Information is not Propety, Therefore Cannot be Stolen

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limitgov Posted: Thu, Sep 27 2012 8:57 AM

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Is this what the IP law argument basically boils down to?  You either believe that or you don't.

Some people believe information is not property; some people believe it is property.

And some people will kill each other based on these beliefs.

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Justin Zelinsky replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 9:52 AM

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I think that most people just dislike the state monopoly on anything.

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Phi est aureum replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 9:55 AM

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From what I've read, Against Intellectual Property by Kinsella, yes. The other big thing, however is that protection of intellectual "property" is not as much a protection of the original "owner's" idea, but is a restriction on others' property. For example, a copyright of a particular book is telling someone that buys the book, paper, a computer, and a printer (all of this his legitimate property) that he may not use his property as he pleases, like to type out and print a copy of the book. In this way, the state has granted the owner of a copyright a privilege over dictating what others may not do with their own legitimate property.

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gotlucky replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 12:03 PM

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Phi est aureum:

The other big thing, however is that protection of intellectual "property" is not as much a protection of the original "owner's" idea, but is a restriction on others' property.

Great way of putting it. Another example could be with patents. You have all sorts of materials, but you cannot put them together in such a way that someone else has within the last 15 or w/e years if they have patented it. Or something similar with software. You have the knowledge to code software a certain way, but because some other company has patented it, you cannot write your program in that manner.

+1 Phi

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ThatOldGuy replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 12:23 PM

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Clayton also hits on this pretty well here. But yeah, Phi's got it down pretty solid.

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Lady Saiga replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 1:49 PM

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I think it's that you can't have real property in something that is not subject to scarcity.  In other words, if you possess a thing and I can also possess it without taking it away from you, it's not subject to scarcity.  It can't be theft to use or own or know ideas because they can be used by an unlimited number of people at once.  By extension, it's not theft to profit by an idea that came from someone else.  They can make money on the same idea simultaneously.

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ThatOldGuy replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 1:59 PM

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I think it's that you can't have real property in something that is not subject to scarcity.

Kinsella mentions this in Against Intellectual Property. If you haven't read it, it's one of the books that influenced to becoming an anarchist. I think it's a pretty good primer on IP, but I'm willing to bet that Against Intellectual Monopoly (which I have not yet read) is much more comprehensive.

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Lady Saiga replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 2:37 PM

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I like to remember that the idea and the thing itself are two separate beasts.  I can own a dog.  My dog’s the only one like her (you have no idea how true that is), so she’s subject to scarcity.  I can’t own the idea of “dog” though.  In IP laws these kinds of things seem to be written as broad exceptions when in fact they prove the rule to be invalid. 

I know a guy who builds carbon fiber parts for some kind of RC buggy.  Each time he designs something new, sooner or later a company in China starts producing the design too.  Eventually the Chinese company got in touch with him and actually offered to pay him a small amount for his new designs before they hit the market, so they could avoid the difficulties of reverse engineering.  The way they put it to him was “well, we’ll be selling them eventually so why not profit now?”  He takes the money.

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Wheylous replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 2:40 PM

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Saiga, you have it in that first post, essentially.

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proxyamenra replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 4:48 PM

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I am a project lead in collecting and analysing data. We have invested a few millions dollars into the project. If our competitors somehow copied the data or got a hold of it, we would be quite upset. They would have the data without having to invest millions of dollars. They could invest what would be required to collect the data on pure analysis rather than collection and analyis. We would be at a competitive disadvantage.

This had me thinking. I don't care if any property rights pertaining directly to the data were violated or don't even exist. The reason being, I am still going to slap on a 128 bit encryption.

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FlyingAxe replied on Thu, Sep 27 2012 5:15 PM

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The fact that it is wise to protect business opportunities does not mean that you own them.

Think of owning a treasure map. It's an opportunity. It makes sense to guard it from others. If you failed to do so, however, and I got to the treasure before you -- did I steal anything from you? Obviously not.

The same way, I cannot possible "steal" customers from you, since their money doesn't belong to you until they gave it to you. But yes, of course it makes sense to guard a secret way to get more customers from your competitors.

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Wheylous replied on Fri, Sep 28 2012 8:17 AM

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I don't think he was saying that he was presenting a reason for copyright protection. He was just saying "either way, I'll be encrypting it, hence making the question sort of moot"

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Bert replied on Fri, Sep 28 2012 9:46 AM

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Past month or so I made a meme of sorts (this actually), and I posted it on my FB and Tumblr, got a lot of likes and reblogs on my Tumblr.  This past week I find an acquaintance sharing it on FB from another music page (oddly I think he liked both "original" posts I made of it as well).  I can't remember how many shares and likes it got on FB from this page (a lot), and of course I was a bit irked, but I wasn't irked that it was being randomly shared by everyone I was more pissed that there was no credit on my part for it.  I messaged the page that shared it with a link to it on my Tumblr and they said it would be no problem to add my info to the photo.

Not sure what the point of this story is, but as long as the creator of the work is noted as being the creator, then I don't have a problem, otherwise it's "theft" because it's stripped of it's origin.

Though once it's on the internet, it's up for grabs by everyone.

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Lady Saiga replied on Fri, Sep 28 2012 10:25 AM

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I'd say no matter where/how, once you share something it's outside of your control.  I do think that it's intellectually dishonest and plain old rude not to credit the origin or at least share as much data as you have (if you don't know where it came from originally), but I don't think you can make a case that anyone is obligated to do so.