[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Ryan Lanham]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/5/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/4/10, Kevin Carson
> > <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Taking my example above, by your standards the
> > > person who uses the Star Trek replicator to make free food for his own
> > > consumption is "stealing," if the state has granted ADM and Cargill a
> > > "property" in the right to sell food at whatever price they set.  But
> > > IMO the actual moral state of affairs is the direct contrary:  I have
> > > a right to feed myself using my own tangible property in any way I see
> > > fit, and to share the food I produce with anyone I see fit.  And the
> > > people at Cargill and ADM, or the people who monopolize access to
> > > proprietary replicators, are thieves who deserve nothing but hatred
> > > and contemptuous defiance of their despicable false "property rights."
>
> > I am all for replicators and matter printers.  We should research the
> heck
> > out that sort of thing.  And we need to deal with those and their
> > implications when we have the prospect of them.
>
> The point of the replicator example, though, was to point out my
> problems with your view on obeying laws restricting access to the
> kinds of abundance that exist here and now, in order to enable rentier
> classes to capitalize increased productivity as a source of rents.
>
>
I agree with the spirit of this criticism.  However, I disagree with the
approach to implement it...which should be systematic, legal and
enforceable.  There are bad laws in bad systems and bad laws in good
systems.  It is also true that some systems become increasingly corrupt--the
US system threatens this in banking, etc.  I also disagree that people
should not have the right to enforce protection of their property.  I
disagree with fundamental views, but I am very near to fundamental that an
idea is property than can and should be protected with the force of social
law.



> For now, we need economies
> > as technologies.  Economies run on IP.  And for every nation on earth at
> > present my definition of stealing is clearly what holds.
>
> Well, first of all, IP violations are not literally defined as "theft"
> in the law.
>

IP is usually its own branch of law and violations are not torts but are
generally criminal (state versus the individual).  Mostly these the standard
is "commercial" acts to violate IP.  At an individual level (e.g. normal
acts of piracy) relatively few states tend to care.  It is not theft, but it
is criminal.


>
> And IP holds for every nation on earth at present, specifically, in
> its *legal codes*.  OTOH, the kind of freedom I advocate holds on
> every nation on earth at present in what a major portion of the
> population actually *does*.  There is a direct conflict in every
> nation between the laws (laws made at the behest of corporate
> interests) and what people do.
>

I'm not sure what you are saying.  Corporations are associations of persons
created to act in a legally orderly way.  They are a legal device.  The
overwhelming majority of legal and rights scholars would see the capacity to
incorporate as an excellent social innovation.  I would agree with them.  I
know of no major legal scholar left, right or libertarian who would not
defend the idea of corporations.  They serve a huge number of useful
purposes...e.g. spreading liability.


>
> And of course the kinds of IP laws you favor are in force in every
> country on earth.  You keep writing as if that universality simply
> reflects some level of understanding currently achieved in the
> collective consciousness of mankind, as it evolves toward the
> absolute.
>

You are misinterpreting me.  I see no perfection in laws.  As a pragmatist,
I see no movement toward fundamentals or ideals.  Everything for me is
practical.  I have no gods, no fundamental rights, no perfect orders.
Everything is about what works and what can work to make people satisfied.
I cannot determine those parameters, so I rely on markets.  I admit markets
are imperfect.  I wish aspects of them didn't exist.  Same with states.
Right now, I see no superior feasible alternatives.  I would characterize
your views, as I understand them, as being fundamentally rather than
pragmatically anti-state.



>
> I'm not at all surprised and dismayed by the fact that your idea of IP
> prevails universally, or almost so, because my understanding of the
> law and its significance differs almost entirely from yours.  Every
> society in the world is a class society where the main purpose of the
> state's laws is to enable a privileged class to extract a surplus from
> everyone else's labor.  So of course IP  law is universal.
>

Agreed.


>
> We have a global, state-privileged corporate economy in which the laws
> of nations favor corporate interests.  In a world dominated by a
> particular class system, the laws that predominate in all nations of
> the world reflect the interests of that class system.  Big surprise.
>
>
While political and of a different narrative or tone than I would use, I
don't disagree.


> If you lived in feudal Europe seven hundred years ago, you could just
> as easily say "for every nation in the West at present my definition
> of land tenure is what holds," because throughout western Europe the
> peasantry would be paying feudal rents to land that they worked and
> were the rightful owners of.  I would not consider this surprising.
>

Agreed.



> Of course the laws universally in force would reflect the interests of
> the dominant class universally in the seat of power.


This is a different interpretation of history than mine.  I believe laws are
technology.  Technologies simply exist largely through memes of innovation
and learning.  They are replace when they are no longer helpful if the
forces of society (democracy and liberty) are allowed to prevail.  What
scares me most about the present is that the externalities of continued
operation of locally satisfactory systems can destroy the whole.



> And I don't
> believe the peasant would be morally obligated to keep paying rent to
> his feudal overlords, out of respect for "the law," until he could
> persuade the landlord that society would be better off if he stopped
> living off rents.  The peasant would be fully entitled to break down
> enclosures, squat on vacant land, and stop paying rent, etc., to
> whatever extent he could get away with it.  The state and its laws,
> then as now, was not some neutral force reflecting the collective
> understanding of society.  It was a weapon in the hands of an enemy,
> used to promote his interests at everybody else's expense.
>
>
Feudalism was stable and effective until technology rendered it not so.  I
hold no fundamental view as to its good or evil.  In today's world of
learning, it would be evil.  When it prevailed, it was simply the best idea
available.


> > For now, we have IP.  People who undermine IP are criminals.
>
> Well, of course.  That's true by definition.  But I don't genuflect at
> the word "law," nor do I shy away from the term "criminal" when the
> law and the people who create it are evil.
>
>
No do I.  But I believe in the rule of law.  Do you?  If not, what do you
propose in a stateless alternative?  Contracts?  Does a person have an
ability to kill someone else at will in a stateless society?  If not, why
not?  At some level, we institute governance.  You may prefer a different
level of governance than me, but we both prefer governance I suspect.


> And "we" also have the technical means of circumvention, and millions
> of people who use them.  The law doesn't have any magical effect on
> reality, and isn't automatically carried out by virtue of being law.
> IP is a contested issue, and "the law" is a stronghold of one side.
> What real people do in everyday life is a stronghold for the other
> side.  The law will be the last stronghold to fall when IP has been
> defeated in physical reality by actual people in the way they live
> their daily lives.
>
>
Individual piracy and DRM are small issues.  I think they go away soon.  Not
sure how, but it doesn't upset me regardless.  There are big problems with
commercial grade violations of IP.  Those are big problems.


> Is a a great
> > felonious crime?  No...not in most cases.  To me, if a college kid steals
> > Coldplay's latest song, I think...shame on Coldplay for not having better
> > systems to stop them doing so.  That is what the Apple iTouch is with its
> > DRM.  Costs are kept low to allow (many) people to do what they want and
> > artists and industry participants to get returns.  I wish everyone could
> > afford want they want from it.  But the way to achieve that isn't to
> force
> > someone to give away wealth to the poor.  That has never worked.  It
> isn't
> > working in Venezuela, it didn't work in Soviet Russia or Maoist China,
> and
> > it won't work anywhere else because wealth is an engine...not a item that
> > can be transplanted like a tree to someone else.  Fools and money are
> soon
> > parted.
>
> Strawman.  Once again, nobody is "forcing" anyone to give anything
> away.  The exact opposite is the case.  IP law (to the extent that it
> is enforceable) is forcing people not to buy unauthorized versions of
> a song.  Competition between proprietary and free versions fo the same
> content is the default.  Suppressing competition from free is what
> requires force.   It's the RIAA and MPAA that are forcing people to
> buy their content on their terms if they want it at all, by forcibly
> suppressing competing providers.
>

I disagree.  Not a strawman, but the essence of the point.  I agree with
your conclusion however.  DRM does work. I think where we disagree is in the
meaning of free.  You want free to meant he right to take.  I do not so mean
it.  Neither do most people and most legal systems (nearly all).  The wave
in fact is strongly toward what I am saying...  Still, we envision similar
outcomes...the triumph of free.  You seem to think it will happen by the
decline of enforcement by it being overwhelmed.  I know that happens quite
rarely in free states.  What I anticipate is the market innovating more and
more toward what people want...which is lower marginal costs approaching
free.



>
> And free replication of proprietary content does not amount to "giving
> up" anything, because nothing is given up.  It's still there.  It's
> been duplicated, so that two people have it instead of just one.
>
> > I have a fellow who works with me who is a guitarist from Ghana.  He used
> to
> > work in the record industry in the UK as an accountant.  He said that IP
> > theft has ruined thousands of performers who were swept out of being
> > competitive by people stealing their work.
>
> Once again, there is no such thing as "IP theft."  Even that sacred,
> majestic "law" that you hold in such high regard does not literally
> treat it as theft.  The only place you see it described as "theft" is
> in polemics by supporters of proprietary content.  But in terms of the
> law, it is explicitly the conferral of a monopoly for a limited term
> in order to promote a utilitarian end.  Surely you, who hold the law
> in such sacred esteem, should refrain from referring to unauthorized
> copying as "theft."
>
>
This is characterizing my argument.  I hold no law sacred.  I do hold the
rule of law as a best ideal for now.  I do hold law in esteem.  It is one of
the best human technologies ever devised.

I accept I should say criminal instead of theft.  It is, nevertheless,
criminal.  To my mind it is semantics, but if theft offends, I'll be more
careful.


> By definition duplication cannot be theft, because there is no party
> that ceases to have the item in question.  The only "loss" is loss of
> the state-enforced right to a return on it, even at the price of
> suppressing competition.  Nobody should have a right to a guaranteed
> return on anything that comes from forcibly preventing other people
> from entering the market and competing.
>
>
Semantics, but I agree.  What a person "loses" is the right to value
creation they are responsible for..you argue they have no such right or
privilege.  Few would agree with your characterization of the facts in legal
terms.  If they would, you would serve the world hugely by doing a survey
that showed this.  It would be instructive to many if not most of us.

In my own personal inquiries to many lawyers and those who have worked in
related areas around me, I have found universal rejection of what you are
saying in terms of the idea that IP laws are not justified and should not be
enforced.  I would be curious of any sorts of people who systematically
think otherwise.  I know of none.  I would be particularly interested in
legal scholars who hold such views.  There are many very radical views held
by law school faculties of all sorts all over the world.  Maybe such views
exist.  In my small survey, no one knew of anyone who held such views.



> > In a post economic world of easy and free replicators, I agree.  IP is a
> > waste of time.  For now, it is the basis for sanity.
>
> The free replicator example was simply an extreme case of the real
> conflict between abundance and artificial scarcity entailed in
> existing technology right here and now.  The struggle, in the case of
> every innovation that reduces labor and capital costs to produce an
> output, is whether that cost saving should be passed on to the
> consumer by free competition or capitalized as a source of rents by
> those who hold a state-granted monopoly.  If the law that grants
> someone to live off someone else's labor by charging a state-enforced
> monopoly price is so sacred now that it should be obeyed by all, even
> to the extent of paying a monopoly price, why should they do otherwise
> when matter printers come about?  In the case of every incremental
> improvement in abundance and reduction in cost, the question is
> whether it is subject to being made property and a source of monopoly
> rents.  The only difference between these incremental improvements and
> the replicator idea is one of degree.
>

As I have said, I don't think artificial scarcity is a valuable term or
idea.  It is far from a "fact" as Michel claims.  That's my opinion.  Others
I bring it up to tend to sympathize with the idea that some economic
vehicles stifle consumption, but that has always been true.  And I agree.  I
think labeling something as artificial scarcity simply hides the
foundational legal and rights argument.  That is, does a person have the
right to protect their intellectual product from unlimited copying?  I
believe they do.  You believe they don't.  Your view goes against most if
not all legal systems now, as you recognize.  So your burden is to either
change the law or to convince large numbers to ignore their own
laws--including law enforcement persons.  I doubt that will happen soon...it
will not happen before other mechanisms--probably market mechanisms, make
the discussion moot.  That's my guess.

Ryan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100206/7a69d9c5/attachment-0001.html>