Intellectual Property rights

[Revolution9]

I, as an artist and musician and owning a gaming company am concerned about IP. I see many posts where folks call down the idea of IP. If we have no IP alot of stories will go untold. Folks making a movie with characters can be pre-empted and ripped off by lessor productions capitalising on any buzz the production has created. Folks could just recompile The Beatles recordings and sell them. How do I stop folks from ripping my artwork off from within my games, using publicly available tools and a bit of savvy and making their own game using my art chops and even my code? These are just a few examples. I can come up with dozens. I think this will kill an entire section of the economy. Prove me wrong. If you are taking the course of proving me wrong then explain to me why i should stay in a business where my work can be ripped and kill my profits and my ability to grow my IP into movie, music, character and other franchises.

Rev9

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Do you honestly believe that if another company decided to use Mickey Mouse that no one would watch Disney productions with Mickey Mouse and decide to watch those emulating him? Sure, you may not make as much money without IP as with (since it is protectionist), but on the other hand your works would be more widely spread and the ideas contained within them would reach a greater audience. The fact is that being first to market is all the incentive and benefit you need. Since when are you entitled to guaranteed profit? If someone decides to emulate your character, you still have your character. Nothing has been stolen from you.

Besides, this is a fruitless argument to have with someone who benefits from IP. Only the most devoutly principled, far-sighted, and wise will choose a set of ideals which aren't immediately self-benefitting. It is akin to asking the robber to stop stealing and see the error of his ways.


PS: The idea of State-IP and Private Property are antithetical. There isn't anything stopping someone from NDA'ing a trade secret or otherwise, you just have no right to be an imposition on anothers property -- say if they decide to reverse engineer their property. It's like if I walk by someone who owns a rocking chair that someone has a patent out on -- I should be able to buy wood from Home Depot and re-create the design and if I want to sell it or not. The same principle applies to all of IP. I should be able to go to Staples, buy some paper, and re-create your character that I've either seen advertised, or from a friend whom has bought your work. Telling me I cannot do so is an abridgement of my fundamental rights of private property and liberty.

[Revolution9]

Do you honestly believe that if another company decided to use Mickey Mouse that no one would watch Disney productions with Mickey Mouse and decide to watch those emulating him? Sure, you may not make as much money without IP as with (since it is protectionist), but on the other hand your works would be more widely spread and the ideas contained within them would reach a greater audience. The fact is that being first to market is all the incentive and benefit you need. Since when are you entitled to guaranteed profit? If someone decides to emulate your character, you still have your character. Nothing has been stolen from you.

Besides, this is a fruitless argument to have with someone who benefits from IP. Only the most devoutly principled, far-sighted, and wise will choose a set of ideals which aren't immediately self-benefitting. It is akin to asking the robber to stop stealing and see the error of his ways.


PS: The idea of State-IP and Private Property are antithetical. There isn't anything stopping someone from NDA'ing a trade secret or otherwise, you just have no right to be an imposition on anothers property -- say if they decide to reverse engineer their property. It's like if I walk by someone who owns a rocking chair that someone has a patent out on -- I should be able to buy wood from Home Depot and re-create the design and if I want to sell it or not. The same principle applies to all of IP. I should be able to go to Staples, buy some paper, and re-create your character that I've either seen advertised, or from a friend whom has bought your work. Telling me I cannot do so is an abridgement of my fundamental rights of private property and liberty.

You can create and sculpt and torture the character. The issue begins when you start SOCIALIZING my idea to put profits in your pocket. You are stealing from me. What I see from this argument is that I should give up art and do drywall. But..My ART is MY PRIVATE PROPERTY I CREATED. I also see that your kind have no problem socializing/stealing others work but are against socialism. Next argument.

Rev9

[CaptainAmerica]

I, as an artist and musician and owning a gaming company am concerned about IP. I see many posts where folks call down the idea of IP. If we have no IP alot of stories will go untold. Folks making a movie with characters can be pre-empted and ripped off by lessor productions capitalising on any buzz the production has created. Folks could just recompile The Beatles recordings and sell them. How do I stop folks from ripping my artwork off from within my games, using publicly available tools and a bit of savvy and making their own game using my art chops and even my code? These are just a few examples. I can come up with dozens. I think this will kill an entire section of the economy. Prove me wrong. If you are taking the course of proving me wrong then explain to me why i should stay in a business where my work can be ripped and kill my profits and my ability to grow my IP into movie, music, character and other franchises.

Rev9

Im with you on this as an artist/musician and writer. Here is my argument:
There must be a balance between patent/copyright and free society. Without such a balance, and without a civil government in place to protect individuals and their property and the fruits of their labor there is no existence of an intellectually inclined and free society. I as an artist/musician and writer understand that the fruits of my labor should be that I own my property ,the very seed of my ingenuity and idea to create a music original to my individual identity and that my identity be protected from others who seek to steal my identity and steal the fruits of my labor. My hard creative work manifested into physical property which I would like to share with others. If my property ,my work and ideas cannot be protected then I would retract and not share the best of them with others. Simply put...you will have an uncivil society without patent and copyright balanced with free society.

[CaptainAmerica]

the DAILYPAUL has a nasty thread on this subject, and there are too many marxists perpetuating the notion that they can replicate my music on a cd and call it their own fruits of their labor.

[CaptainAmerica]

You can create and sculpt and torture the character. The issue begins when you start SOCIALIZING my idea to put profits in your pocket. You are stealing from me. What I see from this argument is that I should give up art and do drywall. But..My ART is MY PRIVATE PROPERTY I CREATED. I also see that your kind have no problem socializing/stealing others work but are against socialism. Next argument.

Rev9

Once a person begins raping your idea or my idea as artists and profits from it ,that society turns into marxism.Marxists do not believe in property ,but equal share. I see that a marxist ideal has creeped its way into libertarianism and its very creepy to me. I for one have made a loud statement against it but then Im quickly called "un-intellectual" because I call it out for what it is...marxism.

[Revolution9]

Captain America is correct. I will weigh in later as I am going to have a meeting about IP and the purchase of our company.

Rev9

[guitarlifter]

On the contrary, libertarians are possibly more concerned with the protection of property rights than any other ideological group. As a matter of fact, when it boils down to the essence of libertarianism and the government's role in a libertarian society, property protection is one of the handful of things that a government can and should do. With that said, the way that libertarians and marxists denounce intellectual property is completely different. Something cannot be stolen that isn't tangible to begin with. AEP is absolutely right in that no one has a right to have guaranteed profit, nor does it supersede one's right to do whatever they please with their own body. And I am speaking as a musician who gives away his music freely. I only accept donations.

[Conza88]

Daily Bell: Where do you stand on copyright? Do you believe that intellectual property doesn't exist as Kinsella has proposed?

Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I agree with my friend Kinsella, that the idea of intellectual property rights is not just wrong and confused but dangerous. And I have already touched upon why this is so. Ideas - recipes, formulas, statements, arguments, algorithms, theorems, melodies, patterns, rhythms, images, etc. - are certainly goods (insofar as they are good, not bad, recipes, etc.), but they are not scarce goods. Once thought and expressed, they are free, inexhaustible goods. I whistle a melody or write down a poem, you hear the melody or read the poem and reproduce or copy it. In doing so you have not taken anything away from me. I can whistle and write as before. In fact, the entire world can copy me and yet nothing is taken from me. (If I didn't want anyone to copy my ideas I only have to keep them to myself and never express them.)

Now imagine I had been granted a property right in my melody or poem such that I could prohibit you from copying it or demanding a royalty from you if you do. First: Doesn't that imply, absurdly, that I, in turn, must pay royalties to the person (or his heirs) who invented whistling and writing, and further on to those, who invented sound-making and language, and so on? Second: In preventing you from or making you pay for whistling my melody or reciting my poem, I am actually made a (partial) owner of you: of your physical body, your vocal chords, your paper, your pencil, etc. because you did not use anything but your own property when you copied me. If you can no longer copy me, then, this means that I, the intellectual property owner, have expropriated you and your "real" property. Which shows: intellectual property rights and real property rights are incompatible, and the promotion of intellectual property must be seen as a most dangerous attack on the idea of "real" property (in scarce goods).

Maybe you are seeking protection via monopoly because your business model isn't good? How about you follow Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails?

Better yet, go check out all the videos in this intellectual property playlist.

/thread

[Conza88]

Once a person begins raping your idea or my idea as artists and profits from it ,that society turns into marxism.Marxists do not believe in property ,but equal share. I see that a marxist ideal has creeped its way into libertarianism and its very creepy to me. I for one have made a loud statement against it but then Im quickly called "un-intellectual" because I call it out for what it is...marxism.

Goods, Scare and Non-Scare by Jeffrey Tucker and Stephan Kinsella.

[Diurdi]

This is one of those debates are almost completely useless to argue with people who directly benefit from them. From the artists point of view it would seem incredibly unfair that someone copies their work. However, imitation of ideas for profit happen all the time in the business world. As businessess strive for competetive advantages to increase their profits in the market, the competitors quickly imititate this competetive advantage and "all the hard work is for nothing" from the original company's point of view. In reality though the consumer and the economy benefits.

[Conza88]

This is one of those debates are almost completely useless to argue with people who directly benefit from them. From the artists point of view it would seem incredibly unfair that someone copies their work. However, imitation of ideas for profit happen all the time in the business world. As businessess strive for competetive advantages to increase their profits in the market, the competitors quickly imititate this competetive advantage and "all the hard work is for nothing" from the original company's point of view. In reality though the consumer and the economy benefits.

Yes, it's just a shame they are completely short sighted and that if the monopoly on ideas was abolished, everyone - including the user currently benefiting would be far better off in terms of wealth etc.

This author gets it:

They'd actually make more money...!

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

You can create and sculpt and torture the character. The issue begins when you start SOCIALIZING my idea to put profits in your pocket. You are stealing from me. What I see from this argument is that I should give up art and do drywall. But..My ART is MY PRIVATE PROPERTY I CREATED. I also see that your kind have no problem socializing/stealing others work but are against socialism. Next argument.

Rev9

It seems less like you want a debate and more like you are set in your ways all ready. Why even bother posting if you are all ready decided? No one is stealing your art by re-creating or reproducing it. You still have your art. Creating a scarce good out of an inexhaustible reproducible good is an abridgement of the concept of property rights. These used to be called artificial rents, and were vehemently fought against by stalwart Classical Liberals, about as far away as you can get from a Marxist or Socialist. Artificial rents and private property are completely antithetical ideas.

[Seraphim]

You can create and sculpt and torture the character. The issue begins when you start SOCIALIZING my idea to put profits in your pocket. You are stealing from me. What I see from this argument is that I should give up art and do drywall. But..My ART is MY PRIVATE PROPERTY I CREATED. I also see that your kind have no problem socializing/stealing others work but are against socialism. Next argument.

Rev9

The finished product is absolutely your private property and that must be protected. The idea? Not so much. An abstract is not a right.

I just invented a word. Gaffufflegarble. It means; STUPID NONSENSE.

But you can't use the word you $#@!ing Marxist.

Jokes aside;

How many schools have made "profits" by teaching the general theory of relativity? A LOT.

Profiting off of the intellectual advancements of one man (and the great guy shared it with the world!)? Absolutely. Stealing anything from him? Absolutely not.

[Acala]

I'm on the fence on this issue. And I don't profit from IP. But there are a few things that should be cleared up at the outset.

IP doesn't protect ideas. The theory of relativity cannot be protected by copyright. However, if you write a book that explains the theory in your own words, that unique arrangement of words CAN be protected. So, it isn't the idea, it is the unique expression of the idea that is protected. Big difference.

IP is not guaranteed profit anymore than the right to fence people off your land is guaranteed profit. If IP IS property, then exclusive use just comes with the bundle of property rights and is no different in that regard than any other form of property.

While ideas may not be scarce, real innovation most certainly IS. To argue that innovation is not scarce is a ridiculous and unsupportable argument. If innovation is NOT scarce you could sit down right now and write out a world-shaking novel, a classic piece of music, or the design for a compact fusion reactor. The fact that you can't PROVES that innovation is scarce.

This still leaves the question whether innovation is a "good" that should be recognized as property. Not everything of value that flows from a human being is a good that needs to be legally defended as property.

I would like to hear someone suggest a business model for a process that takes ten years and fifty million dollars to produce a product that anyone can then reproduce identically for the same cost as it takes the originator to produce. Somehow that fifty million and five years needs to be priced into the product for the innovator but not for the upstart competitor.

On the other hand, I think we should all be able to agree that the length of the grant of copyright is ridiculous and should at the very least be shortened to the life of the author, if not much less.

Oh, and by the way, are people also arguing here against trademark? That is a form of IP. Should I be able to sell computers and call them Apple? If you support trademark and not copyright, why?

[Seraphim]

GOod post.

I'm on the fence on this issue. And I don't profit from IP. But there are a few things that should be cleared up at the outset.

IP doesn't protect ideas. The theory of relativity cannot be protected by copyright. However, if you write a book that explains the theory in your own words, that unique arrangement of words CAN be protected. So, it isn't the idea, it is the unique expression of the idea that is protected. Big difference.

IP is not guaranteed profit anymore than the right to fence people off your land is guaranteed profit. If IP IS property, then exclusive use just comes with the bundle of property rights and is no different in that regard than any other form of property.

While ideas may not be scarce, real innovation most certainly IS. To argue that innovation is not scarce is a ridiculous and unsupportable argument. If innovation is NOT scarce you could sit down right now and write out a world-shaking novel, a classic piece of music, or the design for a compact fusion reactor. The fact that you can't PROVES that innovation is scarce.

This still leaves the question whether innovation is a "good" that should be recognized as property. Not everything of value that flows from a human being is a good that needs to be legally defended as property.

I would like to hear someone suggest a business model for a process that takes ten years and fifty million dollars to produce a product that anyone can then reproduce identically for the same cost as it takes the originator to produce. Somehow that fifty million and five years needs to be priced into the product for the innovator but not for the upstart competitor.

On the other hand, I think we should all be able to agree that the length of the grant of copyright is ridiculous and should at the very least be shortened to the life of the author, if not much less.

Oh, and by the way, are people also arguing here against trademark? That is a form of IP. Should I be able to sell computers and call them Apple? If you support trademark and not copyright, why?

[mczerone]

FTR:

IP requires an all-knowing state to limit the actions of individuals. Anyone calling the IP-abolitionists "marxists", "communists", or "thieves" is blatantly wrong in their characterization.

I don't have a problem with contractually based Intellectual Protections: Microsoft agrees to only use your software; a medical insurance company agrees to only cover your pharmaceutical; the local farmer's market agrees to let only you use your symbol to mark your product. These things are more than enough to protect your "market share", to reduce confusion over creators, to ensure you recover your investment. And it leaves everyone free to develop their own products and compete with you.

Without IP some stories would go untold.

Bull$#@!. Good stories would freely replace bad as consumers selected their favorites. You may not feel that you can compete with good stories, but that's no different than getting pissy because you can't get a job in the NFL.

Indeed, it is under IP where good stories go untold, good songs go unrecorded, good inventions go unmarketed, good trademarks go unused. Why? Because IP places restrictions on the transformation and re-telling of currently protected ideas. Say you've patented a cold-fusion machine. It works, but it costs $2 million dollars and is 20x20x20ft. You introduce it to the market, and demand a licensing fee of $10 billion from any company that uses it in their own production scheme. I, OTOH, have looked over the schematics and see tons of places where carbon fiber could replace polymers, where a bulky mechanical apparatus can be replaced with a small circuit board, and find a supplier of parts that could let me sell my redesign for $1.8 mil, and it's only 10x10x2ft.

Now is right for you to take my profits to cover your "license" charge, when I've made the most marketable improvements? Should I be deterred from even going ahead with a prototype if I know that I would need to sell 10 million units just to turn a profit after paying you? Or should I wait 20 years to introduce my product to the market to avoid your patent?

Maybe now you see that IP kills innovation, or at least artificially delays it, and hurts consumers. Not only that, but it allows the patent holder to deliberately rest on semi-finished ideas to collect rents, when a finished idea would only bring them, and the wider society, more wealth.

[Seraphim]

Very well said!

FTR:

IP requires an all-knowing state to limit the actions of individuals. Anyone calling the IP-abolitionists "marxists", "communists", or "thieves" is blatantly wrong in their characterization.

I don't have a problem with contractually based Intellectual Protections: Microsoft agrees to only use your software; a medical insurance company agrees to only cover your pharmaceutical; the local farmer's market agrees to let only you use your symbol to mark your product. These things are more than enough to protect your "market share", to reduce confusion over creators, to ensure you recover your investment. And it leaves everyone free to develop their own products and compete with you.



Bull$#@!. Good stories would freely replace bad as consumers selected their favorites. You may not feel that you can compete with good stories, but that's no different than getting pissy because you can't get a job in the NFL.

Indeed, it is under IP where good stories go untold, good songs go unrecorded, good inventions go unmarketed, good trademarks go unused. Why? Because IP places restrictions on the transformation and re-telling of currently protected ideas. Say you've patented a cold-fusion machine. It works, but it costs $2 million dollars and is 20x20x20ft. You introduce it to the market, and demand a licensing fee of $10 billion from any company that uses it in their own production scheme. I, OTOH, have looked over the schematics and see tons of places where carbon fiber could replace polymers, where a bulky mechanical apparatus can be replaced with a small circuit board, and find a supplier of parts that could let me sell my redesign for $1.8 mil, and it's only 10x10x2ft.

Now is right for you to take my profits to cover your "license" charge, when I've made the most marketable improvements? Should I be deterred from even going ahead with a prototype if I know that I would need to sell 10 million units just to turn a profit after paying you? Or should I wait 20 years to introduce my product to the market to avoid your patent?

Maybe now you see that IP kills innovation, or at least artificially delays it, and hurts consumers. Not only that, but it allows the patent holder to deliberately rest on semi-finished ideas to collect rents, when a finished idea would only bring them, and the wider society, more wealth.

[noneedtoaggress]

This is one of those debates are almost completely useless to argue with people who directly benefit from them. From the artists point of view it would seem incredibly unfair that someone copies their work.

Not necessarily, my line of work and background would make this an incentive to me, and it was certainly one of the more difficult things for me to break down...

But even before I read Kinsella and

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intell...4361082&sr=8-1

that, I could already somewhat see the writing on the wall with my involvement on the internet and seeing things like YouTube, "Piracy", Creative Commons, and Opensource.

The internet is already undermining and will be the end of IP.

That said, after reading up on the argument against it, there really is no case for it. It's a complete misnomer (IP is not and can not be property), and just another backwards protectionist measure used to create artificial scarcity. It serves corporate establishment interests far more often than it serves the interests of the artist.

[Diurdi]

Oh, and by the way, are people also arguing here against trademark? That is a form of IP. Should I be able to sell computers and call them Apple? If you support trademark and not copyright, why?

If I attempt to mislead my customers into believing my product is something it isn't, then it's fraud. Im pretty sure selling a computer and calling it an iPad or Apple-product would be considered fraud.

And when they say that innovation/idea's are not a scarce resource, they mean that if I have an idea, and someone else copies it, I still have my idea. It doesn't transfer ownership, it's only copied. It can be copied an unlimited amount of times without I losing this idea. For a scarce good this is not the case. If I have a chair and you take it, I don't have it anymore.

[CaptUSA]

“He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me.” - Thomas Jefferson

IP rights are not natural rights. However, both Jefferson and Adam Smith understood that the harm created by not protecting this type of property can outweigh the good. Here's the thing, though. You must understand that you don't really have a "right" to intellectual property once you expose it. Nobody can 'steal' your idea if you still have it. But, there is a place for temporary protections of intellectual property. It has to be limited and temporary.

[noneedtoaggress]

IP rights are not natural rights. However, both Jefferson and Adam Smith understood that the harm created by not protecting this type of property can outweigh the good.

This is just an appeal to authority.

Adam Smith held that, in a primitive society, the amount of labor put into producing a good determined its exchange value, with exchange value meaning in this case the amount of labor a good can purchase. However, according to Smith, in a more advanced society the market price is no longer proportional to labor cost since the value of the good now includes compensation for the owner of the means of production: "The whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him."[23] "Nevertheless, the 'real value' of such a commodity produced in advanced society is measured by the labor which that commodity will command in exchange....But [Smith] disowns what is naturally thought of as the genuine classical labor theory of value, that labor-cost regulates market-value. This theory was Ricardo’s, and really his alone."[24]

Edit: Menger was better than Smith on Value, and Kinsella is better than Smith on IP.

[fisharmor]

Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law (the score, not the video, of course):


Not generated under IP law:



I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
The point being,
we were doing pretty damned well before the state started protecting it.

[YumYum]

IP became protected to put garbage into the market place and sell it on a large scale. Music that is easily copied is spoon-fed to the masses, and is most likely not original, but a rip-off of someone else's original creation. If someone as an artist is as brilliant as Mozart, they will be recognized for their art and their brilliancy and enjoy all the fame and wealth they could ever want. Anybody trying to "steal" that person's music will be seen as not being original. Isn't that what being an artist is all about? Being recognized for your originality? Brilliant artists are identified with their work.

Get rid of IP protection and all the cream will rise to the top. I'm sick of the Gaga bull$#@!.

[erowe1]

The issue begins when you start SOCIALIZING my idea to put profits in your pocket. You are stealing from me.

That's not stealing. You are still every bit as free to sell things that incorporate the idea of your character as you would be if no one else did.

You may think that you would sell fewer of those things if people had the ability to buy them elsewhere. I am not so sure that's the case. But even if it is, your property in the things you want to sell that incorporate that character does not bring with it the right to have any particular customer buy it.

[erowe1]

Incidentally, here's a book that I haven't read yet. But ever since reading a great review of it by Jeff Tucker, I've been wanting to get it.
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intell.../dp/0521127262

Supposedly it focuses on those kinds of pragmatic concerns about what IP laws are supposed to accomplish, and shows how they don't accomplish those things.

[noneedtoaggress]

But even before I read Kinsella and

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intell...4361082&sr=8-1

It's good.

AIM got into a lot more historical and data analysis, while Kinsella (in Against Intellectual Property) focused more on theory/logic IIRC, I vaguely remember AIP being shorter and more to the point while AIM was building a case from real-world examples... but it was a while back.

[wizardwatson]

This horse has been (as one said above) beaten to death already on this forum.

What's so hard to understand.

It's not about protecting or not protecting your creative works. It's about the fact that when you "enforce" IP rights you're actually taking away the rights of others to realize the fruits of their labor.

Say you build a mousetrap and patent it, and I cannot afford to buy but one of your mousetraps, even though I have many mice in my house. So I build mousetraps just like yours. Under IP rights I'll be fined and have all my mousetraps taken away by the state.

So long story short, IP laws enrich the creator by taking away the rights of others to build/produce similar works.

[Acala]

Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law:


Not generated under IP law (the score, not the video, of course):


Not generated under IP law:



I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
The point being,
we were doing pretty damned well before the state started protecting it.

Pretty much all generated under the patronage of a coercive state of some kind I think. Is that better?

[Acala]

This horse has been (as one said above) beaten to death already on this forum.

What's so hard to understand.

It's not about protecting or not protecting your creative works. It's about the fact that when you "enforce" IP rights you're actually taking away the rights of others to realize the fruits of their labor.

Say you build a mousetrap and patent it, and I cannot afford to buy but one of your mousetraps, even though I have many mice in my house. So I build mousetraps just like yours. Under IP rights I'll be fined and have all my mousetraps taken away by the state.

So long story short, IP laws enrich the creator by taking away the rights of others to build/produce similar works.

So if you can't afford land or food, do you get to enter my land and farm it for your needs?

What you can and cannot afford in the way of property should not undermine the rights of others in THEIR property. in other words, your needs are not a good basis for establishing property rights.