Intellectual Freedom and Learning versus Patent and Copyright (by Stephan Kinsella)

[stealthswimmer]

This was an awesome lecture. Was glad to be there. :D

[lukeev]

Great video Nielsio, thanks for posting :)

[swu880]

inventioncity(DOT)com/patent-w­ars-oracle-sues-google-and-the­-wright-brothers-solution(DOT)­html

[swu880]

/watch?v=Tsp-p1L9wuQ

watch?v=LI7moMzwF8g&playnext=1­&list=PLD78E0054B62D3E23



[swu880]

the very essence of learning&development&research is the ability to copy and emulate. hell could you imagine a world if no one was able to copy and emulate others without first seeking permission from just about everyone else?  The very notion of "intellectual property" would overturn and deform the real property rights of others

[swu880]

figure out the way to make a banana pie and neither of us is really without loss. The very act of speech & communication requires that ideas be none scarce. My words i can say and pattern in whatever pattern i wish. You can copy them too. And even if you copy them 1000 times, neither of us is without loss. Now please note i am not saying we should not recognize speakers or "originators" but rather u can copy -

[Buffalo122333]

Your intellectual property communism will have the same result as property communism, poverty.

No IP rights will result in utopia?

That's what communists always say and they always have tons of intelligent sounding reasons to back them up, but it still never works.

Why bother to create when it will be stolen from you? It's not stealing you say? Most people will feel it is, they won't create entertainment and the only technical progress will be in areas that can be kept as industrial secrets.

[GermanInvestor]

@Buffalo122333 "Your intellectual property communism will have the same result as property communism, poverty."

Exactly.

i guess the task is, on how to define IP in the austrian way: To protect and to serve the progress. And i think here we can learn from the handling in the different countries (e.g. comparing german&US patent and copyright laws).

[GermanInvestor]

problem to discuss about IP with opposers is, that most of them have simply no clue about how current laws in gerneral work and also dont own any IP. That is like discussing with a communist proletarian about property.

Fact: the traditional IP laws (and the task is to improve those) are much more useful than a 50page EULA from M$.

[Rcwatson83]

@hashishin13 I didn't say we needed private property. I took those as quotes from the speaker and questioned his logic on that issue.

[GermanInvestor]

even i gave a thumb up for the speech, i dont (fully) agree in the logic. As others said: e.g. I write a nice novell, so others can enjoy it, how do _I_ benefit from it and not just only the guy who "steals&print" it?

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor Well you enter into a contract with the distributor and that way you both benifit. They cant know what youre gonna write so they need to mutually work with you in order to make money. And youd find it very hard to print up your own books and distribute them. Just imagine the amount of money and effort you would have to go to in order to print up and distribute a book youve wrote. Then imagine having just create those means the risk you would take getting someones book out there.

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "Well you enter into a contract with the distributor"

and whats about the end-customer/buyer/reader? Everybody who buys a book would need to enter into a contract, before opening the book? Sorry, but thats a BS just like purchasing M$-Windows acknowledging their "EULA".

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor But yet again not everyone will have the ability to print and distribute your book in their name. Besides just like comedians who steal jokes get dissed, authors who steal materials also get dissed for unoriginality.

And presently look at the internet. Theres a PDF of just about every book written on it yet plenty of people still buy real books. Mises's Store gives them all away(pdf) and yet sells 1000s. Check 'em out.

The ability to distribute at zero cost is here VIA internet

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "not everyone will have the ability to print..."

i bet there will be chinese printers happy to sell it for have the price as its being printed in america....

"And presently look at the internet...."

looking at the looting, stealing and murdering does not make it right either.

and i really have a problem argueing a topics against the obvious "wrongs", just in order to fulfill an ideology (in this case "anarcho-austrian-capitalism")­.

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor " bet there will be chinese printers happy to sell "

And where will they do that? In China. Its not a market we in the west are exposed to anyway. The Chinese wont be physically stealing wealth from anyone but creating new wealth.

"looking at the looting, stealing"

You missed my point there. Point was the opportunity is currently here yet people ignore it. Mises found that they sold more books after they started giving away them for free. Counter intuitive but true.

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "And where will they do that?"

no, in e.g. the US, since you would abondented the copyright.

"You missed my point". No i dont miss the point. what the mises institute does is completely different. they want to spread an important message.

In my example i want to make my living as a good writer, without relying on donations. And i really belief that this is a fair will, of an honest profession.

(i am not a writer in real life, but an independent programmer...)

[NicosMind]

@Ge Anyway never mind all that. This IP limits us on innovations and advancing technology. It stops manufacures from making products and under cutting competitors which keeps profits high and limits the amount of products sold in the market.

And then theres other things IP is pushed onto like human genes, medicines etc. Do you think its right for a company to make 5, 10 times or more on certain pills that another company can under cut? Whats better for humanity as a whole? Ideas used to be free

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "This IP limits us on innovations"

i tell you (since you are obviously not in that profession): if i dont get paid, i either wouldnt do the job, or i would start to inject some really nasty copy protections (what i personally hate, since i also pay for software even privatly).

so, what would _you_ prefer: shitty copyprotection or being "honest" by yourself?

[Hashishin13]

@GermanInvestor You are using the english language, and someone invented each of those words, so if you really believe in intellectual property you should really just stop speaking :P

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "Do you think its right for a company to make 5, 10 times or more on certain pills that another company can under cut?"

you are starting to argue on jealousy. i thing this is not really an austrian argument.

and if you ask me, if this is right? Mises would probably say, thats the free market, encouranging others to either reject the product or to invest into inventing an alternative.

[Hashishin13]

@GermanInvestor Look at it like this, Charles Darwin came out with his book about evolution, and like the pill patent all he was doing was describing something which already existed. How can you claim that he should be the only one who could describe evolution? How can you sy that Pfizer has the sole right to produce a compound that any of us can make?

Pfizer made it's name out of english letters, so I guess it must be flagrantly violating the rights of the guy who came up with those letters?

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor Lets look at a couple of examples. Who invented the phone? It was several people but why should AGB be the only one who profit off it? He cut out all competition and profited handsomely. If there was competition consumers would have far more choices and cheaper phones.

Who invented the Airplane was it the Wright Brothers? Yet again it was many people yet the wrights sued and battered all competition. The Wrights profited and everyone else suffered

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind invention has nothing to do with patent. patent granting is different in every country. patents in the US are the dumbest in the world.

ANYWAY: That has nothing to do about the acknowledgement of IP property.

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor Of course it does. If it wasnt for patent laws people like Innocenzo Manzetti, Johann Philipp Reis, Poul la Cour and Elisha Gray would have been able to compete with Graham-Bell on a device that they helped develope. Ever heard of the saying "Standing on the shoulders of giants"? Is it right to not allow man to use is genius to further development? What a disincentive that is for advancement in the world. Not allowing people to compete or develop

Hashishin13 did a good post

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "Not allowing people to compete or develop"

to copy&paste is "develop"?

an opponents patent is a challenge. Either you find a way to get around technically or to combat legally. But to reject IP from the basics at all (not asking how to improve the situation), is a communist argument.

By the way:how many patents in how many country do you hold to fell competent in these questions? Looking at your channel, i assume not many.

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor "to copy&paste is "develop"?"

I dont understand that. And youre calling my arguement communist? Really? Well youre arguement is corporatist. How about the IP laws for the human genome? How long does a company get the sole right to keep a patent for anything? Just say some big oil company buys up the patents for all alternative energies. Is that fair and just? Isnt engineering just another form of science?

IP laws are monopoly laws. Do you approve of all monopolies?

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "youre arguement is corporatist. "

oh really? i am not a corparatist, or should i say, i am not a corporation, still making my living from creating and owning IP.

"How about the IP laws for the human genome?"

How about _you_ proving this BS in terms of laws or granted patents?

AND HOW ABOUT ___YOU___ PROVING THAT THEREFORE THE LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE SHOULD BE TO ABOLISH IP?

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor Still not denying that theyre monopolies. And if i have to explain to you why a monopoly is bad then theres no hope for you.

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "Still not denying that theyre monopolies."

is property a monopoly?

i guess austrian people say yes, communist people say no.

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor Funny the guy giving this speech sounds very much like an Austrian to me and if you go to MisesMedia all of their IP lectures sound the exact same. Im not talking about stealing physical property here as in a communist state, but preventing free people from using their private property to do what they want with just like a communist country.

If i have a patent on a spoon i suppose its ok for the government to break into your house and arrest you for it?

You sound very Austrian

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind so you dont believe in IP? but you belive in freedom of contract? so how do you like the idea, that with any kind of product you open, who will be obliged to sign a >>>>50page contract?

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvestor What a ridiculus comment. I suppose youre just trolling now. The industrial revolution wouldnt have happened with IP laws(not to the same speed) and the countries that introduced them last had technological advances that outstripped its competitors. Wait till you see Chinese manufacturing out competing itself.

What would the world look like if it was only Ford that was allowed to build cars? Do you think cars would be as good as they are without competition?

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "and the countries that introduced them last had technological advances that outstripped its competitors."

LOL!!! you should study the history who introduced them: France, Austria, Germany & England. And by the way: almost nobody applies for patents in Africa today (and in most of these countries they dont exist, so wheres the progress?).

Oh and your dumb Ford story: Carl Benz patented the "automobil", did it do anything about the progress?

[NicosMind]

@GermanInvesto That would be Ford analogy and it just proves how good it is whenever people ignore patents doesnt it?

Africa is ristricted due to corporatism.

You support monopoly rights so i guess that makes you far more of a communist than me. At the very least a corporatist or someone whos in favor of crony capitalism.

And the LAST places who introduced them was places like Switzerland, and England's IR happened largely due to a free market.

My Q about Ford wasnt about patents re-read plz

[GermanInvestor]

@NicosMind "If i have a patent on a spoon i suppose its ok for the government to break into your house and arrest you for it?"

comments like that show me that you have no idea about patent laws. you are just a communist anarchist distributing some propaganda, misusing the austrian ideas.

[Houshalter]

@NicosMind Ya sure, why not? Immagine if I invest incredible time, effort, and resources to produce some invention of great value to society, and my neighbor rips it off and sells them for just the cost of the materials involved. Now I'll never recover my losses, have no incentive to come up with any new ideas in the future, and he is essentially profitting off the product of my labor and resources without my consent.

[Houshalter]

@NicosMind sure, why not? Immagine if I invest incredible time, effort, and resources to produce some invention of great value to society, and my neighbor rips it off and sells them for just the cost of the materials involved. Now I'll never recover my losses, have no incentive to come up with any new ideas in the future, and he is essentially profitting off the product of my labor and resources without my consent.

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - On the contrary, you DO have incentive to come up with new ideas in the future. The first person to come up with any new invention is able to get their first market share at selling it and building their reputation as being the original developer of that concept.

Intellectual "property" on the other hand ensures that you have no reason to produce and improve upon your idea; you've essentially made competition illegal. Anyone who has a way to improve it can no longer do so.

[Houshalter]

@HexTest "The first person to come up with any new invention is able to get their first market share at selling it and building their reputation as being the original developer of that concept."

That is what patents garuntee. Otherwise I only have as much of incentive to be the first one to produce it as it takes for others to copy it, which could be very short if non-existent in many IP related fields. Like writing a book, within 24 hours anyone can get it for free online, and a week in print.

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - "That is what patents garuntee."

You don't need a patent to be the first person to come up with an idea. If anything it only increases the amount of processing efforts that you must go through to even allow it to hit the market.

If the originator of an idea must use the threat of fines or imprisonment to keep others from replicating and improving upon the idea in question for their to be any incentive to produce it, then why has the open-source movement been so successful?

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - "Like writing a book, within 24 hours anyone can get it for free online, and a week in print."

Funny you mention this, the speaker in the video actually wrote a book on IP and released it on the web in PDF form for free. He gets his money through speaking engagements on the topic (like the one in this video), not by making it illegal for anyone to repeat a particular arrangement of letters and other symbols. Same with musicians, release the mp3s for free and charge for concerts.

[Houshalter]

@HexTest I actually read it awhile ago. If he wants to release it for free, that's fine, but why should he expect everyone else to do the same?Not every book writer of every subject can make money from speeches, and those themselves are not directly compensation for the book itself.

My biggest problem with it is that he didn't elaborate much on the incentives for people to innovate without IP, and he admits IP is basically a contract, but since it can't be enforced perfectly, it doesn't matter.

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - "...why should he expect everyone else to do the same?"

Because there is no legit reason for why someone should be able to partially claim ownership of everyone else's property by saying you cannot arrange it in a certain way that happens to be copyrighted.

"Not every book writer of every subject can make money from speeches..."

Indeed, not everyone has the talent to do so. That doesn't give them the right to sue anyone who arranges letters and symbols a certain way.

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - "...and those themselves are not directly compensation for the book itself."

Could you ellaborate?

"My biggest problem with it is that he didn't elaborate much on the incentives for people to innovate without IP..."

This is where our discussion comes in. There are plenty of ways to profit off a work without having to acquire a total intellectual monopoly on the same thing. Concerts, speaking engagements, ad revenue, Resumes, etc.

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - The alternative is we make it so the holder of IP has no incentive to improve upon it or apply it in any way because they themselves have made it illegal for anyone to use property of their own in that same manner. Why bother to improve a device of some kind when you hold total market share on it and everyone else is forbidden from using it in some way of their own?

[Houshalter]

@HexTest if the improvement creates more value, people will be willing to pay more for it, and you increase your profits.

If I sell you a drug on the condition your won't take it, reverse engineer it and start selling that version of it, how is force not justified if you turn around and break that agreement?

[HexTest]

@Houshalter - I agree with that first paragraph, and that if someone improves upon the idea of another this will be reflected in greater profits.

As for the second, I disagree. What you describe isn't an "agreement," it's still the same bogus right to claim a portion of someone else's property. Under the contractual arrangement that you describe, would someone be allowed to concoct that same drug on their own without buying the drug in question?

[Houshalter]

@HexTest the point is, the only way that would happen is if a contract was broken in the first place. It's like if I contract a ship to carry my goods down a river, and it stops on the side of the river and gives everything out to the crowd for free. Shouldn't I be able to take back what the crowd took?

[swu880]

@Houshalter

There is a huge difference between the real physical world and the world of ideas. In the former, everything except for VERY few things like gravity are scarce. If I have an apple, then you do not have THE apple. If I own the apple, then i can have access to the value which i may be able to exchange for it. However, intellectual world is not scarce! This is key! ideas are everywhere and generally unconfined. I can figure out how to make a banana pie and you can also

[Houshalter]

@swu880 but then there is no incentive to innovate past personal benefit.If I "invent" a banna pie, and agree to share the recipe with you for a cost and under a promise you will also keep the recipe secret, and you go out and release it for everyone, how is that fair?Of course, I could get compensation from you if that was part of the contract, but in the real world there are so many people I may not know who is responsible, and even if I did, they probably couldn't pay the full amount anyways.

[swu880]

@Houshalter

please see the links posted:

/watch?v=D--N8FF3eVQ&feature=r­elated

And learn some damn history! patents had deep deep roots in monopolies & piracy privileges. 'Copyright' originates from censorship & control of publication.

[masonkiller666]

@Houshalter This implies you deserve something for your labor. You aren't owed something for your good ideas.

[Houshalter]

@masonkiller666 if I make a contract with someone to not release my ideas in exchange for sharing them, I am owed something when they go and do otherwise.

[masonkiller666]

@Houshalter True, and that works when protecting trade secrets, however when selling products it's a business model that can't practically work.

[Houshalter]

@masonkiller666 that's the point. IP is just a simpler more practical way of enforcing contracts in an environment where the standard method would be impossible.

[masonkiller666]

@Houshalter Arbitrary laws that did not come about from any first principles are dangerous and once again can only function under a state

[Houshalter]

@masonkiller666 contracts are "arbitrary laws that can only function under a state"?

[masonkiller666]

@Houshalter No, IP laws.

[ndyt]

This guy just builds straw-men and then tears then down.

[Rcwatson83]

@nielsio For example a 100 million dollar movie, what if someone just copies it and steals all their hardwork and reaps the benefits? Same goes for medicine, a processor architecture, music, etc etc. I'm still against copyrights though because they are not apart of a free economy. Anywho that was way too long and confusing of a discussion that didn't even touch on the point of why copyrights exist.

[Rcwatson83]

@nielsio Alright, I think he's including more things then he needs into this arguement and misses the point of copyrights. Copyrights are meant to encourage people to invest time and money into an idea that might takes years to accomplish soo theoretically no one would want to invest all that time in money if someone could just copy their idea and reap the benefits of all the research and money that went into developing it.

[Rcwatson83]

@nielso I'm trying to finish the rest of it so I can establish a more conscious conclusion. My initial reaction was a gut reaction. It could be mistaken. That's why I said I don't like and I feel. I wasn't asserting my statements as facts.

[Rcwatson83]

@nielsio "For a productive use to be made in the cake example someone has to own the spoon" "Property rights set up objective borders to who owns things" "There could be thieves we could theoretically set up crime prevention techniques"

I stopped watching it there but I think it's making some huge, albeit rather taken for granted notions.

So why does one person own one thing more then another? What supports this crime prevention system? How many laws are we going to make?

[Houshalter]

@Rcwatson83 decisions have to be made about the use of finite resources. If a person creates a resources, they aquire the right to do that. If they trade for it from another person, they aquire the right to do that. Who owns resources that aren't created is a bit harder, but generally the first person to find value in it and use it is granted ownership.

[momerath42]

@Rcwatson83 - Your description of Stephan's logic, or lack thereof, is completely without substance. Spell out his logical gaps, or you're guilty of more than a gap in your "argument."

[Rcwatson83]

Sorry for the typos, but I just feel this man is displaying false confidence in his idea by attaching them to simple more agreed upon human concepts. Consequently it's kinda a manipulation technique. We all breath, so thus breathing is a limited resource, thus we all need private property, thus Texas is better than the other states, and blah blah blah under the guide of "scientific".

[Nielsio]

@Rcwatson83 Which line of argument exactly is it that you don't agree with?

[Hashishin13]

@Rcwatson83 Your wrong. We don't need private proeperty in air for the obvious reason that it isn't scarce, meaning that there is enough for everyone, no matter how much they breathe. If you owned a submarine on the other hand, it might be logical to charge people for it.

There is enough air for everyone, and breathing more doesn't mean others have to breath less. Just like when someone reprints someone else's book it doesn't prevent the author from printing, or owning the books he prints.

[Rcwatson83]

I don't like how he made some simple logical inferences in a very detailed manner about some basic human tendencies, then all of a sudden starts asserting huge logical assumptions as a certainty and jumping around to create is larger piece of propoganda... I mean I know we can't be ridiculously detailed about everything but the man using but the man is pretending to be scientific by using one scientific evidence and then falsely comparing it to everything else. Just saying...

[carcabe]

I don't like intellectual property rights because it prevents me from getting what I want and it does not enhance the common good.