Intellectual Property is Not True Property

As a software developer, this is a delicate subject for me. A major deterrent to my recent acceptance of anarchy as a viable and possibly necessary path toward human prosperity and scientific and cultural advancement has been this very issue.

I think it is yet another point of agreement between individualism and other ideologies, proponents of which have been, at least with regard to this topic, miles ahead of my own erstwhile tenets.

I simply cannot deny that the impossibility of enforcing such a concept as intellectual property without government interference relegates it to the intellective garbage heap.

Intellectual Property is Not True Property

Not only is the grant of ownership rights over ideas ridiculous, it is also, in point of fact, impossible. When intellectual property laws undertake to grant such ownership, then, the result as a practical matter is that those laws do ultimately apply themselves to scarce material objects — just not in any defensible manner. Intellectual property privileges simply confer upon their beneficiaries the prerogative to coercively prohibit others from using or arranging their rightful personal property in otherwise peaceful and permissible ways. Patents decree that an individual cannot employ known laws of physical nature together with her own property in ways particularly set forth in special government documents; they therefore necessarily endow their holders with partial ownership rights over others’ property.

greencmp
As a software developer, this is a delicate subject for me. A major deterrent to my recent acceptance of anarchy as a viable and possibly necessary path toward human prosperity and scientific and cultural advancement has been this very issue.

I think it is yet another point of agreement between individualism and other ideologies, proponents of which have been, at least with regard to this topic, miles ahead of my own erstwhile tenets.

I simply cannot deny that the impossibility of enforcing such a concept as intellectual property without government interference relegates it to the intellective garbage heap.

As a software developer myself, I find your take on this interesting.

Not to say you think one way or the other based on your statement above, but do you feel that when either you or I come up with an idea for software, that we should be paid for it because we share it with others?

I personally think we should be compensated for the ideas and problem solving approaches through logic that we bring to the table. To me, this inherently smacks of ownership being exchanged from one person or entity (corporation) to another

But, I also do see your point. To expect it to remain the sole property of an entity afterwards is practically a fools errand.


Interesting point you bring up.


- SN

reply to post by greencmp


Interesting topic. ...The way the laws are written (in Canada at least), your employer owns anything in your head that's related to the work you do for a full year after you leave their employ. Meaning you can't work in your own field until your knowledge is obsolete and unmarketable. Hmmm.

soficrow
reply to post by greencmp

 

Interesting topic. ...The way the laws are written (in Canada at least), your employer owns anything in your head that's related to the work you do for a full year after you leave their employ. Meaning you can't work in your own field until your knowledge is obsolete and unmarketable. Hmmm.

I have always been a contractor and I actually prefer to work through agencies. The reason being that I can make them handle all the minutiae and my employer is the agency and not the end user. If anyone asks me to do anything other than create or edit software, and I do mean anything, I refer them to the agency.

When I get the standard intellectual property rights agreement, I simply ignore it and present them my own in which I authorize the end user to use the software for their own purposes indefinitely but may not resell any of it. I do get a kick out of the look on the faces of everyone involved when I hand them my own agreement for them to sign and discard their irrelevant document. No one ever says no because my agreement is perfectly reasonable.

Through private contract and no other mechanism can such things be handled equitably.

Intellectual property is not true property...hmmm. So apparently, you feel abstract data should be a socialist market?

SadistNocturne

greencmp
As a software developer, this is a delicate subject for me. A major deterrent to my recent acceptance of anarchy as a viable and possibly necessary path toward human prosperity and scientific and cultural advancement has been this very issue.

I think it is yet another point of agreement between individualism and other ideologies, proponents of which have been, at least with regard to this topic, miles ahead of my own erstwhile tenets.

I simply cannot deny that the impossibility of enforcing such a concept as intellectual property without government interference relegates it to the intellective garbage heap.

As a software developer myself, I find your take on this interesting.

Not to say you think one way or the other based on your statement above, but do you feel that when either you or I come up with an idea for software, that we should be paid for it because we share it with others?

I personally think we should be compensated for the ideas and problem solving approaches through logic that we bring to the table. To me, this inherently smacks of ownership being exchanged from one person or entity (corporation) to another

But, I also do see your point. To expect it to remain the sole property of an entity afterwards is practically a fools errand.


Interesting point you bring up.
- SN

As I mentioned above, my own licensing agreement is more than adequate. Of course, I do insist on being paid.

If I have to use any of my prefabricated modules, I am protected by the agreement.

So far, I have managed to avoid any work on retail products but, that will eventually come up. At that point, I am sure that I will have to adjust my strategy. I anticipate handling it in the same way as any high risk circumstance, I will require greater compensation.

AfterInfinity
Intellectual property is not true property...hmmm. So apparently, you feel abstract data should be a socialist market?

Not at all, I explain above how private contracts have been, for the most part, sufficient to protect my reusable code from being used to compete with me. Some of it has been though, it is unavoidable.

I just have come to understand that monopolies in cahoots with government have used this mechanism to prevent clearly superior products from making it to market and that is a loss for everybody.

But, more importantly, it is simply impossible to actually protect an idea from being used by anyone else and is therefore unproductive effort with respect to practical utility.

The other problem with intellectual property, to include patents, is that they channelize all new things into a single, most easily controllable, point of production or dissemination.

An inventor should naturally be able to publish or produce his new thing, and make a fortune, with out competition from huge multi-industry mega corporations, which were grown by the centralizing of the economy since 1900 or so.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

I would slightly alter that to say that even those mega corporations, if not allowed to use violence or coercion, could not effectively compete with a small company with a necessarily smaller footprint and considerably less overhead. I say this because I have been pondering what to do about gigantic monolithic corporations who appear to be nearly as bloated as the federal government itself.

If we could cut off the support and defenses of the established state sponsored monopolies by simply deprecating those state policies, a proper balance is inevitable.

This is an important point because it removes the need for any antitrust actions which would be theoretically necessary otherwise. Also, it relieves any concern over foreign state sponsored industries.

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Semicollegiate

I would slightly alter that to say that even those mega corporations, if not allowed to use violence or coercion, could not effectively compete with a small company with a necessarily smaller footprint and considerably less overhead. I say this because I have been pondering what to do about gigantic monolithic corporations who appear to be nearly as bloated as the federal government itself.

If we could cut off the support and defenses of the established state sponsored monopolies by simply deprecating those state policies, a proper balance is inevitable.

This is an important point because it removes the need for any antitrust actions which would be theoretically necessary otherwise. Also, it relieves any concern over foreign state sponsored industries.

I don't know as much about the anatomy and physiology of conglomerate corporations as I should. I assume that a huge company that has bought up competition and various other companies has some mutually supporting capacities, like selling raw materials or capital at cost to its various other parts.

That said, a smaller company could always start up with better capital goods than an older company, that still needs to get a return on the older less profitable machinery it owns.

The tighter credit is, the more advantage the new company would have.

Like during the War Between the States. If the Confederacy could have built a few competent iron clads, the entire Union Navy would have been nearly useless as a blockade force.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

You are hitting on a major issue (state sponsored monopolies) that needs to be addressed if we are to regain our free and open economy and stave off the coming dark ages.

Assuming we begin to restore productive competition by eliminating state interference, I had previously imagined that the solution could be some form of antitrust action. This solution lacks simplicity and is not obvious or easily described. Also, it just doesn't make sense that state intervention could be the solution to state intervention. There will always be state sponsored companies (or states a la USSR) in the world economy so, the solution must allow for it. As Mises said, the USSR was participating in the world market whether it liked it or not.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that the free market truly does heal itself so to speak. I would be willing to bet a large sum that the 'healing' is going to be extremely painful but, we already knew that.

Hopefully, by that time the insolvency of the current fiat US dollar will be apparent even to the average person so I expect an independent currency to have already emerged, hopefully backed by gold. The problem is that when we officially adopted the gold standard it was already the primary currency so, no big fuss.