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The reason for the contradiction between belief and behavior arises from lack of principles. Most people will decide on a per-issue basis how they feel about it

The reason for the contradiction between belief and behavior arises from lack of principles. Most people will decide on a per-issue basis how they feel about it, and then rationalize their sentiment. The truth is intellectual property is not real property, and therefore has no legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society. That's the principle, property rights for property. Be it Disney or whomever.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The truth is intellectual property is not real property, and therefore has no legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society. This is true in the sense that intellectual property is a subcategory of intangible personal property which is a subcategory of personal property, which is a different and mutually exclusive subcategory of "property" from real property. But I suspect that you are using "real property" to mean something other than what that term means in discussing categories of property (since otherwise you'd be arguing that all personal property is inconsistent with capitalism, which only makes sense if you've gotten capitalism confused with a particularly extreme form of communism.) But I don't know exactly what you do mean by "real property", and I think you would do well to define what you mean by it (and maybe choose a term that doesn't already have a clear and well-understood meaning in the context of property) and explain why that thing is the only thing with a "legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society". (And then, for bonus points, explain what relevance being the only thing with a "legitimate claim for protection a capitalist society" should even be relevant in any modern mixed economy, all of which have made the conscious choice to deviate in some important ways from pure capitalist notions of property rights.)
- innguest 12y ago
  Real property = that which is material, i.e. made out of stuff that you can carry around. For instance, if you print a computer file, the sheet of paper with the data on it is real property because it's a material thing in the world. The file on the computer is not real property because it is not a material thing in the real world that you can carry around - you can put it on a flash drive and carry that around, but not the bytes or the letters that make up that data. Even if you could carry the bytes around (let's say for the sake of the nitpickers) in your hand without a flash drive, just the bytes, then only those bytes would be property, but the information those bytes represent is never property because the information anything represents is purely conceptual; not inherently material, but something that comes from the interpretation of material things. So I'd be free to arrange my own bytes in the same way you arranged your bytes, if you happen to publish your arrangement in any way, and you could not sue me for some bogus "copyright" claim since you have your bytes and I have mine, and you'd impinge on my right if you told me I can't arrange my bytes in a certain way because you've arranged yours that way first. Capitalism can only concern itself with real, material property because one can only possess material things. IT is not possible, really, to possess an interpretation of something material (unless you never tell anyone, like Coca-Cola does, but they do not rely on law for their trade secret to be enforced, they simply don't tell anyone).

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The truth is intellectual property is not real property, and therefore has no legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society. This is true in the sense that intellectual property is a subcategory of intangible personal property which is a subcategory of personal property, which is a different and mutually exclusive subcategory of "property" from real property. But I suspect that you are using "real property" to mean something other than what that term means in discussing categories of property (since otherwise you'd be arguing that all personal property is inconsistent with capitalism, which only makes sense if you've gotten capitalism confused with a particularly extreme form of communism.) But I don't know exactly what you do mean by "real property", and I think you would do well to define what you mean by it (and maybe choose a term that doesn't already have a clear and well-understood meaning in the context of property) and explain why that thing is the only thing with a "legitimate claim for protection in a capitalist society". (And then, for bonus points, explain what relevance being the only thing with a "legitimate claim for protection a capitalist society" should even be relevant in any modern mixed economy, all of which have made the conscious choice to deviate in some important ways from pure capitalist notions of property rights.)

innguest 12y ago
Real property = that which is material, i.e. made out of stuff that you can carry around. For instance, if you print a computer file, the sheet of paper with the data on it is real property because it's a material thing in the world. The file on the computer is not real property because it is not a material thing in the real world that you can carry around - you can put it on a flash drive and carry that around, but not the bytes or the letters that make up that data. Even if you could carry the bytes around (let's say for the sake of the nitpickers) in your hand without a flash drive, just the bytes, then only those bytes would be property, but the information those bytes represent is never property because the information anything represents is purely conceptual; not inherently material, but something that comes from the interpretation of material things. So I'd be free to arrange my own bytes in the same way you arranged your bytes, if you happen to publish your arrangement in any way, and you could not sue me for some bogus "copyright" claim since you have your bytes and I have mine, and you'd impinge on my right if you told me I can't arrange my bytes in a certain way because you've arranged yours that way first. Capitalism can only concern itself with real, material property because one can only possess material things. IT is not possible, really, to possess an interpretation of something material (unless you never tell anyone, like Coca-Cola does, but they do not rely on law for their trade secret to be enforced, they simply don't tell anyone).