From: hal@finney.org
Date: Thu Dec 30 1999 - 11:04:26 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker, <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net (none)>, writes:
> So the obvious, fundamental, inescapable, objective difference
> that physical property _cannot_ be used by two or more people
> simultaneously while intellectual property can be is just a
> "detail"? Isn't that very fact the primary reason for creating
> the idea of "property" in the first place--to make efficient
> decisions about the use of non-sharable things? Why should we
> automatically assume that the same structures would work for
> sharable things?
Excludability is not the deciding principle for whether we choose to treat
something as property. There are excludable things which no one tries to
treat as property. For example, a parcel of water in a flowing river,
or a chunk of air blowing along. No two people can use that piece of
water or air simultaneously, but it is not practical or useful to treat
it as property.
Instead, we may create water rights, which give the right to draw on
a certain quantity of water at a certain time of the year. This is a
much more useful and appropriate form of property right with regard to a
flowing river. There are experiments with creating air pollution rights,
which allow a certain amount of pollution every year. These may also
turn out to be a useful form of property.
The fact that intellectual property is not excludable is certainly
relevant in judging whether any proposed form of property rights will
work. But it is just one factor which must be considered.
Hal
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