Potentially having high market value, an intellectual work must be regarded as property in its own right. Among other things, this is because its value, whether utilitarian or aesthetic, can be appropriated by theft (irrespective of the possibility that any number of copies may remain with its possessor).
Despite crazy definitions to the contrary, thieves do not have uppermost in their minds the concept or intent of denying a legitimate owner the use of their property, but rather the concept and intent of seizing valuable/saleable property without payment (where the effort of theft is expected to be lower than the amount expected to be recovered through possession/use/benefit/exchange of the stolen property).
One cannot simply have a statutory penalty for violation of someone’s privacy right. One must also consider the market value of the intellectual property so appropriated, and ideally the cost of its return/repossession.
The fundamental flaw in most people’s notions of IP is not primarily that creation confers ownership (this tends to be coincident even with a first-comer idea), but that one should continue to own one’s IP even after one has parted with it (sale or gift). But for this, the legitimate owner of a book cannot be stealing its author’s property by making copies of their purchased book, unless one sustains the idea that the author owns all copies of their book even after they’ve sold them.
So it’s quite possible to accept intellectual property as arising out of natural law, e.g. you write a book, you have absolute ownership and control over that book (even without the state’s support, an individual can expect to protect it). Similarly with copies: you make a copy, you have absolute ownership and control over that copy. However, the author has no natural right to control what people do with the copies they purchase, e.g. making further copies or derivatives. Privileging the author to the contrary (for the publisher’s benefit) is the unnatural misstep, the state’s attachment of strings that nature did not.
Copyright is unnatural. All state granted monopolies are unnatural, patent included.
However, despite the unnatural privileges granted to its creators, intellectual property is nevertheless natural. The effective monopoly over access to one’s private domain and control over the material and intellectual properties within it is also natural, and thus to be protected by the state.
It isn’t wrong because it’s unnatural though. Aren’t there some government monopolies which, though unnatural, could be seen as a good thing for society?
Rather, can’t some unnatural things be good?
Comment #000162 at
2008-05-06 23:39
by
It is possible that some government meddling in free markets may remedy a short-term crisis, however it is wrong/unethical for a government to suspend their citizens’ liberty solely in order to create mercantile privileges vis a vis commercial incentives.
One should assume a privilege unhelpful to society and challenge those who support it to demonstrate otherwise, rather than the current situation where those who challenge copyright and patent are charged to demonstrate that their abolition would result in a societal benefit. But such principles are moot.
What’s happening today is that the uncontrollably diffusive nature of our digital technology is demonstrating how unnatural a privilege of controlling diffusion of published works is. So this is no ideological contest, but one of natural law vs unnatural law. Nature will win, as its tide of dissolution inexorably overcomes the last bastions of our three hundred year old sandcastle.
All I’m trying to do in this post is to counter the fatalistic nihilism of those who recognise the imminent doom of copyright (and of patent shortly thereafter), but who then go too far in concluding that intellectual work cannot therefore be considered property at all. Of course, it is.
A loss of privilege does not affect whether something is property. Certainly, if people have a mistaken notion that privileges create property then their loss may lead them to conclude that something can no longer be property. However, an intellectual work is subject to more than mere privilege. It is subject to the same natural laws as any material work and thus is naturally property. A loss of the unnatural privileges given to creators cannot undo the natural rights they started with.
Comment #000163 at
2008-05-07 08:57
by
Crosbie Fitch
Right. I’m with you here. It’s wrong insofar as it’s an unnatural and unnecessary restriction of freedom.
Comment #000182 at
2008-05-31 13:20
by
Potentially having high market value, an intellectual work must be regarded as property in its own right. Among other things, this is because its value, whether utilitarian or aesthetic, can be appropriated by theft (irrespective of the possibility that any number of copies may remain with its possessor).
Despite crazy definitions to the contrary, thieves do not have uppermost in their minds the concept or intent of denying a legitimate owner the use of their property, but rather the concept and intent of seizing valuable/saleable property without payment (where the effort of theft is expected to be lower than the amount expected to be recovered through possession/use/benefit/exchange of the stolen property).
One cannot simply have a statutory penalty for violation of someone’s privacy right. One must also consider the market value of the intellectual property so appropriated, and ideally the cost of its return/repossession.
The fundamental flaw in most people’s notions of IP is not primarily that creation confers ownership (this tends to be coincident even with a first-comer idea), but that one should continue to own one’s IP even after one has parted with it (sale or gift). But for this, the legitimate owner of a book cannot be stealing its author’s property by making copies of their purchased book, unless one sustains the idea that the author owns all copies of their book even after they’ve sold them.
So it’s quite possible to accept intellectual property as arising out of natural law, e.g. you write a book, you have absolute ownership and control over that book (even without the state’s support, an individual can expect to protect it). Similarly with copies: you make a copy, you have absolute ownership and control over that copy. However, the author has no natural right to control what people do with the copies they purchase, e.g. making further copies or derivatives. Privileging the author to the contrary (for the publisher’s benefit) is the unnatural misstep, the state’s attachment of strings that nature did not.
Copyright is unnatural. All state granted monopolies are unnatural, patent included.
However, despite the unnatural privileges granted to its creators, intellectual property is nevertheless natural. The effective monopoly over access to one’s private domain and control over the material and intellectual properties within it is also natural, and thus to be protected by the state.