From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Jun 13 2002 - 17:47:59 MDT
0806D5.10308@freedomspace.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Randall Randall wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> >
> > I think, though, that Lee's definition of property is the problem. What
> > gives an item value is entirely a matter of its marginal utility to its
> > user, while an item's status as property is matter of the fact that
> > labor produced it (or improved it from raw resources).
>
> But the status of something as property is not intrinsic to the
> thing itself, but a social convention. This social convention has
> proven to be incredibly useful for things, because the convention
> makes it easy to tell who should make decisions regarding that thing.
ownership of an individual's labor is not a 'social convention', ergo
ownership of any product of an individual's labor is not to be decided
as a 'social convention'. You are either a slave or you are a free
person. If you are a free person, then anything originally produced by
your muscles or your mind is your property. While the statists,
socialists, and communitarians are fond of the concept of fractional
slavery (taxation), they are not fond of calling it what it is, slavery.
Ten men who are one tenth slaves equals one fully enslaved individual.
The same sorts are also not fond of IP as an extension of the
individuals natural right of self ownership and prefer to describe it
merely as a priveledge granted to the individual by the state (as they
are wont to do with everything). This bias tends to creep into the left
end of the libertarian spectrum, though the looter mentality can crop up
anywhere where utilitarianism or opportunism gains a foothold.
>
> It doesn't seem true that this convention is useful for *types* of
> things, however. The idea that one could own classes or arrangements
> of things, rather than or in addition to the things themselves, seems
> somewhat bizarre, actually.
>
> > To use another's labor without recompense is slavery, therefore any
> > product of our labor is property.
>
> Nor is anyone here, so far as I can tell, advocating that the thing
> of that type or with that arrangement should be taken away from you,
> only that others should be free to create that sort of arrangement
> of things in there own things.
IP law in general entirely allows individuals who create something that
has been previously invented to use their creation for their own
purposes. Copyright law also allows shared ownership of identical art
concieved entirely separately from each other.
The problem when you are dealing with original art, either as devices,
designs, text, images, etc is that once it is in the public domain, it
is very difficult for anyone to make a claim thereafter that they
'invented' the same concept, because the public domain has been already
seeded with that idea.
Others here are, in fact, advocating that others should be free to use
the product of your labor without compensation to you, on the theory
that if it doesn't cost you much, or anything at all, to produce
identical copies of your ingenuity, that you shouldn't be paid anything
at all for the additional copies.
A proper accounting of IP would reflect what the utility your ingenuity
is worth to each user of each copy, and pay you a royalty as a fraction
of that utility value. Additional copies only dilute what each copy is
worth as a function of how broadly the ingenuity is used. Ubiquitously
utilized ingenuity confers very little real additional utility to each
user in a perfectly competitive market.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:46 MST