> Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is
That is wrong. And it is easy to see there must be a problem with it. If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. If I in return copy your stuff, we both lose nothing and end up with twice as much as we started with. That does not sound like taking property at all, in fact it sounds good!
That really ought to be enough to seriously undermine the illusion of IP . . .
First ask: why do we have property? which is as much as to ask: why is it moral? Property is not an axiom of morality, it must be justified. Even more clearly so with IP, since it invents a kind of restriction where there is none in physical fact.
Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things. Property is good not because it gives to someone what is 'theirs', but because as a whole system, in aggregate, it is good for all.
(If we want a rational principal of morality, it is universalisation. Morals are codes of cooperation. They are justified as to how they affect some group. That is what is distinctive in moral rules: they are not rules for individual purpose, they are rules for all (if they do not suit all, why should all consent to them?).)
The Lockean proposition of copyright really only establishes attribution: it 'attaches' a particular thing to a particular creator/author.
But attribution alone does not justify anything much. I may have made a shovel, but that does not then give me a right to dig anyone and everyone's garden with it. Attribution of authorship is merely the 'location' of some possible rights; it is insufficient to set the limits of those rights on its own.
Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". For a rule to be moral it must make sense more widely than for its primary participant. It must work overall for everyone. That is what sets the limits to rights.
'Abstract goods' (i.e. the subjects of copyright) are nonrival. They behave fundamentally differently to material things. Use by one person does not deny another. It means the tacit assumption that some restriction similar to normal property is implied immediately falters. And that puts an end to the Lockean 'argument'.
And if even that is not enough, reconsider from your own view: those proposed 'axioms' of morality. Either personal sovereignty and property rights are equal or, more likely, personal sovereignty has precedence. Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property (and even though the IP 'owner' may be completely unaffected). Now either you have a deep conflict in those axioms or, more reasonably, IP must be overruled.
The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality, not of any kind of 'natural right'.
Ok, that's one part of property - it cant be copied. Been covered to death.
The other part is, people descended from apes have territorial instincts. This drives them to all sorts of behaviors. Some are very useful behaviors. Like creating things to be useful, yes, but also to impress others, create a reputation, gain value in the eyes of society.
If I create something like software, I still want it to be mine. Because that, in part, motivates the creation. Never mind abstract political arguments, you take my software for yourself without any acknowledgment to me, I get pissed. And probably stop creating it, go back to making shovels. Or at least stop showing it to you, since that just gets it appropriated for whatever you want, instead of what I want.
I don't work in the movie industry, which is its own can of worms since that product is Designed to be shared. I write software for particular purposes. And as it stands, I won't share it with anyone unless they properly pay for/acknowledge my contribution. Certainly not with folks with goofy arguments like "since you can't keep me from taking it, its mine!" Certainly not them.
There are so many wrongs in your argument that I have no option but to fall back to the internet pedant's way of arguing, which is to respond point by point, for which my apologies.
"If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. <etc>"
If something is property or not, is irrelevant to what happens when it is copied. What makes something property are the natural rights of the creator, in short - that ownership is justified through the labor of the body, over which the individual has ownership by axiom and the fruits of which are also the property of that individual.
"Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things."
No it is not, these 'greater good' theories are nonsense. Rights exist independent of their social context. Morality isn't just a tool to organize society, it exists irrespective of how people 'feel' about it or even whether there are people at all.
"Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others"."
Right, and this is where intellectual property is even 'more' or 'easier' to see as property than 'physical' property. One man's idea does not preclude another from making his own; there is no scarcity of ideas or expressions. So there is no reason to not make an expression the exclusive property of the author; nobody else is limited in their freedoms because if the original creator would not have made the expression, it wouldn't have existed in the first place. I don't see how you're supporting your argument with this part.
"Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property "
Yes this is faulty reasoning that I've had to put to bed several times here on HN, but I can't find my previous posts so I'll repeat. Freedom to do something only goes so far as long as that something doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom; of course my right to not be tortured infringes on your freedom to torture me. In other words, one freedom is always the other side of the coin of the prohibition of someone else to infringe on that freedom. I don't see how you can reasonably argue that freedom doesn't exist, because its very nature is that it is a protection against someone else's actions (those that infringe on the freedom being protected).
Besides, in your specific example it's not even telling others what they can do with their property; it's telling others (or rather, putting conditions on that that person can then choose to accept or reject) what to do with your property.
"The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market."
No it is not, and that's my whole point. For someone to own the expression of his or her ideas is perfectly reasonable and broadly accepted; and not (only) for utilitarian reasons, but also for fundamental moral ownership reasons. Which is why so many people feel wronged when a picture they took is used by someone else without attribution - a very common pattern, judging from the amount of blog posts about it.
Expressions of ideas represent the work of a creator just as much as a vase made by a pottery maker represents the work of that maker, and just like that maker is entitled to the ownership of the result of his labor, and any potential economic benefit he can gain from it, so are the creators and expressors (I think I'm just making up that word) of ideas. It's not because there are no practical ways of enforcing that ownership that the moral fundamentals change.
In all this you are glossing over what ownership really means (whatever that might be), and how that particular meaning is justified. It is inadequate to simply proclaim it all as some axiom. You need to explain it rationally.
Let us assume mixing of labour gives ownership. Does that mean the owner can demand everyone pay not just when buying the product, but every time they use it? or every time their descendants use it? or every time they merely think of it? That surely sounds absurd. But what makes that absurd and not lesser rights? Aren't they all fruits of the original labour? Wouldn't they all offer economic benefit to the creator? How are the limits set to what rights the creator should be given?
You speak of the objectiveness and deducibility of moral rules. That is fine. So deduce the rightness of payment-for-copies, as opposed to the wrongness of payment-for-thoughts etc..
Somehow you are really going to need to refer to the real-world and its effects on people. What else is more fundamental? and that people really care about? And if you are to stay within any kind of bounds of normal ethics, any rules must be somehow general or universalisable -- that is what makes a rule ethical.
(A Kantian demonstration of the immorality of lying really depends on two things: universalisation of lying as a rule, and the substance of what lying does. Something is found contradictory in general -- what? the actual effective features concerned.)
Just look at the facts of reality. IP imposes restrictions on a beneficial abundance (copyability), where there is no intrinsic need. It is logically possible to compensate people for labour with no restriction on copies. And if you are not interested in the actual effects, why propose rules that have actual effects? Why not simply say that creations are owned in principle, but that everyone need only acknowledge that, and not in any way change their behaviour? Real rules need real justifications.
That is wrong. And it is easy to see there must be a problem with it. If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. If I in return copy your stuff, we both lose nothing and end up with twice as much as we started with. That does not sound like taking property at all, in fact it sounds good!
That really ought to be enough to seriously undermine the illusion of IP . . .
First ask: why do we have property? which is as much as to ask: why is it moral? Property is not an axiom of morality, it must be justified. Even more clearly so with IP, since it invents a kind of restriction where there is none in physical fact.
Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things. Property is good not because it gives to someone what is 'theirs', but because as a whole system, in aggregate, it is good for all.
(If we want a rational principal of morality, it is universalisation. Morals are codes of cooperation. They are justified as to how they affect some group. That is what is distinctive in moral rules: they are not rules for individual purpose, they are rules for all (if they do not suit all, why should all consent to them?).)
The Lockean proposition of copyright really only establishes attribution: it 'attaches' a particular thing to a particular creator/author.
But attribution alone does not justify anything much. I may have made a shovel, but that does not then give me a right to dig anyone and everyone's garden with it. Attribution of authorship is merely the 'location' of some possible rights; it is insufficient to set the limits of those rights on its own.
Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". For a rule to be moral it must make sense more widely than for its primary participant. It must work overall for everyone. That is what sets the limits to rights.
'Abstract goods' (i.e. the subjects of copyright) are nonrival. They behave fundamentally differently to material things. Use by one person does not deny another. It means the tacit assumption that some restriction similar to normal property is implied immediately falters. And that puts an end to the Lockean 'argument'.
And if even that is not enough, reconsider from your own view: those proposed 'axioms' of morality. Either personal sovereignty and property rights are equal or, more likely, personal sovereignty has precedence. Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property (and even though the IP 'owner' may be completely unaffected). Now either you have a deep conflict in those axioms or, more reasonably, IP must be overruled.
The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality, not of any kind of 'natural right'.