was absolutely considered moral and ethical. There are tons of old articles, books, and treteases on the matter, describing it as perfectly moral and ethical, and how its beneficial to the slaves, who lack agency, are animal like, and are offered "useful work" from their masters who know better, how they are beastly and need the whip to get sense into them, and so on. That's of course, on top of the fact that slave owners were among the most respected good-standing members of society, and only controversial figures considered them imoral and unethical for owning slave. In fact abolitionists were considered bad people, not unlike today's terrorists and activists. Theses idea of the morality of being a slave owner, and the superiority and natural right of the owners vs the slaves, is universal in societies that held slaves (as was in societies were royals and lords were above folks reduced to peasants). Regarding the South, for example: "What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious leaders telling their flock? Southern clergy defended the morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which they held up as the universal and objective standard for moral issues. (...) Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy Scriptures. A fellow reverend from Virginia agreed that on no other subject “are [the Bible’s] instructions more explicit, or their salutary tendency and influence more thoroughly tested and corroborated by experience than on the subject of slavery.” The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, asserted that slavery “has received the sanction of Jehova.” As a South Carolina Presbyterian concluded: “If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not what they do justify.” As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case: “Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy, never could authorize the practice of a moral evil. But god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by the bare permission of his Providence, but the express provision of his word. Therefore, slavery is not a moral evil.” Since the Bible was the source for moral authority, the case was closed. “Man may err,” said the southern theologian James Thornwell, “but God can never lie.” The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was a “religious character to the present struggle. Anti-slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.” During the 1850’s, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit became especially strident. A preacher in Richmond exalted slavery as “the most blessed and beautiful form of social government known; the only one that solves the problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a beneficent patriarchate.” The Central Presbyterian affirmed that slavery was “a relation essential to the existence of civilized society.” By 1860, Southern preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners that “both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time.” Same for politicians: William Harris, Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia, explained that Lincoln’s election had made the North more defiant than ever. As Harris saw things, “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.” Lincoln and his followers, he stated, aimed to “overturn and strike down this great feature of our union and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.” For Harris, the choice was clear. Mississippi would “rather see the last of her race, men, women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.” More to the point, he noted, abolition meant “the turning loose upon society, without the salutary restraints to which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in idleness over the country until their wants should drive most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to the bolder crimes of robbery and murder.” https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slaveholding-southerners-fought#:~:text=As%20Southerners%20became%20increasingly%20isolated,they%20owned%20slaves%20or%20not https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-slavehol....

numpad0 4y ago

It’s kind of true that idea of IP is entirely made-up, but it’s also important to recognize that it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living. IP allows authors to require values of content to be preserved, recognized, and financially rewarded(in one-time or recurring payments). In the absence of IP, printing companies can take manuscripts and contents to profit off of copies free-for-all style, bankrupting manuscript writers. However, it was NOT designed to protect interest of multinational megacorporates, causing individual contributors to be ignored and paid for presence in its making than input in the product; such use of IP is basically a polar opposite of its intent. We should stop allowing corporates to take ownership of IPs. J.K. Rowling enjoying her life is fine, that is intellectual property as intended. “(C)Disney” or “(C)2023 Electronic Arts. All Rights Reserved.” is not. Those latter cases is how and where IP laws are not working as intended.

encomiast 4y ago
“it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living”. That’s not really true. It least in the US, its stated purpose is to promote the useful arts and sciences. Incentivizing authors is a means to that end. If incentivizing corporations achieves those ends as well, it would seem to be consistent with the original purpose. Of course, there are probably valid arguments that corporate ownership of IP doesn’t always promote the useful arts and sciences (for example patent trolls).
- bruce511 4y ago
  "patent trolls" is an unhelpful term because it is in the eye of the beholder. Was Amazon being a patent troll patenting single-click-to-purchase? Was Apple a troll in patenting Swipe to Unlock? They were using those patents in their products. On the other hand is the Tolkien Estate patent trolls? They're not producing anything new.) If I have a dozen patents, and some company wants to buy them from me, is that any different to me selling my company? Surely I can sell my assets? The root issue are not "patent trolls". Being sued by Amazon is no less disruptive than by Trolls r US. The root issue is the nature of the patents being issued. The root of copyright issues are (mostly) not about actual copyright, but the length of copyright.

scythe 4y ago

The most obvious distinction between intellectual property and ordinary property is their history. Ownership of things has existed for longer than reliable records are available. Copyright and patents, by contrast, were created during the late Renaissance in response to the particular economic circumstances of the time. They have since become the tools of entrenched interests who would rather suggest that things have always been this way and we couldn't live without it. Is anything humans do natural? The only thing that can make something unnatural, so far as we understand it, is human intervention. Insofar as we conceive of unnaturalness as a recognizable quality of phenomena, it is more acute when the humans responsible are more sophisticated in their methods. We can easily observe a very large difference between the primitiveness of human society when it created the ownership of things and the much more advanced culture that devised what we now call intellectual property. From this construction of what is natural and what is not, we clearly find that intellectual property is much less "natural", though there is still the necessity of accepting that "natural" can be a meaningful idea at all.

canibal57 4y ago
Nearly everything humans do is natural. We have just made up clever ruses to hide the vulgarity of much of it and to dissuade ourselves that the disparity caused by the natural order has no chance to be solved.
generj 4y ago
I’d argue intellectual property existed earlier than that, as soon as states (or guilds) considered certain techniques and skills exclusive to them. Off the top of my mind, with a solely European view the Venetians moved glass production to Murano in the 13th century at least partially to make a monopoly on luxury glass. World History was awhile ago but other restrictions on technology transfer existed by at least 800 CE and probably in a limited sense well before 1000 BCE.
- mymythisisthis 4y ago
  Guilds would get the right to do something by the government, to the exclusion of others. Such as the haberdasher guild, that had the right to sew and no one else could sew commercially. Patent was invented to break the guilds. A guild member could reveal a technology publicly, and get a 10 year right to use it. This was to make progress go faster, as guilds kept technology secret.

casey2 4y ago

>What laws? All natural rights, life (bodily functions e.g. the right to eat not to have something to eat), speech, association etc. Broadly defined as anything a person can do that doesn't require violence or compulsion. If someone says something in public then I have the right to say it. A way to get around this is by making every viewing of copyrighted material a private contract. e.g. "You can only own a license for personal use of this movie if pay and agree not to share it." But, if somebody does break that contract and shares the movie publicly, going only by natural rights everyone who watched it would be able to share. Since book publishers didn't like this they lobbied for our current "unnatural" copyright laws. Why people don't like this now generally falls into three camps with some overlap 1) People who want free books, movies and software. 2) People who want all books, movies and software to be libre. 3) People who don't want the government to create a protected class of license holders, for various reasons (anticommunism, traditionalism etc.)

submeta 4y ago

Physical objects cannot be shared. I can’t create a copy of my car. But ideas can and will be shared. Our societies try to criminalise it. That’s not right. It does not help humanity in making advances. Imagine a world where every human has access to all ideas, papers, books, thoughts. That’ll empower every human being who has access to it. We need to find other ways to compensate authors and creators.

concordDance 4y ago

It's a scale. Laws against murder and theft of food are highly natural (e.g. most social cooperative animals will have something like it), zoning laws are more unnatural.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

Real physical scarcity is that law. Intellectual property is logically reducible to ownership of numbers. Some numbers are illegal for man to know. You can't write down some numbers on a piece of paper without someone else's permission. Or maybe you can but you can't give the paper to someone else. That's how stupid all of this is.