7 ms·

Patents and trademarks are not "intellectual property". They are temporary monopoly privledges. Before the americans came along, these ideas were blatant and we

by 001sky 13y ago

Patents and trademarks are not "intellectual property". They are temporary monopoly privledges. Before the americans came along, these ideas were blatant and well understood. Somewhere around the time of thr french revolution, rewarding special interests with monopoly privledges became scary, because it seemed an awful lot like the fake rights given to the aristocracy. So the monopolists and the special interest lobby re-packaged the same crap in the lingo of the french revolution and the enlightenment. The "enlightened" marketing PR spin for government granted monopoly became "rights" as a result. The "intellectual" was adopted under the umpbrella of meritocracy and rule by the learned (ie, as opposed to "birth" rights). Every time someone repeats this phrase its just old-skool marketing and brainwashing at work.

rayiner 13y ago
I hate to break it to you, but all property is a government granted monopoly. This place I call "my yard" isn't "mine" in any real sense. I didn't make it. It has existed long before I was born and will exist long after I'm gone. I can't defend it, I don't have any guns or ammo. But I have exclusive use of it ("a monopoly") because the government granted it to me.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  It is worth drawing a distinction between that which requires a coercive third party like government to enforce (e.g., intellectual property) and that which does not require such a thing (defending property). The distinction is a direct consequence of the fact that intellectual property isn't actually property. (Because it is not scarce.)
  - setrofim_ 13y ago
    >It is worth drawing a distinction between that which requires a coercive third party like government to enforce (e.g., intellectual property) and that which does not require such a thing (defending property). I don't believe this distinction applies here. Not all IP requires the government to enforce it (e.g. trade secrets). Conversely, if someone were to move into my yard, or steal something from me, I would call Police (an agent of the government) to enforce my property rights. Note: I'm not trying to defend or ague for property rights, merely pointing out that this particular distinction is in valid, as the poster above pointed out -- all property is, to an extent, government enforced.
    - burntsushi 13y ago
      Perhaps I should have been more clear. I consider the fundamental concept of intellectual property to be the application of a body of law to the ownership of ideas. This body of law must be enforced by some coercive third party. (I defer to Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" - http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf - for an explanation of why that is.) Property rights over tangible things (whose use is physically exclusionary) do not require the defense of a coercive third party. That this is how the world works in the US today does not imply it is the only way. For example, I could defend my property with my own weapons. Or more likely, I could pay someone else to defend it for me.
      - setrofim_ 13y ago
        >Property rights over tangible things (whose use is physically exclusionary) do not require the defense of a coercive third party. I would still claim that the distinction you're drawing is arbitrary. Yes physical objects and ideas are different and the ways one goes about defending them will, of course also be different. The defense of intellectual property does not, in principle, require enforcement by a coercive third party. I could defend it by keeping it a secrete, or announce to the word that I am in fact the inventor (ownership of an idea does not necessarily have to imply exclusive use of it). You're claiming that the attribute of physical exclusivity is essential to the notion of "property"; I can argue that it is incidental. The import thing is that thorough appropriating your property, I am depriving you of some tangible benefit. In case of physical property, the benefit is the (necessarily) exclusive use of that property. In case of intellectual property, the benefit maybe competitive advantage (if I choose to keep my knowledge secret), or a revenue stream (if I choose to allow others to benefit from my knowledge in return for compensation), or reputation and status (in being acknowledged as the inventor). That paper makes the same erroneous assumption: "Only tangible, scarce resources are the possible object of interpersonal conflict, so it is only for them that property rules are applicable." This obviously wrong. Reputation, influence (political religious, etc), honor, status, competitiveness -- all quality sources of "interpersonal conflict". In fact, the paper conveniently avoids tackling some forms of intellectual property--trade secretes and trademarks-- by dismissing them as "less problematic" (thus tacitly acknowledging the validity of the concept of "intellectual property") and instead chooses to focus on copyrights and patents (both of which are indeed severely flawed -- today even more so then when the paper was originally published). It is thus drawing an arbitrary distinction between different forms of intellectual property -- something it goes on to condemn later. Note that the classification of physical property is also essentially arbitrary (e.g. the notion of "private property", as applied to physical objects, was far weaker in the Soviet Union, and still is elsewhere in the world, than it is in the US). EDIT: grammar + clarity.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    All property requires a coercive third party. You couldn't actually defend your yard, for example, you almost certainly would lose possession to someone bigger and stronger with more weapons. That's true of almost everyone. The way we think of property, something even weak people can "own," is an artificial state of affairs created by the coercive third party of government. The difference between "property" as it exists in a civilized world and mere objects of possession, as they exist in the state of nature, is precisely the fact that "property" is a possessory interest backed by a coercive third party. Re: scarcity, nothing about property requires it to be scarce. Anglo law has been treating intangible things like contractual rights as property for hundreds of years. Moreover, you're playing a definitional game you're going to lose. Are you suggesting, for example, that if land weren't scarce, it shouldn't be the subject of property rights? Moreover, while copies of say a movie may be infinite, movies themselves are not. There are finite movies in existence, and each one takes effort and investment to produce. The property right attaches to the scarce resource of movies, not the unlimited resource of copies thereof.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      Even if we had infinite space, land would still be scarce: like an IP address, we can't all use the same lawn. On the other hand, the property of land would be well accepted, and easy to enforce: people would just take what they need, plus a suitable margin. The same is (or can be) applied to IPv6 now. As for the scarcity of movies. Well, that's a tough one. First, there is no way I can actually steal a movie —short of abducting the director, stealing the props… I mean, all I can do is download a copy at almost zero charge. Even if I shoplift a DVD, that's not stealing the movie, that's stealing a plastic disc. The problem is, the value of the film is completely decorrelated from its scarcity. As you say, it takes resources to make a film: time, cameras, actors, props… most of which are scarce —some are not, like stock footage. Once the film is done however, the film itself is not scarce at all: it can be copied over and over at near zero cost. The easy way out is to go back to scarcity: you know how to monetize it: just sell the artificially scarce copies. But this is obviously not ideal. Our world is sufficiently flawed as it is, adding artificial scarcity on top of it doesn't sound like a great idea. Hence the question: how do you distribute something abundant when the production of the first copy consumes scarce resources? I don't know. But people are working on it, and have produced some ideas that are worth trying: global licence, basic income… Or maybe just lower the length of the granted monopolies, like 10 years after publication or so. Even if we can't abolish artificial scarcity altogether, we might be able to reduce it.
baddox 13y ago
Patents and trademarks are absolutely intellectual property.
- baddox 13y ago
  Does anyone have a source that defines "intellectual property" to exclude patents and trademarks? Here are a few definitions that do include patents and trademarks: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intellectualproperty.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intellectualproperty.asp http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Any inherent or intuitive meaning has long been subsumed by its appropriation as a work of art. http://cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/33-4/Hughes.33-4.pdf http://cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/33-4/Hughes.33... Details its origins of an 'ex post facto' legal concept.
- belorn 13y ago
  If those are property, then the same is true for an alcohol license and government contracts. So you end up defining that anything exclusive granted by government is an property with inalienable rights and "owners", making both the word "property" and "rights" meaningless.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I'm not making a normative claim about the "true meaning" of the word "property." I don't think that "true meanings" exist. Words and phrases are just communication tools, so using common terms in non-standard ways is not a good way to communicate your ideas, and certainly not a good thing to base an argument on. I'm just demonstrating what overwhelmingly standard usage is for the term "intellectual property."

by 001sky 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

I hate to break it to you, but all property is a government granted monopoly. This place I call "my yard" isn't "mine" in any real sense. I didn't make it. It has existed long before I was born and will exist long after I'm gone. I can't defend it, I don't have any guns or ammo. But I have exclusive use of it ("a monopoly") because the government granted it to me.

burntsushi 13y ago
It is worth drawing a distinction between that which requires a coercive third party like government to enforce (e.g., intellectual property) and that which does not require such a thing (defending property). The distinction is a direct consequence of the fact that intellectual property isn't actually property. (Because it is not scarce.)
- setrofim_ 13y ago
  >It is worth drawing a distinction between that which requires a coercive third party like government to enforce (e.g., intellectual property) and that which does not require such a thing (defending property). I don't believe this distinction applies here. Not all IP requires the government to enforce it (e.g. trade secrets). Conversely, if someone were to move into my yard, or steal something from me, I would call Police (an agent of the government) to enforce my property rights. Note: I'm not trying to defend or ague for property rights, merely pointing out that this particular distinction is in valid, as the poster above pointed out -- all property is, to an extent, government enforced.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    Perhaps I should have been more clear. I consider the fundamental concept of intellectual property to be the application of a body of law to the ownership of ideas. This body of law must be enforced by some coercive third party. (I defer to Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" - http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf - for an explanation of why that is.) Property rights over tangible things (whose use is physically exclusionary) do not require the defense of a coercive third party. That this is how the world works in the US today does not imply it is the only way. For example, I could defend my property with my own weapons. Or more likely, I could pay someone else to defend it for me.
    - setrofim_ 13y ago
      >Property rights over tangible things (whose use is physically exclusionary) do not require the defense of a coercive third party. I would still claim that the distinction you're drawing is arbitrary. Yes physical objects and ideas are different and the ways one goes about defending them will, of course also be different. The defense of intellectual property does not, in principle, require enforcement by a coercive third party. I could defend it by keeping it a secrete, or announce to the word that I am in fact the inventor (ownership of an idea does not necessarily have to imply exclusive use of it). You're claiming that the attribute of physical exclusivity is essential to the notion of "property"; I can argue that it is incidental. The import thing is that thorough appropriating your property, I am depriving you of some tangible benefit. In case of physical property, the benefit is the (necessarily) exclusive use of that property. In case of intellectual property, the benefit maybe competitive advantage (if I choose to keep my knowledge secret), or a revenue stream (if I choose to allow others to benefit from my knowledge in return for compensation), or reputation and status (in being acknowledged as the inventor). That paper makes the same erroneous assumption: "Only tangible, scarce resources are the possible object of interpersonal conflict, so it is only for them that property rules are applicable." This obviously wrong. Reputation, influence (political religious, etc), honor, status, competitiveness -- all quality sources of "interpersonal conflict". In fact, the paper conveniently avoids tackling some forms of intellectual property--trade secretes and trademarks-- by dismissing them as "less problematic" (thus tacitly acknowledging the validity of the concept of "intellectual property") and instead chooses to focus on copyrights and patents (both of which are indeed severely flawed -- today even more so then when the paper was originally published). It is thus drawing an arbitrary distinction between different forms of intellectual property -- something it goes on to condemn later. Note that the classification of physical property is also essentially arbitrary (e.g. the notion of "private property", as applied to physical objects, was far weaker in the Soviet Union, and still is elsewhere in the world, than it is in the US). EDIT: grammar + clarity.
- rayiner 13y ago
  All property requires a coercive third party. You couldn't actually defend your yard, for example, you almost certainly would lose possession to someone bigger and stronger with more weapons. That's true of almost everyone. The way we think of property, something even weak people can "own," is an artificial state of affairs created by the coercive third party of government. The difference between "property" as it exists in a civilized world and mere objects of possession, as they exist in the state of nature, is precisely the fact that "property" is a possessory interest backed by a coercive third party. Re: scarcity, nothing about property requires it to be scarce. Anglo law has been treating intangible things like contractual rights as property for hundreds of years. Moreover, you're playing a definitional game you're going to lose. Are you suggesting, for example, that if land weren't scarce, it shouldn't be the subject of property rights? Moreover, while copies of say a movie may be infinite, movies themselves are not. There are finite movies in existence, and each one takes effort and investment to produce. The property right attaches to the scarce resource of movies, not the unlimited resource of copies thereof.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    Even if we had infinite space, land would still be scarce: like an IP address, we can't all use the same lawn. On the other hand, the property of land would be well accepted, and easy to enforce: people would just take what they need, plus a suitable margin. The same is (or can be) applied to IPv6 now. As for the scarcity of movies. Well, that's a tough one. First, there is no way I can actually steal a movie —short of abducting the director, stealing the props… I mean, all I can do is download a copy at almost zero charge. Even if I shoplift a DVD, that's not stealing the movie, that's stealing a plastic disc. The problem is, the value of the film is completely decorrelated from its scarcity. As you say, it takes resources to make a film: time, cameras, actors, props… most of which are scarce —some are not, like stock footage. Once the film is done however, the film itself is not scarce at all: it can be copied over and over at near zero cost. The easy way out is to go back to scarcity: you know how to monetize it: just sell the artificially scarce copies. But this is obviously not ideal. Our world is sufficiently flawed as it is, adding artificial scarcity on top of it doesn't sound like a great idea. Hence the question: how do you distribute something abundant when the production of the first copy consumes scarce resources? I don't know. But people are working on it, and have produced some ideas that are worth trying: global licence, basic income… Or maybe just lower the length of the granted monopolies, like 10 years after publication or so. Even if we can't abolish artificial scarcity altogether, we might be able to reduce it.

baddox 13y ago

Patents and trademarks are absolutely intellectual property.

baddox 13y ago
Does anyone have a source that defines "intellectual property" to exclude patents and trademarks? Here are a few definitions that do include patents and trademarks: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intellectualproperty.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intellectualproperty.asp http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intellectual_property http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/ http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
- 001sky 13y ago
  Any inherent or intuitive meaning has long been subsumed by its appropriation as a work of art. http://cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/33-4/Hughes.33-4.pdf http://cardozolawreview.com/Joomla1.5/content/33-4/Hughes.33... Details its origins of an 'ex post facto' legal concept.
belorn 13y ago
If those are property, then the same is true for an alcohol license and government contracts. So you end up defining that anything exclusive granted by government is an property with inalienable rights and "owners", making both the word "property" and "rights" meaningless.
- baddox 13y ago
  I'm not making a normative claim about the "true meaning" of the word "property." I don't think that "true meanings" exist. Words and phrases are just communication tools, so using common terms in non-standard ways is not a good way to communicate your ideas, and certainly not a good thing to base an argument on. I'm just demonstrating what overwhelmingly standard usage is for the term "intellectual property."