About the only way that I can describe my experience with the LP is that it was much like when I joined the End The Fed movement– which began as a result of Ron Paul’s campaign– only to find that I was surrounded by Greenbackers.

And you don’t even believe that either. You equivocate by talking about the rivalrousness of intellectual objects, but admit that the rivalrousness you really have in mind is that of the limited amount of potential revenue (i.e., money that belongs to other people that MIGHT give it to you).

Intellectual objects != money belonging to other people

Thus you are engaged in equivocation, which is another way of saying you are lying.

All of law relies on analogy. If you dismiss analogy outright. you dismiss the common law. Unless you are willing to accept the validity of saying “This situation is similar to that situation, therefore the law should treat it the same”, then you simply cannot have law.

Ah, in your post at April 19, 2013 at 6:39 pm you give away your argument and expose your true colors. (Brian correctly addresses the same thing in his post at April 22, 2013 at 5:54 am).

You do not want property rights in songs. You want property rights in revenue. You said it yourself.

What is easy to see is that the vast majority of people ACT as though IP exists – in particular they contract to buy and sell it. That one fact alone proves IP’s existence and validity. If there was no valid property in IP, people would not and could not contract regarding it.

Wow, a papal encyclical that extols state assistance to the poor and the rights of the worker would be enough to make you reject religion and the existence of God? It’s true what the say–the free market orthodoxy is a religion, and to you and your ilk, the superlatively dogmatic religion in world history.

Ownership in fact is literally impossible over nonscarce things. Ownership is some kind of recognized exclusive use of something–necesarily a scarce resource. It is often backed by force, say. And implies the power to exclude, to exclusively control, a given thing. That makes no sense whatsoever for nonscarce things like information. How could it, since rights are en”forced” by physical force used against physical (material) resources. The copyright holder suing someone always seeks to control some physical resource owned by the victim-defendant: his money, say, or his body or other resources. The dispute is always, always, always, about scarce resources. The copyright claim is just a disguise used to cover up the nature of the real claim being made: the claim on the owned property of the victim. If you said “I own the money you just earned because you used information in your actions that I came up with” then the naked theft would be more transparent; thus the IP advocate covers it up by using “property” and other techniques. It’s question-begging and disingenuous. IP is just a type of theft of existing property rights.

This is nonsense.

It is similar to another argument IP libertarians often make. I say: if you grant an IP right, it gives a third party the right to limit how you can use scarce resources that you already own. They respond: “Well you can’t shoot your gun at me or swing your first if it hits my nose, so the existence of others’ property rights always limits how you can use your property. ‘Therefore’ [sic], libertarians have no grounds for complaining about any limitations on property rights.”

Both arguments are completely nonsensical. See: Intellectual Property Rights as Negative Servitudes, The Non-Aggression Principle as a Limit on Action, Not on Property Rights, and IP and Aggression as Limits on Property Rights: How They Differ.

“The IP advocate’s argument is dishonest. He says, well, my IP rule limits your property rights, but so do all property rights. So what’s the big deal?”

The statement is flat out false (and becoming more and more widely used by IP advocates). Property rights do not limit other property rights. Property rights limit actions. Declaring that your property right in your body places a limit on my property right in my gun is just flat out false. I may not shoot your body, so my action is limited, but my property right in my gun is exclusive to the gun, it does not include your body. When I gained ownership of my gun, that doesn’t magically include the right to interact with other things I don’t own. It only means I have no limits on what I may do with the gun. Recognizing that using my gun PLUS something else means requiring consent of the owners of that something else doesn’t in any way diminish my property right in the gun alone.

There is an increasing use of the fallacious logic “property rights place limits on the property rights of others” by pro-IP proponents, and that nonsense needs to be nipped in the bud.

Silas writes:

“Any argument that merely involves relabeling things is an automatic fail.

(Which includes the quoted one above)

If I can’t do X with my machine gun, that is a limitation on my right to use the machine gun. It doesn’t matter if it arises from someone else’s rights, or the lack of a specific right to do X.”

Which is funny because relabeling is exactly the error he is guilty of.

To shoot someone isn’t to do X with my machine gun. It’s to do X with my machine gun (incl bullets), the airspace the bullet travels through, and the body of the other person. To conclude that because your actions are limited when considering THREE (at the least) resources (gun, airspace, target), your actions are limited when considering ONE (just the gun) is a dishonest relabeling, or rather, a dishonest shift in context.

As Stephan has rightly pointed out, the property of others imposes limits on actions you may perform, but only actions that include the property of others. This does not result in their being limits on your ownership. In other words, there are no limits to your actions when involving only your property. Actions that involve your property AND the property of others are limited (by the consent of the other property owner).

A = scarce resources I own
B = scarce resources someone else owns

A is not the same as A + B! To observe the context of A + B and then declare diminishment of A is fallacious.

P1: You cannot contract your natural rights
P2: IP and copyright are state granted monopolies, not natural rights
P3: IP and copyright as natural rights would require another to contract his/her natural right
C: IP and copyright are not valid

I’m still confused as to how P1 makes any sense. You say that if all human beings are equal, none can gain/lose power they possess by nature. Why not? Let’s say I contract away my right to reproduce the iPhone. I lose my power to reproduce the technology, but I gain the power to use the technology. Apple gains my money, retains their IP, and loses the part. It seems as though there is an offer, an acceptance, and consideration.. how is that not a valid contract? I SUBMITTED TO IT. Why are you telling me I cannot do that?

So, you might as well say “Let’s call the state’s recognition of natural property a ‘monopoly’”.

I have a natural monopoly over my identity, but it isn’t property.
I have natural property in my chair, but I don’t have a monopoly in the sale/manufacture/supply of chairs – natural or granted by the state.

Yes, there are many opportunities for Newspeak, whether you’re an overt copyright supporter, or a fifth column ‘libertarian’.

homesteadip.blogspot.com

“The purpose of my use is to commercially exploit a market. Your use directly interferes with my use.”

All competition interferes with your purpose to commercially exploit a market.

“[the digital media file of a song] is rivalrous, because its use…the capital goods use of that digital media file is to mass produce copies and to exploit a scarce and limited supply of potential customers”

Like virtually all IP proponents, his argument basically boils down to asserting a property right in potential revenue. Since “potential revenue” is just a misleading way of saying “the money that currently belongs to other people”, this is a false property right assertion.

Clearly the digital media file (i.e., the pattern of bits his physical digital device is configured to) is not rivalrous in its use to “mass produce copies”. I can have a copy on my computer (i.e., I can configure my harddrive to that pattern) and he can have a copy on his and we can both use it (the pattern) to copy en masse at exactly the same time.

What is actually (potentially) “rivalrous” is our ability to “exploit a scarce and limited supply of potential customers”. It might be that customer X will not buy from Alex the song file (pattern of bits to configure his digital device) AND buy/receive it from me too. This exlusivity is of course not a given. It could be customer X downloads the song from me for free, determines he likes the song, then looks up Alex and pays for the “official copy” (this happens all the time in real life). It could also be that since Alex most likely has not perfected the ability to market to every single human being, my independent distribution actually reaches new markets and thus does not actually reduce the potential consumer base he had considered.

But even if my provision of the song does indeed reduce the number of people willing to obtain it from Alex (the actual numbers are always speculative since “potential” customers are uncountable), the point is that “rivalry” over customers is not rivalry in the same definition as “rivalrous” when defining scarce resources. This is the same dishonest tactic Wenzel employed: using “rivalrous” in the same sense as “rivalry”. Two sellers may have a “rivalry” over who gets customer X (this process is more accurately referered to as “competition”), but there is no actual property ownership dispute involved in this type of rivalry, since the actual resources (money, bodies, digital devices, etc.) are already owned by the customers.

As Kinsella has pointed out in various contexts, this highlights the error in over-use of metaphor and inconsistent definitions. It’s acceptable for convenience to use the term “my customers”, but the “my” there (indicating relationship) is not the same meaning as the “my” in “my computer” (indicating ownership). I clearly don’t own my friends, even though I use the term “my friends”. You don’t own your customers/potential customers, so competing for their patronage is not a trespass against your property. Nor can you rightly include the potential actions of others in how you define the usage of a pattern you originate to magically make it rivalrous and thus subject to ownership.

Like all pro-IP belligerents, Alex is simply upset that people can compete with him. He’s tried to construct a complex theory to obscure this simple fact, but when all the nonsense and sophistry is stripped away, it’s the same old song we’ve heard over and over. Though presented falsely, the true “rivalrousness” that is claimed is the same claimed by any monopolist. If others are allowed to compete, my income might decline. This no more establishes a property trespass than any other anti-competitive argument.

If you can sell me a box of faeries such we can both identify and count how many faeries are within, and we can both exclude others from the faeries in our respective boxes, then that sounds promising.

If we can add and remove faeries to boxes, such that several people (in a double blind test) count the same numbers of faeries in a set of boxes (containing differing numbers of faeries), then we’re pretty close to establishing the physical reality of faeries.

The trouble is, we need to distinguish between a ‘faerie’ (a piece of paper shaped like a faerie) and a faerie (a tiny winged humanoid creature, ethereal or otherwise).

You can substitute faerie with triangle, and similarly distinguish between the ‘triangle’ (drawing of) and the triangle (abstract concept). You can put drawings of abstractions in boxes, but you can’t put abstractions in boxes.

You can even substitute ‘intellectual object’, but again, you need to distinguish between its physical description and the imaginary abstraction.

If you reverse this process, you should see that you are effectively trying to argue that faeries are real, and that you believe in their existence.

That the concept of faeries has played a significant part in mankind’s culture is true, but this doesn’t make faeries real, nor property (copyright notwithstanding).

You can physically possess a physical description of an abstraction. You can imagine, but cannot physically possess an abstraction – though thanks to indoctrination by sacred state granted monopolies, many people like to imagine that they can and should be able to possess abstractions (they make do with ‘all physical manifestations thereof’, given the abstract plane is still inaccessible to them).

So, Alexander, do you believe in faeries?

See this:

http://homesteadip.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-mises-test-of-external-realitty.html

LOL. You’re obviously an anonymous coward, ignorant of Hoppe’s central point about rivalry, or worse, cognizant of it, and refusing to engage, as it obviously makes my point:

Rivalry is key to property. Not all property is productive capacity, but all productive capacity is property. When intellectual objects function as productive capacity, they are rivalrous, and rightly property.

You sound like a socialist to me. Change your screen name, and go post on DemocracyNow, or something.

LMFAO.

Being intelligent, we can think/imagine in terms of abstractions, and can conceive of a non-existent/abstract plane in which abstract ideas permeate. One might term this an ‘intellectual space’. However, if we start confusing the abstract with the real, and start believing that, despite a lack of physical power within the abstract plane, people have some kind of divine ‘right’ to exclude others from the abstractions they ‘homestead’ within that abstract plane (or ‘intellectual space’) then we join the ranks of what can be termed ‘religious nutters’.

It may be your shadow, but are you sure you can do what you want with it?

If all human beings are equal, equipotent, then none can gain nor lose any power they possess by nature – however much they think it might suit them. We have natural powers, natural rights as a consequence of being human beings. Being inherent, as shadows, these rights are inalienable. They aren’t handed to us by our parents in a bag for us to keep safely and sell only in the direst of circumstances. You may be thinking of state granted powers, ‘legal rights’, such as copyright and patent, that are transferable.

In contracting away one’s liberty, as much fraud is committed in contracting away one’s shadow.

Beware of any state or devil that has it otherwise.

On what philosophical grounds can natural rights not be contracted? Are you a libertarian? They’re my natural rights. Why can’t I do whatever the fuck I want to do with them? They aren’t yours. Nor are they the state’s.

You refuse to admit that your factory example fails as a factory owner can evict a trespasser from his property without concerning himself or herself with whether his or her “productive use” was being interfered with. One wonders whether you wouldn’t mind sneaking into someone’s apartment while they’re away on holiday as long as you didn’t interfere with their “productive use” and brought your own bed.

It’s interesting you mention the name Hoppe. I have suggested The Economics and Ethics of Private Property Rights to you. In chapters 11 and 13, Hoppe explains in great detail why the notion of rivalry can only involve physical property. You claim you’re writing a book but you haven’t addressed his arguments for this very specific claim or his definition of aggression being tied specifically to physical property.

Fine. I don’t really care to convince you through blog comments as you’re obviously wed to this notion of IP till death do you part it seems. To be honest, your reasoning is imprecise, poorly thought out, inchoate. I see no further reason to engage with you. You don’t seem versed in the literature of the philosophy of property, never mind your attempt to extend it to IP. So, I shan’t be waiting for your book and I shall now disengage.

That said, I wish you the best as a human being.

With all due respect, your “challenge” simply assumes its own conclusion. You’re asking how copying is a physical trespass. It isn’t. It is an intellectual trespass. If you assume that a thing must be physical to be property, then it surely follows that trespass must occur in physical space.

In my theory, trespass can occur in intellectual space.