Intellectual Property Rights

"The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
-Article I Section VIII of the Constitution

I don't understand how people stretch and stretch the role of government so grossly beyond the limits of the Constitution, but say it has no business in one specifically mentioned element!

Intellectual property rights do nothing but provide income to one person for products that other people make on their own.

If company B is imitating the product of company A, then B still has to go through the labor of producing the "imitations".

I don't believe you are entitled to money that wasn't voluntarily given to you. No one who sells their own goods should be made to pay "royalties" to a supposed "inventor" or simply the patent holder.

The major difference I see between the obviously necessity for actual property rights and intellectual property rights is that while actual property, such as chairs, houses, cars, etc. are all scarce, while IP is not. So for example if I watch an episode of The Office online, they still have the episode and the ability to watch/share it, but if I steal Steve Carell's car, he is now forced to walk home.

Exactly. Very good point. :)

After all, if the product requires a lot of time and energy, it's likely that competitors won't be able to just rip you off and make the same kind of product or an imitator without high costs to themselves. This limits the amount of competitors. Plus, why would a company spend time making a ripoff version of a current product on the market rather than coming up with its own products? See my point here? Patents and copyrights just are a thing of the past.

I think it's a total myth to say that without patents and copyrights, ingenuity and innovation would completely shut down. Where's the evidence?? What society has operated without these things to prove that they had a very weak economy? I think folks are just overly cautious and afraid to take the challenge, so they make claims they can't back up. I mean, why don't we try a patentless society for a year or so? If it doesn't work, then we can go back. But I doubt it'll kill innovation.

I kinda think the idea of copyrights and patents is just sneaky protectionism, although we don't call it that. We have other terms for it like "intellectual property rights." Libertarians shouldn't confuse personal rights (right to life, liberty and happiness) with actually creating products or inventions andp utting them out there on the market.

If you ask me, once it's on the market, it's free reign. It's the community's now. If you wanna make money off it, great, go for it.

But if someone else wants to make money off of it or make their own version, that should be their right. I don't think if a person puts a product out there on the market that they alone should be allowed to restrict its sale. If this is a product that could better society greatly, we all should have a choice in the matter. After all, isn't that how the market works most efficiently, with the least regulations?

Economists deride a lot of bad regulations, but patents and copyrights they like?

Why would you doubt that the Government could hide something like that for so long....
They hid the fact that the Federal Reserve is a Private company...they lie about WMD's, the soldier go over thinking they will be taken care of when they get back and then the Gov't just casts them aside.
I have absolutely no trust at all anymore with the medical profession...Just because of what I have or my family has gone through. They ain't out to help anyone! I got more but I'm outta space