INTELLECTUAL =/= PROPERTY

Author: 3RU7AL

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3RU7AL
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I don't believe ideas (Qualia) can be owned like property (Quanta).

Ideas have none of the essential characteristics of property and it is a category error to claim that ideas are property.

Even the term, "intellectual-property" is like a mind-trap that infects your whole world-view.

For example,


Your scathing critique is requested.
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Can't wait to get my free books, music, and movies.
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@Greyparrot
Here you go, [LINK]
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@3RU7AL
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you pirate intellectual property.

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The only people who get hurt are the ones who put all that time, effort, and money to produce the books, music, movies, etc.
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@Mopac
The only people who get hurt are the ones who put all that time, effort, and money to produce the books, music, movies, etc.
99.999% of the content creators are already 100% screwed by the publishers and distributors.
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@Mopac
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you pirate intellectual property.
I follow the law, even if it's logically incoherent.
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@3RU7AL
99.999% of the content creators are already 100% screwed by the publishers and distributors.

What a dumb statement. 100% screwed means the creators sign a contract for zero compensation.
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@Greyparrot
What a dumb statement. 100% screwed means the creators sign a contract for zero compensation.
Have you ever heard of Bill Finger?

If you think that copyrights and patents protect the original creators and PROMOTE innovation, you are sadly mistaken.
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@3RU7AL
Yah, Wikipedia says he was partially compensated, so not 100%

Superlatives are the tool of a person with a bad argument.
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@Greyparrot
Yah, Wikipedia says he was partially compensated, so not 100%
Partially compensated, no thanks to copyright law.

He dreamed up Batman - and got treated like The Joker.
Bill Finger co-created the superhero in 1939 and founded an empire worth billions of dollars today.
The cartoonist gave Batman the nickname The Dark Knight and invented the story of his parents being killed in front of him as a boy.
Yet for 75 years all the credit went to Bob Kane, Finger's friend who asked him to help on creating a rival to Superman.
Kane became a wealthy celebrity and when he died in 1998 he got an obituary in the New York Times and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
By then Finger had already been dead 24 years and was thought to have been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave. [LINK]

He couldn't even afford a funeral.  100% screwed.

And he's not the only one.  The media loves to barrage us with success stories, but we almost never hear anything about the people crushed by industry.
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@3RU7AL
Partially compensated, no thanks to copyright law.

Who cares? Why would you cry wolf with fake news by spouting 100%?

If you have an argument, you don't have to use fictional stats that are impossible. There's very few things in nature that are 100%
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@Greyparrot
Who cares? Why would you cry wolf with fake news by spouting 100%?

If you have an argument, you don't have to use fictional stats that are impossible. There's very few things in nature that are 100%
If I invented-or-co-invented a billion dollar character and got paid the equivalent of a minimum wage job for it and was buried in an unmarked grave, I'd consider that 100% screwed.

COPYRIGHT LAW DOES NOT PROTECT THE MAJORITY OF CONTENT CREATORS.
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@3RU7AL
No fam.

100% screwed is zero compensation.

Even fake news climateers don't say 100%.

They say 97%


Why so radical extreme absolute?

Stats are for scientific comparison.

100% is for religious dogma.
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@Greyparrot
If I invented-or-co-invented a billion dollar character and got paid the equivalent of a minimum wage job for it and was buried in an unmarked grave, I'd consider that 100% screwed.

100% screwed is zero compensation.
That sounds like your personal opinion.  Citation please.
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@3RU7AL
doesn't all property start out as an idea?


The law of intellectual property is commonly understood as providing an incentive to authors and inventors to produce works for the benefit of the public by regulating the public's use of such works in order to ensure that authors and inventors are compensated for their efforts.

(what made you think of this topic?)
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@3RU7AL
Ok then don't use statistical percentages when stating an opinion. Just say everyone gets screwed.

And you know how people roll their eyes when absolute terms are mixed with opinion like every and all...
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
doesn't all property start out as an idea?
When you grow corn, or potatoes, they start out as a seed, a physical seed, not a concept.

The seed is property and the plant is property.

The law of intellectual property is commonly understood as providing an incentive to authors and inventors to produce works for the benefit of the public by regulating the public's use of such works in order to ensure that authors and inventors are compensated for their efforts.
This is the lie they tell you to get you onboard.  Have you ever tried to patent an idea? (spoiler alert, you will get screwed)  Have you ever tried to copyright an idea? (spoiler alert, you will get screwed).

(what made you think of this topic?)
I realized the other day that I can barely write or think about anything that is not a corporate property and protected under copyright law.

Every time I talk about my childhood memories, I'm basically shilling for some mammoth corporation that crushes thousands of people just like me every single day.

Here's an example,


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@Greyparrot
Ok then don't use statistical percentages when stating an opinion. Just say everyone gets screwed.
99.999% of the content creators are already 100% screwed by the publishers and distributors.

I'm pretty sure I can say whatever I want whenever I want as long as I avoid ad hominem attacks.
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@3RU7AL
To say that something is "property" is to say that no one else but the owner can have or use it unless the owner decides they can. But this is necessarily a legal concept, because even in the case of physical property like a chair, anyone can acquire the chair by stealing it. Nothing within the chair itself says that it belongs to the owner. That's a societal decision, which makes the whole notion of property abstract. To say that a physical object is "property" is really to say that we as a society will *treat* it as "property". And clearly, things like songs and movies can be treated as property. All that's missing in the case of intellectual property is one of the justifications for property, namely that because taking away property from its owner deprives them of the ability to use it, it shouldn't be allowed. But it also deprives them of the ability to sell it, just like in the case of abstract ideas such as songs and movies. 
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The intangible nature of intellectual property presents difficulties when compared with traditional property like land or goods. Unlike traditional property, intellectual property is "indivisible", since an unlimited number of people can "consume" an intellectual good without it being depleted. Additionally, investments in intellectual goods suffer from problems of appropriation: a landowner can surround their land with a robust fence and hire armed guards to protect it, but a producer of information or literature can usually do very little to stop their first buyer from replicating it and selling it at a lower price. Balancing rights so that they are strong enough to encourage the creation of intellectual goods but not so strong that they prevent the goods' wide use is the primary focus of modern intellectual property law.[11] [WIKI]


The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide variety of intellectual goods.[9] To achieve this, the law gives people and businesses property rights to the information and intellectual goods they create, usually for a limited period of time. [WIKI]


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@dylancatlow
@3RU7AL
@3RU7AL:

Your scathing critique is requested.
No critique warranted. I agree with you.

@dylancatlow:

To say that something is "property" is to say that no one else but the owner can have or use it unless the owner decides they can. But this is necessarily a legal concept, because even in the case of physical property like a chair, anyone can acquire the chair by stealing it. Nothing within the chair itself says that it belongs to the owner. That's a societal decision, which makes the whole notion of property abstract. To say that a physical object is "property" is really to say that we as a society will *treat* it as "property". And clearly, things like songs and movies can be treated as property. All that's missing in the case of intellectual property is one of the justifications for property, namely that because taking away property from its owner deprives them of the ability to use it, it shouldn't be allowed. But it also deprives them of the ability to sell it, just like in the case of abstract ideas such as songs and movies. 
The concern here isn't whether the concept of property is abstract. The concern is whether the abstract should be extended to abstracts themselves (i.e. patents, copyrights, and trademarks.) Property is a device that resolves disputes over scarce resources; and "intellectual property" is nothing of the sort. It is abundant. Another concern is establishing theft. In order to establish theft, the property must be displaced denying its owner abusus and its usufruct. How does this occur when one, for example, downloads a song? Intellectual property law undermines itself in that its real purpose is to monopolize the capacity to rent intellectual content. It does not establish ownership. If that were the case, then once purchasing a song, for example, its owner (at least of that partitioned data which contains the song) should be able to do whatever he or she wants with it including uploading it to their computer and reproducing it so that others can listen. Denying that intellectual content can be alienated especially through purchase or willful trade while also denying your patrons the usufruct of the purchase is to deny said content is actual property. 

"Intellectual property" as its currently legislated is a useless attempt to "own" access and distribution of intellectual content at all times. It's like selling museum tickets or "sponsoring" an animal in need.
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@3RU7AL
"Unlike traditional property, intellectual property is "indivisible", since an unlimited number of people can "consume" an intellectual good without it being depleted."

This has to do with one of the justifications for enforcing of property rights, which is irrelevant to your claim that intellectual property is a meaningless concept. 

I would argue that there are at least two justification for having property rights, one of which you identified and another which I would call "the right to sell one's intellectual labor." Although illegally downloading someone's song doesn't deprive them of the ability to listen to that song, it does take away their ability to sell the music they produce. We as a society have simply decided that people should be able to sell their intellectual labor, just as they can sell their physical labor. There is nothing arbitrary about this.
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@dylancatlow
...it does take away their ability to sell the music they produce.
Uh, no it doesn't.

Napster and bittorrent have NOT put the music industry out of business, in-fact, their profit margins have been GROWING.
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@Athias
Intellectual property law undermines itself in that its real purpose is to monopolize the capacity to rent intellectual content.
They want to get paid every time you loan that movie or song to your friend, every time you play it at a party and every time you hear it in the backgroud of a home movie you upload to youtube.

I'm not kidding, I recorded a video of some friends dancing at a party and when I uploaded it to youtube it gave me a warning that any profits I earned from monetization would automatically be funneled to the copyright holder of the song playing in the background.  I don't even monetize my videos!

Reality is now copyrighted.  You don't even own your own memories.

And it makes me sick when people try to say that nobody will write books or songs in a world without copyrights.

Are you kidding me?

People have been writing songs and stories and inventing things for thousands of years without any sort of "intellectual-property-rights".
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@dylancatlow
Although illegally downloading someone's song doesn't deprive them of the ability to listen to that song, it does take away their ability to sell the music they produce.
No it doesn't. Owners of "intellectual property" can still sell their content even if it's illegally downloaded. If downloading content neither displaces nor deprives, then there's nothing to prevent said owners from at least attempting to sell their content. Proponents of IP claim that they are being deprived of the prospect of sales had they been the exclusive distributor. It's argued as an opportunity cost--i.e. the costs of foregone alternatives. You have to justify the regulated distribution less you engage circular logic (i.e. opportunity costs --> property right and property right --> opportunity costs.)

We as a society have simply decided that people should be able to sell their intellectual labor, just as they can sell their physical labor.
"We" decided nothing. Even if you were to indulge a consensus fallacy and argue that this alleged collective consciousness is appeased by consensus, there was never a public referendum on intellectual property. And this is purposeful. If there were a referendum, then "we" would have likely decided against it.

There is nothing arbitrary about this.
It is arbitrary when the government attempts to manipulate the scarcity of a resource by arbitrarily enforcing a regulation.
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@3RU7AL
Reality is now copyrighted.  You don't even own your own memories.
That's the slippery slope of arguments endorsing intellectual property. How does one lay claim to an idea when its fundamentally and infinitely reproducible?
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@Athias
How does one lay claim to an idea when its fundamentally and infinitely reproducible?
And furthermore, NOBODY can PROVE their idea is "ORIGINAL" (i.e. NOT just some combination of previous ideas).