Intellectual Property

This comes from the topic "My Concept of Anarchy" in which a discussion of IP rights sprung up.  So, let's make it a topic of conversation.

This is a post from tgibson11 in response to myself:

tgibson11:

kingmonkey:

And even without IP laws Apple would still be able to protect their designs through court enforcements (yeah, even private courts).  Their 'designs', as you put it, are still their property anyway you cut it.  Unless you feel that no matter what is created or invented is free for anyone to steal and copy without any recourse.  Then that would be just as immoral and coercive as any apparatus of the state.

FYI - those who oppose IP (myself included) aren't just opposing IP laws, or the words "patent" and "copyright".  We really do oppose the very idea of intellectual property, i.e., property in ideas.

I don't want to turn this into an IP debate.  I just wanted to point out that your intended reductio ad absurdum is precisely the position that many on this site advocate.  If you are going to reject this position as "immoral and coercive" and put it on a level with statism, you had better back it up with some logic (but not in this thread, please).

I can agree that you cannot hold a "patent" on ideas.  If you told a friend about an idea of yours and he turns around and starts producing it making millions of dollars off of it then you are out of luck.  He is the one that put the idea to work and turned out a product which people then purchased.  If he is a good friend he might give you a kick back for the idea but you certainly can't sue him for violating your "intellectual property." 

But there is a big difference between just thinking of something and thinking of something and then using capital and energy to research, develop, produce and market that thing.  Apple is the absolute owner of their products because they spend the time, money and capital to develop, build and market those products.  For instance, the iPod is fully Apples own property which they produce and sell to others.  No, they didn't have the idea for a portable music player first but they did develop proprietary software and hardware which are theirs.  No one is justifed in copying Apples software and hardware developments and repackaging them as something else.  Doing so is theft of Apples property rights and is totally within their right as legitmiate owners of that property to seek legal recourse.

kingmonkey:

Apple is the absolute owner of their products because they spend the time, money and capital to develop, build and market those products.  For instance, the iPod is fully Apples own property which they produce and sell to others. 

Yes, Apple is the absolute owner of the physical products they produce until they sell or give them to someone else.  But Apple does not own every iPod ever made.  I know what you really mean is that Apple owns the "idea" of the iPod.  Your subsequent statements are merely unjustified assertions based on this...unjustified assertion.

You first need to explain how one comes to have property rights in an idea.  Ideas are not scarce resources.  The use of an idea by one person does not prevent its simultaneous use by another person (or any number of people).  The person who invented fire was not agressed against when other people also started using it. 

To consistently apply the concept of property in ideas leads to nonsense.  Hence the mind-boggling complexity of modern IP laws.  That is also the reason copyrights and patents have to expire after a certain period of time - before the nonsense becomes too obvious.

Property only makes sense for objects that can't be controlled by more than one person.

Ego:

Property only makes sense for objects that can't be controlled by more than one person.

No it doesn't.  If I build 10,000 Super Deluxe Widgets they are my property.  But I can sell those Super Deluxe Widgets to whomever I want but under the condition that you cannot make copies of my Super Deluxe Widgets, mass produce them and sell those.  And that is exactly what happens when you buy an iPod and you see "(C) 2004 Apple Computers.  All rights reserved."  Apple has spent the time, resources and energy to develop and produce the millions of iPods they use but they sell them to you with the understanding that you will not take their design and copy it and sell it for commercial gain.  To do so violates the property right of Apple Computers (more accurately the shareholders of Apple).

tgibson11:

 

Yes, Apple is the absolute owner of the physical products they produce until they sell or give them to someone else.  But Apple does not own every iPod ever made.  I know what you really mean is that Apple owns the "idea" of the iPod.  Your subsequent statements are merely unjustified assertions based on this...unjustified assertion.

Apple is the absolute owner of the physical products they produce until they sell them.  But the sale of those products is conditional and contractual.  When you purchase an iPod you do so with the understanding that you will not steal their design. 

tgibson11:

You first need to explain how one comes to have property rights in an idea.  Ideas are not scarce resources.  The use of an idea by one person does not prevent its simultaneous use by another person (or any number of people).  The person who invented fire was not agressed against when other people also started using it. 

An idea becomes property after one produces it, using their resources and energy to develop and build the item in question.  We aren't talking about the "idea" here now.  I agree, you can't copyright an idea.  But you can copyright an "idea" if you have produced it.  You analogy of the man "inventing fire" is ridiculous.  No man "invented" fire because that is a natural phenomenon.  However, iPods are nowhere to be found in nature and are the direct result of someone using their resources and that which nature provides to produce them.

Murray Rothbard covered this very well in his Ethics of Liberty when he stated:

Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard, p. 123:

There is, however, an exception to the right to use and disseminate the knowledge within one’s head: namely, if it was procured from someone else as a conditional rather than absolute ownership. Thus, suppose that Brown allows Green into his home and shows him an invention of Brown’s hitherto kept secret, but only on the condition that Green keeps this information private. In that case, Brown has granted to Green not absolute ownership of the knowledge of his invention, but conditional ownership, with Brown retaining the ownership power to disseminate the knowledge of the invention. If Green discloses the invention anyway, he is violating the residual property right of Brown to disseminate knowledge of the invention, and is therefore to that extent a thief.

Violation of (common law) copyright is an equivalent violation of contract and theft of property. For suppose that Brown builds a better mousetrap and sells it widely, but stamps each mousetrap “copyright Mr. Brown.” What he is then doing is selling not the entire property right in each mousetrap, but the right to do anything with the mousetrap except to sell it or an identical copy to someone else. The right to sell the Brown mousetrap is retained in perpetuity by Brown. Hence, for a mousetrap buyer, Green, to go ahead and sell identical mousetraps is a violation of his contract and of the property right of Brown, and therefore prosecutable as theft. Hence, our theory of property rights includes the inviolability of contractual copyright.

kingmonkey:

Ego:

Property only makes sense for objects that can't be controlled by more than one person.

No it doesn't.  If I build 10,000 Super Deluxe Widgets they are my property.  But I can sell those Super Deluxe Widgets to whomever I want but under the condition that you cannot make copies of my Super Deluxe Widgets, mass produce them and sell those.  And that is exactly what happens when you buy an iPod and you see "(C) 2004 Apple Computers.  All rights reserved."  Apple has spent the time, resources and energy to develop and produce the millions of iPods they use but they sell them to you with the understanding that you will not take their design and copy it and sell it for commercial gain.  To do so violates the property right of Apple Computers (more accurately the shareholders of Apple).

 

I agree; if you sell someone an object on the condition that they will not copy it, they are violating that promise by copying it. Intellectual property rights go far beyond that, though!

edit: can't spell, can't think, and can't type

kingmonkey:

No it doesn't.  If I build 10,000 Super Deluxe Widgets they are my property.  But I can sell those Super Deluxe Widgets to whomever I want but under the condition that you cannot make copies of my Super Deluxe Widgets, mass produce them and sell those.  And that is exactly what happens when you buy an iPod and you see "(C) 2004 Apple Computers.  All rights reserved."  Apple has spent the time, resources and energy to develop and produce the millions of iPods they use but they sell them to you with the understanding that you will not take their design and copy it and sell it for commercial gain.  To do so violates the property right of Apple Computers (more accurately the shareholders of Apple).

I could sell you a fire too, and stipulate in the contract that I retain the exclusive right to produce fire.  Claiming that I have that right doesn't necessarily make it so.  You have yet to explain how property rights in ideas are acquired.

kingmonkey:

Apple has spent the time, resources and energy to develop and produce the millions of iPods they use but they sell them to you with the understanding that you will not take their design and copy it and sell it for commercial gain.  To do so violates the property right of Apple Computers (more accurately the shareholders of Apple).

Well, I bought my ipod at Fry's Electronics so any contract on the end use would be with them instead of with Apple according to your argument.

Without IP laws Apple would have absolutely no say in what I do with my property even if they 'bet the farm' in designing and bringing it to market. Not one word unless I signed a contract that specifically stated what I could and couldn't do with my property.

Once I dispose of my property this contract would be null and void for future owners, they could possibly go after me for violating the terms of our agreement but couldn't go against the person I gave it to even if they decided to produce an exact copy and sell it in direct competition with Apple because they weren't a party to the contract between myself and Apple.

This is where the contractual basis of IP falls apart, there is no way outside of a general law for the 'property rights' of the producer to follow the product beyond the original purchaser, once it escapes the custody chain it is fair game for anyone to capitalize on the design and theory behind its market success.

tgibson11:

 

I could sell you a fire too, and stipulate in the contract that I retain the exclusive right to produce fire.  Claiming that I have that right doesn't necessarily make it so.  You have yet to explain how property rights in ideas are acquired.

 

If you sold me fire you're a good salesman since fire is a natural phenomenon not something "created" by man.  And again, I agree with you in that you cannot acquire property rights in an idea.  I'm talking about the product that is derived from that idea.  I can invent a warp drive in my head but if I do not produce that warp drive then I have no claim to it.  But once I begin producing it I have acquired my property right in that warp drive.  If I sell it to you I sell it to you under the agreement that you may use it but you may no reproduce it.

 Ideas are not scarce and thus can not be property.

Posted that last one before I saw this.

kingmonkey:

Apple is the absolute owner of the physical products they produce until they sell them.  But the sale of those products is conditional and contractual.  When you purchase an iPod you do so with the understanding that you will not steal their design.

See my previous post.  I will concede that a person could voluntarily agree not to copy something as a condition of purchasing it.  But that is not what IP law is about.  IP law says no one may copy a protected idea, regardless of the existence of any contract or agreement to that effect.

kingmonkey:

An idea becomes property after one produces it, using their resources and energy to develop and build the item in question.  We aren't talking about the "idea" here now.  I agree, you can't copyright an idea.  But you can copyright an "idea" if you have produced it.  You analogy of the man "inventing fire" is ridiculous.  No man "invented" fire because that is a natural phenomenon.  However, iPods are nowhere to be found in nature and are the direct result of someone using their resources and that which nature provides to produce them.

First, it is not ridiculous.  Someone probably spent a lot of time figuring out a way to create fire.  Maybe they would patent the method of creating fire rather than fire itself.

Second, everything is ultimately part of nature.  All we can do is re-arrange the elements of nature in certain ways.  The rearrangement of wood molecules creates fire.  A particular rearrangment of petroleum (plastics), sand (silicon), and metals results in an iPod.

IP says, once I invent or discover a certain way to re-arrange nature, no one else may re-arrange nature in that way without my permission.  Ever. Absurd.

Unfortunately, Rothbard is not particularly clear here.  He correctly points out that no one has property rights in ideas.  He then goes on about how one could agree to not use certain ideas as a term of purchase, which he refers to as contractual copyright.  So far, so good.  But he fails to emphasize that the copyright only exists because of the contract.  This has nothing to do with copyright as commonly understood in the IP world.

kingmonkey:

If I sell it to you I sell it to you under the agreement that you may use it but you may no reproduce it.

What if there were no purchase involved?

If I went over to my buddy's house and merely looked at his warp drive and from that act could reproduce it how would I be violating your property rights since there was no direct agreement between us?

Property rights in anything come from using labor to produce them.  So if I created a Super Deluxe Widget which has a very specific and unique design I have created something through my labor which I own absolutely (the design of this Widget).  I then begin manufacturing thousands of these Super Deluxe Widgets stamped "Copyright Kingmonkey.  All rights reserved."  I have reserved my right to the design of this property.  It is the design that I own, which I have replicated and which I sell.  When I sell this product I am transferring conditional ownership of this product, as I still reserve the rights to the design of it.  If you use these Super Deluxe Widgets for a time and then tire of them and then transfer ownership to another person the original contract of conditional ownership is not void but transfers with the Widget.  The new owners cannot duplicate and distribute my design of the Super Deluxe Widget because I never transfered ownership of the design in the first place but only a copy of it.  I am not copyrighting the idea of the Super Deluxe Widget but the design of it which is a very tangible item and which is very much owned.

In the same way if I write a book the book becomes "mine" in that I have taken the effort and energy and labor to write down the words in a particular pattern.  I own the book the same way I would own a piece of land which I have transformed into usable farm land.  I can sell copies of that book but that does not mean I am giving you the right to claim you are the original creator of that book.  I retain that right.  All of the copies of the book you may own are owned only conditionally.

In the same way Apple fully owns the design of the iPod because they wrote the software, built the hardware, built the case, etc. of the iPod.  They then duplicated it and sold it to consumers under the condition that no one can replicate the design of that iPod.  To duplicate it and sell it would be a violation of Apples property right in the design of that product.  And it doesn't matter if you are the first, second or tenth owner of that iPod.  It was purchased with the understanding that Apple reserved their property right to the design of that iPod and ownership of that design was never transfered to anyone.

In the same way Apple fully owns the design of the iPod because they wrote the software, built the hardware, built the case, etc. of the iPod.