11/comments 2021-09-27 06:32:01 +0000 Comments on 11 Thank you so much Dennis and Logan, I'm a big fan of both of your work and I really like this FAQ you wrote. Both of you changed my mind a lot, I'm really enjoying reading A Window on Intelligence and ever since I heard Logan on the Do Explain podcast, I've been gobbling up Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises books. My question is this: What about intellectual property? Property rights make good sense and I really like Hans-Herman Hoppe's argumentation ethics... but does all this apply to the ideas that one creates? It seems like to successfully copy an idea it has to be re-created in the person that does the copying (using their own computational resources), so I find it hard to believe when people say that an idea has been "stolen". Information doesn't seem scarce in the same way matter and energy is. If I copy the computer code that you created, you are still free to use it yourself, meaning I didn't take it away, right? But then, if intellectual property isn't a valid concept, is it okay for me to just pirate all software at my hearts content, so long as I can get away with it? Or on the other hand, if I was to ever publish software myself (which I plan to do, hence the question), would it be morally reprehensible for me to attempt to publish this software under anything but the most liberal open source licenses possible? I suppose it must be okay to keep secrets, but would it ever be okay for me to demand that people pay to use my software if they can just pirate it? Can I really say that they have stolen it from me, or does this not apply here? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. 2021-01-26T15:53:51Z Hi Amaro, Thank you for the kind words. You're right that you cannot own an idea. To own a pattern of information is effectively totalitarian, because it would imply that you have a property right (partial or otherwise) over every other information-carrying medium in the entire multiverse. Many issues around copying software and ideas have already been solved in some interesting cases, such as stand-up comedy. There are no laws against stealing someone's jokes (nor should there be). Still, comedians police their own and ostracize those whom they think are repeating jokes that other comedians had created. As always, the process is fallible, and sometimes joke 'thieves' get away with it, and sometimes someone is wrongfully accused of 'thievery'. But mistakes are inevitable whether there is a government or not. Also, there are ways to monetize one's creation even in the absence of IP laws. In fact, without IP laws, creators would be more inclined to solve just that problem. Amazing how creativity is unleashed on a problem when coercion is off the table. I'll also say that it's not even clear that there's more innovation under an IP legal order. Think about the additional legal costs on people who might be sued for accidentally 'copying' someone else's work. That alone will inhibit creative endeavors. I tried to be brief, but I highly recommend Stephan Kinsella's short book, Against Intellectual Property - https://cdn.mises.org/Against%20Intellectual%20Property_2.pdf 2021-01-27T19:05:46Z Isn't it a bit ironic that the Mises Institute has a copyright notice on page 3? > Copyright © 2008 Ludwig von Mises Institute 2021-01-29T07:14:14Z Thank you so much for taking the time to answer and sharing "Against Intellectual Property", it took me a moment but I did end up reading the whole thing. I found it to be very persuasive and a great aid for thought on the subject. I am generally convinced that IP should not be enforced, but there are some implications to this that I am still struggling to wrap my head around. I would love to read your thoughts on this (Logan or Dennis, as I guess that both of you would have interesting things to say on the subject). If IP is illegitimate, what are the implications of this to things such as plagiarism, privacy intrusion, media and software piracy etc.? Can we maintain that such things should be simultaneously conceived of as both immoral as well as legal? Or are they, perhaps, not even immoral? Should comedians really be outraged for having their jokes 'stolen'? I'm genuinely unsure. Talking about plagiarism, I ran into this article by Temple accusing Dennis of plagiarising Temple in Dennis's book A Window on Intelligence. The fact that I had found that article (I won't link to it here, I don't want to give the guy any traffic) by looking up his name on Google precisely because I ran into a bunch of citations mentioning his name in the book didn't really lend Temple much credence when it came to his accusations. I had never heard of the guy until stumbling upon the citations that Dennis had bothered to include in his book. Mentioning this here might not amount to much more than gossip, but I did think that was very curious and I was wondering what was up with that. Is Temple just an unusually bitter person? His article was pretty hard to read, filled with righteous indignation and vitriol as it was. Anyway, to bring this back to my question: Would Dennis have been wrong if he hadn't cited anyone and if so, why? I’m starting to doubt that the common attitude towards accreditation is very useful, at least in as strong of a form as it is commonly held. I have read both of David Deutsch's books, for instance. His ideas appear a lot in A Window on Intelligence, but I wouldn't have been able to acquire all my understanding from them if I hadn't also read them in the context in which they appear in Dennis' work. Accreditation or not, writing that book would still have been a feat of creativity, even if it could be well described by saying that it is merely an aggregate of other people's ideas (I don’t happen to think that that is an apt description). Accreditation or not, it would still be the best book on the subject I have ever read, and I have read a few. Don't get me wrong, I think there are plenty of good reasons to give people credit, many of them are actually in the author’s own interest, but I think a demand for accreditation is a bit like a demand that people say please and thank you in every day interactions. Doing so may be polite and proper, but not doing so is hardly a severe breach of morality that should be punishable by, for instance, being expelled from one's university. I have a feeling that attitudes towards software piracy and intrusions on privacy should be similarly downgraded in terms of moral urgency. What do you think? I realise that this is quite far off topic now, so if you'd rather discuss this elsewhere, feel free to reach me via amaro@amarokoberle.com 2021-02-15T11:32:09Z Following [a suggestion](reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/muih42/libertarian_faq/gv6j9vk/), I have changed the following passage > Then there’s the issue that nobody has ever given a *moral* explanation for why it would be okay to employ coercion against peaceful people. to say "*non-refuted moral* explanation" instead. As suggested, "there has been plenty of moral philosophy dealing with that, starting with Hobbes and Rousseau. Whether the theories are satisfying or not, they do exist." Likewise, the following sentence that used to say > Arguments usually concentrate on certain outcomes that may seem desirable, but it is never explained why coercing yourself there is okay. has been changed to > Coercion does not *solve* problems—it just steamrolls over one side of the argument. 2021-04-20T20:05:30Z