4 ms·

the concept of physical property ownership is as artificial as intellectual property ownership plenty of societies have existed without it

pcthrowaway 4y ago
Possession is 9/10 of the law
brookst 4y ago
Neither of these statements is true. Physical property is zero sum. If you take something from me, I no longer have it. IP has zero marginal cost of duplication; if you take something from me, we both have it. Physical property ownership is nearly universal, and is probably related to the way humans are more loss averse than gain seeking (losing $100 is more bad than gaining $100 is good). There have been some societies with leased, or even no concept of physical property ownership, but those are exceptionally rare and can hardly be held up as equally aligned with human nature. IP ownership, however, is recent and very artificial. The idea that any random person is prohibited from singing a song they heard or copying a painting is new to the past couple of hundred years, to the best of my knowledge. It’s fine to be opposed to both physical property and IP, but let’s not equate the two as far as the history of the concepts goes. They’re very different.
- matwood 4y ago
  For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. I assume you don't want to go back to that time, so now we have laws defining ownership. It's been decided to have these same laws apply to IP. You may disagree with that last statement, but I think it's incorrect to use recency or artificial as the argument when current laws are also the only thing letting many people own their physical property today.
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    > For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. This is both still the case today and probably was never the case in the way that I think a lot of people would read that sentence. Property rights have always been maintained, to some extent, through force. This is the case today. The state maintains a monopoly on violence and uses it to enforce property rights. It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. And "stronger" doesn't imply that the single physically strongest individual maintained ownership. Humans are social creatures who have always banded together and lended resources and support to individuals they trusted to be the most fair when making decisions. This only extremely rarely was the single physically strongest individual.
    - matwood 4y ago
      Great points. Thank you for expanding on that concept.
    - friendzis 4y ago
      > It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. You have the argument backwards. Even in the old times one would not go and occupy house in a village or milk others' cows not because of some innate concept of fairness, but rather because of genuine fear of backlash resulting in violence of other villagers banding together. You can see the same thing in animal kingdom. Territorial animals do not cross into rival territories not because of innate concept of fairness (new leaders happily massacre offspring of previous leader), but rather threat of violence and resulting negative expected value of hunting in rival grounds. Property rights exist primarily because of force. To some extent states exist in order to apply force on ownership rights
- notahacker 4y ago
  Control of streams of income from selling reproductions of something is clearly also zero-sum, and much physical property is non-rival. If I don't pay a toll on your bridge, you still have a bridge (of course you may not build the bridge if you are unable to extract tolls from it, but the same arguments justified intellectual property laws). If I stay in your apartment when you're on holiday, you still have uninterrupted enjoyment of your apartment on your return: the only thing you have lost is a possible income stream from selling it to others. A freeholder isn't even allowed to enter apartments whose freehold he owns without permission of the leaseholder; and yet he has the property right to extract ground rent and maintenance fees from leaseholders. Modern world physical property rights - centred around permanent or fixed term tradable exclusive rights of economic exploitation - bear more resemblance to intellectual property rights than the relatively universal notion that people shouldn't have the stuff they're using taken away from them, as do the practical and moral arguments about people deserving fruits of their labour and being more productive when given exclusivity over them.
  - brookst 4y ago
    You’ve conflated ownership and rent. Once we’re into second- and third-derivatives (like A paying B for the exclusive right to rent property owned by C), it’s all more complex and blurs the line between real property and IP. But at its heart, the concept of physical property ownership is fundamentally different from IP. The fact that there are hybrids doesn’t change that.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Most of "ownership" is the right to extract rent or deny others from using something. Arguments that the original owner now has the ability to use the thing and always did have no validity as a defence whatsoever against any sort of property crime, because modern ownership is defined by rules artificially enforcing exclusivity claims, not whether the original owner has the use of a thing. If property actually pertained to owners not being prevented from using things, property law would be a very short set of guidelines entirely approved by the author of Property is Theft. The fact that modern physical property law is - like IP - almost entirely about creating artificial restrictions on other people's use of stuff and the right to charge for its use obviously changes the concept that actually it's fundamentally different.
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
Send me your laptop then
- blibble 4y ago
  I don't think you'd want it, it's pretty old (I also didn't state I disagree with the concept of private property)
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    Ok but it’s only an imaginary concept until somebody wants to take your stuff.
    - ronsor 4y ago
      "Intellectual property" is a fiction not bound by any sane laws of reality. Meanwhile physical property is bound by the fact that you can't create new matter.
      - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
        I think that's a little broad, IP should be divided further into: - is there value in keeping it secret / not public? (e.g. commercial software, etc.) - content, things that can be freely distributed without diluting the inherent value of the property In the first case, I think it's analogous to not being able to create new matter. Once the secret is out, you can't put it back in. In the case of content, I'm a lot more open about this but it does bring up all of the tricky questions of ensuring that content creators get paid for their work, etc. (another endless debate)
shp0ngle 4y ago
Societies had property ownership far more and far longer than "intellectual ownership". One can argue "intellectual ownership" doesn't actually _mean_ anything; it's a sum of unrelated laws - copyright, patents, trademarks, all doing a different thing and protecting different customers

pcthrowaway 4y ago

Possession is 9/10 of the law

brookst 4y ago

Neither of these statements is true. Physical property is zero sum. If you take something from me, I no longer have it. IP has zero marginal cost of duplication; if you take something from me, we both have it. Physical property ownership is nearly universal, and is probably related to the way humans are more loss averse than gain seeking (losing $100 is more bad than gaining $100 is good). There have been some societies with leased, or even no concept of physical property ownership, but those are exceptionally rare and can hardly be held up as equally aligned with human nature. IP ownership, however, is recent and very artificial. The idea that any random person is prohibited from singing a song they heard or copying a painting is new to the past couple of hundred years, to the best of my knowledge. It’s fine to be opposed to both physical property and IP, but let’s not equate the two as far as the history of the concepts goes. They’re very different.

matwood 4y ago
For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. I assume you don't want to go back to that time, so now we have laws defining ownership. It's been decided to have these same laws apply to IP. You may disagree with that last statement, but I think it's incorrect to use recency or artificial as the argument when current laws are also the only thing letting many people own their physical property today.
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  > For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. This is both still the case today and probably was never the case in the way that I think a lot of people would read that sentence. Property rights have always been maintained, to some extent, through force. This is the case today. The state maintains a monopoly on violence and uses it to enforce property rights. It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. And "stronger" doesn't imply that the single physically strongest individual maintained ownership. Humans are social creatures who have always banded together and lended resources and support to individuals they trusted to be the most fair when making decisions. This only extremely rarely was the single physically strongest individual.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Great points. Thank you for expanding on that concept.
  - friendzis 4y ago
    > It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. You have the argument backwards. Even in the old times one would not go and occupy house in a village or milk others' cows not because of some innate concept of fairness, but rather because of genuine fear of backlash resulting in violence of other villagers banding together. You can see the same thing in animal kingdom. Territorial animals do not cross into rival territories not because of innate concept of fairness (new leaders happily massacre offspring of previous leader), but rather threat of violence and resulting negative expected value of hunting in rival grounds. Property rights exist primarily because of force. To some extent states exist in order to apply force on ownership rights
notahacker 4y ago
Control of streams of income from selling reproductions of something is clearly also zero-sum, and much physical property is non-rival. If I don't pay a toll on your bridge, you still have a bridge (of course you may not build the bridge if you are unable to extract tolls from it, but the same arguments justified intellectual property laws). If I stay in your apartment when you're on holiday, you still have uninterrupted enjoyment of your apartment on your return: the only thing you have lost is a possible income stream from selling it to others. A freeholder isn't even allowed to enter apartments whose freehold he owns without permission of the leaseholder; and yet he has the property right to extract ground rent and maintenance fees from leaseholders. Modern world physical property rights - centred around permanent or fixed term tradable exclusive rights of economic exploitation - bear more resemblance to intellectual property rights than the relatively universal notion that people shouldn't have the stuff they're using taken away from them, as do the practical and moral arguments about people deserving fruits of their labour and being more productive when given exclusivity over them.
- brookst 4y ago
  You’ve conflated ownership and rent. Once we’re into second- and third-derivatives (like A paying B for the exclusive right to rent property owned by C), it’s all more complex and blurs the line between real property and IP. But at its heart, the concept of physical property ownership is fundamentally different from IP. The fact that there are hybrids doesn’t change that.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Most of "ownership" is the right to extract rent or deny others from using something. Arguments that the original owner now has the ability to use the thing and always did have no validity as a defence whatsoever against any sort of property crime, because modern ownership is defined by rules artificially enforcing exclusivity claims, not whether the original owner has the use of a thing. If property actually pertained to owners not being prevented from using things, property law would be a very short set of guidelines entirely approved by the author of Property is Theft. The fact that modern physical property law is - like IP - almost entirely about creating artificial restrictions on other people's use of stuff and the right to charge for its use obviously changes the concept that actually it's fundamentally different.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

Send me your laptop then

blibble 4y ago
I don't think you'd want it, it's pretty old (I also didn't state I disagree with the concept of private property)
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Ok but it’s only an imaginary concept until somebody wants to take your stuff.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    "Intellectual property" is a fiction not bound by any sane laws of reality. Meanwhile physical property is bound by the fact that you can't create new matter.
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
      I think that's a little broad, IP should be divided further into: - is there value in keeping it secret / not public? (e.g. commercial software, etc.) - content, things that can be freely distributed without diluting the inherent value of the property In the first case, I think it's analogous to not being able to create new matter. Once the secret is out, you can't put it back in. In the case of content, I'm a lot more open about this but it does bring up all of the tricky questions of ensuring that content creators get paid for their work, etc. (another endless debate)

shp0ngle 4y ago

Societies had property ownership far more and far longer than "intellectual ownership". One can argue "intellectual ownership" doesn't actually _mean_ anything; it's a sum of unrelated laws - copyright, patents, trademarks, all doing a different thing and protecting different customers