Intellectual property

[flan]

I think you guys are way off on this IP issue, much as I love your show. Two points I'll make.

First, is it wrong to sneak into a movie theater to watch a movie? Is it wrong to sneak into a concert, or anywhere someone is performing? Even if they're not guarding the gates closely enough to prevent you from doing so, I still think it's wrong. They are going on stage (or projecting a movie) with the intent of providing you a show in exchange for your money. You don't get to set the rules, the vendor does. If you don't like the restrictions they put in place, you can not watch the performance. I liken listening to a recording of music to any other kind of performance. The performer gets to set the rules, and you get to listen.

Second, I think the consistent liberty-lover's position should be to support the studios on this one. You shouldn't get to decide how I want to make my living (if I were in the recording biz). If you think I have a stupid business model, well, that's my decision, and I'll pay the consequences. You don't get to decide how I sell my performance. I do. If I want to stipulate that before letting you have a copy of my song, you agree that you won't give it to someone else, those are the conditions of our contract. If you then decide I'm an idiot and want to give your friend a copy of the song, you've violated our contract.

I realize there's no explicit contract when someone buys a CD or legally downloads a song. But there's an implicit one, the current copyright laws of the political designation you happen to be living in. If there weren't copyright laws in place, you bet there would be a contract to sign every time you bought a song saying that you promise not to give the song to someone else.

You guys have decided to give a lot of the content on your site for free, including your podcasts. That's great, and I really appreciate that. But if I want to make my living charging people to listen to me talk (or sing), that's my decision.

[velojym]

Perhaps the bigger issue is how much deadly force you're willing to use by proxy to keep kids out of the theater.

[dalebert]

Theater is not the same as copying a DVD.  The theater is private property and a service, providing an experience with expensive equipment and having staff that clean up after you and make sure the projector and sound are working, etc.  Sneaking in is a way of enslaving them, making them work for you for free.  I had a friend who'd watch 3 or 4 movies after buying one ticket and he was always trying to convince me this was okay.  He failed.  I paid big bucks to see Avatar three times in the theater-- once on IMAX, once on digital 3D, and once without 3D.  I'm about to pay big bucks and travel out of my way (Keene's theater SUX) to see Sucker Punch and Harry Potter.  I love the theater experience of a movie and I'm willing to pay for it.  People who love music are willing to pay for live performances and often buy CDs that they could easily burn themselves in order to support a less-than-mainstream band.

A CD or a DVD is a product.  That product can be copied at no cost to the original producer.  Millions can enjoy that DVD at no cost (harm) to the producer.  If you make people sign a contract, on the day of release some unscrupulous person will copy it (immorally) and then give it away to someone who now OWNS a CD or DVD that they signed no contract for.  They can copy and distribute it guilt-free.  Copyright is like having a business model for a hat company where you try to charge a surcharge every time someone compliments you on one of their hats!  The copyright model, with or without violence, just doesn't work and that will become increasingly the case as technology continues to advance.  It still works for hard copy books because there's actual materials and effort involved with making copies and people still like books, despite Kindles.  It's not about morality (it's not immoral); it's about reality.  You guys clinging to copyright are like newspapers trying to stay in business with a model built on distributing pieces of paper in a digital world.

It's easier to produce content and it's easier to distribute it.  That's the reality.  Find a way to deal with reality or live in your fantasy world, but fantasies don't put food on the table.  You can bitch and piss and moan at reality all you want, but it ain't gonna change.

[Cognitive Dissident]

Just a thought.

"Intellectual Property" is the only way the pigopolists could enslave the Star Trek world, in which anything you want can be synthesized by a machine from some sort of proto-matter.  So not only is it evil today, it's probably the best way to propagate evil in the future, aside from the murdering and stuff.

There is no contract, of any kind, to prevent me from copying anything I purchase and, therefore, own.  Your implicit contract is the same "contract" that implies it's okay for the cops to come and bust me over the head because I broke some immoral law.  This "contract" (copyright) is itself immoral, because it limits what I can do, for myself, with my own property and my own mind.

Oh, and "sneaking in" is the crime known as criminal trespass, and that won't change in a free market.

[velojym]

ergh. I wasn't even referring to the actual trespass, so the parallel wasn't really there I guess.

I was thinking more about the pattern of photons traveling through space that could be sensed by the evil horrid trespassers. Keeping the movie in a closed theater would be a reasonable attempt at providing IP security for the movie, and a perfectly acceptable one, in my opinion. So, disregard my earlier post as having not been fully thought out (yeah, happens a lot with me anyway). I was in no way meaning to advocate unwelcome trespass on private property.

[MacFall]

The problem is that "intellectual property" violates actual, physical property. An IP claim cannot be enforced without the claimant attempting to exercise ownership over another person's actual property. If you can make a case for an actual property violation, then you win as far as morality and ethics are concerned. All that IP advocates can claim is a violation of a state-created monopoly privilege (which is not and never could be considered property), or of their expectations of future profit (which expectation is not a property claim, and which profits are the property of their present owners until a transfer of title has been made).

But if an IP claimant attempts to exercise control over my property to prevent me from expressing an idea that has entered my mind (or from expressing information that has entered my computer, which is the same thing respecting the ethics of property ownership) then he is the one violating property rights. All I am doing is exercising my right to the full and exclusive control of my property; he is attempting to stop me.

Now consider that in order to fully express this supposed right of creators to control the property of others to prevent the expression of certain ideas, the IP claimant must have the just power to control even my body to prevent me from expressing his idea. But that is a moral absurdity, because it is my body; I own it as a part of my self.

Consider further that the IP claim must include the just power to control all of the matter and energy in the entire Universe, because anything less than that would imply the right of someone else to use some of it to express the idea over which the IP claimant supposes he has a justly enforceable monopoly.

But rather than considering these things, recognizing their moral indefensibility (and utter impracticableness), IP advocates instead try to place arbitrary limits on the extent of IP claims. But in doing so, they strip away the whole moral premise of their argument. Because a moral principle cannot be limited arbitrarily: either it may be justly taken to its logical conclusion, or it is a falsehood, and in practice must be morally wrong. Therefore they fall back on the argument from effect, abandoning the moral position altogether. I have never seen an IP debate in which this failed to occur.

[blackie]

This "contract" (copyright) is itself immoral, because it limits what I can do, for myself, with my own property

Are deed restrictions also immoral, because they limit what you can do with your own property?

What if you buy some property with a deed restriction, then sell/give it to someone without the deed restriction. The person you sell/give it to never agreed to the deed restrictions, so they can do whatever they want with the property, right?

[MacFall]

No, because with deed restrictions you are dealing with actual property, and the restriction is agreed to explicitly. Likewise, it is possible for a person to agree, explicitly and in specific instances, not to use one's property to express certain ideas. But IP relies on the notion that merely by existing, all persons have implicitly agreed not to use their property to express ANY idea over which the originator wishes to retain such control. No such agreement exists.

[Cognitive Dissident]

This "contract" (copyright) is itself immoral, because it limits what I can do, for myself, with my own property

Are deed restrictions also immoral, because they limit what you can do with your own property?

What if you buy some property with a deed restriction, then sell/give it to someone without the deed restriction. The person you sell/give it to never agreed to the deed restrictions, so they can do whatever they want with the property, right?

No, they aren't, because you voluntarily agree to them when you sign the contract in exchange for the use of someone else's property.  There is also a remedy to ending that contract and no longer having to follow those restrictions--you drop any claims to the other person's property and leave.

As for the second, if you buy the property, I doubt any deed restrictions can apply to that property at all, once it's yours.  The concept is meaningless.  If there are restrictions on your property, then you don't own it--it's a lease.  Of course, this would also apply to re-selling it.  

The only deed restriction that would make sense would be one that has some stipulation about access to other property.  For example, if you buy a home in a closed community and are not allowed to buy any road, but your deed gives you access privileges to it and requires you to pay dues.  Then the restrictions to how you behave there and on your easement make sense, because it's not your exclusive property.

Having pointed out that, you could "buy in" as a partial owner, but then you'd have a situation like we do now, where "everyone" owns your property (in reality, because they can tell you how to behave on it, in some cases.)

[dalebert]

What if you buy some property with a deed restriction, then sell/give it to someone without the deed restriction. The person you sell/give it to never agreed to the deed restrictions, so they can do whatever they want with the property, right?

Yeah, I think you're right actually.  This is something I was thinking about with deed restricted property.  You can't make a contract with a piece of property.  That's far too close to statism for comfort.

You make a contract with a person who agrees to do, or not to do, certain things.  If they break a contract (like sell a property without passing on the agreements in contract form to the buyer), then you have a beef with the seller to resolve.  Meanwhile, the new property owner never agreed to anything and the property belongs to him now.

I think the only way to truly preserve a community like that is to have one entity continue to own it and rent it out.  People could own pieces of that entity and prolly work out a way to give them access to specific pieces of real estate simulating pseudo-ownership of it.

That's really another topic completely though.  As was said, this is real property as opposed to some data that can be replicated with no harm to the producer.

[MacFall]

Partial title can be transferred for property, and in real estate that is considered "ownership". But it isn't really ownership unless you have the full and exclusive use of the property. Deed restrictions obviously preclude full use. What you own under a restricted deed is the right to certain uses of the property; the seller of the deed retains ownership of the other uses listed as encumberments. Neither party really owns the property as a unit; they respectively own the rights to different uses of it. If the deed holder sells the deed to someone else, the encumberments still remain on the property, as rights retained by the issuer of the deed. If the second party in this scenario attempts to sell an unencumbered property, he is defrauding the third party, who is in fact purchasing a restricted deed, with the original owner having the right to enforce the restrictions, he being the factual owner of the title to the uses of the property which they describe.

The difference between that and IP, as I mentioned above, are the facts of physical property and explicit agreement. The holder of a restricted deed can no more justly transfer an unencumbered property to a third party, than he could justly sell a stolen watch to a third party. But in the IP scenario, if Al shows Bob his idea under the contractual term that Bob may not show it to Charles, and then Charles nevertheless comes into possession of the idea, Al cannot take the idea away from Charles. Because it is now in Charles's mind, and hence, it is Charles's idea. Nothing has been stolen from Al by the fact of Charles having come into possession of the idea, nor are Al's rights violated if Charles uses his property to express the idea. Al's only claim is against Bob, with whom he had an explicit contract, because no property of Al's was transferred, justly or unjustly, to Charles.

[Cognitive Dissident]

Partial title can be transferred for property, and in real estate that is considered "ownership". But it isn't really ownership unless you have the full and exclusive use of the property. Deed restrictions obviously preclude full use. What you own under a restricted deed is the right to certain uses of the property; the seller of the deed retains ownership of the other uses listed as encumberments. Neither party really owns the property as a unit; they respectively own the rights to different uses of it. If the deed holder sells the deed to someone else, the encumberments still remain on the property, as rights retained by the issuer of the deed. If the second party in this scenario attempts to sell an unencumbered property, he is defrauding the third party, who is in fact purchasing a restricted deed, with the original owner having the right to enforce the restrictions, he being the factual owner of the title to the uses of the property which they describe.

The difference between that and IP, as I mentioned above, are the facts of physical property and explicit agreement. The holder of a restricted deed can no more justly transfer an unencumbered property to a third party, than he could justly sell a stolen watch to a third party. But in the IP scenario, if Al shows Bob his idea under the contractual term that Bob may not show it to Charles, and then Charles nevertheless comes into possession of the idea, Al cannot take the idea away from Charles. Because it is now in Charles's mind, and hence, it is Charles's idea. Nothing has been stolen from Al by the fact of Charles having come into possession of the idea, nor are Al's rights violated if Charles uses his property to express the idea. Al's only claim is against Bob, with whom he had an explicit contract, because no property of Al's was transferred, justly or unjustly, to Charles.

Good job.

[dalebert]

What you're describing, Macfail, is not selling a property but rather selling rights to use the property, which is really leasing it for an indefinite time.  For it to make sense, they need to retain the deed to the property.  That's the only way they can really enforce the rights they have granted over the property, even if they've transferred the right to sublet.

[Cognitive Dissident]

What you're describing, Macfail, is not selling a property but rather selling rights to use the property, which is really leasing it for an indefinite time.  For it to make sense, they need to retain the deed to the property.  That's the only way they can really enforce the rights they have granted over the property, even if they've transferred the right to sublet.

It's basically like when they pretend to sell property like that, it's not a sale; it's a lease...or...it's a sale, and the "stipulations" really can't apply.

[MacFall]

Not exactly true, Dale. For example, you could give a mining company the right to use your property to access minerals near the surface (which is different from selling the minerals themselves) either temporarily or in perpetuity. If the latter, while you still own all the other rights to the use of that property, you may not interfere with the mine's access to those minerals as defined by the transfer of title without purchasing those rights back from the mine.

And that right of partial transfer must be available to the property owner, because full control implies the control of disposal as well. A person may prefer to sell the rights to access (or an easement, using an older definition of the word) minerals on the property in perpetuity in exchange for a lump sum now, rather than leasing those rights for a greater total sum in the future. His would be the right to do so.

Current real estate law does not usually allow for partial transfer of title in perpetuity, but it would in a system of law that fully respects the right of property owners to do as they wish with the property in terms of disposal.