Economics Questions

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

MacFall — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:33:45 GMT

Actually, reading over my posts I am realizing that I never actually made clear exactly what I was talking about, so the culpa is mea.

LOL internets.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:42:06 GMT

MacFall:

What you say I am talking about has nothing to do what I am actually talking about.

What I have maintained is that if the terms of a sale are that you will recieve a for the price of x and the vendor gives you b instead of a, there is a legally addressable discrepancy.

Ok, now I feel really stupid. I am really sorry. Here is the post I was referring to:

I think you misunderstand what I mean by "copyright", Spidey. If a person claims to be writing a book as Terry Goodkind and is not actually Terry Goodkind, they are committing fraud.

However, I do not think this has anything to do with copyright. But it does have everything to do with fraud.

Copyright, as far as I understand, just says that if someone "creates" something (a song, poem, picture, floorplan, etc.), that no one else can copy it and sell it.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

MacFall — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:44:21 GMT

What you say I am talking about has nothing to do what I am actually talking about.

What I have maintained is that if the terms of a sale are that you will recieve a for the price of x and the vendor gives you b instead of a, there is a legally addressable discrepancy.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:47:20 GMT

MacFall:

Um. I think I'm in a better position to say what I'm talking about than you are, since I'm me and you're not. And given that, I can say confidently that you're pretty wrong.

The whole world can read what you are talking about, and you cannot even understand the false analogy you are making. Invalid analogies are one of the most common argumentative fallacies made, and you are doing an excellent job of it.

If I write a story, and then you sell the story, and claim you wrote it, did the story somehow magically change? No, it does not, but this is what you are claiming, and I can read what you are claiming just fine. But you yourself appear to not know what you are claiming.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

MacFall — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:35:25 GMT

Um. I think I'm in a better position to say what I'm talking about than you are, since I'm me and you're not. And given that, I can say confidently that you're pretty wrong.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:00:05 GMT

banned:
But suppose I ask for fuji apple and the vendor sells me a gala.

But this is not what he is talking about. He is talking about a vendor selling you a fuji apple, and claiming he produced it, when he did not. You still got a fuji apple. There is no "fraud".

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:35:53 GMT

MacFall:

That's not a proper analogy. It's more like, I paid for a tomato and got a carrot.

And this is where your argument falls apart. We are talking about re-selling something as if I produced it, when I did not. The product is the same regardless of who produced it. The tomato does not magically change to a carrot in the real world. My analogy is the correct analogy.

It is the same as selling a story as your own when you did not write it. The story does not change.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

MacFall — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:14:15 GMT

Thanks banned, that's basically what I was saying. People are coming up with some rather absurd scenarios to avoid admitting that a party's failure to meet the terms of a contract creates a debt against that party toward the rectification of the discrepancy.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

banned — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:57:20 GMT

It is only fraud if the seller does not sell what was promised. Confusion over similar naming and packaging can be solved by product sampling.

But the scenario you've put forward relies on an error in description and confusion in what product was wanted. A book is like an apple. It is a common, base commodity, but there are many variations of books just like there are of apples. If I describe a certain apple to a vendor and pay him for it by what it contains, what it tastes like and looks like and has on it, he can interpret that any way he wants and it's my fault for not making sure there could be no discrepancy.

But suppose I ask for fuji apple and the vendor sells me a gala. The vendor has not met the stipulations of our bargain. He has taken what was mine and not met the requirement I set on releasing ownership of it. Essentially the property I traded still belongs to me and it is theft, an act of agression upon me, if he does not return it. If there is a dispute in what the requirements of each party were prior to making the trade, it would have to be a matter decided by a court system.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Paul — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:27:06 GMT

And what if my name is Terry Goodkind and I write a book, and you buy the book expecting to get a book by the other Terry Goodkind - do I owe you something? No. There's no fraud or lying or anything at all involved. Your mistake. There's more than one Terry Goodkind in the world.

(What if my name isn't actually Terry Goodkind, but I use that as a nom-de-plume? Think that makes a difference? Consider that I published my first book under that name before the other Terry Goodkind published his...)

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

MacFall — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:12:24 GMT

Spideynw:

Uh, if I buy a tomatoe that someone else grew, and then sell it to you and claim that I grew it, who cares? You still got a tomato.

That's not a proper analogy. It's more like, I paid for a tomato and got a carrot.

So if you paid me for a Dodge truck and I gave you a Ford, and the Ford performs just as well, do you not still own the title to a Dodge? And regardless of whether you would care to demand it, would you not still have the right to have the exchange reversed?

There is a condition implicit in the purchase of the book that the author who appears on the book actually wrote it. When I buy the book, I also intend to compensate the person who wrote it - not some sorry hack who copied his work so he can bum off his reputation. If the terms of sale include those things and I do not recieve them, it is an act of implicit theft on the part of the seller.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:17:51 GMT

Callisthenes:

Of course I understand monopolies. I understand that there's a huge incentive to get a monopoly, because then you don't have to compete on things like price and efficiency of production and distribution. In fact, the incentive is so great that people will invest a lot of research money to come up with new inventions that they can patent and get monopolies on. Compare that to the situation where someone invests a lot of money in an invention, starts selling it, and then has a bunch of competitors come along and spend far less money reverse-engineering it than he spent inventing it... That is why patents encourage innovation.

Now once someone has a patent, there aren't the same kind of competitive pressures as there usually are when it comes to manufacturing, distributing, advertising, etc. Of course, most patents don't really lead to market domination, for the simple reason that there are few things that can only be done one way. If I have a patent on a new thing called a paper clip, I still have to worry about competing with that guy who came up with the banker's clip. In fact, there's a hint about another way patents encourage innovation: they force people to come up with different ways of doing the same thing, instead of just competing for more market share with the same product.

Hmm, let's see, for twenty years no one can make improvements to an idea, whether it cost $1 to invent or a hundred million dollars. It also results in probably billions of dollars being wasted on litigation instead of other activities. It also results in things being invented, and never used, simply because a company owns a patent and does not care to produce it, but does not want anyone else to either.

No, you obvioulsy do not understand monopolies or how patents actually work.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:45:58 GMT

JonBostwick:

Trademark laws are a joke.

Trademark laws are not about customer's being tricked by a vendor. Trademark laws allow Rolex to prevent others from competing with them.

If I want to deliberately buy a knockoff Rolex there is nothing Rolex can do about it.

What?! Trademark laws do not stop anybody from competing at all. Anyone can still make watches. They just cannot make watches, and then sell them as Rolex watches. But this in no way, shape, or form impedes competition in producing watches.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

Spideynw — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:43:48 GMT

MacFall:
If I pay for a book by one author and get a book by someone else, at the very least the person I bought it from owes me what I actually paid for.

Uh, if I buy a tomatoe that someone else grew, and then sell it to you and claim that I grew it, who cares? You still got a tomato.

Re: intellectual property - forgetting "property" has a long legal history

banned — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:09:57 GMT

MacFall:

Of course not, but that limitation does serve to extend the originator's period of exclusivity for a while, and by perfectly just means.

Exclusivity can be maintained by simply not publicizing, since the elimination of exclusivity is only a single transaction beyond that which the publisher makes in making his works public, or trading them to someone else.