Approaching some common ground with the IP Anarchsts - ebooks (I love ebooks)

[GunnyFreedom]

I love ebooks. Way back when they were a brand new thing, or back when they were still just a concept on the verge of becoming reality I was pretty sure I would like them, but when they became reality and I landed an iPad with which to effectively read them, it turned out that I liked them way more than I even expected to like them.

I LOVE ebooks. I really do.

About an hour ago, I was browsing around, and I bought and downloaded about $100 or so worth of ebooks and happily organized them into my library, with the promise of many weeks of reading enjoyment to come.

But I had a problem.

One of the promises of ebooks was a reduction in cost, but that simply has not materialized.

An ebook basically costs the same as a physical book, and I find that very annoying.

Much if not all of the production cost is gone, other than the intrinsic cost of authorship. No worries with printing presses, pulp, paper, binding, covers printing, shipping logistics, etc etc. Just data infinitely replicated to your ebook reader.

So why is the price the same as a physical book? I kinda feel like I am getting ripped off.

I mean, I a not in the abolition of IP altogether crowd, because I still worry about the author getting his or her credit and share, and I know that can be rehashed ad nauseum, but that's not my point.

Something is wrong when an ebook costs the same as a physical book. Someone is taking advantage of IP in a way that I believe was not intended in order to use advanced technology NOT to enhance delivery to market, but to divert profit to middlemen. And somehow I am pretty sure that the authors are not seeing any of that enhanced profit.

Anyway, my original point was going to be to start a thread in OT to go on about how much I genuinely love ebooks more than I expected to, having always been a physical book person, I really expected to find something lacking in ebooks that I in fact did not find lacking.

The problem I did find was totally unexpected and far more annoying, and it calls into question the current IP system as it is currently constructed. An ebook should not cost the exact same as a physical book. Sorry, but it should not. Subtract the actual cost of physical materials, printing, covering, shipping, and brick and mortar sales and I'm with you...but by doing this thing where an ebook costs the exact same as a physical book aren't you actually encouraging piracy?

Just ruminating...

[PierzStyx]

That is the market my friend. As long as people are willing to pay that amount for them, they'll keep charging you that much.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

That is the market my friend. As long as people are willing to pay that amount for them, they'll keep charging you that much.

The only reason they can charge that much is because they hold a State-monopoly in the form of IP, which was the entire premise of the OP in the first place. Any monopoly yields less supply than a non-monopolized product, service, or industry. I do disagree with the premise of the OP in that they conflate costs of production with price, but nevertheless the fact remains that anyone should be able to sell these books to whom they want without threat of State violence initiated against them.

[liberdom]

I love ebooks. Way back when they were a brand new thing, or back when they were still just a concept on the verge of becoming reality I was pretty sure I would like them, but when they became reality and I landed an iPad with which to effectively read them, it turned out that I liked them way more than I even expected to like them.

I LOVE ebooks. I really do.

About an hour ago, I was browsing around, and I bought and downloaded about $100 or so worth of ebooks and happily organized them into my library, with the promise of many weeks of reading enjoyment to come.

But I had a problem.

One of the promises of ebooks was a reduction in cost, but that simply has not materialized.


Exactly, it's a reduced cost for the publisher and author, but not much for the consumer, unless they're either a pirate, or reading something that's intended for public non-profit use. It's efficient for propaganda and promotion, and also for making money, whatever the goal is for the publisher.



So why is the price the same as a physical book? I kinda feel like I am getting ripped off.

You are. Sickening is the idea that ebook authors, many are online marketers, tell people they are "going green", and they are, but reducing production costs and making delivery faster, but who cares as a consumer, unless those costs are saved back to them?


Someone is taking advantage of IP in a way that I believe was not intended in order to use advanced technology NOT to enhance delivery to market, but to divert profit to middlemen.

You are correct, they ARE diverting money away from the middle man, and at the same time, retaining most of the profits for the author. Which is not the model of profit sharing we are used to, but as long as consumers don't care, it'll continue. Yesterday's authors were used to being paid 10% of retail, letting publishers and retailers keep close to 90% of the rest. Today's ebook authors keep 99% of it.

Technology is going to eventually make piracy easy, and IP hard to enforce, so the question is, will authors be ready for it? Or are they already aware of it, and simply trying to squeeze the last years of this failed model before they're abruptly from it?

Yesterday's paper print author keeps $1 of each book, letting his investor (publisher, retailer) keep $9.
Today's author is keeping close to all of it. Leaving the retailer less than 10% (with exceptions, such as Kindle, where price control is real).
Today's author is keeping $5-10 per sale.
Tomorrow's author will keep much less than that, probably back to $1, if not less. There will be no middle man.
But what incentive does today's author have to adapt to this? Other than to look like a nice guy who cares about consumers? Why would he voluntarily give up his profits unless he has to? Consumers can choose, we can stop buying ebooks until they are cheap enough. That's all I can say, and all I've been doing.

[liberdom]

That is the market my friend. As long as people are willing to pay that amount for them, they'll keep charging you that much.

yep.

Kindle takes advantage of that, they have a virtual competition free outlet.
Amazon has little competition for selling printed books.
Kindle has little competition for selling ebooks with good copyright protection.
That means whether you are selling ebooks or printed books, you have to find a better and cheaper way to sell than amazon before things change.
Ironically, Amazon sells DRM free music downloads, meaning, mp3 files that can be copied indefinitely. This undermines iTunes, but promotes piracy (or you can say, they are adapting to it before the free fall comes).

Therefore for Amazon to lose its advantage against consumers, it must either be hacked, (meaning Kindle's IP protection will be broken) breaking open the flood gates (not likely).
Or, at some point piracy will just catch up, and authors will have to come to compromise, and sell DRM free ebooks.

[GunnyFreedom]

The only reason they can charge that much is because they hold a State-monopoly in the form of IP, which was the entire premise of the OP in the first place. Any monopoly yields less supply than a non-monopolized product, service, or industry. I do disagree with the premise of the OP in that they conflate costs of production with price, but nevertheless the fact remains that anyone should be able to sell these books to whom they want without threat of State violence initiated against them.

And the author?

[specsaregood]

I guess you didnt hear how steve jobs colluded with book publishers to artificially prop the prices of ebooks up? Its the similar assholishness where jobs attempted to collude with other computer companies to agree not to hire each others employees.


edit:http://www.wired.com/business/2012/03/justice-dept-threatens-apple-publishers-with-price-fixing-lawsuits-report/


A new report at the Wall Street Journal says that the U.S. Department of Justice has threatened Apple and five major publishers with an antitrust lawsuit, alleging the publishers and Apple colluded to fix e-book prices.

Some but not all of the publishers, according to the report, have moved to settlement discussions with the government before any such lawsuit is filed, hoping to avoid a public and very messy fight. Whether the parties settle or go to court, at stake is the agency pricing model Apple helped introduce to the e-book industry, where publishers set fixed prices across all e-bookstores and retailers recoup a set percentage of the sales.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

And the author?

Has not been deprived any use, ownership or possession of his property. I still can't believe how people cannot see how IP infringes on property rights...Do you guys ever look at anyone else, but the producer? It's like I am constantly arguing with a bunch of mercantilists all the time on these boards. Never mind the fact that not one IP advocate I've ever met has ever reconciled the fact that if IP was property it would hold the characteristics of property, but it doesn't and never has. Why is it time limited? Why can only certain things be IP? Why can't I pass title to my progeny? We should all be paying royalties to the family of the person who invented the English Language, or combined to invent it, after-all why can you own specific arrangements of words and letters, but not the words and letters themselves?

You have to pay to speak -- and you call that liberty or property rights? This is the logical conclusion to the IP argument and it falls flat on it's face under this scrutiny.

[mad cow]

I love e-books,they are a Godsend to my 61 year old eyes and I would pay the same price as a printed book just for that.

That has not been my experience,however,e-books are usually cheaper.
For instance,moderator CaseyJones recommended a book a few days ago and provided an Amazon link to it in the post.
The kindle edition,which I bought,was 49% less than the printed book.

[liberdom]

Has not been deprived any use, ownership or possession of his property. I still can't believe how people cannot see how IP infringes on property rights...


We define property differently. I define property as whatever I create, own, and can control. You define property as privacy from being told what to do. Therefore when you pirate a musical work, you consider it your property and privacy to have your pirated copy, and I consider it a violation of my control, privilege to exploit.

let's try this, "I can't believe people can't see how prohibiting ID theft and counterfeiting is violation of property". Who are you to tell me I can't "steal" your identity? Do you "own" your identity? Do you own any rights to the dollar bills in your pocket? Who are you to say I can't counterfeit it?




Do you guys ever look at anyone else, but the producer? It's like I am constantly arguing with a bunch of mercantilists all the time on these boards. Never mind the fact that not one IP advocate I've ever met has ever reconciled the fact that if IP was property it would hold the characteristics of property, but it doesn't and never has.


Actually it does. You just refuse to recognize it.



Why is it time limited?


The same way all property enforcement is limited, to be reasonable, fair and practical.



Why can only certain things be IP?


Are you talking about why advertisements are not IP protected, or why knowledge is not IP?
Because not all information posess the same nature and value. The same way not all objects can be property, not all land can be privately owned.



Why can't I pass title to my progeny?


Who says you can't? Time expiration still applies



We should all be paying royalties to the family of the person who invented the English Language


No, you shouldn't. No more than you should pay royalties to Newton for inventing calculus, the old crock strawman of IP opponents. We can go over why language and scientific knowledge are not IP, but that is not the same as creative works, copyright, trademark, identity, patents for inventions...etc. You cannot conflate them and generalize it just to throw them all out.



, or combined to invent it, after-all why can you own specific arrangements of words and letters, but not the words and letters themselves?


Depends on how they can be used. So you must be advocating that your identity can be used by any person, and counterfeiting should be perfectly acceptable?



You have to pay to speak -- and you call that liberty or property rights?


So I can't say "I have money" unless I have money you recognize? At what point do we call something "fraud" rather than "free speech"?




This is the logical conclusion to the IP argument and it falls flat on it's face under this scrutiny.

Answer mine, so you know how ridiculous your analogies are

[liberdom]

I guess you didnt hear how steve jobs colluded with book publishers to artificially prop the prices of ebooks up? Its the similar assholishness where jobs attempted to collude with other computer companies to agree not to hire each others employees.


edit:http://www.wired.com/business/2012/03/justice-dept-threatens-apple-publishers-with-price-fixing-lawsuits-report/

ha.

I'm surprised Kindle/Amazon hasn't been investigated for it. iBooks is a rather smaller marketshare compared to Kindle. (as far as paid ebooks).

[specsaregood]

ha.

I'm surprised Kindle/Amazon hasn't been investigated for it. iBooks is a rather smaller marketshare compared to Kindle. (as far as paid ebooks).

IIRC, Amazon was the reason they did it. Amazon wanted the prices to go down on ebooks.

[liberdom]

IIRC, Amazon was the reason they did it. Amazon wanted the prices to go down on ebooks.

really?

So what stopped Amazon from trying? Unless they too were in on it?

Because just checking right now, books on Kindle are only $1-5 less than in print, sometimes, Kindle costs even MORE than in print.
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Trilogy-Darker-3/dp/034580404X/ref=zg_bsnr_books_1 (just one example)
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionaries-Unlocking-Spiritual-Cultural-Potential/dp/0061916137/ref=zg_bsnr_books_6
http://www.amazon.com/Cowards-Politicians-Radicals-Media-Refuse/dp/1451693478/ref=zg_bsnr_books_13
(as you can see, sometimes audible costs more than CDs, WTF! they must be assuming that the digitized audiobook is more portable, and "saving" work of converting if you bought the CD)

If iBooks wants to prop prices high, Amazon can kill them overnight if they wanted to lower prices (but they didn't, and have no reason to).

[heavenlyboy34]

Has not been deprived any use, ownership or possession of his property. I still can't believe how people cannot see how IP infringes on property rights...Do you guys ever look at anyone else, but the producer? It's like I am constantly arguing with a bunch of mercantilists all the time on these boards. Never mind the fact that not one IP advocate I've ever met has ever reconciled the fact that if IP was property it would hold the characteristics of property, but it doesn't and never has. Why is it time limited? Why can only certain things be IP? Why can't I pass title to my progeny? We should all be paying royalties to the family of the person who invented the English Language, or combined to invent it, after-all why can you own specific arrangements of words and letters, but not the words and letters themselves? You have to pay to speak -- and you call that liberty or property rights? This is the logical conclusion to the IP argument and it falls flat on it's face under this scrutiny.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Austrian Econ Disciple again. I haz teh sad. Such a +rep worthy post, yet I cannot rep thee. :(

[liberdom]

I haz teh sad. Such a +rep worthy post, yet I cannot rep thee. :(

I responded to his post, can you try to answer the questions I raised?

[specsaregood]

really?
So what stopped Amazon from trying? Unless they too were in on it?

Because just checking right now, books on Kindle are only $1-5 less than in print, sometimes, Kindle costs even MORE than in print.
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Trilogy-Darker-3/dp/034580404X/ref=zg_bsnr_books_1 (just one example)
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionaries-Unlocking-Spiritual-Cultural-Potential/dp/0061916137/ref=zg_bsnr_books_6
http://www.amazon.com/Cowards-Politicians-Radicals-Media-Refuse/dp/1451693478/ref=zg_bsnr_books_13
(as you can see, sometimes audible costs more than CDs, WTF! they must be assuming that the digitized audiobook is more portable, and "saving" work of converting if you bought the CD)

If iBooks wants to prop prices high, Amazon can kill them overnight if they wanted to lower prices (but they didn't, and have no reason to).

Because amazon is limited by the publishers on what prices to charge. Amazon wanted ebooks cheaper than print so they could sell more of them. So (allegedly) apple went to the publishers and asked them not to allow ebook prices to be cheaper than print versions, as to slow the market growth of kindle and give apple time to work on their platform. jobs has ALWAYs been about propping prices up.

[heavenlyboy34]

Actually it does. You just refuse to recognize it. BS. Prove it. When real property changes hands, one person no longer has the property. When I copy data onto your computer, we both have a copy. I am no poorer because this copying has occurred. (I might THINK so if I were a mercantilist, though) This is not possible with real property. All your other claims stem from this core claim-that IP is "real property". I have demonstrated this to be false here and numerous other times on these forums. You just refuse to recognize it.

[liberdom]

Because amazon is limited by the publishers on what prices to charge.


Ok, now it's starting to make sense.

Now, what IF amazon said from the beginning "we will not carry your books on Kindle unless you let us fix prices (towards low), and feel free to find somebody else who will do this dirty work", they would break no laws, and publishers would have little alternatives.

Doesn't that mean, instead of turning against publishers, they turned against consumers? Since their marketshare gives them the advantage in any bargain, whether with publishers or consumers.



Amazon wanted ebooks cheaper than print so they could sell more of them. So (allegedly) apple went to the publishers and asked them not to allow ebook prices to be cheaper than print versions, as to slow the market growth of kindle and give apple time to work on their platform. jobs has ALWAYs been about propping prices up.

I know Jobs is a greedy bastard who knows how to play consumers. Publishers didn't need to hear from Apple to prop up prices, because Amazon already gave in to them, right? Unless, Amazon first threatened not to help them prop, and then publishers went to a propper (Apple), and then Amazon decided to ride on the benefits of the Apple propping.

Seems like an awfully complex way to vindicate Amazon, when you can simply accuse them. So I guess what you're saying is, since Apple is always the propper, they propped up prices for both iBook and Kindle, otherwise Amazon would've deflated the ebook prices and iBooks would've been dead?

I think we can both agree, that unless there was an IP protection system alternative to Kindle (and there's a few), Amazon would've had the upper hand in bargaining with publishers. But since there are alternatives (nook, iBooks, ePub, kobo), publishers had the upper hand, and was able to make Amazon keep prices high, and Apple was instrumental in assisting them?

[liberdom]

BS. Prove it. When real property changes hands, one person no longer has the property. When I copy data onto your computer, we both have a copy. I am no poorer because this copying has occurred. (I might THINK so if I were a mercantilist, though) This is not possible with real property.

Really? So you're not poorer just because I counterfeitted the dollars you have? You're a mercantilist if you want to criminal counterfeiting!

[LibForestPaul]

BS. Prove it. When real property changes hands, one person no longer has the property. When I copy data onto your computer, we both have a copy. I am no poorer because this copying has occurred. (I might THINK so if I were a mercantilist, though) This is not possible with real property.
IP is a great lie being used to justify bought and paid for privileges..
It is not property, that is why specific laws had to be drafted within the US Constitution. If it were property, no special articles would need to have been drafted.
It IS an infringement upon my right to do with MY property as I see fit. This infringement is so great, that it required not only a special article being drafted within The Constitution of the United States, but also required an explanation of why this infringement was necessary.

Those who lie are simply mercantilist apologists. The want to alter history. And hide the infringement that COPYRIGHT holders have been granted upon MY property.

[GunnyFreedom]

Has not been deprived any use, ownership or possession of his property. I still can't believe how people cannot see how IP infringes on property rights...Do you guys ever look at anyone else, but the producer? It's like I am constantly arguing with a bunch of mercantilists all the time on these boards. Never mind the fact that not one IP advocate I've ever met has ever reconciled the fact that if IP was property it would hold the characteristics of property, but it doesn't and never has. Why is it time limited? Why can only certain things be IP? Why can't I pass title to my progeny? We should all be paying royalties to the family of the person who invented the English Language, or combined to invent it, after-all why can you own specific arrangements of words and letters, but not the words and letters themselves?

You have to pay to speak -- and you call that liberty or property rights? This is the logical conclusion to the IP argument and it falls flat on it's face under this scrutiny.

I'm not following your argument.

Author spends 5 years writing a book. Does everything he can to distribute/sell it to recoup some value on his time. One guy likes it so much he copies it, leaves the author's attribution so it's not fraud, and sells it to a million people. One guy walks away with $3 million cold, author walks away with a buck fifty.

I just don't see how that's a viable model, sorry.

[liberdom]

I'm not following your argument.

Author spends 5 years writing a book. Does everything he can to distribute/sell it to recoup some value on his time. One guy likes it so much he copies it, leaves the author's attribution so it's not fraud, and sells it to a million people. One guy walks away with $3 million cold, author walks away with a buck fifty.

I just don't see how that's a viable model, sorry.

Anti-IP people don't care about "viable model" and the minute you tell them how long it took to write a book, they'll yell "you're using labor theory of value" as if you said labor equals value (you didn't, you simply said labor equals ownership, no different than homesteading).

Anti-IP people hate profits when they can't exploit another person's fruits, they are no different than communists who want land and housing for everybody because they produce nothing themselves.

[mad cow]

I just went to Amazon and checked their top 40 paid bestsellers,ranging in price from $1.99 on up.In every case from $9.99 on up it said"this price is set by the publisher."Could it be that Random House et al don't like e-books and want you to buy the paper copy?
Anyhow ,you can't blame Amazon for that price.

[Invi]

Am I the only one who has found a few of the eBooks I wanted to buy costing more than a printed copy? That was incredibly annoying.

[liberdom]

Am I the only one who has found a few of the eBooks I wanted to buy costing more than a printed copy? That was incredibly annoying.

nope, you are not. I just gave examples of them, there's plenty!!

Publishers will keep doing it as long as the consumers let them.

[heavenlyboy34]

Really? So you're not poorer just because I counterfeitted the dollars you have? You're a mercantilist if you want to criminal counterfeiting!
Do you know what counterfeiting means? Do you really conflate dollars with IP? (please tell me you aren't so profoundly ignorant) I did NOT describe counterfeiting there (except in a few senses of the word, like 4 and 5 below). Let me help you:

coun·ter·feit   [koun-ter-fit]

adjective 1.made in imitation so as to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; not genuine; forged: counterfeit dollar bills.

2.pretended; unreal: counterfeit grief.


noun 3.an imitation intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; forgery.

4.Archaic . a copy.

5.Archaic . a close likeness; portrait.

6.Obsolete . impostor; pretender.


00:01



Counterfeit is an SAT word you need to know.





verb (used with object) 7.to make a counterfeit of; imitate fraudulently; forge.

8.to resemble.

9.to simulate.


verb (used without object) 10.to make counterfeits, as of money.

11.to feign; dissemble.



Origin:
1250–1300; (adj.) Middle English countrefet false, forged < Anglo-French cuntrefet, Old French contrefait, past participle of conterfere to copy, imitate, equivalent to conter- counter- (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/counter-) + fere to make, do ≪ Latin facere ( see fact (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fact)); (v.) Middle English countrefeten, verbal derivative of countrefet

P.S.-let me know when you are ready to prove the positive claims you make. You haven't done it yet.

[liberdom]

I just went to Amazon and checked their top 40 paid bestsellers,ranging in price from $1.99 on up.In every case from $9.99 on up it said"this price is set by the publisher."Could it be that Random House et al don't like e-books and want you to buy the paper copy?
Anyhow ,you can't blame Amazon for that price.

Yes, definitely publishers have ultimate control. You can blame amazon for giving in, because their marketshare would allow them to bargain against publishers, but they chose to side with them, this could be just efficiency, or due to pressures from competitors like Apple, which is why there is an antitrust probe.

The better question should be, should there be antitrust probes and lawsuits? Why is it or should it be illegal for merchants and producers to work together to screw the consumer? The only justification I can think of is, that the state already protects them from IP violators, otherwise competitors would've arisen to make collusion harder.

[liberdom]

Do you know what counterfeiting means? Do you really conflate dollars with IP? (please tell me you aren't so profoundly ignorant) I did NOT describe counterfeiting there (except in a few senses of the word, like 4 and 5 below). Let me help you:


SO your point is that counterfeiting is copy + intention to decieve? What if I didn't intend to decieve, I admitted that my printed dollars were not authorized by you, but they look and can be accepted exactly the same. Are you poorer or not? Do you not believe I have a right to copy the dollars you have and give them to people who accept it?

[liberdom]

P.S.-let me know when you are ready to prove the positive claims you make. You haven't done it yet.

Property is defined by the society you live in. When people recognize your right to own land, they allow you to protect it, even by force. When they don't recognize your right to own a slave, they will use force to prevent you from it. And the same is true with IP. In the past, IP protection was a limitation on technology, and therefore laws were not necessary. Today, pirating and copying is easier, therefore laws were enact to prevent or discourage it. People who like to bring up the bullshit example "how come Shakespeare didn't need copyright laws" ignore that Shakespeare is the only person who survived the era, and the common man cannot name a dozen authors in the same era the same way he can for 1990s authors. Every honest IP advocate will tell you, that if you took away copying technology from the hands of common consumers, they would not need IP protection laws. This is where opponents will argue that IP is an incidental product of lacking technology, rather than an intention that deserves to be continuously protected. They are wrong, because again, PROPERTY IS DEFINED BY THE SOCIETY YOU LIVE IN. IP is not a "state monopoly with force against people" any more than land ownership is, the only difference is how many people recognize it. If people stopped caring about land ownership, the same would result.

[jmdrake]

And the author?

Here's a thought experiment. Let's say you got an e-book from author X that you really liked. Let's say author X had a blog and updated it once a week with more thoughts on the subject. Might you read the blog if it was linked to the website? Might that generate ad revenue? Could the author have sponsors for his book were ads were placed on certain pages? For example if you were reading someone's big game hunting diary, and they had an ad and links to some of the gear they mentioned in the book...?

[GunnyFreedom]

Anti-IP people don't care about "viable model" and the minute you tell them how long it took to write a book, they'll yell "you're using labor theory of value" as if you said labor equals value (you didn't, you simply said labor equals ownership, no different than homesteading).

Anti-IP people hate profits when they can't exploit another person's fruits, they are no different than communists who want land and housing for everybody because they produce nothing themselves.

I'm pretty sure AED doesn't think I believe in the LTV, what I do believe in is doing a CBA before engaging in a project, and when the CBA starts revealing that 5 years of digging ditches returns 10000% of the value as writing a novel, then our society will become one hell of a lot poorer, intellectually.

I am also confident that the anti IP people aren't taking that position because they want free goodies, contrary to your caricature. I believe it is a philosophical position the ramifications of which have not been entirely understood.

[liberdom]

Here's a thought experiment. Let's say you got an e-book from author X that you really liked. Let's say author X had a blog and updated it once a week with more thoughts on the subject. Might you read the blog if it was linked to the website? Might that generate ad revenue? Could the author have sponsors for his book were ads were placed on certain pages? For example if you were reading someone's big game hunting diary, and they had an ad and links to some of the gear they mentioned in the book...?

It's not a thought experiment, people write blogs knowing the rules of the internet. The internet is not free from DMCA regulations. What does that have to do with ebooks?

[DerailingDaTrain]

I'm not following your argument.

Author spends 5 years writing a book. Does everything he can to distribute/sell it to recoup some value on his time. One guy likes it so much he copies it, leaves the author's attribution so it's not fraud, and sells it to a million people. One guy walks away with $3 million cold, author walks away with a buck fifty.

I just don't see how that's a viable model, sorry.

Nobody makes money off of it. Someone buys the book, cd, movie, etc. and then uploads it to the internet for free.

[liberdom]

I'm pretty sure AED doesn't think I believe in the LTV, what I do believe in is doing a CBA before engaging in a project, and when the CBA starts revealing that 5 years of digging ditches returns 10000% of the value as writing a novel, then our society will become one hell of a lot poorer, intellectually.


And he wants you to believe "I didn't agree with your CBA so it's not my problem if you didn't assume the risks"



I am also confident that the anti IP people aren't taking that position because they want free goodies, contrary to your caricature. I believe it is a philosophical position the ramifications of which have not been entirely understood.

changes no facts that they can't live what they preach and shouldn't be taken seriously.

[liberdom]

Nobody makes money off of it. Someone buys the book, cd, movie, etc. and then uploads it to the internet for free.

"nobody makes money off it" = "perfectly acceptable"?

So if I publicize your identification information allowing anybody to "steal" your identity, as long as I make no money off of it, it's acceptable to you? You don't seriously believe in "owning" "your" identity, do you?

[GunnyFreedom]

Here's a thought experiment. Let's say you got an e-book from author X that you really liked. Let's say author X had a blog and updated it once a week with more thoughts on the subject. Might you read the blog if it was linked to the website? Might that generate ad revenue? Could the author have sponsors for his book were ads were placed on certain pages? For example if you were reading someone's big game hunting diary, and they had an ad and links to some of the gear they mentioned in the book...?

No, actually probably not. I don't like books that never end. I would find that model so annoying as to drive me away from books altogether. That kinda strikes me as the "Jersey Shore" version of literature. I would probably hold a funeral and a memorial service for the death of literature with the half-dozen or so readers that would be left at that point and there would be much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

[heavenlyboy34]

Anti-IP people don't care about "viable model" and the minute you tell them how long it took to write a book, they'll yell "you're using labor theory of value" as if you said labor equals value (you didn't, you simply said labor equals ownership, no different than homesteading). Anti-IP people hate profits when they can't exploit another person's fruits, they are no different than communists who want land and housing for everybody because they produce nothing themselves. And this is why it is pointless for me to debate you on this subject. You don't understand the fundamental laws and principles underlying the concepts being discussed. I do not "hate profits when they can't exploit another person's fruits". This is an outright lie and red herring the IP-advocates like to use to distract people and vilify opponents.I am perfectly fine with you making profits on your product. The problem comes in when you try to prevent me from profiting from use of my property (which you have freely given me in exchange for money or some compensation). If you want to be the sole beneficiary of profits from your product, you have to devise a way to allow the public to enjoy it without owning it (like keeping a film in theaters instead of releasing it on DVD). Even then, there may be someone who has the ability to memorize and reproduce the product with his own labor and capital. This is the risk you run being in a creative industry. If you don't like it, pick a less risky field.

[PierzStyx]

BS. Prove it. When real property changes hands, one person no longer has the property. When I copy data onto your computer, we both have a copy. I am no poorer because this copying has occurred. (I might THINK so if I were a mercantilist, though) This is not possible with real property. All your other claims stem from this core claim-that IP is "real property". I have demonstrated this to be false here and numerous other times on these forums. You just refuse to recognize it.

No, you just violated the rights of the owner of the property you copied without paying for it. That is called theft. Even if it is an mp3 it can be visually identified, felt by usage opf a computer or mp3 player, heard, etc. It has every characteristic of physical property and is a reality. The fact that you want to justify theft by saying you own the rights to the original property simply because you bought a copy of it is pathetic.

[GunnyFreedom]

Nobody makes money off of it. Someone buys the book, cd, movie, etc. and then uploads it to the internet for free.

And this encourages people like Stephen King to write....how?

[specsaregood]

//

[heavenlyboy34]

No, you just violated the rights of the owner of the property you copied without paying for it. That is called theft. Even if it is an mp3 it can be visually identified, felt by usage opf a computer or mp3 player, heard, etc. It has every characteristic of physical property and is a reality. The fact that you want to justify theft by saying you own the rights to the original property simply because you bought a copy of it is pathetic. Wrong on all counts. The law calls it piracy, not theft. It has no characteristic of real property. Only the medium it is captured on is property. That's why you can't copyright something until it's captured in a tangible medium. (see the Copyright Act) Learn the law, learn economics, learn logic, learn argumentation. Then, maybe you'll come up with a convincing argument.

[jmdrake]

It's not a thought experiment, people write blogs knowing the rules of the internet. The internet is not free from DMCA regulations. What does that have to do with ebooks?

The point isn't just about blogs. It's about connecting an ebook to a blog. The free ebook becomes free advertising. You're right though, it's not just a thought experiment. http://www.famousbloggers.net/make-money-free-ebooks.html And I know that the Internet is not free from DMCA. The point I was making is that if DMCA went away it would still be possible for ebook writers to make money.

[GunnyFreedom]

The point isn't just about blogs. It's about connecting an ebook to a blog. The free ebook becomes free advertising. You're right though, it's not just a thought experiment. http://www.famousbloggers.net/make-money-free-ebooks.html And I know that the Internet is not free from DMCA. The point I was making is that if DMCA went away it would still be possible for ebook writers to make money.

If shovels were outlawed, ditch diggers could still make money digging with their hands too, but if they were paid by the volume of dirt they turned, chances are not many ditches would get dug until the cost of digging ditches went so high that only multi millionaires could afford it.

IP anarchy just wouldn't work with authors of novels and novellas. It would kill literature altogether. Someone knows they are going to spend 5 years doing back breaking work and never see a dime, they are going to go flip burgers instead, mark my words.

[DerailingDaTrain]

"nobody makes money off it" = "perfectly acceptable"?

So if I publicize your identification information allowing anybody to "steal" your identity, as long as I make no money off of it, it's acceptable to you? You don't seriously believe in "owning" "your" identity, do you?

I know you can't respond since you were banned but you didn't read what I said if you think that. I simply corrected him

[GunnyFreedom]

And it's not about DMCA per se, a WHOLE BUNCH of ebooks are sold without DMCA per author/publisher request, but they are still sold. It's about the wholesale free-for-all copyfest that would ensue from stripping authors of any rights to their work.

[DerailingDaTrain]

And this encourages people like Stephen King to write....how?

I didn't know Stephen King had stopped writing books. :eek:

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert but to give you an example the movie Hostel 2 was leaked to the internet and downloaded millions of times by people and yet it still made over 85 million dollars worldwide (50 million of that was from DVD and PPV sales). The maker of the film Eli Roth didn't really care but Lionsgate went crazy.

[GunnyFreedom]

I didn't know Stephen King had stopped writing books. :eek:

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert but to give you an example the movie Hostel 2 was leaked to the internet and downloaded millions of times by people and yet it still made over 85 million dollars worldwide (50 million of that was from DVD and PPV sales). The maker of the film Eli Roth didn't really care but Lionsgate went crazy.

He hasn't, but when he can no longer make a living at it, he will.

As to Hostel 2, just because the copyright was violated doesn't mean the copyright didn't exist. Distribution outlets are not going to do business with pirates. But when copy-free becomes perfectly legal, all bets are off.

[Anti Federalist]

Couple of things:

I hate e-books, not only because I'm generally a Luddite about such things, but more importantly due to the fact that wireless readers can be remotely manipulated to edit or delete content, without your knowledge. Fuck that. I'll keep my paper books on my shelf, thank you.

I'm in agreement with Gunny here. You create something, you have a right to profit from it and control how it is used. There would be no faster way to crush any new innovations and research if anybody could reverse engineer anything and flood the market with cheap knockoffs. Research into some new forms of technology or medicine costs billions of dollars and nobody is going to engage in that type of research if there can be no expectation of a return on investments.

Why was liberdom banned? Trollish, maybe, but I see nothing ban worthy.

[Anti Federalist]

He hasn't, but when he can no longer make a living at it, he will.

LOL - I think if SK never wrote another word, he would not have anything to worry about.

[GunnyFreedom]

Why was liberdom banned? Trollish, maybe, but I see nothing ban worthy.

liberdom has been excessively trollish everywhere he posted on RPFs, but I, like you, have not seen anything actually banworthy. Probably should have toned down the trollish superiority complex with every keystroke though.

[heavenlyboy34]

Couple of things:

I hate e-books, not only because I'm generally a Luddite about such things, but more importantly due to the fact that wireless readers can be remotely manipulated to edit or delete content, without your knowledge. Fuck that. I'll keep my paper books on my shelf, thank you.

I'm in agreement with Gunny here. You create something, you have a right to profit from it and control how it is used. There would be no faster way to crush any new innovations and research if anybody could reverse engineer anything and flood the market with cheap knockoffs. Research into some new forms of technology or medicine costs billions of dollars and nobody is going to engage in that type of research if there can be no expectation of a return on investments.

Why was liberdom banned? Trollish, maybe, but I see nothing ban worthy.
The claim that a creator should be able to profit from sales of the product is not at dispute. What is at dispute is the claims that copying is theft and that copying destroys value of an original. Neither of those claims are true.

You may hate the market being flooded with cheap knock-offs, but so what? This benefits consumers who are more concerned with the product in general than in quality. Protectionism is only good for "producers" who want to manipulate the market to their favor and their buds in gov'ment who they buy off to get their protections.

btw, I had nothing to do with liberdom's ban.

[Anti Federalist]

You may hate the market being flooded with cheap knock-offs, but so what? This benefits consumers who are more concerned with the product in general than in quality. Protectionism is only good for "producers" who want to manipulate the market to their favor and their buds in gov'ment who they buy off to get their protections.

Because, at some point, there would be nothing left in the market at all.

Or, it will be of such poor quality, that it will be next to worthless.

Why risk and produce anything if your profits are just decimated the second you introduce a new product or service or consumer good?

I don't work for free, and I'm sure you don't either.


btw, I had nothing to do with liberdom's ban.

LOL, I'm sure you didn't and neither did I.

Somebody must have pitched a bitch I guess.

[GunnyFreedom]

Couple of things:

I hate e-books, not only because I'm generally a Luddite about such things, but more importantly due to the fact that wireless readers can be remotely manipulated to edit or delete content, without your knowledge. Fuck that. I'll keep my paper books on my shelf, thank you.

Yeah, that's kinda why I go out of my way to only buy books that say "This e-book does not have DCM protection in accordance with the request of the author/publisher" That way they can't reach in and block it, I can make backups and kick them to long term storage. I just LIKE the idea of being able to fit an entire local library worth of books onto a thumb drive...


I'm in agreement with Gunny here. You create something, you have a right to profit from it and control how it is used. There would be no faster way to crush any new innovations and research if anybody could reverse engineer anything and flood the market with cheap knockoffs. Research into some new forms of technology or medicine costs billions of dollars and nobody is going to engage in that type of research if there can be no expectation of a return on investments.


See that's exactly the problem I have with the total anti-IP position.

I mean, sure, IP has problems too, I don't dispute THAT for a minute, but there has to be a better way than either current IP schema or nothing at all.

I hear this debate and the dilema I hear is "Do you want me to superglue your rear end shut, or let Bubba over there rape you repeatedly?" How about uhhhh neither?

And when people try to justify that it's OK for an author to invest 5 years into writing a book and not make a dime, I just have to shake my head. Really? How any person who believes in the free market sees that situation not leading to the total extinction of books is beyond me.

IP needs a ground-up re-write. It's broken to be sure. The problem is that complete abolition is a cure worse than the disease.


LOL - I think if SK never wrote another word, he would not have anything to worry about.

Yeah, true enough, but you know there is some kid out there who is destined to be the next Stephen King, struggling with himself right now as to whether or not to start typing that first word. Right now he knows that if he writes a book good enough to be picked up that he can make a decent living off of it and maybe make a career out of being an author. So someone comes along and abolishes all forms of Ip and replaces it with nothing. That kid shrugs his shoulders and goes to flipping burgers instead. It's the whole world that loses.

[Anti Federalist]

See that's exactly the problem I have with the total anti-IP position.

I mean, sure, IP has problems too, I don't dispute THAT for a minute, but there has to be a better way than either current IP schema or nothing at all.

I hear this debate and the dilema I hear is "Do you want me to superglue your rear end shut, or let Bubba over there rape you repeatedly?" How about uhhhh neither?

And when people try to justify that it's OK for an author to invest 5 years into writing a book and not make a dime, I just have to shake my head. Really? How any person who believes in the free market sees that situation not leading to the total extinction of books is beyond me.

IP needs a ground-up re-write. It's broken to be sure. The problem is that complete abolition is a cure worse than the disease.

I'd say the remedy lies in the way the law used to be applied, before the feds became the enforcement arm of RIAA.

"Copying" wasn't an issue and nobody paid it any mind, as long as you were not making commercial profits off it.

There is a HUGE difference between prosecuting the Uzbekstahn brothers running a CD copy mill in the Bronx, pumping out half a million units a month, and prosecuting "Musically Clueless FarceBook Girl" for sharing mp3s of Justin Bieber and Fiddy Cent.


Yeah, true enough, but you know there is some kid out there who is destined to be the next Stephen King, struggling with himself right now as to whether or not to start typing that first word. Right now he knows that if he writes a book good enough to be picked up that he can make a decent living off of it and maybe make a career out of being an author. So someone comes along and abolishes all forms of Ip and replaces it with nothing. That kid shrugs his shoulders and goes to flipping burgers instead. It's the whole world that loses.

Yes, and not just a King, but any other innovator.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Because, at some point, there would be nothing left in the market at all.

Or, it will be of such poor quality, that it will be next to worthless.

Why risk and produce anything if your profits are just decimated the second you introduce a new product or service or consumer good?

I don't work for free, and I'm sure you don't either.



LOL, I'm sure you didn't and neither did I.

Somebody must have pitched a bitch I guess.

First you have to prove that people only make purchasing decisions based on that one criteria. In fact though, people make their decisions to purchase something with numerous different values. Reputation, first to market, support a person they like, hating someone (never heard of a ban before? lol), etc.

Your hypothesis is actually not born out in reality. Yes, some people due to their low purchasing power have reduced options and thus make choices based on their incomes and having cheaper, lower quality goods is a benefit to these people who otherwise may not be able to purchase or own such a good or service. That's the joy of the market, peoples wants and needs are met whether that is at the low income spectrum or the high income, or anything and everything in between.

I distinctly remember a few of Murray's lecture where he gives little comments about these things. Why do people go to restaurants that charge 40$ for the same meal you can get for 7$ at another restaurant? Because you are not just purchasing food, you are purchasing the environment & reputation as well. People aren't stupid. If they can afford to support the originator of a product they'll more than likely do so, but to restrict one's use of property because you feel that person has a right to restrict every other individuals use of their property in that fashion in society does not necessarily enrich the creator (not talking about the monopoly here at the moment). If someone who makes 300$ a year decides to buy a 25 cent copy of a movie from the local DVD ripper down the street does not take anything away from MGM, since he could have never afforded their DVD in the first place.

Of course, due the monopoly of IP such products are artificially over-priced due to a restriction of supply (competition). As far as no one would ever do anything because they have no monopoly and therefore no guarantee of profit...well, we all have to survive right? If you just do nothing because life means risk and competition, well, you die (or at least find yourself on charity rolls) or mooch off family, church, etc. when the State does not exist. That won't last too long.

Anyways, this whole argument is one giant ignorance of economics and human action (and I say that as a neutral statement). If we all took a little time out and read, deduced, and researched these things we would all come to the same conclusion - IP restricts innovation, competition, and is a violation of property rights.

[GunnyFreedom]

The claim that a creator should be able to profit from sales of the product is not at dispute. What is at dispute is the claims that copying is theft and that copying destroys value of an original. Neither of those claims are true.

You may hate the market being flooded with cheap knock-offs, but so what? This benefits consumers who are more concerned with the product in general than in quality. Protectionism is only good for "producers" who want to manipulate the market to their favor and their buds in gov'ment who they buy off to get their protections.

btw, I had nothing to do with liberdom's ban.

With the recent proliferation of ebooks, now novels can fall under this copy-free model you endorse. With copy-free being legal, and unrestricted, a distributor of ebooks can snatch up an authors work for free (because, fk an author you know) charge 50 cents a book and people will eat them up like hotcakes in order to utilize a convenient distribution model even if they can get them free elsewhere.

The point being that unlimited free copying and distribution means there will no longer be occasion to make a living writing books. So books will no longer get written.

Arguments that go "so-and-so got pirated and the author still made money" are not on point, because they made money under the current system, broken as it is. Reputable distributors would not distribute pirated work under the current system, where they WOULD under a copy-free system.

You will find no argument from against the fact that the current system is broken beyond repair and needs to be scrapped. The difference is I believe it needs to be re-written from the ground up to be made fair, where you believe it needs to be abolished and left abolished.

If you remove all rights from authors and content creators and musicians, you will eliminate most of the worlds books, content, and music. No sense in inventing something if it's just going to be stolen and someone else is going to profit off of your hard work.

[mad cow]

Couple of things:

I hate e-books, not only because I'm generally a Luddite about such things, but more importantly due to the fact that wireless readers can be remotely manipulated to edit or delete content, without your knowledge. Fuck that. I'll keep my paper books on my shelf, thank you.

I'm in agreement with Gunny here. You create something, you have a right to profit from it and control how it is used. There would be no faster way to crush any new innovations and research if anybody could reverse engineer anything and flood the market with cheap knockoffs. Research into some new forms of technology or medicine costs billions of dollars and nobody is going to engage in that type of research if there can be no expectation of a return on investments.

Why was liberdom banned? Trollish, maybe, but I see nothing ban worthy.

I would hope that copyright laws would punish somebody for editing something without their permission and laws against theft would prohibit someone from deleting content I had already paid for,just as a book store would be punished(or shot) if they attempted to steal back a book I had bought.
I do understand that if Amazon goes bankrupt I might lose my books if they are in their "cloud".

[Anti Federalist]

If someone who makes 300$ a year decides to buy a 25 cent copy of a movie from the local DVD ripper down the street does not take anything away from MGM, since he could have never afforded their DVD in the first place.

If both played as well, and had the same sound and picture quality, why would anybody pay $20 instead of 20 cents?

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Yeah, that's kinda why I go out of my way to only buy books that say "This e-book does not have DCM protection in accordance with the request of the author/publisher" That way they can't reach in and block it, I can make backups and kick them to long term storage. I just LIKE the idea of being able to fit an entire local library worth of books onto a thumb drive...



See that's exactly the problem I have with the total anti-IP position.

I mean, sure, IP has problems too, I don't dispute THAT for a minute, but there has to be a better way than either current IP schema or nothing at all.

I hear this debate and the dilema I hear is "Do you want me to superglue your rear end shut, or let Bubba over there rape you repeatedly?" How about uhhhh neither?

And when people try to justify that it's OK for an author to invest 5 years into writing a book and not make a dime, I just have to shake my head. Really? How any person who believes in the free market sees that situation not leading to the total extinction of books is beyond me.

IP needs a ground-up re-write. It's broken to be sure. The problem is that complete abolition is a cure worse than the disease.



Yeah, true enough, but you know there is some kid out there who is destined to be the next Stephen King, struggling with himself right now as to whether or not to start typing that first word. Right now he knows that if he writes a book good enough to be picked up that he can make a decent living off of it and maybe make a career out of being an author. So someone comes along and abolishes all forms of Ip and replaces it with nothing. That kid shrugs his shoulders and goes to flipping burgers instead. It's the whole world that loses.

I can disprove your entire premise in one quick link:

http://www.teamliquidpro.com/liquidrising/

Now, why on Earth would anyone ever pay for this considering it is free? It is precisely because people are not dumb, and understand that creating electronic products does involve time and labor and they are willing to pay for more content to be created. To say that the abolition of IP would abolish culture, literature, works of art, etc. is not even historically accurate at all! During the time of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. there was no IP. I'd argue that IP restricts innovation and progress due to monopoly.

You know how difficult it is for anyone to do anything new and improved with computers because of ridiculous IP and Patents? Microsoft and these other companies sit on their ass on their 80 year monopolies...why create something that obsoletes your monopoly product? Further, now no one else in the entire country can improve on this or compete because of the IP monopoly the State grants. On both points you destroy innovation and progress, not encourage it!

Windows has hardly changed since 1990s. Wow, thanks for such innovation and progress...

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

If both played as well, and had the same sound and picture quality, why would anybody pay $20 instead of 20 cents?

Because MGM is the creator of the works, and thus, if people want to see more works created they need to support that creation. Man, people are not dumb guys.

http://www.teamliquidpro.com/liquidrising/

Why would these people pay money for this when it is free? Think for a second. Ruminate. Then pontificate. :p

[Anti Federalist]

I would hope that copyright laws would punish somebody for editing something without their permission and laws against theft would prohibit someone from deleting content I had already paid for,just as a book store would be punished(or shot) if they attempted to steal back a book I had bought.
I do understand that if Amazon goes bankrupt I might lose my books if they are in their "cloud".

Let me see if I can dig up that story.

IIRC, Amazon deleted copies of 1984 (appropriate huh?) off people's readers, because of some legal/copyright issue.

They did without people's knowledge but refunded their money.

Bottom line was that they deleted a book from you library, remotely, without your consent or knowledge.

I am, every day, becoming increasingly hostile toward electronic technology and "goodies".

Throw your Sail Fawn in the Woods as a favorite writer of mine, Eric Peters, would say.

[GunnyFreedom]

First you have to prove that people only make purchasing decisions based on that one criteria. In fact though, people make their decisions to purchase something with numerous different values. Reputation, first to market, support a person they like, hating someone (never heard of a ban before? lol), etc.

Your hypothesis is actually not born out in reality. Yes, some people due to their low purchasing power have reduced options and thus make choices based on their incomes and having cheaper, lower quality goods is a benefit to these people who otherwise may not be able to purchase or own such a good or service. That's the joy of the market, peoples wants and needs are met whether that is at the low income spectrum or the high income, or anything and everything in between.

I distinctly remember a few of Murray's lecture where he gives little comments about these things. Why do people go to restaurants that charge 40$ for the same meal you can get for 7$ at another restaurant? Because you are not just purchasing food, you are purchasing the environment & reputation as well. People aren't stupid. If they can afford to support the originator of a product they'll more than likely do so, but to restrict one's use of property because you feel that person has a right to restrict every other individuals use of their property in that fashion in society does not necessarily enrich the creator (not talking about the monopoly here at the moment). If someone who makes 300$ a year decides to buy a 25 cent copy of a movie from the local DVD ripper down the street does not take anything away from MGM, since he could have never afforded their DVD in the first place.

Of course, due the monopoly of IP such products are artificially over-priced due to a restriction of supply (competition). As far as no one would ever do anything because they have no monopoly and therefore no guarantee of profit...well, we all have to survive right? If you just do nothing because life means risk and competition, well, you die (or at least find yourself on charity rolls) or mooch off family, church, etc. when the State does not exist. That won't last too long.

Anyways, this whole argument is one giant ignorance of economics and human action (and I say that as a neutral statement). If we all took a little time out and read, deduced, and researched these things we would all come to the same conclusion - IP restricts innovation, competition, and is a violation of property rights.

Sure, we all have to do something, like catch fish, dig ditches, or flip burgers.

Stop pretenting to be the smartest guy in the world for a second and realize that you are missing some very big steps.

People are just going to magically spend $5.00 on a book just because the author gets a cut when they can get the same book with the same quality...perhaps with even better delivery because they did not have to invest the resources into actually, you know, WRITING the book...for 50 cents? I don't think so!

Research and development is not worthless, no matter how much the anti-IP crowd skirts the issue. Five years of authorial struggle to create a novel is not valueless no matter how much people try to avoid saying that by only claiming that the information produced is valueless.

Humans are ging to go where it's cheaper and more convenient. Most people are simply not going to be driven by altruistic motivations of paying more money for something inconvenient just to see that the actual author gets paid. "well the author should have charged less and made hus book more convenient then." well, sure, if he hadn't spent five years...you know, actually writing the darn thing...that would probably happen.

And Murray is also off base. I have never had the same meal cost $40 vs $7 where the $40 meal was not better.

And because the people who take the work via copy-free don't have to invest the time and resources actually creating it, they can charge LESS making a BETTER environment because they don't have the huge up front investment.

This is one of those issues where I look at my own people and think we are crazy. Person A or Company B invests a Billion dollars into Research and Development to bring a product to market. Oops too fkn bad, now you go out of business because someone can steal all your work and not pay a dime, so they can charge less without all that investment and you are just screwed.

I mean, how is this not obvious?

[GunnyFreedom]

I can disprove your entire premise in one quick link:

http://www.teamliquidpro.com/liquidrising/

Now, why on Earth would anyone ever pay for this considering it is free? It is precisely because people are not dumb, and understand that creating electronic products does involve time and labor and they are willing to pay for more content to be created. To say that the abolition of IP would abolish culture, literature, works of art, etc. is not even historically accurate at all! During the time of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. there was no IP. I'd argue that IP restricts innovation and progress due to monopoly.

You know how difficult it is for anyone to do anything new and improved with computers because of ridiculous IP and Patents? Microsoft and these other companies sit on their ass on their 80 year monopolies...why create something that obsoletes your monopoly product? Further, now no one else in the entire country can improve on this or compete because of the IP monopoly the State grants. On both points you destroy innovation and progress, not encourage it!

Windows has hardly changed since 1990s. Wow, thanks for such innovation and progress...

I do not know what that liquidrising documentary is, but I can tell you that $44k is not even the salary for one person for one year, much less a whole team of documentarians. If this was their model for making a living they would end up homeless and on the streets. How do you now know that?

[GunnyFreedom]

Because MGM is the creator of the works, and thus, if people want to see more works created they need to support that creation. Man, people are not dumb guys.

http://www.teamliquidpro.com/liquidrising/

Why would these people pay money for this when it is free? Think for a second. Ruminate. Then pontificate. :p

Do you really think that $44k in revenues is enough for team of documentarians to earn a living, plus pay for production, equipment, and distribution? They are lucky if that covers hosting and streaming...

It wouldn't even cover one salary for one person for one year if they were a competent documentarian.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Sure, we all have to do something, like catch fish, dig ditches, or flip burgers.

Stop pretenting to be the smartest guy in the world for a second and realize that you are missing some very big steps.

People are just going to magically spend $5.00 on a book just because the author gets a cut when they can get the same book with the same quality...perhaps with even better delivery because they did not have to invest the resources into actually, you know, WRITING the book...for 50 cents? I don't think so!

Research and development is not worthless, no matter how much the anti-IP crowd skirts the issue. Five years of authorial struggle to create a novel is not valueless no matter how much people try to avoid saying that by only claiming that the information produced is valueless.

Humans are ging to go where it's cheaper and more convenient. Most people are simply not going to be driven by altruistic motivations of paying more money for something inconvenient just to see that the actual author gets paid. "well the author should have charged less and made hus book more convenient then." well, sure, if he hadn't spent five years...you know, actually writing the darn thing...that would probably happen.

And Murray is also off base. I have never had the same meal cost $40 vs $7 where the $40 meal was not better.

And because the people who take the work via copy-free don't have to invest the time and resources actually creating it, they can charge LESS making a BETTER environment because they don't have the huge up front investment.

This is one of those issues where I look at my own people and think we are crazy. Person A or Company B invests a Billion dollars into Research and Development to bring a product to market. Oops too fkn bad, now you go out of business because someone can steal all your work and not pay a dime, so they can charge less without all that investment and you are just screwed.

I mean, how is this not obvious?

That's not my argument at all and you are only attacking your own built up strawman. Of course people aren't going to pay someone just because 'he should be paid'. They pay the creator of a work precisely because they want to see more works from that person or company, and people with all the faculties of reason understand that if the person is unable to provide for his own needs, that he will have to seek alternate jobs to do so, hence, the loss of whatever content they could have created. I mean, we see this around us every day where people actually aren't using State-monopoly grants such as independent developers in the video game arena. There is a lot of innovation and progress being made there precisely because IP really does not exist there (since we as consumer's demanded it to be so...GG DRM).

No one is also arguing that these things are valueless, merely that just because you discovered something does not give you the right of monopoly, guarantee of profit, etc. If I cannot dispose of my CD's to my own choosing, and there is no contractual arrangements limiting it's use, then there is a violation of my property rights. You are arguing the utilitarian position that the benefit to violating my property rights is outweighed by the so-called good that IP produces. I've yet to see any proof of this good and on the contrary I see the effects being very poor and bad. You are only looking at the SEEN and not the UNSEEN. Please, take a step back and try and not be so emotionally involved - they are clouding your faculties.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Do you really think that $44k in revenues is enough for team of documentarians to earn a living, plus pay for production, equipment, and distribution? They are lucky if that covers hosting and streaming...

It wouldn't even cover one salary for one person for one year if they were a competent documentarian.

You aren't even comprehending what I am writing. Why I even bother to converse with people who do not address the information in my posts....waste of my time. I wouldn't mind if we had different opinions with legitimate arguments that addressed each other's points, but there is not even any semblance of that whenever this discussion comes up. It's always one sided. The anti-State IP advocates address the points in rebuttal posts without building strawmans, or other fallacies, and yet we are only greeted with stuff like this. Way to completely miss the point Gunny.

[GunnyFreedom]

That's not my argument at all and you are only attacking your own built up strawman. Of course people aren't going to pay someone just because 'he should be paid'. They pay the creator of a work precisely because they want to see more works from that person or company, and people with all the faculties of reason understand that if the person is unable to provide for his own needs, that he will have to seek alternate jobs to do so, hence, the loss of whatever content they could have created. I mean, we see this around us every day where people actually aren't using State-monopoly grants such as independent developers in the video game arena. There is a lot of innovation and progress being made there precisely because IP really does not exist there (since we as consumer's demanded it to be so...GG DRM).

No one is also arguing that these things are valueless, merely that just because you discovered something does not give you the right of monopoly, guarantee of profit, etc. If I cannot dispose of my CD's to my own choosing, and there is no contractual arrangements limiting it's use, then there is a violation of my property rights. You are arguing the utilitarian position that the benefit to violating my property rights is outweighed by the so-called good that IP produces. I've yet to see any proof of this good and on the contrary I see the effects being very poor and bad. You are only looking at the SEEN and not the UNSEEN. Please, take a step back and try and not be so emotionally involved - they are clouding your faculties.

I am neither arguing utilitarianism (except inasmuch as I am describing the results of the anti-IP utopis from a utilitarian perspective) nor am I advocating the invasion of your property. Instead, it seems to me more like you are advocating the raping and pillaging of the creative caste. Don't they have the right to earn money as a product of their labor? I mean, if you spend 5 years working on something you should get more than a pack of ramen noodles back I would think. There is your utilitarian argument.

Content creators are not your slaves. Authors are not the new 'owned people' picking cotton on the plantation. That's the argument I am making. I oppose all forms of slavery, including the one that you and apparently Murray Rothbard advocate.

[GunnyFreedom]

You aren't even comprehending what I am writing. Why I even bother to converse with people who do not address the information in my posts....waste of my time. I wouldn't mind if we had different opinions with legitimate arguments that addressed each other's points, but there is not even any semblance of that whenever this discussion comes up. It's always one sided. The anti-State IP advocates address the points in rebuttal posts without building strawmans, or other fallacies, and yet we are only greeted with stuff like this. Way to completely miss the point Gunny.

yeah I'm just a drooling moron before the all-wise master lmao

perhaps you just aren't as smart as you think you are.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

I am neither arguing utilitarianism (except inasmuch as I am describing the results of the anti-IP utopis from a utilitarian perspective) nor am I advocating the invasion of your property. Instead, it seems to me more like you are advocating the raping and pillaging of the creative caste. Don't they have the right to earn money as a product of their labor? I mean, if you spend 5 years working on something you should get more than a pack of ramen noodles back I would think. There is your utilitarian argument.

Content creators are not your slaves. Authors are not the new 'owned people' picking cotton on the plantation. That's the argument I am making. I oppose all forms of slavery, including the one that you and apparently Murray Rothbard advocate.

I'm done. You don't even address any of my arguments in any of my posts. You just continue to ramble on and post the same thing over and over and attack built up strawmen and then act like you've 'won' or found some truth.

Yeah, sure, people only ever act in one rigid manner. There is never a multitude of values that are weighed when purchasing a product or service. Whatever, I'm done getting into these childish and completely unintelligent conversations.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

yeah I'm just a drooling moron before the all-wise master lmao

perhaps you just aren't as smart as you think you are.

Thank god we had IP which produced Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven....OH WAIT. Piss off.

http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2011/02/17/the_shakespeare_conspiracy.php

http://www.volokh.com/2011/02/17/there-should-be-a-name-for-this-one-too/

[GunnyFreedom]

You aren't even comprehending what I am writing. Why I even bother to converse with people who do not address the information in my posts....waste of my time. I wouldn't mind if we had different opinions with legitimate arguments that addressed each other's points, but there is not even any semblance of that whenever this discussion comes up. It's always one sided. The anti-State IP advocates address the points in rebuttal posts without building strawmans, or other fallacies, and yet we are only greeted with stuff like this. Way to completely miss the point Gunny.

That was YOUR example, that wasn't my example. They haven't even made enough to cover COSTS on their production. Any rational CBA is going to produce a recommendation to not make such productions in the future.

You claim that I am missing the point, but I say you are avoiding the point by trying to focus the discussion on irrelevancies. If you make it impossible for an author to earn a living and put food on his table from writing books, then books will no longer get written.

You don't like my point so you call me stupid and say I am missing the point. Is that how adults argue nowadays?

[GunnyFreedom]

Thank god we had IP which produced Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven....OH WAIT. Piss off.

Thank God Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven....had recording studios digital media and internet transfers...OH WAIT.

Yeah, ok. lol

[GunnyFreedom]

I'm done. You don't even address any of my arguments in any of my posts. You just continue to ramble on and post the same thing over and over and attack built up strawmen and then act like you've 'won' or found some truth.

Yeah, sure, people only ever act in one rigid manner. There is never a multitude of values that are weighed when purchasing a product or service. Whatever, I'm done getting into these childish and completely unintelligent conversations.

You didn't like my argument so you tried to divert it into something else, and when that failed you got all pissy and tried to blame it on me being stupid. You've done that to me before you know.

[Slacker]

What do people think of Apple banning other phones? Doesn't that impede progress?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/us-judge-bans-sales-of-samsungs-galaxy-nexus-phone-during-apple-trial-follows-tablet-ban/2012/06/30/gJQACn6ADW_story.html

[specsaregood]

You don't like my point so you call me stupid and say I am missing the point. Is that how adults argue nowadays?

Yes it is Gunny, yes it is. People can no longer discuss ideas and can only spread their own propaganda through their virtual bullhorns.

[jmdrake]

If shovels were outlawed, ditch diggers could still make money digging with their hands too, but if they were paid by the volume of dirt they turned, chances are not many ditches would get dug until the cost of digging ditches went so high that only multi millionaires could afford it.

IP anarchy just wouldn't work with authors of novels and novellas. It would kill literature altogether. Someone knows they are going to spend 5 years doing back breaking work and never see a dime, they are going to go flip burgers instead, mark my words.

Well I wasn't thinking about novels so much (note the example I gave of the "Big game hunter's diary). That said I suspect most novel writers today are secretly hoping their 5 years of work will be turned into a screenplay. Wide distribution of their work could possible lead to notice by a studio. The "shareware" video Doom eventually became a move (albeit not a very good one).

Personally I'm IP agnostic. But the fact is that regardless of the law, technologies means a lot of people are going to read electronic versions of books without paying for them. For examples many libraries now allow you to "check out" ebooks for free. Yeah, sure there's "DRM" stuff to keep you from keeping the book indefinitely, but considering the convenience of downloading a book over the internet and then being able to "return" from your bedroom, why buy the book? (At least when it comes to novels. References books are a different matter, but a reference book could get me going to the blog for more information.)

[jmdrake]

Thank God Shakespeare, Mozart, and Beethoven....had recording studios digital media and internet transfers...OH WAIT.

Yeah, ok. lol

Back then the arts were funded largely by patronage. The internet is democratizing the patronage system.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

[GunnyFreedom]

What do people think of Apple banning other phones? Doesn't that impede progress?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/us-judge-bans-sales-of-samsungs-galaxy-nexus-phone-during-apple-trial-follows-tablet-ban/2012/06/30/gJQACn6ADW_story.html

Apple hasn't banned anything lol a US District court did.

I think that if you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars into research and development of a product only to have that product stolen and replicated for basically free, with no consequences, then innovation requiring expensive R&D will die.

I don't know enough to speak to this particular case, and like I said current IP laws are junk and need to be scrapped and rewritten from the ground up. Copyright and patents are written WAY too broadly, and if this is just a "voice operated smartphone assistant" then the lawsuit is junk and needs to be tossed.

But if large swaths of code were copied outright or reverse engineered from machine code, then Apple would have a case.

If dumping millions upon millions of dollars into R&D were equivalent to just dumping money into a hole, nobody would do it, and innovation would grind to a halt.

More than likely, however, this is the result of one of those over-broad patents that we get in America, one of the things that Apple is absolutely guilty of, and that is absolutely a thing that needs changed.

[jmdrake]

Well Xerox invented the Ethernet, the WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointers) user interface and the laser printer. Imagine where Apple would be if Xerox had treated its inventions the way Apple is treating theirs?


Apple hasn't banned anything lol a US District court did.

I think that if you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars into research and development of a product only to have that product stolen and replicated for basically free, with no consequences, then innovation requiring expensive R&D will die.

I don't know enough to speak to this particular case, and like I said current IP laws are junk and need to be scrapped and rewritten from the ground up. Copyright and patents are written WAY too broadly, and if this is just a "voice operated smartphone assistant" then the lawsuit is junk and needs to be tossed.

But if large swaths of code were copied outright or reverse engineered from machine code, then Apple would have a case.

If dumping millions upon millions of dollars into R&D were equivalent to just dumping money into a hole, nobody would do it, and innovation would grind to a halt.

More than likely, however, this is the result of one of those over-broad patents that we get in America, one of the things that Apple is absolutely guilty of, and that is absolutely a thing that needs changed.

[GunnyFreedom]

Well I wasn't thinking about novels so much (note the example I gave of the "Big game hunter's diary). That said I suspect most novel writers today are secretly hoping their 5 years of work will be turned into a screenplay. Wide distribution of their work could possible lead to notice by a studio. The "shareware" video Doom eventually became a move (albeit not a very good one).

Personally I'm IP agnostic. But the fact is that regardless of the law, technologies means a lot of people are going to read electronic versions of books without paying for them. For examples many libraries now allow you to "check out" ebooks for free. Yeah, sure there's "DRM" stuff to keep you from keeping the book indefinitely, but considering the convenience of downloading a book over the internet and then being able to "return" from your bedroom, why buy the book? (At least when it comes to novels. References books are a different matter, but a reference book could get me going to the blog for more information.)

For reference works the multimedia approach makes sense. I like the idea of keeping novels though, especially DRM free novels because I can maybe give a novel to a kid who discovering Heinlein or Asimov now becomes a fan. I'm not opposed to some limited sharing, and you will note that a lot of authors specifically demand their ebooks be listed DRM free for that very reason.

I have said a whole silly bunch of times that current US IP copyright and patent laws are junk and need to be scrapped. The system we have right now is irreparably broken. No argument there. I'm just saying that scrapping the system and replacing it with nothing is even worse than what we have now because that would lead to the death of content/music/innovation/literature.

The creative set are people too, is all I'm saying.

[GunnyFreedom]

Well Xerox invented the Ethernet, the WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointers) user interface and the laser printer. Imagine where Apple would be if Xerox had treated its inventions the way Apple is treating theirs?

Xerox didn't know what they had, and Steve Jobs specifically asked Xerox if they planned on using that interface on a computer and Xerox said "no." Only then did Jobs apply the GUI idea to the Macintosh. Had Xerox treated it's innovation the same way Apple is, then Xerox would have lost in court because Apple was not in the business of making copier machines.

I agree it was a little crooked, but not nearly on the level of Bill Gates stealing both DOS from a poor college kid for $50 (or was it $500?) and Windows directly from the Macintosh. Imagine if Apple in 1985 treated it's innovations the way Apple 2012 does? Microsoft would still be running a command line. (And we'd all probably be better for it lol)

Point being that what Jobs did with Xerox was I agree slightly crooked, but only slightly. Before he ever put one bit to a magnetic media he first asked Xerox if they ever planned on making a computer with that interface and Xerox said no, and Apple had no intention of making copiers either. Therefore there was no competition between the two companys devices, and neither would be damaged by the lifting of the idea for the GUI.

Now, Xerox could have played their cards a little smarter and said "Maybe, let me get back to you" or Jobs could have been straight up and told them that he wanted to make a computer with their GUI whereupon Xerox would have likely asked for some future compensation from sales revenue, but that didn't happen.

[mad cow]

I am holding a copy of For A New Liberty in my hands right now that I ordered from Laissez-Faire Books over 20 years ago.
First,if I ever reread it and I want to and will reread it,it will be an ebook,this print is tiny.

Next,right here in the front it says:
Copyright 1973,1978 by Murray N. Rothbard

According to some here,if any book in the world should be free for the copying and distributing,this guy wrote the book,so to speak.

Why is that,why didn't he just give it away if he is so against IP and all.

[Anti Federalist]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I think the larger point that Gunny is arguing here is very similar to the one you made once about not wanting to live on a "libertarian island" because, since you would be subjected completely to the whims of the property owner, including the "right" to toss you overboard whenever he felt like it.


Well I wasn't thinking about novels so much (note the example I gave of the "Big game hunter's diary). That said I suspect most novel writers today are secretly hoping their 5 years of work will be turned into a screenplay. Wide distribution of their work could possible lead to notice by a studio. The "shareware" video Doom eventually became a move (albeit not a very good one).

Personally I'm IP agnostic. But the fact is that regardless of the law, technologies means a lot of people are going to read electronic versions of books without paying for them. For examples many libraries now allow you to "check out" ebooks for free. Yeah, sure there's "DRM" stuff to keep you from keeping the book indefinitely, but considering the convenience of downloading a book over the internet and then being able to "return" from your bedroom, why buy the book? (At least when it comes to novels. References books are a different matter, but a reference book could get me going to the blog for more information.)

[Anti Federalist]

Back then the arts were funded largely by patronage. The internet is democratizing the patronage system.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Or direct government payments.

Saleri and Mozart both were in the employ of the Austrian state IIRC.

[GunnyFreedom]

I am holding a copy of For A New Liberty in my hands right now that I ordered from Laissez-Faire Books over 20 years ago.
First,if I ever reread it and I want to and will reread it,it will be an ebook,this print is tiny.

Next,right here in the front it says:
Copyright 1973,1978 by Murray N. Rothbard

According to some here,if any book in the world should be free for the copying and distributing,this guy wrote the book,so to speak.

Why is that,why didn't he just give it away if he is so against IP and all.

Ouch, so not only did Murray Rothbard secure the original copyright, but he renewed it. I can see an original copyright going through as just "part of the process" to secure a publisher, and perhaps allowing it begrudgingly, but to actually go and renew the copyright, well, you make a pretty significant point there.

[heavenlyboy34]

I am holding a copy of For A New Liberty in my hands right now that I ordered from Laissez-Faire Books over 20 years ago.
First,if I ever reread it and I want to and will reread it,it will be an ebook,this print is tiny.

Next,right here in the front it says:
Copyright 1973,1978 by Murray N. Rothbard

According to some here,if any book in the world should be free for the copying and distributing,this guy wrote the book,so to speak.

Why is that,why didn't he just give it away if he is so against IP and all.
We can't know. Could've been forced to because of the arrangement with the publisher. IP wasn't as big a concern back then as it was now, so he probably didn't even think about it. That book is now available free on Mises.org. People who know him believe Murray would've been excited about the possibilities of using the webbernets for outreach. We can guess from what we know about him that he would've been against IP. It is, after all, a special privilege granted by the State that would not have come to be in a truly free market.

[GunnyFreedom]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I think the larger point that Gunny is arguing here is very similar to the one you made once about not wanting to live on a "libertarian island" because, since you would be subjected completely to the whims of the property owner, including the "right" to toss you overboard whenever he felt like it.

Well, maybe parallel would be a better word than similar.

Why would Drake live on an island where the arbitrary whim of a madman could have him tossed in the ocean, and why would an author invest five years to write a book when the arbitrary whim of a lazy uncaring population could leave him starving and homeless despite the popularity of his work.

[Anti Federalist]

I'm done. You don't even address any of my arguments in any of my posts. You just continue to ramble on and post the same thing over and over and attack built up strawmen and then act like you've 'won' or found some truth.

Yeah, sure, people only ever act in one rigid manner. There is never a multitude of values that are weighed when purchasing a product or service. Whatever, I'm done getting into these childish and completely unintelligent conversations.

Relax, we're all trying to have a conversation here.

A pretty silly, "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" type of argument, especially in light of the police state horrors unfolding all around, but a civil conversation nonetheless.

Maybe it comes down to this: when rights are in conflict, which take precedent?

[Anti Federalist]

We can't know. Could've been forced to because of the arrangement with the publisher. IP wasn't as big a concern back then as it was now, so he probably didn't even think about it. That book is now available free on Mises.org. People who know him believe Murray would've been excited about the possibilities of using the webbernets for outreach. We can guess from what we know about him that he would've been against IP. It is, after all, a special privilege granted by the State that would not have come to be in a truly free market.

Let's look at something not some ephemeral as words and images on the InterLink.

How about the design of a new machining process that took years to develop and millions of dollars of investment to produce a prototype.

Within a week the design is sent off to China, "reverse engineered" and distributed for 90 percent below the cost that original designers took to produce it.

Do the investors and inventors have a right to their property?

[heavenlyboy34]

Because, at some point, there would be nothing left in the market at all.

Or, it will be of such poor quality, that it will be next to worthless.

Why risk and produce anything if your profits are just decimated the second you introduce a new product or service or consumer good?

I don't work for free, and I'm sure you don't either.
An awful lot of assuming going on there. The profits of sales of the original product wouldn't be decimated when the product is introduced. Take the Mona Lisa, for example. The price of the original is still extremely high, even though there are millions of copies around the world. Prices of IP don't "behave" in the same manner as ordinary goods and services. The music industry hates file sharing-not because it cuts into their profit, but because it forces them to produce new material and perform live instead of sitting around and collecting royalty checks. Same in most every other "creative" industry. Are you familiar with Eric Fishl? One of the more interesting living contemporary artists. His paintings and sculptures still command thousands of dollars, even though people can easily photograph them and imitate them. Innovate or die. It's what's best for the consumers, artists, and the market.

[GunnyFreedom]

Let's look at something not some ephemeral as words and images on the InterLink.

How about the design of a new machining process that took years to develop and millions of dollars of investment to produce a prototype.

Within a week the design is sent off to China, "reverse engineered" and distributed for 90 percent below the cost that original designers took to produce it.

Do the investors and inventors have a right to their property?

I would say yes, because R&D cost serious money, and if you do nothing to protect R&D investments, then people will stop doing it. Everybody loses. Not because you want to, but because you kinda have to. There has to be a better way than the over-broad patents we use now, perhaps a system that drills down into the actual time, effort, and expense of the R&D invested to produce an innovation.

[Anti Federalist]

See my post #89.

Let me ask, from the anti IP POV, is there a distinction made between songs, books, paintings, that sort of thing and "hard" commodities and products, like the hypothetical machine tool I mentioned?


An awful lot of assuming going on there. The profits of sales of the original product wouldn't be decimated when the product is introduced. Take the Mona Lisa, for example. The price of the original is still extremely high, even though there are millions of copies around the world. Prices of IP don't "behave" in the same manner as ordinary goods and services. The music industry hates file sharing-not because it cuts into their profit, but because it forces them to produce new material and perform live instead of sitting around and collecting royalty checks. Same in most every other "creative" industry. Are you familiar with Eric Fishl? One of the more interesting living contemporary artists. His paintings and sculptures still command thousands of dollars, even though people can easily photograph them and imitate them. Innovate or die. It's what's best for the consumers, artists, and the market.

[heavenlyboy34]

Let's look at something not some ephemeral as words and images on the InterLink.

How about the design of a new machining process that took years to develop and millions of dollars of investment to produce a prototype.

Within a week the design is sent off to China, "reverse engineered" and distributed for 90 percent below the cost that original designers took to produce it.

Do the investors and inventors have a right to their property?
Of course the investors/inventors have a right to their property. The Chinese didn't take it from them. They just figured out how to make it cheaper. It seems "unfair" from the modern inventor's perspective because he's been spoiled by the State for so long. Now they have to find a way to work better and more efficiently. Cry me a river.

[Anti Federalist]

I would say yes, because R&D cost serious money, and if you do nothing to protect R&D investments, then people will stop doing it. Everybody loses. Not because you want to, but because you kinda have to. There has to be a better way than the over-broad patents we use now, perhaps a system that drills down into the actual time, effort, and expense of the R&D invested to produce an innovation.

I happen to agree.

But maybe there is a line of demarcation between purely "intellectual" property and hard assets.

I'm curious to see what HB or whomever has to say about it.

[Anti Federalist]

Of course the investors/inventors have a right to their property. The Chinese didn't take it from them. They just figured out how to make it cheaper. It seems "unfair" from the modern inventor's perspective because he's been spoiled by the State for so long. Now they have to find a way to work better and more efficiently. Cry me a river.

Well, I'm not going to do that, but I'm certainly not going to bother investing another dollar in any new innovation or process ever again, if any innovation that comes of it will just be ripped off and my investment go tits up and my company will go bankrupt.

I think I'll just malinvest in Fed manufactured "bubbles" instead.

And so, here we are.

[heavenlyboy34]

See my post #89.

Let me ask, from the anti IP POV, is there a distinction made between songs, books, paintings, that sort of thing and "hard" commodities and products, like the hypothetical machine tool I mentioned?
If you mean a piece of IP captured in a tangible medium (like a CD or canvas or book), these are akin to "hard" commodities. The creator is of course entitled to the profits earned by selling these. It is, however, irrational and anti-capitalist(in the laissez-faire sense) to expect profits when people use their property as they wish. Already, IP producers don't make money when their products are sold at second-hand stores, garage sales, etc.

[GunnyFreedom]

An awful lot of assuming going on there. The profits of sales of the original product wouldn't be decimated when the product is introduced. Take the Mona Lisa, for example. The price of the original is still extremely high, even though there are millions of copies around the world. Prices of IP don't "behave" in the same manner as ordinary goods and services. The music industry hates file sharing-not because it cuts into their profit, but because it forces them to produce new material and perform live instead of sitting around and collecting royalty checks. Same in most every other "creative" industry. Are you familiar with Eric Fishl? One of the more interesting living contemporary artists. His paintings and sculptures still command thousands of dollars, even though people can easily photograph them and imitate them. Innovate or die. It's what's best for the consumers, artists, and the market.

Leonardo da Vinci is a bit more well known than Joe down the street.

If we as a society devalue creativity, then creativity itself will wane. Oh, there will always be one or two souls who just can't help themselves, of course, the spark is like that. I'm not saying that the products of creativity should be ruthlessly protected against all kinds of examination for 100 years like we do now, that's just insane. However, it's just as insane to say that the products of creativity are worthless.

Ron Paul says "What you subsidize you get more of, and what you tax you get less of."

I would add, "What you value you increase, and what you devalue you decrease."

If we devalue creativity and innovation to worthlessness, then we will have (almost) no innovation or creativity left.

[GunnyFreedom]

Of course the investors/inventors have a right to their property. The Chinese didn't take it from them. They just figured out how to make it cheaper. It seems "unfair" from the modern inventor's perspective because he's been spoiled by the State for so long. Now they have to find a way to work better and more efficiently. Cry me a river.

And the millions of dollars in R&D to develop it in the first place? What of that investment?

[heavenlyboy34]

Well, I'm not going to do that, but I'm certainly not going to bother investing another dollar in any new innovation or process ever again, if any innovation that comes of it will just be ripped off and my investment go tits up and my company will go bankrupt.

I think I'll just malinvest in Fed manufactured "bubbles" instead.

And so, here we are.
The copyright act didn't exist at all till 1909. Yet creators fared well by all accounts. You're looking at this from a modern, distorted perspective.

[GunnyFreedom]

Well, I'm not going to do that, but I'm certainly not going to bother investing another dollar in any new innovation or process ever again, if any innovation that comes of it will just be ripped off and my investment go tits up and my company will go bankrupt.

I think I'll just malinvest in Fed manufactured "bubbles" instead.

And so, here we are.

This. Clearly this. If investing millions of dollars in R&D is pointless then why do it?

[GunnyFreedom]

The copyright act didn't exist at all till 1909. Yet creators fared well by all accounts. You're looking at this from a modern, distorted perspective.

We live in a completely different world from 1909. All someone had to do was travel 100 miles and nobody was hurt by the undercut.

[Anti Federalist]

The copyright act didn't exist at all till 1909. Yet creators fared well by all accounts. You're looking at this from a modern, distorted perspective.

Well, just the date on that would make me suspect, but patents have been issued since the nation was founded.

By Thomas Jefferson no less:


The Patent Commission of the U.S. was created in 1790. Its first three members were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.

U.S. Patent X1: making of Pot Ash by a new apparatus & process

On July 31, 1790 inventor Samuel Hopkins of Pittsford, Vermont became the first person to be issued a patent in the United States. His patented invention was an improvement in the “making of Pot Ash by a new apparatus & process.” The earliest patent law required that a working model of each invention be produced in miniature.

I'd have to look specifically at the 1909 copyright act to find all the prgressive era horrors in it.

[heavenlyboy34]

Leonardo da Vinci is a bit more well known than Joe down the street.

If we as a society devalue creativity, then creativity itself will wane. Oh, there will always be one or two souls who just can't help themselves, of course, the spark is like that. I'm not saying that the products of creativity should be ruthlessly protected against all kinds of examination for 100 years like we do now, that's just insane. However, it's just as insane to say that the products of creativity are worthless.

Ron Paul says "What you subsidize you get more of, and what you tax you get less of."

I would add, "What you value you increase, and what you devalue you decrease."

If we devalue creativity and innovation to worthlessness, then we will have (almost) no innovation or creativity left.
You assume that eliminating government privilege would make innovation "useless". But that's not so. There will always be demand for innovation. Eliminating IP subsidizes innovation. IP laws subsidize lack of innovation. If you can sit around collecting royalties without doing anything new, what's the incentive to innovate? Pop culture regurgitates itself every 5-10 years. There's no true innovation going on. The classics are still usually better than the modern stuff. The innovative musicians are in "offbeat" styles like avant-garde and free jazz. Same in every other field. (Session musicians make great money, as do people who gig a lot) Problem is, true innovation usually repulses the popular palate. (How often to you hear "Pierrot Luniere" performed?)

[GunnyFreedom]

You assume that eliminating government privilege would make innovation "useless". But that's not so. There will always be demand for innovation. Eliminating IP subsidizes innovation. IP laws subsidize lack of innovation. If you can sit around collecting royalties without doing anything new, what's the incentive to innovate? Pop culture regurgitates itself every 5-10 years. There's no true innovation going on. The classics are still usually better than the modern stuff. The innovative musicians are in "offbeat" styles like avant-garde and free jazz. Same in every other field. (Session musicians make great money, as do people who gig a lot) Problem is, true innovation usually repulses the popular palate. (How often to you hear "Pierrot Luniere" performed?)

Sure there will always be a demand for innovation, but if innovators were regularly ripped off of their ideas and left stone paupers nobody would be willing to do it without getting paid up front. And that model would be even MORE broken because only 1% of innovations actually go anywhere.

[GunnyFreedom]

You assume that eliminating government privilege would make innovation "useless". But that's not so. There will always be demand for innovation. Eliminating IP subsidizes innovation. IP laws subsidize lack of innovation. If you can sit around collecting royalties without doing anything new, what's the incentive to innovate? Pop culture regurgitates itself every 5-10 years. There's no true innovation going on. The classics are still usually better than the modern stuff. The innovative musicians are in "offbeat" styles like avant-garde and free jazz. Same in every other field. (Session musicians make great money, as do people who gig a lot) Problem is, true innovation usually repulses the popular palate. (How often to you hear "Pierrot Luniere" performed?)

And I'm still not talking about music. ;)

Music is subject to the lunacy of trends. There is literally no telling what will be wanted or unwanted next year, IP or not.

[heavenlyboy34]

And the millions of dollars in R&D to develop it in the first place? What of that investment?
It's recouped by being the first mover and calculating costs more carefully.

[heavenlyboy34]

And I'm still not talking about music. ;)

Music is subject to the lunacy of trends. There is literally no telling what will be wanted or unwanted next year, IP or not.
Doesn't matter what you're talking about. I just chose an example to illustrate the point. Everything created is subject to trends.

[GunnyFreedom]

Well, just the date on that would make me suspect, but patents have been issued since the nation was founded.

By Thomas Jefferson no less:



I'd have to look specifically at the 1909 copyright act to find all the prgressive era horrors in it.

Yeah, I knew innovation was being protect long long before 1909. I am sure there was some mechanism for protecting innovation back in merry old England before the Revolution. After all they got the idea to put patents in the Constitution from somewhere. I am sure it didn't just come out of the blue.


To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

[GunnyFreedom]

Doesn't matter what you're talking about. I just chose an example to illustrate the point. Everything created is subject to trends.

SMH

You keep going to music because it is easier to argue the pointlessness of copyright on derivative dullery that has no purpose but entertainment, and you can't argue artists's effort because most songs are put together in a couple hours on the back of a napkin and jammed in a studio on a drug spree hangover.

Anti Fed's case that everyone likes to avoid is about the expenditure of millions of dollars. You somehow forgot about that. My case that everyone likes to avoid is about the investment of five years of grinding effort. You somehow forgot about that too.

But keep talking about music and I will keep talking about everything but music and never the twain shall meet.

[GunnyFreedom]

It's recouped by being the first mover and calculating costs more carefully.

What does that even mean?

If you are the one doing the R&D you are automatically the first mover. If it takes a million dollars to develop something, then it takes a million dollars to develop it.

[specsaregood]

You keep going to music because it is easier to argue the pointlessness of copyright on derivative dullery that has no purpose but entertainment, and you can't argue artists's effort because most songs are put together in a couple hours on the back of a napkin and jammed in a studio on a drug spree hangover.

You think most of the artists got to the point where they could bang that music out like that without lots of effort? Or years of practice and investment?

[GunnyFreedom]

You think most of the artists got to the point where they could bang that music out like that without lots of effort? Or years of practice and investment?

As a musician myself I know better, but that effort is completely disconnected from the material being considered for IP, unlike AF's and my examples.

[specsaregood]

As a musician myself I know better, but that effort is completely disconnected from the material being considered for IP, unlike AF's and my examples.

I was more referring to your comment about "you can't argue artist's effort". My argument is that all that practice is part of the effort and investment in producing that final product.

edit: also, what do you play?

[jmdrake]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I think the larger point that Gunny is arguing here is very similar to the one you made once about not wanting to live on a "libertarian island" because, since you would be subjected completely to the whims of the property owner, including the "right" to toss you overboard whenever he felt like it.

LOL. I didn't know anyone remember that little anecdote. I'd better copyright it. ;)


Well, maybe parallel would be a better word than similar.

Why would Drake live on an island where the arbitrary whim of a madman could have him tossed in the ocean, and why would an author invest five years to write a book when the arbitrary whim of a lazy uncaring population could leave him starving and homeless despite the popularity of his work.

I guess using that same analogy, if it became almost impossible not to live on such an island I'd have to find the way to make the best of it. Technologically for many forms of media it's pretty much impossible to keep illicit copies from happening. But some creative types are finding ways to make money without charging up front. Case in point, Rolling Stone magazine recently did a "Top 10 hair metal band songs" and with every song they had the YouTube video embedded. Did they go through all of the proper DRM for that? I dunno. But some artists have "Vevo" channels on YouTube so they at least get advertising revenue. I can see both side from the legal/ethical argument.

[GunnyFreedom]

I was more referring to your comment about "you can't argue artist's effort". My argument is that all that practice is part of the effort and investment in producing that final product.

edit: also, what do you play?

Anything brass with buttons, particularly those keyed in B flat

and

Bass guitar.

I had an Ibanez double humbucker bass, amazing stick, got really good at it and then it was stolen. Later I went and bought a Fender Stratocaster USA Manufactured (I figured strings are strings right?) and can't play it to save my life. Sounds like I'm mangling cats. Strings too close together, too close to the fretboard, I'm just lost on the thing I suppose I actually need lessons. :p

I can make sweet sweet music completely improv on a bass guitar, but on the Fender Strat regular guitar I sound like the cat mangler. Go figure.

[jmdrake]

My point is that sometimes people do the R&D and develop great stuff without ever even being motivated to "lock it down" legally. And I don't see how Apple can claim Microsoft "stole" something that they got from someone else. Don't get me wrong. I'm not Bill Gates fan. But one of the cardinal laws of intellectual property, whether its patents or copyright, is that you can't claim rights to something as 'inventor" or "creator" if you actual just took it from someone else. It would be one thing if Apple bought a "patent" from Xerox for a certain piece of technology and then Bill Gates stole it.

This reminds me of my first exposure to IP in high school. Our school had TRS-80 computers. The entire operating system fit on 5 1/4 floppies with room to spare. One kid bought a 3rd party operating system called "SuperDOS" and some pretty cool games to go with it. (Pretty cool for garbage TRS-80 computers). He "sold" a copy to another kid. This second kid accidentally left his disk in the computer lab and some other kids made copies and it went around the school. He complained to the school authorities who made the other kids erase their copies. I tried to explain to the authorities that it didn't make sense because the second kid didn't really have a right to a copy either. I didn't know copyright law. I just knew that it seemed wrong for some kid to be selling copies of something that he bought. I definitely knew it was wrong for the 2nd kid to try to claim the other kids were somehow "stealing" from him.


Xerox didn't know what they had, and Steve Jobs specifically asked Xerox if they planned on using that interface on a computer and Xerox said "no." Only then did Jobs apply the GUI idea to the Macintosh. Had Xerox treated it's innovation the same way Apple is, then Xerox would have lost in court because Apple was not in the business of making copier machines.

I agree it was a little crooked, but not nearly on the level of Bill Gates stealing both DOS from a poor college kid for $50 (or was it $500?) and Windows directly from the Macintosh. Imagine if Apple in 1985 treated it's innovations the way Apple 2012 does? Microsoft would still be running a command line. (And we'd all probably be better for it lol)

Point being that what Jobs did with Xerox was I agree slightly crooked, but only slightly. Before he ever put one bit to a magnetic media he first asked Xerox if they ever planned on making a computer with that interface and Xerox said no, and Apple had no intention of making copiers either. Therefore there was no competition between the two companys devices, and neither would be damaged by the lifting of the idea for the GUI.

Now, Xerox could have played their cards a little smarter and said "Maybe, let me get back to you" or Jobs could have been straight up and told them that he wanted to make a computer with their GUI whereupon Xerox would have likely asked for some future compensation from sales revenue, but that didn't happen.

[mad cow]

Well,I ordered For A New Liberty on my Kindle,$4.73,Copyright 2006 The Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
I looked at Man,Economy,And State,$22,Copyright 2001,2004,2009 The Ludwig Von Mises Institute,but it was only available in the paper edition,not in ebook and my eyes said no.

We can't know if Murray N. Rothbard was coerced somehow into renewing his copyright or not but the Ludwig Von Mises Institute is still around and they don't seem to mind renewing theirs.

[heavenlyboy34]

SMH

You keep going to music because it is easier to argue the pointlessness of copyright on derivative dullery that has no purpose but entertainment, and you can't argue artists's effort because most songs are put together in a couple hours on the back of a napkin and jammed in a studio on a drug spree hangover.

Anti Fed's case that everyone likes to avoid is about the expenditure of millions of dollars. You somehow forgot about that. My case that everyone likes to avoid is about the investment of five years of grinding effort. You somehow forgot about that too.

But keep talking about music and I will keep talking about everything but music and never the twain shall meet.
Although my examples were perfectly relevant, I'll address your point more directly.

Per Rothbard:

It is by no means self-evident that patents encourage an increased absolute quantity of research expenditures. But certainly patents distort the type of research expenditure being conducted. . . . Research expenditures are therefore overstimulated in the early stages before anyone has a patent, and they are unduly restricted in the period after the patent is received. In addition, some inventions are considered patentable, while others are not. The patent system then has the further effect of artificially stimulating research expenditures in the patentable areas, while artificially restricting research in the nonpatentable areas.[
(http://www.ronpaulforums.com/#sdfootnote9sym)
Murray N. Rothbard, (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/#sdfootnote9sym)Man, Economy, and State (http://mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp), scholar's ed'n (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2004), ch. 10, sec. 7.

]

(Further...)Part of the patent protection now obtained by an inventor could be achieved on the free market by a type of “copyright” protection. Thus, inventors must now mark their machines as being patented. The mark puts the buyers on notice that the in*vention is patented and that they cannot sell that article. But the same could be done to extend the copyright system, and without patent. In the purely free market, the inventor could mark his machine copyright, and then anyone who buys the machine buys it on the condition that he will not reproduce and sell such a machine for profit. Any violation of this contract would consti*tute implicit theft and be prosecuted accordingly on the free market. The patent is incompatible with the free market precisely to the extent that it goes beyond the copyright. The man who has not bought a machine and who arrives at the same invention in*dependently, will, on the free market, be perfectly able to use and sell his invention. Patents prevent a man from using his in*vention even though all the property is his and he has not stolen the invention, either explicitly or implicitly, from the first in*ventor. Patents, therefore, are grants of exclusive monopoly priv*ilege by the State and are invasive of property rights on the mar*ket.
The crucial distinction between patents and copyrights, then, is not that one is mechanical and the other literary. The fact that they have been applied that way is an historical accident and does not reveal the critical difference between them.[96] (http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10e.asp#_ftn22)The cru*cial difference is that copyright is a logical attribute of property right on the free market, while patent is a monopoly invasion of that right.
The application of patents to mechanical inventions and copy*rights to literary works is peculiarly inappropriate. It would be more in keeping with the free market to be just the reverse. For literary creations are unique products of the individual; it is almost impossible for them to be independently duplicated by someone else. Therefore, a patent, instead of a copyright, for literary productions would make little difference in practice. On the other hand, mechanical inventions are discoveries of natural law rather than individual creations, and hence similar inde*pendent inventions occur all the time.[97] (http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10e.asp#_ftn23) The simultaneity of in*ventions is a familiar historical fact. Hence, if it is desired to maintain a free market, it is particularly important to allow copy*rights, but not patents, for mechanical inventions.
The common law has often been a good guide to the law con*sonant with the free market. Hence, it is not surprising that com*mon-law copyright prevails for unpublished literary manuscripts, while there is no such thing as a common-law patent. At common law, the inventor also has the right to keep his invention unpublicized and safe from theft, i.e., he has the equivalent of the copy*right protection for unpublicized inventions.
On the free market, there would therefore be no such thing as patents. There would, however, be copyright for any inventor or creator who made use of it, and this copyright would be per*petual, not limited to a certain number of years. Obviously, to be fully the property of an individual, a good has to be perma*nently and perpetually the property of the man and his heirs and assigns. If the State decrees that a man’s property ceases at a cer*tain date, this means that the State is the real owner and that it simply grants the man use of the property for a certain period of time.[98] (http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap10e.asp#_ftn24)
Some defenders of patents assert that they are not monopoly privileges, but simply property rights in inventions or even in “ideas.” But, as we have seen, everyone’s property right is de*fended in libertarian law without a patent. If someone has an idea or plan and constructs an invention, and it is stolen from his house, the stealing is an act of theft illegal under general law. On the other hand, patents actually invade the property rights of those independent discoverers of an idea or invention who made the discovery after the patentee. Patents, therefore, in*vade rather than defend property rights. The speciousness of this argument that patents protect property rights in ideas is demon*strated by the fact that not all, but only certain types of original ideas, certain types of innovations, are considered patentable.

[HigherVision]

No creation is truly an 100% original anyway. They're always influenced by previous creations. So if you wanted to be an IP purist you'd have to make creation and invention itself illegal because they always borrow upon something already done.

[GunnyFreedom]

Sounds to me like Rothbard agrees with me rather than you, HB. Rather than simply doing away with patent and copyright and all IP, he was talking about converting patent into copyright, and defending copyright as a means to protect innovation.

IE 'rewriting IP from the ground up' just as I said, certainly not abolishing IP altogether as you say.

Thank you for finding material from Murray Rothbard to support my argument! :)

[GunnyFreedom]

No creation is truly an 100% original anyway. They're always influenced by previous creations. So if you wanted to be an IP purist you'd have to make creation and invention itself illegal because they always borrow upon something already done.

The only IP purists in this thread are anti-IP. I am a human rights purist that doesn't want to see authors enslaved or literature abolished.

[HigherVision]

Force is so awesome

[heavenlyboy34]

The only IP purists in this thread are anti-IP. I am a human rights purist that doesn't want to see authors enslaved or literature abolished. No. The pro-natural rights (human rights) position is properly anti-IP. (See Rothbard, who argued from the natural rights position)

[heavenlyboy34]

From the summary of Mosser's study (http://www.researchoninnovation.org/tiip/archive/2005_1e.html) on patent's influence on innovation:In her analysis of the data Moser found that countries without patent laws produced as many innovations as countries with patent laws when adjusted for population. The type of innovations produced, however, differed between countries with and without patents, and among countries with different patent lengths. As it turns out, patent laws seem to influence the industrial composition of innovation, but they do not necessarily increase innovation per se.Countries without patents were particularly inventive in the fields of food processing and the manufacture of scientific instruments; indeed, Denmark and Switzerland, both without patent laws, had the largest share of innovations of any country in scientific instruments. However, the patentless countries were not very innovative in machinery fields, especially large-scale manufacturing, and in mining and mineral products.Countries with short patent grants (under 10 years) were more similar to countries without patent laws than to those with long patent grants. They exhibited significantly higher proportions of inventions in food processing than those countries with longer patent grants. Moser explains that the absence of patent laws guided innovative activity toward areas where patent grants were not necessary to protect innovations. She cites historical evidence that secrecy, rather than patenting, was widely used to protect innovations in scientific instruments and food processing.Overall, introducing strong and effective patent laws to countries without any such institutions, Moser concludes, would have a greater effect on the direction, rather than the rate, of innovation. In other words, patent laws do affect innovation in industries, but the effects are in kind, not in number.

[GunnyFreedom]

No. The pro-natural rights (human rights) position is properly anti-IP. (See Rothbard, who argued from the natural rights position)

I'm sorry HB, the pro natural rights position is anti slavery not pro slavery. And in the Rothbard piece you quoted he defended copyright as a means to replace patents. I'm with Murray Rothbard on this one. We need to protect innovators and their investments through some form of copyright.

[GunnyFreedom]

From the summary of Mosser's study (http://www.researchoninnovation.org/tiip/archive/2005_1e.html) on patent's influence on innovation:In her analysis of the data Moser found that countries without patent laws produced as many innovations as countries with patent laws when adjusted for population. The type of innovations produced, however, differed between countries with and without patents, and among countries with different patent lengths. As it turns out, patent laws seem to influence the industrial composition of innovation, but they do not necessarily increase innovation per se.Countries without patents were particularly inventive in the fields of food processing and the manufacture of scientific instruments; indeed, Denmark and Switzerland, both without patent laws, had the largest share of innovations of any country in scientific instruments. However, the patentless countries were not very innovative in machinery fields, especially large-scale manufacturing, and in mining and mineral products.Countries with short patent grants (under 10 years) were more similar to countries without patent laws than to those with long patent grants. They exhibited significantly higher proportions of inventions in food processing than those countries with longer patent grants. Moser explains that the absence of patent laws guided innovative activity toward areas where patent grants were not necessary to protect innovations. She cites historical evidence that secrecy, rather than patenting, was widely used to protect innovations in scientific instruments and food processing.Overall, introducing strong and effective patent laws to countries without any such institutions, Moser concludes, would have a greater effect on the direction, rather than the rate, of innovation. In other words, patent laws do affect innovation in industries, but the effects are in kind, not in number.

Which Denmark and Switzerland use copyright to accomplish the same purpose no?

[heavenlyboy34]

I'm sorry HB, the pro natural rights position is anti slavery not pro slavery. And in the Rothbard piece you quoted he defended copyright as a means to replace patents. I'm with Murray Rothbard on this one. We need to protect innovators and their investments through some form of copyright.
Slavery? Irrelevant to the discussion. The only "slavery" case you could make in this debate is that the IP holder's state-granted monopoly on an idea makes everyone else who wants to use the idea a slave to him. (Just as a slave/serf would have to pay a master/king for the "privilege" of living on his own land)

Rothbard's position above is anti-IP. Note: On the free market, there would therefore be no such thing as patents. There would, however, be copyright for any inventor or creator who made use of it, and this copyright would be per*petual, not limited to a certain number of years. Obviously, to be fully the property of an individual, a good has to be perma*nently and perpetually the property of the man and his heirs and assigns. If the State decrees that a man’s property ceases at a cer*tain date, this means that the State is the real owner and that it simply grants the man use of the property for a certain period of time

[GunnyFreedom]

Slavery? Irrelevant to the discussion. The only "slavery" case you could make in this debate is that the IP holder's state-granted monopoly on an idea makes everyone else who wants to use the idea a slave to him. (Just as a slave/serf would have to pay a master/king for the "privilege" of living on his own land)

Rothbard's position above is anti-IP. Note: On the free market, there would therefore be no such thing as patents. There would, however, be copyright for any inventor or creator who made use of it, and this copyright would be per*petual, not limited to a certain number of years. Obviously, to be fully the property of an individual, a good has to be perma*nently and perpetually the property of the man and his heirs and assigns. If the State decrees that a man’s property ceases at a cer*tain date, this means that the State is the real owner and that it simply grants the man use of the property for a certain period of time

Slavery, like you expect an author to crank out books for free. An author is just as entitled to the fruits of his or her labor as you or I, sorry HB, but I am on the side of liberty on this one, and even in the quote above Murray Rothbard is clearly defending copyright.

[heavenlyboy34]

Slavery, like you expect an author to crank out books for free. An author is just as entitled to the fruits of his or her labor as you or I, sorry HB, but I am on the side of liberty on this one, and even in the quote above Murray Rothbard is clearly defending copyright.
I didn't say that an author should work without compensation-you did. You know better than to lie like that. An author should make his living by producing, like everyone else. Publish or perish-the motto of academic writers, which all authors would be wise to adopt. If you don't adopt it, technology will destroy you. And no, Rothbard didn't defend copyright as it is now known in the above passage. Re-read it carefully. He says that the copyright can only be valid to the property a man holds. (when he sells it, he no longer owns it-contrary to the IP-advocates' wishful thinking). He makes it clear that copyright is an arbitrary state privilege: If the State decrees that a man’s property ceases at a cer*tain date, this means that the State is the real owner and that it simply grants the man use of the property for a certain period of time. Further, The common law has often been a good guide to the law con*sonant with the free market. Hence, it is not surprising that com*mon-law copyright prevails for unpublished literary manuscripts, while there is no such thing as a common-law patent. At common law, the inventor also has the right to keep his invention unpublicized and safe from theft, i.e., he has the equivalent of the copy*right protection for unpublicized inventions. IOW, whoever publishes the piece of IP (even if it isn't the "creator") has the right to copy ("copyright"). Keep in mind that common law definition of "copyright" is entirely different from the modern understanding.

[GunnyFreedom]

The bottom line is some of you think that authors, musicians, designers, and creative types are your slaves. You are monsters! I will defend the right to EVERYBODY'S liberty whether I like them or not. If that means that I have to stand in front of an author with a rifle and defend him from the likes of you lot I will.

These people are entitled to the fruits of their labor JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

Jackboot thuggerty doesn't just become "OK" whenever it's an issue we like.

[CaseyJones]

The Free Hornet will be taking a week off

[GunnyFreedom]

I didn't say that an author should work without compensation-you did. You know better than to lie like that. An author should make his living by producing, like everyone else. Publish or perish-the motto of academic writers, which all authors would be wise to adopt. If you don't adopt it, technology will destroy you. And no, Rothbard didn't defend copyright as it is now known in the above passage. Re-read it carefully. He says that the copyright can only be valid to the property a man holds. (when he sells it, he no longer owns it-contrary to the IP-advocates' wishful thinking). He makes it clear that copyright is an arbitrary state privilege: If the State decrees that a man’s property ceases at a cer*tain date, this means that the State is the real owner and that it simply grants the man use of the property for a certain period of time. Further, The common law has often been a good guide to the law con*sonant with the free market. Hence, it is not surprising that com*mon-law copyright prevails for unpublished literary manuscripts, while there is no such thing as a common-law patent. At common law, the inventor also has the right to keep his invention unpublicized and safe from theft, i.e., he has the equivalent of the copy*right protection for unpublicized inventions. IOW, whoever publishes the piece of IP (even if it isn't the "creator") has the right to copy ("copyright"). Keep in mind that common law definition of "copyright" is entirely different from the modern understanding.

If an author's work is free to copy and free to distribute without his or her permission or consent, then it will be freely distributed and they will not be compensated. That's how the free market works. Surely you are not counting on people giving 'pity money' to an author when the same product often with superior distribution can be had for free? We both know that's not how the free market works. Expecting people to do work without compensation is slavery. That's not a lie, that's the definition of what we are talking about here.

And nowhere in any place in this thread have I ever supported Ip as it is currently constructed. Indeed, time and time again over and over until I am blue in the fingers I have taken special pains to say that "The whole IP system needs to be trashed and re-written from the ground up." Where in that statement do you find any kind of support for IP as it is currently constructed? You made the claim that I am lying, how about you just making stuff up?

And Murray Rothbard in the passage you quote in this posts states that if copyright EXPIRES then the State is the real owner, not if copyright exists. In the piece you posted earlier (but removed from this section) Rothbard explains that in a real free market there would be permanent copyright available should any innovator choose to avail themselves of it.

So yes, in the section of this passage that you deleted, you can see it a couple posts above, Rothbard defends copyright. Nobody, least of all me, has ever said that Rothbard or I would defend copyright as it is currently construed. Oh wait, you are accusing me of defending copyright as it is currently construed so i guess somebody is. :)

[NIU Students for Liberty]

The bottom line is some of you think that authors, musicians, designers, and creative types are your slaves. You are monsters!

Yes, because slaves are afforded the right to sell items that they have produced and receive financial compensation in return....

[GunnyFreedom]

Yes, because slaves are afforded the right to sell items that they have produced and receive financial compensation in return....

Well isn't that the whole point?

[GunnyFreedom]

Force is so awesome

Only when it's being used to stop aggression. Otherwise it's kind of evil.

[Danan]

I want to go back to the initial question about why e-books aren't cheaper than hard-cover books are. Let's analyze the whole szenario from a positive economic point of view (although more or less neo-classical I belief it's quite good in describing what's going on):

With IP-laws the market for any kind of book is esentially a monopoly market protected by government because consumers usually don't substitute one book for another if it's becoming too expensive. Or at least they don't view every book as a perfect substitute good for each other. If we only look at the market for "book X" it's clearly a monopoly.

Here is how every monopoly maximizes it's profits: You search the intersection of the marginal costs function (what are the costs to produce an additional unit at a current production of X?) and the marginal revenue function (because there are no other sellers on the market you can change the price according to the amount you produce which changes the demand for that product). Then you draw a straight vertical line at this quanitity and charge the price where it intersects with the demand function (or average revenue function).

http://tutor2u.net/economics/content/diagrams/monopolyprofits1.gif

This will be a higher price and lower quantity than the equilibrium in a competing free market where (ideally, in the long run) the equilibrium is at the intersection of the average costs and the marginal costs function (which is the minimum of the average costs curve).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Economics_Perfect_competition.svg/560px-Economics_Perfect_competition.svg.png

So this monopoly creates a deadweight loss because there would still be demand for the good and sellers could produce more without having a loss but profit maximizing monopolys won't ever realize that point.

This problem could be elliminated by fixing the price at equilibrium level.

But there is another problem: In the case of e-books the marginal costs to produce another unit is zero. Once the distribution system is created and the staff, author, etc. is payed the average costs will fall indefinitely but never reach the marginal costs (of zero).

http://leanderwattig.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/grenzkosten.jpg
(GK = MC and DK = AC)

The pareto efficient quantity of a product with no marginal costs is indefinite. When it doesn't cost anything to produce something (additionally) but people want it this obviously enlarges overall utility. But there is one downside to that. Average costs are always higher than the price which leads to losses for the seller. So if prices were fixed at zero someone would have to subsidize the losses (with revenue that creates dead weight losses somewhere else). Or the second best solution could be chosen which is a fixed price at the point where the average cost function intersects the demand curve.

But without price control the price of the product won't fall linearly with the costs to produce.


The argument that without these special IP-laws there were less professional art is not completely refutable imho. I the doubt that it really increases the quality (just listen to modern radio programms...) but that can't be proven. But everyone who makes that argument has to be so honest that this artificially increased supply of art also is a great burden on society. The court system that has to deal with it is extremely expensive and is funded by coercion by people who don't enjoy art too. Also the whole patent system has shown to slow down progress rather than increasing it. Before IP-laws existed (or were enforced like today) companies had to create new products and ideas all the time to be ahead of other companies that copied them. Now they hire a huge amount of lawyers to cement their market leader position. All that R&D does is to create patent after patent (because the companies want to "save" them for the future) but these ideas never get actually realized. They are just there so that nobody else can block them from creating something in the future. Maybe.


There was no normative aspect in this analysis so far. We could try to look at the moral side of the case too:

Is IP really property and is copying IP really stealing? I'd say no. There is no consistent definition of property where copying a song is stealing but copying a technique is not. So if you want to have a consistent philosophical point of view you either agree that the first guy who roasted meat with fire, the first guy who used letters to write down messages and the first guy who combined music notes in a specific way (or their descendants) have a right to stop everyone else by force from copying their idea without their consent or you think that nobody can stop you from doing it because you can't "steal" an idea. Or what is it that distinguishs one type of idea from another? Would humanity really be better off, if these laws existed all the time?

Are we really depriving artists of their rightfull income without IP-laws? Just like we are depriving the inventors (or their descendants) of baking bread, building houses, reading and writing, singing, riding horses and every other technique/idea that isn't protected by government their "rightfull" income.

What about the price fixing in markets protected by IP-laws? Isn't price fixing a bad thing? In the free market, sure. But not if governmental regulations create a monopolistic environment. The too options are: underconsumption/overpricing with huge monopoly-profits for protected mega-companies, price fixing or getting rid of IP-laws.

The list goes from the worst to the best option, imho.


I believe overall society would be better off without IP-laws and I certainly believe that this is the only moral option. I'd guess that without IP-laws intellectual and technical progress would thrive and the quality of art would even increase although people like Justin Bieber and corporations like Sony Music Entertainment might suffer.

[Danan]

Also a few other points:

"Everyone is entitled to make a profit of the fruits of their labour!" - This is just not true. You are entitled to produce whatever you want and you are entitled to go to the market place and to find buyers. But a profit is not entitled to you just because you worked hard.

"But there is demand for it!" - Yes but there is also demand for millions of ideas and techniques humanity uses that were created some time ago and aren't created by special laws and regulations. Are we better off being able to use these ideas and techniques freely or would humanity be better off if we had to pay a price everytime we read/write/cook/etc. ?

Why is there an uncountable amount of beautyful songs and drawings all of which were created long before IP laws existed?

If a someone sang a song in front of an audience he couldn't sue the guy who listened to him and started to sing the same song in front of audiences for a living. But nevertheless songs were created (out of joy and profit seeking) and the singer had to become better than his competition.


Also on the copyright of Murray's books: The way I understand it the law in the US says that everyone who writes (and publishes?) something has a copyright on it. There is no way around it and you don't have to apply for it. It's granted automatically.

Also in the current environment it's a necessary evil to protect yourself against someone else who could claim that he has the exclusive right to profit from it which would essentially block you from sellling your own product.

[heavenlyboy34]

+rep ^^ epic posts. :cool:

Also on the copyright of Murray's books: The way I understand it the law in the US says that everyone who writes (and publishes?) something has a copyright on it. There is no way around it and you don't have to apply for it. It's granted automatically. this is true. You don't even need to put the (c) symbol on anything you submit to a publisher. It's common knowlege now that anything captured in a tangible medium (as defined in copyright/patent law) is copyrighted. In fact, your manuscript may be rejected outright if you put the (c) symbol on it, as almost all publishers (save the small, mom n' pop operations, maybe) will consider it unprofessional and amaterish.

[TheGrinch]

I'm sorry HB, the pro natural rights position is anti slavery not pro slavery. And in the Rothbard piece you quoted he defended copyright as a means to replace patents. I'm with Murray Rothbard on this one. We need to protect innovators and their investments through some form of copyright.
That is how I read it too... He actually defends the idea that even though someone could arrive at the same conclusions or ideas as the author/producer, the likelihood that two authors independently produce the exact same media without influence from one another is virtually impossible... Like you said earlier, patents need some massive reforms, but copyrighting is very much free market... I mean, yes ideas are based on previous ideas, but jsut because you could have produced the same product/idea as me, doesn't mean you did or have any claim on the R&D I might have paid millions to produce.

Now let's look at this another way without regard to intangible ideas, and just look at the tangible parts... First, it is not just the intangible idea that's being sold, they're selling media. It previously was books, tapes, CDs, but now are turning towards files, but it is nonetheless something tangible that's being sold. ...

Now the second component is to look at a copyright like a contract, because that's really what it is and would be replaced by in a free market... If you did not have copyrights, then all that would do is force the producers to get the consumer to sign a contract that they won't reproduce it without their permission. Essentially a copyright is an easier way than having to do that, just like money will always exist as a more convenient means than bartering, even though they serve the same purpose...

Plain and simple, if IP doesn't exist, then the market will demand contracts to serve the same ends and protect their investments, or if they cannot, then as Gunny has highlighted, they simply won't go into the industry at all if their innovations aren't protected from theft the same way that more tangible products are. However, that won't happen, because the free market producers will demand that a contract be in place that prohibits unauthorized use of the product.

[Danan]

Now the second component is to look at a copyright like a contract, because that's really what it is and would be replaced by in a free market... If you did not have copyrights, then all that would do is force the producers to get the consumer to sign a contract that they won't reproduce it without their permission. Essentially a copyright is an easier way than having to do that, just like money will always exist as a more convenient means than bartering, even though they serve the same purpose...


It's more like fiat money vs real money. In a free market there is some commodity that serves as money but since that's very inconvinient for governments they create a money monopoly and issue fiat money. They argue that by doing so they enhance overall utility since they are able to "prevent" economic crises, stimulate the economy and so on which wouldn't be possible without monetary policy. Of course it's immoral but that's a low price for all the additional benefits!

Just like in the free market (without government interventions) there are no IP-laws. So government argues that only with special IP-laws it is possible to overcome the current "underconsumption" of art, etc. Of course initially that wasn't the reason they created copy right laws. It was done to prevent certain papers from being printed.


But I totally agree with you about "copy right" in contract form. If you sell your product only to costumers who agree to not copy it that's fine.

But that wouldn't stop anyone who didn't sign the contract from copying the idea.

[heavenlyboy34]

That is how I read it too... He actually defends the idea that even though someone could arrive at the same conclusions or ideas as the author/producer, the likelihood that two authors independently produce the exact same media without influence from one another is virtually impossible... Like you said earlier, patents need some massive reforms, but copyrighting is very much free market... I mean, yes ideas are based on previous ideas, but jsut because you could have produced the same product/idea as me, doesn't mean you did or have any claim on the R&D I might have paid millions to produce.

There is nothing free market about copyright. It is mercantilist. Before mercantilism, it was a royal privilege.



Now the second component is to look at a copyright like a contract, because that's really what it is and would be replaced by in a free market... If you did not have copyrights, then all that would do is force the producers to get the consumer to sign a contract that they won't reproduce it without their permission. Essentially a copyright is an easier way than having to do that, just like money will always exist as a more convenient means than bartering, even though they serve the same purpose... Copyright is, at best, a tacit contract. These are traditionally considered unenforceable in practical reality. It's only relatively recently that corporations have been able to use state power to prevent people from using their legitimate property as they wish. (did you know the "happy birthday" song is copyrighted? Are you paying royalties to the "owner" when you sing happy birthday at parties? If not, you are a "pirate" and hypocrite)

[jmdrake]

The bottom line is some of you think that authors, musicians, designers, and creative types are your slaves. You are monsters! I will defend the right to EVERYBODY'S liberty whether I like them or not. If that means that I have to stand in front of an author with a rifle and defend him from the likes of you lot I will.

These people are entitled to the fruits of their labor JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

Jackboot thuggerty doesn't just become "OK" whenever it's an issue we like.

Ummmmm....the problem with that argument is that you standing in front of the author with your rifle would do nothing to stop someone thousands of miles away from downloading an electronic copy of his book. That said, do you think libraries should be banned? Serious question, because once there was an IP battle over whether a library could buy a book once and then lend it out over time for thousands of people to read for free. Now that libraries lend "ebooks" that takes the same "problem" to a new level.

[jmdrake]

The only IP purists in this thread are anti-IP. I am a human rights purist that doesn't want to see authors enslaved or literature abolished.

....and you want to see the cost of ebooks come down. ;) It's possible for authors to make money off of books, including ebooks, while still "giving" them away. I'm not saying they should have to. I am saying that giving the reality of the technology, and the fact that I despise monstrosities like SOPA, it's probably good for authors look at new revenue streams.

[TheGrinch]

It's more like fiat money vs real money. In a free market there is some commodity that serves as money but since that's very inconvinient for governments they create a money monopoly and issue fiat money. They argue that by doing so they enhance overall utility since they are able to "prevent" economic crises, stimulate the economy and so on which wouldn't be possible without monetary policy. Of course it's immoral but that's a low price for all the additional benefits!

Just like in the free market (without government interventions) there are no IP-laws. So government argues that only with special IP-laws it is possible to overcome the current "underconsumption" of art, etc. Of course initially that wasn't the reason they created copy right laws. It was done to prevent certain papers from being printed.

That was meant to be a loose analogy, because no, there is no such thing as a "fiat copyright". The point was that if copyrights didn't exist, then they would exist as a contract that serves the same purpose, because the market demands it.... And no, the purpose of copyrights is not for the purpose of propping up innovation, that is merely an undesirable side effect of allowing piracy to thrive and producers to suffer as others profit from their work. The reason is still the same as it's always been. I can change just a few words and your explanation holds just as true: " It was done to prevent papers (media) from being printed (reproduced without permission).".

You see, just because the form of media has changed, as well as the ease to rip it off, does not change the purpose of copyrights, and in fact only necessitates them, because of greater ease for someone to walk into a movie theatre and prop up a camera, or hit the scanner and scan a book, or to make copies of a file that are difficult to restrict copies of.



But I totally agree with you about "copy right" in contract form. If you sell your product only to costumers who agree to not copy it that's fine.

But that wouldn't stop anyone who didn't sign the contract from copying the idea
Umm, okay, if the contract cannot stop anyone, just those who signed the contract from reproducing it, then you've only made the case for why we need copyrights... But I don't think that's true. No matter how you go about it, the free market will work against those who copy.

Using movies as an example: First, anyone who views the movie and has access to it has already signed an implied contract... When you purchase a movie ticket, I'm sure it's in writing somewhere that you're not allowed to film and reproduce it. Second, if you buy the book, the copyright stamp implies a contract that you're not free to reproduce it.
THird, if you just outright steal it and then reproduce it, then you've gotten into a whole new matter of theft if there was no sale to make it "your property" as you claim. So no matter what route you go, you are either breaking an agreement to an implicit contract, or you've stolen it to forego that contract, none of which is right... Who haven't I covered here? You either bought it and are breaking a contract, or you're a thief for claiming property you never purchased.

By leaving it ot the free market, all you're doing is making it more inconvenient for producers to enforce that contract. You will eliminate nothing...

[TheGrinch]

There is nothing free market about copyright. It is mercantilist. Before mercantilism, it was a royal privilege.


Copyright is, at best, a tacit contract. These are traditionally considered unenforceable in practical reality. It's only relatively recently that corporations have been able to use state power to prevent people from using their legitimate property as they wish. (did you know the "happy birthday" song is copyrighted? Are you paying royalties to the "owner" when you sing happy birthday at parties? If not, you are a "pirate" and hypocrite)
Perhaps you have not heard of the Fair Use Doctrine, which covers you to be able to use copyrighted things without penalty. With few other restrictions, it is mainly whether you are profiting from it that makes you unfree to reproduce it. So no, if you want to sing happy birthday, you are free to do so, but if you want to profit from the song, then you have to speak to the copyright holder. Make sense? It should, because the issue centers 100% around someone profitting from the work and money spent on R&D of others, and I can't believe I even have to explain why that's not right, and why the market will demand protection from this kind of theft, regardless of government.

[TheGrinch]

Further, as someone who has around $10,000 invested into video equipment, but is barely scraping by as a freelancer as it is, I remain completely offended that you do not respect, not only the value and original creativity of the work I produce, but that will go as far as to make a claim that you have some implicit right to take away my ability to profit or do with as I please by not only taking it for free, but even reproducing and profiting from it as if it were your own. It's some completely twisted logic that not even Rothbard agrees with, and it sickens me to my stomach that you think you can lay claim to my original work and prevent me from having my right to lay claim to it as MY work.

By thinking that way, you only empower the media companies to restrict your ownership of digital products, because you don't respect the fact that ownership does not imply authorship. Look at iTunes, where you already are basically just renting the music, only holding limited rights to a certain number of copies, or things like netflix, where you aren't entitled to even a digital copy. Get used to more and more of that, since you don't want them to have any protection that can allow them to still profit without necessitating them going after and preventing those who are destroying their livelihood.

[Danan]

Further, as someone who has around $10,000 invested into video equipment, but is barely scraping by as a freelancer as it is, I remain completely offended that you do not respect, not only the value and original creativity of the work I produce, but that will go as far as to make a claim that you have some implicit right to take away my ability to profit or do with as I please by not only taking it for free, but even reproducing and profiting from it as if it were your own. It's some completely twisted logic that not even Rothbard agrees with, and it sickens me to my stomach that you think you can lay claim to my original work and prevent me from having my right to lay claim to it as MY work.


So if I could prove to you that my direct ancestors invented the concept of writing should I be able to sue you everytime you read/write? After all grand-grand-grandpa invested hundreds of hours in creating letters and to convince the other cavemen to use his technique. And nobody ever paid him for it. I'm offended by you stealing my monopoly to use written language!

But yeah, you're barely scraping in the current system, so you defend it.

And not only do you defend it because you profit from it (which is an argument I'd even be willing to accept) but you even claim that the existence of government protections that create by it's very definition a monopoly on the distribution of individual ideas is hurting the media companies. That's just plain wrong. There is not a single economist who wouldn't agree with me on this. Read what I wrote about it in a previous post. Monopolies always lead to inefficiencies. So would you agree that everybody who uses IP-laws should have to operate under fixed prices?

http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1366554505000396-gr6.jpg


I personally don't like the notion of government messing around in the price structure, but as I said earlier if it creates such a distortion in the market place by creating artificial laws that create monopolies it may be better than the alternative (huge monopoly profits and underconsumption).

But of course the best solution would be to get rid of the distoriton.

[TheGrinch]

So if I could prove to you that my direct ancestors invented the concept of writing should I be able to sue you everytime you read/write? After all grand-grand-grandpa invested hundreds of hours in creating letters and to convince the other cavemen to use his technique. And nobody ever paid him for it. I'm offended by you stealing my monopoly to use written language!

If they intended for that to be private language to only be replicated by those they gave permission to, then yes. However, language is socialist in nature, not economic, as it is and has always been a collective standard used to communicate by those who choose to, or in other words they gave their permission for it to be spread and used. It was never intended to be a product for sale, or else I would have supported their right.

Actually, a better example would be software and code (a different type of language). Do you believe you're just free to steal complex coding and pass them off as your own, after another company spent millions creating them? Just because the technology exists to do so, doesn't make that software/code (or in essence language) yours to steal, unless the owner has implied you are allowed to. We call that shareware. Other exe.'s we are programs for profit.

In short, your language example describes shareware, not the free market.


I personally don't like the notion of government messing around in the price structure, but as I said earlier if it creates such a distortion in the market place by creating artificial laws that create monopolies it may be better than the alternative (huge monopoly profits and underconsumption).

But of course the best solution would be to get rid of the distoriton.
No, you are correct that the patent system is broken, which is where monopolies occur (though only temporarily, which in some cases may be appropriate. different argument however), but if you're trying to pretend that copyrighting somehow gives you a monopoly, then you're misunderstanding the term. How is it a monopoly when there are literally millions of other books, movies, albums and their creators out there to compete with? That's where I think a clear distinction should be drawn between patents and copyrights. My writing a book does not impede your ability to write a book, but it does impede your ability to pass off my book as yours. Understand the clear difference between that and a patent/monopoly?

[jmdrake]

Just out of curiosity, what kind of freelance work are you doing?


Further, as someone who has around $10,000 invested into video equipment, but is barely scraping by as a freelancer as it is, I remain completely offended that you do not respect, not only the value and original creativity of the work I produce, but that will go as far as to make a claim that you have some implicit right to take away my ability to profit or do with as I please by not only taking it for free, but even reproducing and profiting from it as if it were your own. It's some completely twisted logic that not even Rothbard agrees with, and it sickens me to my stomach that you think you can lay claim to my original work and prevent me from having my right to lay claim to it as MY work.

By thinking that way, you only empower the media companies to restrict your ownership of digital products, because you don't respect the fact that ownership does not imply authorship. Look at iTunes, where you already are basically just renting the music, only holding limited rights to a certain number of copies, or things like netflix, where you aren't entitled to even a digital copy. Get used to more and more of that, since you don't want them to have any protection that can allow them to still profit without necessitating them going after and preventing those who are destroying their livelihood.

[TheGrinch]

Just out of curiosity, what kind of freelance work are you doing?
I've done everything from a commercial to informational and entertainment. I've actually seen my videos for a video entertainment website I had ripped off from youtube and posted on other's websites, but made no complaints because they always made sure to cite us as the original source as far as I know (and of course had our website in the video, but this all neither here nor there, as it relates to companies who actually charge for their videos)... But I like that I have the right to tell them to take it down or expect to be sued, because I did not mark that as creative commons on Youtube, and don't at all appreciate those being taken if they're not going to give us credit. This would obviously be tenfold if my business was a traditional one where you have to pay for the content being reproduced and given away for free, or to the profit of someone else..

BTW, my comments about Danan's comments about my vested interest got cut out of that last post somehow, but that was jsut an aside, and had nothing to do with my argument, other than to show that it's not just the big media conglomerates that it's much harder to feel sorry for. It also affects people like me who are already having a hard enough time making it without you feeling like my content is yours, just because you have the technology at hand to easily do so. That doesn't change whether I'm personally profiting from it or not, as there are plenty who make their livelihood this way. So for them to not be able to pursue this legitimate career they choose to, just because the technology exists to make it far easier for any jackass to copy and distribute it as if it's their own, is frankly bullshit.

[heavenlyboy34]

Perhaps you have not heard of the Fair Use Doctrine, which covers you to be able to use copyrighted things without penalty. With few other restrictions, it is mainly whether you are profiting from it that makes you unfree to reproduce it. So no, if you want to sing happy birthday, you are free to do so, but if you want to profit from the song, then you have to speak to the copyright holder. Make sense? It should, because the issue centers 100% around someone profitting from the work and money spent on R&D of others, and I can't believe I even have to explain why that's not right, and why the market will demand protection from this kind of theft, regardless of government.
I am aware of Fair Use. Screenwriters have people singing happy birthday in films all the time. They are profiting from the use of song. We see this in televised birthday parties for celebrities and so on. (violations of fair use) However, I've never heard of any director/producer actually paying the copyright holder. I'm sure some have been sued though, and I know the guy who "owns" the song still gets mechanicals.

Again, you make a claim of "theft". It's obviously not theft. Not even the LAW ITSELF makes a claim about "theft"-as I've demonstrated repeatedly. It's only dogmatic pro-IP folks, creator-worshipers, and mercantilists who use the word "theft" regarding ideas. You're right that a freed market would rely on R&D. However a freed market (this is agorist terminology, btw) allows property owners to do whatever they like with their property. This means that creators will have to change their business models. This will work to the benefit of the consumer and producer.

[TheGrinch]

Anyways, I'm done with this thread, unless one of you wants to explain this from my previous post:


How is it a monopoly when there are literally millions of other books, movies, albums and their creators out there to compete with? That's where I think a clear distinction should be drawn between patents and copyrights. My writing a book does not impede your ability to write a book, but it does impede your ability to pass off my book as yours.

[TheGrinch]

I am aware of Fair Use. Screenwriters have people singing happy birthday in films all the time. They are profiting from the use of song. We see this in televised birthday parties for celebrities and so on. (violations of fair use) However, I've never heard of any director/producer actually paying the copyright holder. I'm sure some have been sued though, and I know the guy who "owns" the song still gets mechanicals.

Again, you make a claim of "theft". It's obviously not theft. Not even the LAW ITSELF makes a claim about "theft"-as I've demonstrated repeatedly. It's only dogmatic pro-IP folks, creator-worshipers, and mercantilists who use the word "theft" regarding ideas. You're right that a freed market would rely on R&D. However a freed market (this is agorist terminology, btw) allows property owners to do whatever they like with their property. This means that creators will have to change their business models. This will work to the benefit of the consumer and producer.What exactly do you call plaigarism then? There is no fundamental difference between plagiarism and pirating.

Theft seems a fairly appropriate word, when you claim right to something that you did not create or have permission to distribute. Do you prefer the term exploitation instead?


(Oh, and no one is going to a movie to hear the happy birthday song, so while they could sue, it would be a pretty weak claim for a song that's become an American tradition inserted into 30 seconds of an hour and a half film.)

[QueenB4Liberty]

What exactly do you call plaigarism then? There is no fundamental difference between plagiarism and pirating.

Theft seems a fairly appropriate word, when you claim right to something that you did not create or have permission to distribute. Do you prefer the term exploitation instead?


(Oh, and no one is going to a movie to hear the happy birthday song, so while they could sue, it would be a pretty weak claim for a song that's become an American tradition inserted into 30 seconds of an hour and a half film.)

Ok I didn't read your whole argument, but plagiarism is where you copy someone else's work and put your name on it. Pirating something is just taking something of someone else's for your own use, you aren't personally taking credit for it. I think.

Luckily none of the books I bought on Kindle were more expensive than the printed copy.

[Origanalist]

I am aware of Fair Use. Screenwriters have people singing happy birthday in films all the time. They are profiting from the use of song. We see this in televised birthday parties for celebrities and so on. (violations of fair use) However, I've never heard of any director/producer actually paying the copyright holder. I'm sure some have been sued though, and I know the guy who "owns" the song still gets mechanicals.

Again, you make a claim of "theft". It's obviously not theft. Not even the LAW ITSELF makes a claim about "theft"-as I've demonstrated repeatedly. It's only dogmatic pro-IP folks, creator-worshipers, and mercantilists who use the word "theft" regarding ideas. You're right that a freed market would rely on R&D. However a freed market (this is agorist terminology, btw) allows property owners to do whatever they like with their property. This means that creators will have to change their business models. This will work to the benefit of the consumer and producer.

Excuse me for coming late into the discussion but, "happy birthday" was written a long time ago. Is anyone here advocating for eternal rights to a intellectual creation? Hasn't the copyright for that song expired? If not, why not? Is it still for sale?

[Danan]

Anyways, I'm done with this thread, unless one of you wants to explain this from my previous post:


How is it a monopoly when there are literally millions of other books, movies, albums and their creators out there to compete with? That's where I think a clear distinction should be drawn between patents and copyrights. My writing a book does not impede your ability to write a book, but it does impede your ability to pass off my book as yours.


I was about to comment on that anyway because you misrepresented (or misunderstood) what I was writing about.


The part of my post you didn't quote or comment was:


And not only do you defend it because you profit from it (which is an argument I'd even be willing to accept) but you even claim that the existence of government protections that create by it's very definition a monopoly on the distribution of individual ideas is hurting the media companies.

I explained earlier why "books" is not a very good classification of a "good". This would only be true if every book were a perfect (or very good) substitute for each other. But that's clearly not the case. If I'm a big Harry Potter fan I will not be influenced in my decision of whether or not I want to buy the new sequel of it by the price of the new Twighlight book. They could give it away or raise the price for for it to $ 1 Mio. - none of that would have an effect on my decission of whether or not I want to give a few bucks to JK Rowling. The only price that has anything to do with that is the price of the new Potter novel.

I said that I agree that it's not a perfect monopoly. Some people may have a certain book budget they want to spend every now and then and if their favourite book was much more expensive than another book they might substitute and buy the cheaper one. Even though they still would have bought the more expensive book had the other one not existed. And especially with nonfiction this effect might be stronger.

But overall (in some areas more than in others) a single individual book (or most other products of human minds) is it's own product class. And the owner of a copyright by definition has a monopoly to sell this product. Therefore market forces will never be able to force the seller to sell at equilibrium level (or even to move them into that direction). The price will never move to minimal average costs-level.

The result of a market with IP-laws but without price regulations will necessarily be: prices higher than equilibrium level, quantities lower than equilibrium level, monopoly profits and a huge deadweight loss (which means that the consumer surplus in a society without IP-laws isn't even completely transfered to the producers, but is lost).

You say that art and other IP-related stuff will be encouraged by those laws. And I don't believe that this argument is completely wrong (although one could critize it too). But I say that you have to look at the costs too. For example a very expensive legal system that deals with IP laws were a massive amount of resources is distributed into a completely unproductive service (lawyers...). Most of these resources are generated by coercion (taxes) where government has to steal (physically!) from people (and many of them can't even aford to go to a cinema or to buy books) to subsidize artists through IP-laws. Then there is the huge consumer surplus that goes up in smoke. And of course the need to enforce these laws which creates an incentive for governments to spy on our PCs and the internet and an incentive to create international government because of worldwide trade (servers in Pazific islands...). And so on.


Just for clarification: When I'm talking about "individual books" I'm talking about what is subject to IP-laws (name and content of a book) rather than about single copies of it.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Excuse me for coming late into the discussion but, "happy birthday" was written a long time ago. Is anyone here advocating for eternal rights to a intellectual creation? Hasn't the copyright for that song expired? If not, why not? Is it still for sale?

If IP was property then yes, the title is yours to do what you wish with it in toto, that is, you can pass your estate (collection of all just property titles) to your progeny, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, you can tell the whole jibe is hogwash since even the IP advocates do not even dare argue IP with property characteristics because it would soon be very evident how contradictory the terms are and how tyrannous IP is. Pay to speak? Pay to think? Never mind the fact that property is a concept devised both as a moral philosophy and as a system of dispute resolution (e.g. to describe the state of affairs in a world of scarce resources), wherein there is no scarcity to IP. It can be infinitely reproduced in the mind, nearly infinitely or at such a spectacularly low cost as to be considered nearly infinite via electronic means, etc. which renders moot any conception of property.

What they are arguing for is the utilitarian position that their violation of property rights is justified in the sense they believe that without IP no creation would take place because there would be no guarantee of monopoly re: profit. It is an absurd argument that is straight out of the Mercantilist hand book which has been refuted umpteen million times by folks much wiser and smarter than I.

Now, I wouldn't have such a problem with IP advocates if they were just honest and consistent and presented IP with all characteristics of property. At least I can tolerate cognitive dissonance rather than abject willful deception.

These folks just don't like competition if it means they have to compete (which I've encountered many many times). It's like trying to argue to a Central Banker why the Central Bank should be abolished and is immoral.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

What exactly do you call plaigarism then? There is no fundamental difference between plagiarism and pirating.

Theft seems a fairly appropriate word, when you claim right to something that you did not create or have permission to distribute. Do you prefer the term exploitation instead?


(Oh, and no one is going to a movie to hear the happy birthday song, so while they could sue, it would be a pretty weak claim for a song that's become an American tradition inserted into 30 seconds of an hour and a half film.)

Plagiarism is fraud. Pirating is the reproduction, copy, or to make anew of a good. You would have a case if say, I made a CD called Concerto No. Five by Beethoven, but it was just a collection of cricket sounds, or if I made a CD titled Diablo 3 by Blizzard, but it was a blank CD. As long as it is merely a copy of property in your just ownership (that is, you didn't walk into a company and plug your USB into their computer and download their schema's, etc.) and you do not willfully deceive the buying party, there has been no immorality or violation of property rights committed.

[TheGrinch]

Okay, so let me get this straight. The first of the last three posters suggested that because other books besides Harry Potter that he felt were inferior (entirely subjective), that that somehow means that there's not competition in that marketplace... Are you serious? Competition means precisely that some products are better and some are inferior, and the strongest will survive... Thus, even if other books go for more, does not in any way mean that they'll be more successful or worth it than Harry Potter. That's up for the market to decide. This is the basis of free-market competition.

Then the second comes in with the argument that there is no competition, and only monopolies with regard to copyrights, even though I've shown that it's patently false that there is no competition. It's pretty simple. You create media and I create media, 1 million others create media, and we'll see who sells better, but you have no right to just rip off the work that I took time,effort and money ot create. The copyright laws exist to determine exactly what's infringement and what's incidental use and non-copyrightable ideas.

In fact, the different types of media and all kinds of entertainment are actually in competition with eachother for your time and money. Even more reason why it one's creative work is something that they created and hold the rights to, becuase if you cna do it better, then you're free to do it under copyright law. If their product is inferior, then it will lose to the competition, but it's still their product to sell and relegate use as they see fit.

Then of course the third poster who wants to figure out a few nitpick distinctions of why different types of fraud are different, when they all have the same affect of stripping the owner of express rights to their work and subsequent profits from it. The means they do so is rather irrelevant. It's just as bad to shoot someone as stab them with an ice pick.

[Danan]

@Austrian Econ Disciple

I agree with what you're saying and I can see why it might get tiring to argue the same stuff again and again.

I don't know about you but I have been on the other side of the argument too. And if someone tryed to persuade me like you (or even if I only read through it as an outsider with an open mind) I wouldn't even have listened to you.

Most people (at least that's how I see it) become purer and purer in their libertarian beliefs by realizing that even by utalitarian standards the purest positon wins. And only after they know that they begin to care about the moral arguments. And once they researched the whole philosophy in detail they tend to defend their positions on a moral basis and very harshly. But that wasn't what converted them in the first place and they would have never listend to someone arguing like that.

Yes at some point you come to the conclusion that you don't even care if your position is better from a utalitarian / Mercantilist point of view ("I'd rather be poor but free than rich but unfree" - Ron Paul). But the good thing is we win the argument even by their rules. So lets try to persuade them by what works best.

And obviously it will always be especially hard to acknowledge that the way you currently earn your income might not be how things would be done in a completely free market. I can fully understand artists, etc. having a problem with getting rid of IP-laws. It's always hard to imagine what could be in absence of the state.

I think it was Murray Rothbard who made the argument that if government had a monopoly on shoe production people wouldn't believe that it's possible to let the free market create shoes. How could it be possible that free market anarchy figures out a way how to create all the different types of sizes? And people have all kinds of different preferences regarding color, type, material and so on. What about shoes for special tasks (golf shoes, running shoes, ...)? Also just look the logistics. How many shoes should be created at what company in what town? How would it be possible that the right amount is in the local stores at all times? What prices should be charged? What about bad qualitiy shoes and fraudulent producers? Clearly without government no shoes would exist!

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Okay, so let me get this straight. The first of the last three posters suggested that because other books besides Harry Potter that he felt were inferior (entirely subjective), that that somehow means that there's not competition in that marketplace... Are you serious? Competition means precisely that some products are better and some are inferior, and the strongest will survive... Thus, even if other books go for more, does not in any way mean that they'll be more successful or worth it than Harry Potter. That's up for the market to decide. This is the basis of free-market competition.

Then the second comes in with the argument that there is no competition, and only monopolies with regard to copyrights, even though I've shown that it's patently false that there is no competition. It's pretty simple. You create media and I create media, 1 million others create media, and we'll see who sells better, but you have no right to just rip off the work that I took time,effort and money ot create. The copyright laws exist to determine exactly what's infringement and what's incidental use and non-copyrightable ideas.

In fact, the different types of media and all kinds of entertainment are actually in competition with eachother for your time and money. Even more reason why it one's creative work is something that they created and hold the rights to, becuase if you cna do it better, then you're free to do it under copyright law. If their product is inferior, then it will lose to the competition, but it's still their product to sell and relegate use as they see fit.

Then of course the third poster who wants to figure out a few nitpick distinctions of why different types of fraud are different, when they all have the same affect of stripping the owner of express rights to their work and subsequent profits from it. The means they do so is rather irrelevant. It's just as bad to shoot someone as stab them with an ice pick.

Let's make this simple. You say there is no monopoly if X company was rewarded with Y patent for a specific chair. It only so happens this particular design is the most comfortable, but also, easily made. The Government through granting you this sole right of production (e.g. NO OTHER INDIVIDUAL IS ALLOWED TO EVER MAKE A CHAIR WITH THE SAME DESIGN), is not actually a monopoly, because some other people can make a chair, but of a different design. This doesn't negate the fact that you have a monopoly on the design of that chair, which precludes competition, ergo, monopoly especially for the fact that it is entirely a writ of and enforced by the State.

Even the State doesn't recognize IP as property, but as privilege (e.g. monopoly) of their writ of monopoly. If it was property then all the laws in regards to property would take effect (estate, in toto, etc.).

Also, can I please get an answer from an IP advocate about this little problem called independent discovery? I think this little scenario points how IP violates property rights. If two people who never the twain shall meet (or perhaps even more), come up with the same design, or same discovery at relatively the same time without ever having knowledge of each other who is stealing from whom, and who shall this monopoly be granted to? How can you steal something which you've never come into contact or knowledge of? There are two people, with the same idea, according to you that is thievery, but each person retains the idea. There has been no loss of property. Please do not say that someone has a right to profit, that is about the most tyrannous thing I've ever heard. If someone has a right to profit then by definition there can be no bankruptcy and the Government must subsidize loss through thievery (tax) to make whole that right. Absurd. Absurd. Absurd.

Everyone has the right OF profit, but not TO profit. Words have meanings and those meanings are very important.

[TheGrinch]

Why do you all continue to insist that this is the same thing as patent laws? We've spent half this thread trying to explain how copyrights are different.

As Rothbard said himself, it is virtually impossible for 2 different parties to independently produce the same literary work, painting, film, musical piece, etc., but there is indeed plenty of wiggle room for them to be influenced by one another, just not misrepresented or stripping the author of explicit rights (that again, will only be more explicitly stated in a truly free market, because the market doesn't agree that their productions are yours to distribute as you please, and will demand more explicit contracts if copyright law doesn't provide relief).

Again, there is tons of wiggle room, and even things like satire are protected, but as soon as you blatantly rip off others' works, whether through copying, plagiarizing, or whatever, then you are basically saying that those in the information/media/entertainment/service businesses don't have legitimate claims to ownership over what in some cases they spent years and paid millions to produce... I don't give a damn what kind of justifications you give me that you can distribute it. Sorry, but you're only working against your own stateless cause by forcing people to give you their media, no matter whether they give permission to or not...

Sounds equally like force to me, but against instead of for the party who created it, which is not the way it should be


(Edit: By the way, some of the arguments can be applied to patent reform too, but copyrights are the subject of the thread, and a distinction needs to be drawn between the two)



Let's make this simple. You say there is no monopoly if X company was rewarded with Y patent for a specific chair. It only so happens this particular design is the most comfortable, but also, easily made. The Government through granting you this sole right of production (e.g. NO OTHER INDIVIDUAL IS ALLOWED TO EVER MAKE A CHAIR WITH THE SAME DESIGN), is not actually a monopoly, because some other people can make a chair, but of a different design. This doesn't negate the fact that you have a monopoly on the design of that chair, which precludes competition, ergo, monopoly especially for the fact that it is entirely a writ of and enforced by the State.

Even the State doesn't recognize IP as property, but as privilege (e.g. monopoly) of their writ of monopoly. If it was property then all the laws in regards to property would take effect (estate, in toto, etc.).

Also, can I please get an answer from an IP advocate about this little problem called independent discovery? I think this little scenario points how IP violates property rights. If two people who never the twain shall meet (or perhaps even more), come up with the same design, or same discovery at relatively the same time without ever having knowledge of each other who is stealing from whom, and who shall this monopoly be granted to? How can you steal something which you've never come into contact or knowledge of? There are two people, with the same idea, according to you that is thievery, but each person retains the idea. There has been no loss of property. Please do not say that someone has a right to profit, that is about the most tyrannous thing I've ever heard. If someone has a right to profit then by definition there can be no bankruptcy and the Government must subsidize loss through thievery (tax) to make whole that right. Absurd. Absurd. Absurd.

Everyone has the right OF profit, but not TO profit. Words have meanings and those meanings are very important.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Why do you all continue to insist that this is the same thing as patent laws? We've spent half this thread trying to explain how copyrights are different.

As Rothbard said himself, it is virtually impossible for 2 different parties to independently produce the same literary work, painting, film, musical piece, etc., but there is indeed plenty of wiggle room for them to be influenced by one another, just not misrepresented or stripping the author of explicit rights (that again, will only be more explicitly stated in a truly free market, because the market doesn't agree that their productions are yours to distribute as you please, and will demand more explicit contracts if copyright law doesn't provide relief).

Again, there is tons of wiggle room, and even things like satire are protected, but as soon as you blatantly rip off others' works, whether through copying, plagiarizing, or whatever, then you are basically saying that those in the entertainment/service business don't have legitimate claims to ownership over what in some cases they spent years and paid millions to produce... I don't give a damn what kind of justifications you give me that you can distribute it. Sorry, but you're only working against your own stateless cause by forcing people to give you their media, no matter whether they give permission to or not...

Sounds equally like force to me, but against instead of for the party who created it, which is not the way it should be


(Edit: By the way, some of the arguments can be applied to patent reform too, but copyrights are the subject of the thread, and a distinction needs to be drawn between the two)

Who said anyone should force anyone to 'give their media' or in laymen term's trade. I certainly said in this same thread it is entirely your right to never trade what you discover or make. However, once you trade something unless explicitly made clear in understandable and readable terms that the parties involved in the trade agree to reservation of some rights to the selling party, then the buyer can do whatever he wants with it and if that means copy and sell it that is it right because it is now his property. I've said time and time again I have no problem with contractual IP under these principles, the point made however is that contractual IP is very weak and futile because it only binds involved parties, something that the people who want a monopoly despise.

How are you ripping off someone by copying their property? I all ready said please don't bring that bullshit argument that a person has a right to profit to the table. It's tyrannical garbage. You have a right to the product of your labor, in this case the piece of paper a particular musical arrangement is notated on, or a draft of a new schema, etc. No one can take this from you without your permission, however, the minute you trade this to another person, it becomes his property (again contractual stipulation, blah, blah), but de novo you have no ownership over the idea, but over the property the idea is embedded in. That's why you can stipulate how someone can use that property, but you cannot preclude another individual for example who observes it's use and function to use their own property in recreation, or reproduction.

If this is not at all clear, I can try and explain it more succinctly.

[Danan]

Okay, so let me get this straight. The first of the last three posters suggested that because other books besides Harry Potter that he felt were inferior (entirely subjective), that that somehow means that there's not competition in that marketplace... Are you serious? Competition means precisely that some products are better and some are inferior, and the strongest will survive... Thus, even if other books go for more, does not in any way mean that they'll be more successful or worth it than Harry Potter. That's up for the market to decide. This is the basis of free-market competition.


Do you really believe that I think that Harry Potter is the best book in the world? Do you really believe that I - the only part of this discussion who backs up his arguments with economic theory - don't know that value is entirely subjective?

What I did say is because of IP-laws a seller has a monopoly to sell a specific book title. That's the very definition of copy rights.

Economics (and to my knowledge every school of economics) tells us that in a free market the price of a good (at least by trend) should be the intersection of average costs function and marginal costs function which is also the minimum of the average costs function.

In the special situation of e-books we have a case where marginal costs are zero so this function can't intersect with the average costs function. If there weren't any entry barriers in that market competition would lead to the second best solution which is where the average costs function and the demand function intersect.

But this is clearly not the case. How do we know that? If the equilibrium would be realized the company would make losses. At the second best solution it would make no economic profits (which is a rather complicated concept as there is still an average return of investment for the capital, this has to do with the concept of opportunity costs). To clarify this, because "no economic profits" sounds rather bad: this is the same situation every market in equilibrium looks like in theory. Of course in reallity there are only trends into this direction, but that's what causes prices to fall.

But non of that is true for the IP-market. There are huge monopoly profits to be made. I have no problems with profits in the free market. If you're the best in selling a product you deserve your profits. They will enocurage other businessmen to go into the market and bring down the price (because clearly if a profit is being made, costs are currently lower than the selling price is). But with IP-laws competition (in selling the same product, a certain book title, piece of music, etc.) is not allowed. No matter how many sellers enter the book market the price will not go down and the profits of the "winners" won't either. That doesn't mean that everyone who enters will make a profit. Some will, some won't. But there is no market force that moves prices towards equilibrium level. Or at least it's much weaker than it is in totally free markets.

[TheGrinch]

Who said anyone should force anyone to 'give their media' or in laymen term's trade. I certainly said in this same thread it is entirely your right to never trade what you discover or make. However, once you trade something unless explicitly made clear in understandable and readable terms that the parties involved in the trade agree to reservation of some rights to the selling party, then the buyer can do whatever he wants with it and if that means copy and sell it that is it right because it is now his property. I've said time and time again I have no problem with contractual IP under these principles, the point made however is that contractual IP is very weak and futile because it only binds involved parties, something that the people who want a monopoly despise.

How are you ripping off someone by copying their property? I all ready said please don't bring that bullshit argument that a person has a right to profit to the table. It's tyrannical garbage. You have a right to the product of your labor, in this case the piece of paper a particular musical arrangement is notated on, or a draft of a new schema, etc. No one can take this from you without your permission, however, the minute you trade this to another person, it becomes his property (again contractual stipulation, blah, blah), but de novo you have no ownership over the idea, but over the property the idea is embedded in. That's why you can stipulate how someone can use that property, but you cannot preclude another individual for example who observes it's use and function to use their own property in recreation, or reproduction.

If this is not at all clear, I can try and explain it more succinctly.
No, it's pretty clear. You make Murray Rothbard look like a moderate.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

No, it's pretty clear. You make Murray Rothbard look like a moderate.

Danan, this is a futile endeavor. These people do not respond to reason and logic at all. They don't even apply their own conclusions to their own arguments. If IP is property why is it treated differently than property? If IP were to be treated as property, what would this look like, and how much ownership over your own body and property would you have?

You cut down a tree? Good luck ever making anything you've not personally designed yourself, cause that be stealing.

[LibertyRevolution]

If I want to loan my friend my book and I drive it to his house and give it to him...
He reads its, it cost him nothing, you profit no money, but you gained a reader.

I send my my friend a copy of an ebook of the same book over torrent...
He reads it, it cost him nothing, you profit no money, but you gain a reader.

Same results, but I face fines/jail for saving myself some gas and time and sending it over the net?
Um... yeah I think we need to look into that.

People need to understand that just because you download something, doesn't mean you would have bought it...
They think every download is a lost sale, and that there is the flaw in their logic.

How many people used to dub tapes for friends?
That is my tape, Ill do what ill want with it, gtfo!
I mean really...FIRST SALE DOCTRINE !!!

Anyways, I think they are going about this shit all wrong..
Movie and record guys need to be making deals with blank media/HDD/Memory manufacturers for cuts in the profits.
I mean if you think about it, movie/record industry got all the power, they go on strike.. blank sales would plummet!
Hollywood keep shooting, just not releasing, keep showing trailers, start a media campaign blaming the manufactures for no releases.
They got the money to holdout, that is what I would do if I ran a movie studio...

[Danan]

Danan, this is a futile endeavor. These people do not respond to reason and logic at all. They don't even apply their own conclusions to their own arguments. If IP is property why is it treated differently than property? If IP were to be treated as property, what would this look like, and how much ownership over your own body and property would you have?

You cut down a tree? Good luck ever making anything you've not personally designed yourself, cause that be stealing.

I have never believed that he reads what we're writing and suddenly a light bulb goes on over his head. ;)

But there might be some people reading this discussion who are more open minded on that subject. And also even if TheGrinchWhoStoleDC might never come to an anti-IP-laws position he might at least understand our reasoning a little better.

In hindsight I've been wrong on many issues but can't remember a single incident where I changed my entire position during an argument and admitted to my "opponent" that he was right all the time. ;)

[Origanalist]

If IP was property then yes, the title is yours to do what you wish with it in toto, that is, you can pass your estate (collection of all just property titles) to your progeny, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, you can tell the whole jibe is hogwash since even the IP advocates do not even dare argue IP with property characteristics because it would soon be very evident how contradictory the terms are and how tyrannous IP is. Pay to speak? Pay to think? Never mind the fact that property is a concept devised both as a moral philosophy and as a system of dispute resolution (e.g. to describe the state of affairs in a world of scarce resources), wherein there is no scarcity to IP. It can be infinitely reproduced in the mind, nearly infinitely or at such a spectacularly low cost as to be considered nearly infinite via electronic means, etc. which renders moot any conception of property.

What they are arguing for is the utilitarian position that their violation of property rights is justified in the sense they believe that without IP no creation would take place because there would be no guarantee of monopoly re: profit. It is an absurd argument that is straight out of the Mercantilist hand book which has been refuted umpteen million times by folks much wiser and smarter than I.

Now, I wouldn't have such a problem with IP advocates if they were just honest and consistent and presented IP with all characteristics of property. At least I can tolerate cognitive dissonance rather than abject willful deception.

These folks just don't like competition if it means they have to compete (which I've encountered many many times). It's like trying to argue to a Central Banker why the Central Bank should be abolished and is immoral.

Could it be, (and forgive me, as I know someone has already made this observation) that the computer has transformed the universe of idea's so much that our generation just can't keep up?

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Could it be, (and forgive me, as I know someone has already made this observation) that the computer has transformed the universe of idea's so much that our generation just can't keep up?

It has transformed it in that it has reduced the cost of the production of many ideas, recipes, etc. to near or pretty much at zero. That is, it has eliminated for all intents and purposes scarcity amongst those goods INSOFAR as to making a new good in that world. Of course the cost isn't zero, and scarcity still exists, because it requires a computer and all its antecedent parts in order for this world to take shape. I say all intents and purposes because while there is a limit to hard drive space, having 1 TB of memory it essentially pushes the price to zero for that medium. Now, if you want to transport that good from that medium it requires more scarce goods in our world in order to do so (such as MP3 player, CD, etc.).

[Origanalist]

It has transformed it in that it has reduced the cost of the production of many ideas, recipes, etc. to near or pretty much at zero. That is, it has eliminated for all intents and purposes scarcity amongst those goods INSOFAR as to making a new good in that world. Of course the cost isn't zero, and scarcity still exists, because it requires a computer and all its antecedent parts in order for this world to take shape. I say all intents and purposes because while there is a limit to hard drive space, having 1 TB of memory it essentially pushes the price to zero for that medium. Now, if you want to transport that good from that medium it requires more scarce goods in our world in order to do so (such as MP3 player, CD, etc.).

See, all I can do is grin. I'm just an old guy who wants to make government smaller. I read what you're writing, but I don't know shit about computers. All my work is in the physical world. I'm just trying to catch up.:)

[heavenlyboy34]

If I want to loan my friend my book and I drive it to his house and give it to him...
He reads its, it cost him nothing, you profit no money, but you gained a reader.

I send my my friend a copy of an ebook of the same book over torrent...
He reads it, it cost him nothing, you profit no money, but you gain a reader.

Same results, but I face fines/jail for saving myself some gas and time and sending it over the net?
Um... yeah I think we need to look into that.

People need to understand that just because you download something, doesn't mean you would have bought it...
They think every download is a lost sale, and that there is the flaw in their logic.

How many people used to dub tapes for friends?
That is my tape, Ill do what ill want with it, gtfo!
I mean really...FIRST SALE DOCTRINE !!!

Anyways, I think they are going about this shit all wrong..
Movie and record guys need to be making deals with blank media/HDD/Memory manufacturers for cuts in the profits.
I mean if you think about it, movie/record industry got all the power, they go on strike.. blank sales would plummet!
Hollywood keep shooting, just not releasing, keep showing trailers, start a media campaign blaming the manufactures for no releases.
They got the money to holdout, that is what I would do if I ran a movie studio...
This is already law, and has been almost since copying machines have been in existence. A portion of the cost of all blank recording media goes to the regime to pay extorted loot (er, uh, "royalties") to creators.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

See, all I can do is grin. I'm just an old guy who wants to make government smaller. I read what you're writing, but I don't know shit about computers. All my work is in the physical world. I'm just trying to catch up.:)

That is no crime. I pretty much presume I'll be just like you in thirty years. Knowledge and learning is an every day routine for all of us throughout our entire lives, and when new information is presented we must either adapt and change our positions or simply plant face in the ground and mutter loudly. If the Pro-IP folks could convince me using chains of logic and reasoning that IP was actually property and it did not interfere in one's self-propriety and property, then I'd change my position. You know, I wasn't always anti-State IP, I looked at the information made my own chains of logic and reasoning and using thought experiments came to the conclusion I now hold.

If they could break that chain of logic and show me how I erred, I am certainly open to changing my position. Lord knows, I've done it once or twice... :p

[heavenlyboy34]

It has transformed it in that it has reduced the cost of the production of many ideas, recipes, etc. to near or pretty much at zero. That is, it has eliminated for all intents and purposes scarcity amongst those goods INSOFAR as to making a new good in that world. Of course the cost isn't zero, and scarcity still exists, because it requires a computer and all its antecedent parts in order for this world to take shape. I say all intents and purposes because while there is a limit to hard drive space, having 1 TB of memory it essentially pushes the price to zero for that medium. Now, if you want to transport that good from that medium it requires more scarce goods in our world in order to do so (such as MP3 player, CD, etc.).
Indeed. Super-abundance of anything is still somewhat limited, but its abundance drives its price downward (usually to zero or extremely close...but other costs, like opportunity cost, still apply-as the laws of economics are still in play).

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Anyways....just for video reference and a slight argument from authority fallacy to boot, here is Walter (considering he was a very close intimate friend with Murray, you can't completely claim fallacy! :p) about Murray and IP re: Kinsella's great IP article:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtYH77bxeCU&feature=related

Skip to 29 minutes in.

[RonPaulMall]

Anyways, I'm done with this thread, unless one of you wants to explain this from my previous post:

How is it a monopoly when there are literally millions of other books, movies, albums and their creators out there to compete with? That's where I think a clear distinction should be drawn between patents and copyrights. My writing a book does not impede your ability to write a book, but it does impede your ability to pass off my book as yours.

It is a monopoly because you've been granted ownership rights to a particular arrangement of letters. Arrangements of letters are not property. There are no property rights to grant, yet government has nonetheless granted them to you. In terms of passing off a book as your own, perhaps a minarchist could make some sort of "fraud" argument, but I think you should remember that in practice this really wouldn't be happening much in a copyright-less world. Why would a publisher deny you your authorship credit? It doesn't cost them anything, and putting another author's name on the title would damage their credibility. Customers would want to know who really wrote the book.

You might want to check out this article which discusses the historical case study of a Copyright Publishing Industry vs Non-Copyright Industry that was England vs Germany in the 19th Century:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html