Comment by kazagistar
12 years ago
To be fair, all property law is just as fictional. I didn't agree to not trespass or use items that other people claim belong to them. I didn't agree to the papers they hold saying that I cannot go for a joyride in my neighbors' car.
The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area.
There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
Scarcity is what sustains private property, as a way to control conflicts when multiple people want to access rivalrous goods. Intellectual property is a collection of disparate concepts, but if we take copyright, there's no similar justification for it.
See Against Intellectual Property, by Stephan Kinsella: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
Right, some kind of solution for scarcity is needed, but any particular property system is merely a possible implementation. And while "scarcity" is not a problem solved by IP, there are other problem that IP does indeed solve.
All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
I'm not sure why you feel I would disagree with that, or why would that contradict my position. I'm not a believer in natural laws.