107 replies to this topic

[RighteousReason]

why do you connect ownership with labor? I can give you several counterexamples that disconnect the two.

I agree with all the counterexamples that were brought up in the paper you linked, except where it broke from what Ayn Rand was representing --

The product of your labor -- for anyone else to achieve (without having your product to steal or copy) they would have to reproduce your labor -- the whole principle of money is this --

Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.

Edited by RighteousReason, 29 April 2010 - 03:53 PM.

[JLL]

Giving value for value means that when I give money to you for your car, I value your car more than I value money, and you value my money more than your car.

However, when I can get a similar car for free, without actually stealing your car, your car no longer has value for me. The Ayn Rand quote does not refute this.

[RighteousReason]

Giving value for value means that when I give money to you for your car, I value your car more than I value money, and you value my money more than your car.

However, when I can get a similar car for free, without actually stealing your car, your car no longer has value for me. The Ayn Rand quote does not refute this.

If I create a car design and put up what I created for sale, you can't get that design for free unless you steal it from me. You can bypass owing me anything by creating your own design which achieves the same ends as my design. But doing that cost you the labor it took for you to produce the design, so it wasn't free.

If you want to ask why I connect ownership and labor, this is the same question as why you connect ownership and scarcity.

In order for you to obtain the output of some mental or physical labor, you either have to perform that labor yourself, or you have to find someone else who already has and obtain it from them.

If you say ownership doesn't apply to a movie because it is just a handful of easily copyable bits, I can equally say that ownership doesn't apply to your GPS because your car is so easy to break into.

Edited by RighteousReason, 29 April 2010 - 04:21 PM.

[JLL]

If I create a car design and put up what I created for sale, you can't get that design for free unless you steal it from me.

You can bypass owing me anything by creating your own design which achieves the same ends as my design. But doing that cost you the labor it took for you to produce the design, so it wasn't free.

So it's fine for me to look at your car and then design mine based on it? Surely it has taken you much more labor than me, because all I have to do is copy the design, not use my imagination.

If you want to ask why I connect ownership and labor, this is the same question as why you connect ownership and scarcity.

In order for you to obtain the output of some mental or physical labor, you either have to perform that labor yourself, or you have to find someone else who already has and obtain it from them.

We're just going around in circles here. You say that ownership is connected to labor. However, consider this example:

I steal your car parts and build a car from them. Is the resulting car mine or yours?

If labor = ownership, it should be rightfully mine. If ownership = property rights + scarce resources, then it is yours.

If you say ownership doesn't apply to a movie because it is just a handful of easily copyable bits, I can equally say that ownership doesn't apply to your GPS because your car is so easy to break into.

I don't follow your logic here.

In a world of infinite resources, is ownership needed in your opinion?

[JLL]

Another thought experiment:

We both have a machine capable of creating objects based on photographs. You spend a year designing a new fuel engine, much more efficient than old engines. I take a picture of your engine, and feed it into the machine, creating an exact replica of your fuel engine.

Do I have ownership over the replica or not?

[eternaltraveler]

If I create a car design and put up what I created for sale, you can't get that design for free unless you steal it from me.

You can bypass owing me anything by creating your own design which achieves the same ends as my design. But doing that cost you the labor it took for you to produce the design, so it wasn't free.

So it's fine for me to look at your car and then design mine based on it? Surely it has taken you much more labor than me, because all I have to do is copy the design, not use my imagination.

If you want to ask why I connect ownership and labor, this is the same question as why you connect ownership and scarcity.

In order for you to obtain the output of some mental or physical labor, you either have to perform that labor yourself, or you have to find someone else who already has and obtain it from them.

We're just going around in circles here. You say that ownership is connected to labor. However, consider this example:

I steal your car parts and build a car from them. Is the resulting car mine or yours?

If labor = ownership, it should be rightfully mine. If ownership = property rights + scarce resources, then it is yours.

If you say ownership doesn't apply to a movie because it is just a handful of easily copyable bits, I can equally say that ownership doesn't apply to your GPS because your car is so easy to break into.

I don't follow your logic here.

In a world of infinite resources, is ownership needed in your opinion?

The purpose of IP is to encourage the generation of future ideas. present IP law is ridiculously complicated, and often implemented very stupidly, but this rational stands. forget movies and music which are really pretty irrelevant; no one is going to spend billions of dollars developing biotechnology out of the goodness of their hearts. What should be eliminated is all the anti competitive IP like all the patents of chunks of the human genome made to prevent anyone else from using it.
If you want some kind of "natural law" reasoning I contend that societies that allow some level of appropriate IP will be more competitive as they will tend to generate more ideas. The fact that some ideas are successfully generated without IP (linux,wikipedia) is irrelevant. Many ideas are not so generated. the fact that company B can make and sell a new pharmaceutical for a lower cost per pill is also irrelevant if company A would never have invented it in the first place with such an arrangement.

Edited by eternaltraveler, 29 April 2010 - 06:41 PM.

[eternaltraveler]

I don't make an appeals to this or that ”morality”. People define morality very differently. Its pointless to debate as it really at the end of the day is just a semantic debate over the definition of "morality".

[Athanasios]

I don't make an appeals to this or that ”morality”. People define morality very differently. Its pointless to debate as it really at the end of the day is just a semantic debate over the definition of "morality".

Is not morality about what 'ought' to be done? If you have a system that uses direct enforcement, and want that system to be consistent and protect human dignity/rights, how can you avoid a discussion on morality? Is it much different than defining what we value as humans? Isn't this also fundamental to friendly AI?

edit:

appeals to this or that ”morality”

I think I misread you. Nevermind, I get it now.

Edited by cnorwood, 29 April 2010 - 08:05 PM.

[RighteousReason]

If I create a car design and put up what I created for sale, you can't get that design for free unless you steal it from me.

You can bypass owing me anything by creating your own design which achieves the same ends as my design. But doing that cost you the labor it took for you to produce the design, so it wasn't free.

So it's fine for me to look at your car and then design mine based on it? Surely it has taken you much more labor than me, because all I have to do is copy the design, not use my imagination.

If the seller retains their rights to the design of the car you can't use it to base your design off of.

If you want to ask why I connect ownership and labor, this is the same question as why you connect ownership and scarcity.

In order for you to obtain the output of some mental or physical labor, you either have to perform that labor yourself, or you have to find someone else who already has and obtain it from them.

We're just going around in circles here. You say that ownership is connected to labor. However, consider this example:

I steal your car parts and build a car from them. Is the resulting car mine or yours?

If labor = ownership, it should be rightfully mine. If ownership = property rights + scarce resources, then it is yours.

The car parts are mine, you stole them. The car is not yours because you did not earn it through your labor, you stole my parts (which I probably traded for in return for some other product of my labor), so you essential stole some of my labor to produce your car.

If you say ownership doesn't apply to a movie because it is just a handful of easily copyable bits, I can equally say that ownership doesn't apply to your GPS because your car is so easy to break into.

I don't follow your logic here.

In a world of infinite resources, is ownership needed in your opinion?

sort of a silly hypothetical... I guess it depends on what sort of world of infinite resources we are talking about... I'm guessing no

Edited by RighteousReason, 29 April 2010 - 07:55 PM.

[RighteousReason]

Another thought experiment:

We both have a machine capable of creating objects based on photographs. You spend a year designing a new fuel engine, much more efficient than old engines. I take a picture of your engine, and feed it into the machine, creating an exact replica of your fuel engine.

Do I have ownership over the replica or not?

If I retain my rights to the design of that engine, you can't copy it and claim legitimate ownership.

[JLL]

Another thought experiment:

We both have a machine capable of creating objects based on photographs. You spend a year designing a new fuel engine, much more efficient than old engines. I take a picture of your engine, and feed it into the machine, creating an exact replica of your fuel engine.

Do I have ownership over the replica or not?

If I retain my rights to the design of that engine, you can't copy it and claim legitimate ownership.

What if I make a fuel engine that is somewhat similar to yours but not entirely?

[RighteousReason]

Another thought experiment:

We both have a machine capable of creating objects based on photographs. You spend a year designing a new fuel engine, much more efficient than old engines. I take a picture of your engine, and feed it into the machine, creating an exact replica of your fuel engine.

Do I have ownership over the replica or not?

If I retain my rights to the design of that engine, you can't copy it and claim legitimate ownership.

What if I make a fuel engine that is somewhat similar to yours but not entirely?

If you look back the quote from the start of the money speech -- it is about trading value for value, mooching or looting from others doesn't count. So if you aren't cheating off my fuel engine than you fully own yours. If you do cheat off mine, you haven't earned it, and you don't own it. (assuming I'm retaining all rights)

Edited by RighteousReason, 29 April 2010 - 08:15 PM.

[EmbraceUnity]

If we had tech-progressive economists leading us, they'd ensure that the same advances in technology make it less and less a necessity to earn money from one's work. When you're beyond survival and some degree of comfort, there's barely any justification left for asking people to pay you for something you would do anyway out of sheer pleasure and passion.

Now you're talkin

[Lallante]

Natural rights are nonsense on stilts. Nothing less than a religion in fact.

[valkyrie_ice]

Rather interesting read. Amazing really. Alex actually saying something I can agree with entirely.

Copyright, I.P. and most other attempts to "control idea ownership" need to be rewritten from the ground up. As they exist currently, they do little encourage growth, innovation, or originality, merely work as money making tools for the corporations, not the authors.

In this case, it is an example of private industry misusing laws and regulation to stifle competition, prevent market evolution, and tilt the playing field in their favor.

I write fan fic. I have a 400,000+ fic which is indeed based on someone else's ideas, but never once have I claimed those ideas as anything but a starting point from which to launch a creative effort. It formed a base to start from, nothing else.

Additionally, right now you can find numerous "remixes" of various movies which may use the same footage, yet tell vastly different stories than the original work.


So, RR, let me ask this. You design a engine. If I take your initial design, build on it, and create a vastly different kind of engine, which is nonetheless still inspired by your work, how would you view this? What percentage of the engine would need to be different to qualify as MY WORK instead of yours?

Should every thought "inspired" by your work also belong to you, even though YOU did not think of it?

We even have a Real Life Example, as The Verve's song "Bittersweet Symphony" is now credited to the Stones for no other reason than a chord sequence. Do you feel the Rolling Stones DESERVED the rights, royalties, and money of someone else's work simply because they INSPIRED it?

Who is the leech and parasite here?

[RighteousReason]

So, RR, let me ask this. You design a engine. If I take your initial design, build on it, and create a vastly different kind of engine, which is nonetheless still inspired by your work, how would you view this? What percentage of the engine would need to be different to qualify as MY WORK instead of yours?

If you "take my initial design" in any way outside of the contract I offer to distribute my design, then you are violating my rights. It doesn't matter what you do with it.

Should every thought "inspired" by your work also belong to you, even though YOU did not think of it?

What you do with it doesn't belong to me, what you took belongs to me.

We even have a Real Life Example, as The Verve's song "Bittersweet Symphony" is now credited to the Stones for no other reason than a chord sequence. Do you feel the Rolling Stones DESERVED the rights, royalties, and money of someone else's work simply because they INSPIRED it?

If that chord sequence was taken from a work by the Rolling Stones in such a way that was outside their offered contract for their works, then yes The Verve is violating their rights. If they came up with it independently then they are not violating anybody's rights.

Edited by RighteousReason, 30 April 2010 - 07:59 PM.

[Alex Libman]

Rather interesting read. Amazing really. Alex actually saying something I can agree with entirely.

C'mon, even I don't agree with what I said on this thread! You'll have to excuse me, I'm a little bit nutty on this issue, which is one of the most significant disagreements between some Minarchists (ex. Objectivists) and Anarcho-Capitalists. I have Ayn Rand + my hatred for the copyleft commies + my "virtualized brain self-ownership" argument on one shoulder, but the rest of the Anarcho-Capitalist / hacker ethic on the other...

[JLL]

If you look back the quote from the start of the money speech -- it is about trading value for value, mooching or looting from others doesn't count. So if you aren't cheating off my fuel engine than you fully own yours. If you do cheat off mine, you haven't earned it, and you don't own it. (assuming I'm retaining all rights)

So how can anything new be invented in a world where IP laws are the kind you are suggesting? Because nothing in this world is truly new. When I code a new software application, I'm already using many ideas from others, who are using ideas from others, who are improving upon the first idea of a software application.

Are you arguing from a utilitarian or moral perspective?

[JLL]

If that chord sequence was taken from a work by the Rolling Stones in such a way that was outside their offered contract for their works, then yes The Verve is violating their rights. If they came up with it independently then they are not violating anybody's rights.

And how could you prove it either way? Where do you draw the line -- can I take two chords and use them in the same sequence as someone else? What about three? Or just one?

[JLL]

By the way, I think you are misreading the money speech to say that value is created through labour; what is says is that money is the tool for exchanging something valuable with another valuable:

Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

It does not, in fact, say anything about how value is created in the first place, only that money is how decent people deal with value in relation to one another. You can have money in a world with and without IP laws -- money itself says nothing about this issue.

I still don't think you've given an explanation to why you think value is created through labor. I think that argument is a slippery slope. It leads to the strange idea that when I paint an ugly painting it must inherently have value because I spent three days on it. And yet, in reality, value is created on the market subjectively -- if nobody wants to pay anything for my painting, then it doesn't really have value (in a monetary sense anyway). Value and creation are two separate things, and the first does not follow from the latter.

The opposite is also true. Something that I have not laboured on can still have value. I can have information, for example, which I just happened to hear but which someone else would gladly pay to hear.

[RighteousReason]

If you look back the quote from the start of the money speech -- it is about trading value for value, mooching or looting from others doesn't count. So if you aren't cheating off my fuel engine than you fully own yours. If you do cheat off mine, you haven't earned it, and you don't own it. (assuming I'm retaining all rights)

So how can anything new be invented in a world where IP laws are the kind you are suggesting? Because nothing in this world is truly new. When I code a new software application, I'm already using many ideas from others, who are using ideas from others, who are improving upon the first idea of a software application.

Are you arguing from a utilitarian or moral perspective?

A lot of the code I use at work was written by someone else -- from the Java language itself, all of the external libraries we import, and when I come across a particular situation the easiest way to solve it is often just Google it and grab someone else's code rather than reinvent the wheel. However, I always have to check the license agreement that comes with any code I use. If they say I can't use it commercially without paying them, then either I will have to pay them to use it or I won't use it. If they say all of my code has to go open source or something crazy like that, then I can't use that either.

This is a moral argument for rightly understood capitalism, which incidentally is a system that results in the greatest good for the greatest number.

If that chord sequence was taken from a work by the Rolling Stones in such a way that was outside their offered contract for their works, then yes The Verve is violating their rights. If they came up with it independently then they are not violating anybody's rights.

And how could you prove it either way? Where do you draw the line -- can I take two chords and use them in the same sequence as someone else? What about three? Or just one?

Being able to prove it is a problem for the justice system... how can it be proven either way that a particular GPS device was taken from my car? The line is drawn at the point where you stop dealing with someone else as a trader and start dealing with them by force. Anything you take from someone else against their will is a violation of their rights. Even if they took a single note from another song (if such a thing even makes sense).

I still don't think you've given an explanation to why you think value is created through labor. I think that argument is a slippery slope. It leads to the strange idea that when I paint an ugly painting it must inherently have value because I spent three days on it. And yet, in reality, value is created on the market subjectively -- if nobody wants to pay anything for my painting, then it doesn't really have value (in a monetary sense anyway). Value and creation are two separate things, and the first does not follow from the latter.

I agree with you of course, just because you do labor doesn't mean you create value. And if nobody wants to obtain the product of your labor then what does the concept of ownership even matter? This is why the money speech was relevant, if someone does want to obtain the product of your labor, these concepts describe the right way for the situation to be handled.

Edited by RighteousReason, 01 May 2010 - 03:40 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

*giggle* JLL more or less made my point RR. Almost nothing is "Original" but is instead a derivative inspired by another work. Read Campbell's essays on myth sometime.

Current Copyright patent, and IP laws are extremely detrimental to originality, innovation, and competition. For example, my Fanfic is based on several animes, all of which are by authors who have encouraged and supported fanfics. It is a 90% original work, using Characters and settings created by someone else. Under current laws, if I were making a profit, any of these authors could demand 100% of the profit despite the fact that I did 90% of the work. I can see sharing the 10% I do indeed owe, but the 90% is not their work.

So basically where does the line get drawn? At present, that line is drawn where it creates an unlevel playing field, and needs to be corrected.

[Alex Libman]

As far as I'm concerned the only rational purpose of IP laws is to keep capitalist innovations from trickling down to communist states playing catch-up. After we kill all the commies, IP "rights" will go the way of the Reagan Doctrine.

[JLL]

Anything you take from someone else against their will is a violation of their rights. Even if they took a single note from another song (if such a thing even makes sense).

No, it doesn't make any sense, but you are arguing that it is stealing anyway. Your IP system doesn't even make sense on the surface, and I can't imagine how disputes would be resolved in a system like that. To dismiss that by saying that's a problem for the judicial system is not really any kind of answer.

I agree with you of course, just because you do labor doesn't mean you create value. And if nobody wants to obtain the product of your labor then what does the concept of ownership even matter? This is why the money speech was relevant, if someone does want to obtain the product of your labor, these concepts describe the right way for the situation to be handled.

And why is it the right way? Why is it better than no IP laws at all?

[JLL]

As far as I'm concerned the only rational purpose of IP laws is to keep capitalist innovations from trickling down to communist states playing catch-up. After we kill all the commies, IP "rights" will go the way of the Reagan Doctrine.

But IP laws are country-specific, right?

[RighteousReason]

No, it doesn't make any sense, but you are arguing that it is stealing anyway. Your IP system doesn't even make sense on the surface, and I can't imagine how disputes would be resolved in a system like that. To dismiss that by saying that's a problem for the judicial system is not really any kind of answer.

What is your objection?

I agree with you of course, just because you do labor doesn't mean you create value. And if nobody wants to obtain the product of your labor then what does the concept of ownership even matter? This is why the money speech was relevant, if someone does want to obtain the product of your labor, these concepts describe the right way for the situation to be handled.

And why is it the right way? Why is it better than no IP laws at all?

This is another reason why I posted the money speech.

When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out.

and so on.

Roark's speech at the end of The Fountainhead is just as applicable. It is all about his design of a building (his IP). And why he dynamited that building when his contract was violated.

...
I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid.

I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless it's the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone's property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all collective action.

I did not recieve the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could it to their satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribue gifts of this nature.

It it said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world.

I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited.
...

The work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive

This is the problem I have with Yudkowsky's CEV, and the reason I do not support The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). It is a creation of "altruism" ... it would be the permanent embedding of second-handed, collectivist philosophy into the very laws of physics (Alex, this is why I told you I'm hardly worried about statism compared to other things going on). It is fundamentally Unfriendly as far as Friendly AI goes. Ironically, it is Unfriendly for the very reason that it is the logical conclusion of what Friendly AI would be under the second-handed, "altruistic" concepts normalized into philosophy today as right and wrong. Yudkowsky is indeed a pioneer into understanding of what sort of consequences we are facing and why Friendly AI is so important. It is one of his big points (from the lessons of Isaac Asimov) that you don't have to be an Al Qaeda member to create Unfriendly AI, even the most well intentioned creator of AI could easily destroy the Universe without taking extreme care to create Friendly AI -- and he falls victim to his own point in CEV, which purports to overcome all of these dangers as well as could be possible, while taking as a premise the broken concepts of altruism which makes falling into these dangers an inevitability. And that is what makes his theory of Friendly AI so insidious.

Edited by RighteousReason, 02 May 2010 - 04:00 PM.

[Alex Libman]

As far as I'm concerned the only rational purpose of IP laws is to keep capitalist innovations from trickling down to communist states playing catch-up. After we kill all the commies, IP "rights" will go the way of the Reagan Doctrine.

But IP laws are country-specific, right?

Yes -- in the sense that we live in a world without laws, and regional tyrants can institutionalize whatever unnatural ruleset they see fit -- but IP laws do still serve the purpose I have stated, in that they allow the less vile tyrants (ex. the United States) the excuse to keep the more vile tyrants (ex. Cuba) isolated and backward.

I don't like those laws, just as I don't like the American Empire, but I must admit that they do serve a positive purpose - at least for now. I am making a tactical compromise in making this recognition, not an ideological one.

Edited by Alex Libman, 03 May 2010 - 03:49 PM.

[JLL]

Yeah but what I mean is that since IP laws are not recognized by some of those countries, capitalist innovations will trickle down to them. China and India already produce cheap copies of things invented in the US.

[Alex Libman]

Natural rights are nonsense on stilts.

I've explained the scientific basis of Natural Rights elsewhere. You might as well shout that there are no laws of physics either, in which case I welcome you to take a very long walk off a very short pier...

Yeah but what I mean is that since IP laws are not recognized by some of those countries, capitalist innovations will trickle down to them. China and India already produce cheap copies of things invented in the US.

I guess it's a matter of degrees. Uncle Sam does penalize countries for "IP theft" via trade restrictions, so they lose more than they gain.

Edited by Alex Libman, 03 May 2010 - 05:11 PM.

[ken_akiba]

Yeah but what I mean is that since IP laws are not recognized by some of those countries, capitalist innovations will trickle down to them. China and India already produce cheap copies of things invented in the US.

(A lil joke)
Do you know what Chinese will say to that?
"Then pay us for the four inventions Europeans took from us: paper, gun powder, compass and printing press."

Edited by ken_akiba, 03 May 2010 - 05:20 PM.