This is my final response to my brother's post about Intellectual Property laws and his subsequent comments in the thread here. If you're not interested, just move on and don't bother to make the jump below.
I want to be done with this and so I'll sum up as quickly as I can. I'm not encouraged by the base-stealing debater's trick you start with. I do not agree that our dispute is about whether or not the government ought to be allowed to violate our rights. Couching it in those terms begs the question. I aver that the government is not necessarily violating rights with IP laws. (In fact, it is protecting them.)
The FDA is neither here nor there; I didn't bring it up and I will ignore it as a red herring. The FDA has nothing to do with IP laws.
Obamacare: see above.
You claim that you don't believe in the perfectability of man, and I do believe you. But you clearly are failing to understand the connection between infallible man and the lack of government. You do (tacitly) assert man's perfectability through your argument for anarchy. We are agreed on the ideal state, but it clearly does not obtain. Since it does not, government is necessary and Romans 13 clearly enjoins our obedience in all things not contrary to the will of God.
I regret having brought up religion since this is straying too far afield, but having done so I will consent to engage this point. God did note that it was a rejection of him to want a government other than his direct leadership, but we do not currently live in a theocracy where a prophet brings us the direct words of God. Despite his dissatisfaction with the request, God does establish a temporal government with His blessing.
It is better to have someone forced to do right than to have them do wrong in a temporal sense, yes. Better for all his neighbors. I can passively force you not to burgle my house by locking it up. The fact that you are forced to refrain from burglary is good, even if your soul does not benefit. God may not value the good deed done to please men, but I still can, though perhaps at a discounted rate?
I'm tired of all the slippery definitions of value you've given to music over the course of this thread. You have argued everything can have a monetary value; that's what your friend in the video argued with your full endorsement. It's just a matter of making enough exchanges or having enough intermediate steps in valuation. Don't get your panties in a twist and start throwing insults as a result.
Socialist countries prevented authors from retaining IP rights. This is what you are arguing for. Socialist countries (in theory) allow everyone to have access to everything since it is communally owned. This is what you are arguing for. It fails in practice (as we both agree, the rights were instead held by the small group of people in power) since it's unworkable (here we disagree since you think that having no exclusive rights to your ideas is a workable proposition) and it actually depresses the output of creators. So, as a response, they allowed some privileges to creative types without trying to admit the connection so that they wouldn't be completely without cultural output in their countries.
Concert performances are not the same as studio albums. Concerts are different from recorded songs and what is being sold is not the same thing. You begin to argue from pragmatism (they won't starve) instead of principle. I argue that the principle is that the idea is their property and they have a right not to have it stolen regardless of whether or not they'll starve. Your argument from pragmatism would allow children to shoplift since what a child can steal will not bankrupt a major supermarket chain. If you dispute that it is different in what is stolen, then the real debate is whether an idea can constitute property and the rest of this nonsense merely obscures the true point of contention. (Which is, I think, the case.)
Your example about inventors relies on IP law for its force. Otherwise, nothing would prevent the inventor from retailing his idea to the highest bidder without regard to his contract. And, if you only allow contracts to be enforced by mutual arbitration, all he has to do is not show up. And if you agree that someone should be able to force him to comply.... You think that his lack of trustworthiness will bite him, but as long as his ideas are salable, then he's on velvet. He won't necessarily get another contract, but his ideas will still be in demand.
All anarchy is Hobbesian; to think otherwise assumes things about the perfect... well, I said that up there at the top already. Hobbes and Nietzche got a lot wrong in their solutions, but their understanding of problems is not necessarily faulty as well. I've read some of what folks like Rothbard have written, and well, I'll be nice and just say I was unpersuaded.
Okay, I'm done with this topic. Bring it up again in 3 months and I might be willing to discuss it again.
You were somewhat vague about whether or not you're willing to read another reply, so in case you are, here goes:
ReplyDeleteYou never made an argument for why there is an inherent right to an idea, or why it should trump my right to use my computer or pen (or even my own vocal cords), or where the demarcation comes in. Idea rights are headed ineluctably to arbitrary fiat (because there has to be demarcation of the idea right at some point, or else literally everything including our words belongs to the eldest or the willed going back to Cain or Seth, as it were the heir of the first speaker who thus holds copyright to everything in the whole realm of human existence, which is a theory of everything if I've ever heard one), and arbitrary fiat is tenuous ground for abrogating tangible property rights.
Let's assume, for the moment, the ludicrous idea that a government is possible that is so wise and noble that it can be trusted to make subtle and just judgments about where to draw the boundaries for idea rights, both in scope and in time. What if someone independently comes up with an idea that another has copyrighted? Now we have to have a judgment on whether or not he is lying about having come up with it independently (a daunting task even for our supernaturally benevolent government), or simply punish everyone who is second in coming up with an idea. Talk about unworkable! Again and again, like all Statists, you rely on the proposition that our betters can be trusted to do this or that well. To point to the Bible saying that we should submit to them does not prove that they are doing what is right or that we should approve of them or give them our aid.
When you get right down to it, idea monopolies (for that is what they are - state-granted exclusive use of certain ideas) are as unjust and antisocial as any other state-granted monopolies. And just as people could not imagine what would happen, or how such and such essential function would be carried out, when the government started abolishing monopolies (such as the guilds), likewise you cannot imagine what would happen if free people had to interact freely in the fields of music, literature, software, and medicine, instead of relying on government to aid them in extracting as much wealth as they can from their fellowman.
I'm glad that you reject argument from pragmatism, because that is the only facet of this debate ambiguous enough to be claimed for idea monopolists (though as I have shown, there is reason enough to doubt that society benefits from idea monopolies).
I could go on and on, I'm sure, but I'll give it a rest for 3 months, or more likely find something else to debate with you.