Copyright
Showing only ideas leading to #1341 and its comments.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.To keep someone from copying your work you have to infringe on the private property of that person by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned copying medium to instantiate a certain pattern.
‘To stop someone from murdering you you have to infringe on his private property by claiming an exclusive right on prohibiting his use of his privately owned gun to shoot you’ How is that different?
Murdering someone destroys their scarce property (their body in this case). Copying something using your own property leaves the original totally untouched.
One can steal value without stealing physical property (as happens when you transfer someone’s digital money without their consent).
But digital money isn’t physically scarce like someone’s body. Your argument rests on physical property being special in some way.
I don’t think the issue hinges on whether something is physically scarce, whatever that’s supposed to mean. After all, all information is physical, as David Deutsch likes to emphasize. The real distinction is this: stealing someone’s digital money deprives them of the ability to use it, while copying someone’s novel does not prevent the author from accessing or using their own work. The former is zero-sum; the latter is not.
The latter is still zero-sum because the author gets nothing in exchange for the work they put in upfront, but expected to get something, and made the distribution of their work contingent upon this expectation being fulfilled.
If you take an idea from me and produce a derivative work you may change the value of my copy.
It need not necessarily be a decrease in value. For example, a novel derivative work created by you may increase purchases of my works. Alternatively, your work may tarnish the brand associated with my work, or even directly compete with me, and reduce my sales.
I may not want to take this risk. I ask you not to take such actions in exchange for me sharing a copy with you (with agreed restrictions). If you accept and breach the agreed restrictions, you have violated our contract.
Do you agree that scarcity is at least a central consideration in determining whether copying information in disregard of consent should be considered a crime or not?
Edit: Dennis points out that copyright infringement is generally not treated as a crime. Perhaps I should have said: “[…] should be considered unlawful,” or “[…] should entitle the original author to seek a court order (e.g., a cease-and-desist) backed by state enforcement.”
No I disagree, for all the reasons I already gave in response to #1346.
Was there any other reason besides the claim that my argument rests on the “physical” nature of private property? If not, I believe I have already addressed that criticism. I don’t actually think property rests on physicality, but rather on whether something is zero-sum or non-zero-sum, physical or not. A useful concept in this context is “rivalry” in economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)
Imagine living on a flat planet that extends infinitely in all directions.
Land is not scarce on this planet.
You build a house, mixing your labor with an acre of land. Someone comes and takes your land, saying you have no cause for complaint since land isn’t scarce.
See how scarcity isn’t necessary for something to be property?
Take someone’s reputation. That isn’t a ‘scarce’ thing yet it’s a good thing there are laws against defamation.
Reputation is scarce in the sense that it’s limited.
So if someone publishes a blog post falsely but believably accusing you of being a pedophile and then all your business partners stop talking to you and you lose all your money and your friends and family ghost you, you wouldn’t want to have any legal recourse?
I'm not sure, seriously. I'm open to suggestions.
There's lots of things that I think people shouldn't do yet should still be legal.
I can also think of ways this could be misused.
Edit: This alone is not a sufficient argument to discredit laws against defamation.
Laws (against murder and other crimes) don’t reduce to physical property.
Libertarians often think that the purpose of the law is ONLY to define and enforce property rights. In reality, the purpose of the law is to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life.
It’s true that it would be arbitrary if anyone could just take your property against your will, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only kind of arbitrariness the law should prevent/address.
Ridiculous definition of murder. Classic libertarian thought bending over backwards to reduce everything to property rights. Please cite a legal text where the definition of murder invokes scarce property.
No. I don't expect to find it, but that doesn't make it less true. That's how I make sense of the difference between IP and real property.
If current law isn’t based on what you claim it’s based on then that does make it less true.
I don't care about current law, there are lots of dumb laws. I care about what's right and why.
But the law against murder isn’t a dumb law even though it doesn’t refer to someone’s body being scarce property.
It’s right for the law to address and prevent the arbitrary, and that’s about more than just property. See #1345.