UNR Students for Liberty

How can you acquire something of value, without anyone paying for it?

Value is not inherent in an object. Nothing “has” value; rather, value is “ascribed” to an object by an appropriate agent.

How can you acquire something that has been ascribed value, without paying for it?

Copious amounts: I value air and water and food quite greatly.

Specificity adds value to some and not others: I want the first English translation edition of Comte de Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror. I would be willing a hundred dollars or so. Other people, might even be reluctant to even take it for free. For instance, the converse: I wouldn't take free tickets to a Yanni concert even though many might pay hundreds for it.

You can already have it: my liver is valuable: but I really have done anything for it.

Or how about: I pick up a rock from the desert. I keep it with me through all my adventures. I wouldn't let anyone buy it from me for all the money in the world. The rock isn't intrinsically valuable, I made it valuable.

Oh and perhaps most obviously: Make. A. Copy.

It's not theft when nothing is stolen.

…I really don't see how you keep falling into the traps of these economic fallacies. No one has a “right to profit.” No one “deserves” to reap what they sow. You don't “own” your labor.

All of those facts are incidental facts, not necessary ones. That's where both you and Marx went wrong.

I've never heard of anyone pirating those things, probably because they have no intellectual value or are file-shared. Let's stick to the top 300 list of any given torrent site so our examples don't become ridiculous: http://isohunt.com/stats.php?mode=zg

Just because something is non-excludable and is readily copied does not give anyone the right to copy it for free without permission by the owner. All licensed software, for example, force the end user to sign a contract stating they wont share it without paying for it or allow others to use it if it did not come from them. In fact, most licenses state that you do not even own the program, but are merely given permission to use it for a fee. Is this not theft and a breach of contract which is enforceable when you do not abide by the terms of usage?

Simplicity, a great solution. Don't have to quote people or read theoretical books, just common sense. Right on Barry.

Come on, John, this is basic political economic theory…Not all contracts should be legitimate.

1. Owning something means you can do with it what you will. (If you don't own something, for instance, if you rent an apartment, there are certain things I agree to refrain from/agree to do with my landlord)

2. All property has physical manifestation. (For example, my “reputation” is unownable.)

2b. Usually property is discretized. (Basically, it would be possible to pick up an move something in theory. I can own the side of a mountain because if I were a giant or had a large enough machine, I could move it. However, I can't own my “silhouette”–even if it is recognizable as “mine”–because I can't move the pattern/information that is my silhouette.

3. There must exist an ability to exclude others from a property. (I can't say that I “own” the photons that come off my body, even if I have mixed my property and my labor because I can't exclude others from engaging in this property. [And the Man-In-The-Box criticism doesn't apply as it undercuts the very assumption upon which everything is based: we exist with others.])

Hence, no person has the right to do this:

I sell you a bike and I say its yours, but no one else gets to use it. In fact, you can only use it a certain way: riding it only here and only there, riding it only this way, using it as it I say to you use. That is the contract of our agreement.

But. But we can't make this contract because it is based on illegitimacy. I can't tell you how to use your property. So I can't sell you a DVD and say you can only put it in your DVD player. If it is actually “yours” you are allowed to do with it anything so long as it is not coercive to others. Copying a DVD is not coercive to others. Therefore, I can copy that DVD. I can also share it by the same logic: I can do it if it's not harmful, not harmful, I can do it. QED.

Now you're saying what about the “information”. Isn't there such a thing as intellectual property? No. No no. No. A thousand times no. Information is “unownable” for the same fact that my reputation is unownable: where's the physicality? Where's the excludability?

Watch. I will now become the owner of every conceivable kind of information, from software to movies to mathematical formulas. From this point on, I own the infinitely long random sequence of every permutation of 0 and 1. Every thought ever thought and every thought yet to be thought is contained within it.

But that's just stupid. And you know it's stupid. Because I can't own information.

What I could own would be a Turing machine that would make sense of this information. The Turing machine would be the thing which I could exclude others from. I don't even have to tell others about the information I get from it. There is no positive right associated with information, but neither is there a negative one.

I don't know if you're just playing devil's advocate or if you really do think your position is tenable, but maybe Roderick T. Long's article on the subject can help you out a little: http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html.

If you want to discuss this more, shoot me an email.

Barry, I've got a few questions:

1) On the issue of intangible versus tangible, how is discovering a “natural” idea any different than “discovering” new land? The first one there gets the benefits (at least under Western conceptions of property). Are the differentiating factors the ability to touch and the finitely accessible quantity of physical goods.

2) Given many “natural” ideas are only discovered after many years of labor (i.e., have a high opportunity cost), if a person is not able to profit from that discovery, what incentive exists to labor towards discovery. Intellectual satisfaction and social benefit only go so far. As Adam Smith wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” The mathematician can't feed himself with satisfaction and praise.

3) As you tangentially acknowledge, extracting value from intellectual creation involves demonstration of understanding of said creation—which is not the case with an “infinitely long random sequence of every permutation of 0 and 1″—and requires a commensurate acknowledgement of value on the part of other parties, how does a belief in the illegitimacy of the idea of intellectual property mesh with the Libertarian (and most economists notions) of value?

Finally, I don’t follow your point regarding an infinite set of all sets of 1s and 0s. A Turing Machine is an implementation of an idea. A Turing Machine is nothing more than a series of steps to analyze and provide context to strings of 1s and 0s. From your above reference, “Defenders of patents claim that patent laws protect ownership only of inventions, not of discoveries. (Likewise, defenders of copyright claim that copyright laws protect only implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves.) But this distinction is an artificial one. Laws of nature come in varying degrees of generality and specificity; if it is a law of nature that copper conducts electricity, it is no less a law of nature that this much copper, arranged in this configuration, with these other materials arranged so, makes a workable battery. And so on.”

It is unimaginably annoying how behind this topic you are. I've got a plane to catch in a few minutes, but let's see if I can't sum this up nice and neat for you:

1. Discovering is not a legitimate form of ownership, I don't care how deeply established in The Western Tradition it is. The long and short of property creation is Land + Labor = Property. Simply discovering a piece of land doesn't make it yours. Till the soil and then we'll talk.

2. I don't give two shits about the incentives. I care about a functionally working self-consistent philosophy based on the ideals of liberty. If that means mathematicians are only hobbyists, then fine.

3. Your third point seems entirely irrelevant. I invite you to look around Mises.org a bit.

The infinite set of 0s and 1s represents every possible bit of information that can every be. Information can exist outside of its embodiments. One can own the embodiments of information (the iPod, for instance) but one can't own information (F=ma).

Next time come to the meeting if you think you have anything to add to this conversation.

Should laws against piracy exist? If so, how does this mesh with a libertarian philosophy. Libertarianism tells us an individual should be free to do as the individual pleases without government intervention; i.e., the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization of the state. So how does this fit in with intellectual property laws that essentially places the power of the state behind the individual intellectual property creator?

I assume you have no problem with an individual profiting from labor. Thus, if I make the next great movie, I should be able to profit from it by selling it to anyone who is willing to buy it. But in a digital era, there is no guarantee I will make any sales beyond the first. After that, piracy could take over. So that's where IP laws come in. The state backs up my ability to profit from my labor by giving me civil causes of actions against pirates and in some cases criminalizing the infringements.

But if individual liberty is to be maximized, how can a libertarian at once both be for the liberty of the content creator to make and profit from the creative work and the liberty of the pirate to diminish the value of the labor?

Let's see what kind of pretzel I get as a response. If we remove the state from the equation, then there is no individual incentive to produce because no greater force will protect that interest. I don't see how you can possibly balance the interests without involving the apparatus of the state.

I really wish you had read any of the previous comments before posting this one. It would have answered all of your questions. But here is the long and short of it:

No one has a “right to profit.”

No liberty-based philosophy begins with conclusions. Hence, I Do. Not. Give. A. Single. Shit. whether or not there is individual incentive to do anything. All a libertarian can proclaim is that people “should not” do something. Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't coerce.

Information is not property. Information exists independently of its physical manifestation. Tricky/Enlightening example: You can own a webpage. Amazon can own the domain Amazon.com. They cannot, however, own the *idea* of Amazon.com. Just because someone happens to think of/patent something first does not give them exclusive rights.

It's simple.

A contract binds two people to an agreement.
A patent is a contract.
A patent is a contract that says “A invented X, therefore B gives A the exclusive right to profit from X.”
A patent is a contract that actually says, “A wants B to prevent C, D, Etc from profiting from X.”

But C, D, Etc didn't agree to this contract.

A legitimate contract cannot bind unwilling third parties. Hence, patents are illegitimate.

QED. A law for intellectual property rights can only exist in a society where all people bound by the contract of intellectual property rights agree to it. …which had you read the “File Sharing” announcement post, you would have known.

“Congress shall have the power to…promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;” Article I, Sec 8, US Constutition.

Since the constitution itself is a contract, and by being a citizen and residing under the laws of the constitution you ascribe yourself to it and are bound by it's rules, you agree to copyright law.

As you said, “A law for intellectual property rights can only exist in a society where all people bound by the contract of intellectual property rights agree to it.” Seems like we do, therefore it is legitimate. Unless of course you think the US Constitution is an illegitimate document/contract.

Wow. Total n00b status.

The Constitution is not even close to anything that should be considered a “contract.” While there are hundreds of great arguments against such a foolishly held position consider simply that not only did no living person (who is currently bound to it) sign it, but even if it was signed as a contract between the original drafters and society at the time, none of them had any right to bind future generations.

Read some Lysander Spooner before you embarrass yourself next time.

How are the back-room dealings of politicians two centuries ago any sort of evidence if something is justified or not?

**Goes outside. Looks around. Listens. “Get off my lawn!” sign is intact. Goes back inside.**

I'd say the fact there aren't open revolts stands as good evidence that the people, by and large, view the Constitution as legitimate. Even those who want to get back to “the true Constitution” still view the document as legitimate. You live in dream world. Your philosophy is intriguing but has no practical application. That makes it a useless philosophy.

How are the back-room dealings of politicians two centuries ago any sort of evidence if something is justified or not?

**Goes outside. Looks around. Listens. “Get off my lawn!” sign is intact. Goes back inside.**

I'd say the fact there aren't open revolts stands as good evidence that the people, by and large, view the Constitution as legitimate. Even those who want to get back to “the true Constitution” still view the document as legitimate. You live in dream world. Your philosophy is intriguing but has no practical application. That makes it a useless philosophy.

Perhaps one of the least persuasive arguments I've ever heard.