Two points against Intellectual property laws

[2OuterJitsu]

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So it's OK for you to engage in aggressive acts? "Hey, you might get hit by a falling rock, so I feel justified in mugging you!"

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As apposed to “hey what are you doing on my land I WAS HERE FIRST!

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Huh? Who's granting patents in ACland?

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The same guys providing security? Someone who isn’t fat from bread and numb from circuses, and actually wants to <u>produce</u> something of a value determined by the market?

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Og has done nothing to infringe upon you. You have no right to restrain his activities that do not aggress against you. You have no right to exclusive trading in any given commodity, because to do so requires restraint on both buyers and sellers, neither of which have consented to such restraints.

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So I’m entitled to your apples because I haven’t consented to be restricted? The almighty arbitrary determiner has some seriously wide ranging powers at least they’re appropriately arbitrary.

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Wait, did I miss something? Is there some government agency passing out unclaimed land to anyone who wants some?

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No there is some private agency giving patent/land owners some recourse for those who infringe on their rights.

Sorry but I don’t speak picture but I’ll try. Pythagoras invented what? Newton invented the telescope, he’s entitled to compensation from anyone who profits from his device without his permission for some arbitrary period of time (admittedly arbitrary, but no more or less arbitrary than the concept of property). Everyone is entitled to reproduce Salk’s vaccine because…? Einstein invented what? Maybe your confusing discovery with invention? How does one compensate Newton for discovering the third law of motion?

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WTF? What patents are being bought in ACland? How are these patents used to prevent other people from doing stuff?

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The same way security firms apprehend other criminals?

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I have no idea what you're talking about. Selling glory? Market-sanctioned violence? Inventors wishing to compete will have to come up with their own ideas - that's part of competeing. Why is someone else required to do their homework for them?

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That in fact <u>is</u> my entire argument. Their OWN ideas my precious.

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What was he robbed of? He got $10 million??

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Thank you oh mighty arbitrary determiner of market value.

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It helps some people, at the expense of restraining others.

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Oh I get it now. The consumer is the most important half of the market equation. As long as he gets his bread and circuses, who cares by what manner those breads and circuses are provided. I mean after all, give any plebe a babillion dollars and sooner or later presto chango he instantly transmographies into Michael Dell, or Henry Ford. And of course sooner isn’t better than latter because there is no way to predict how soon is soon. Additionally: the rights of the producers of bread and circuses, meh screw them greedy CAPITALISTS bitches.

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Well, first of all, copyright doesn't place restraints on those who may come up with an idea independently. Patents do.

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Which is why “with my last breath, I spit at thee” – Kahn Noonian Singh. Is correct.

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Apples are clearly scarce. If you take an apple from me, I no longer have it.

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By what manner of sorcery did you <u>have</u> this apple?

Intermittent wiper: &lt;10 cents
your apple: priceless

Oh almighty arbitrary determiner of value please accept these burnt offerings I beseech thee…

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And labor is also scarce. I only get one shot at laboring for a particular hour. If someone else appropriates that labor, I miss out on it.

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Your labor is scarce because it’s the labor of the almighty arbitrary determiner. Labor is not. I wrote a great deal more than what you decided to cherry pick “rebut”. Again my argument is not that patents create innovation, but that patents provide an incentive to innovate, by those without capital.

Why would any investor compensate an inventor? Because they signed a contract? Contracts can protect the ownership of things that can’t be owned? So slavery exists in ACland if there is a market for slaves?

[pvn]

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So it's OK for you to engage in aggressive acts? "Hey, you might get hit by a falling rock, so I feel justified in mugging you!"

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As apposed to “hey what are you doing on my land I WAS HERE FIRST!

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Land is scarce, although I'm not sure how land relates to that point. I'm sure you'll illuminate us momentarily.

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Huh? Who's granting patents in ACland?

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The same guys providing security? Someone who isn’t fat from bread and numb from circuses, and actually wants to <u>produce</u> something of a value determined by the market?

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Hmm. So I guess those deeds to tracts on the moon that some guy is printing up are valid too.

THe fact that someone prints up some piece of paper that says "Joe gets exclusive rights to sell ice cream cones" means nothing in a free market, since nobody else has agreed to be bound by such a decree. Who, outside of Joe and the grantor of such toilet paper, is going to value such?

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Og has done nothing to infringe upon you. You have no right to restrain his activities that do not aggress against you. You have no right to exclusive trading in any given commodity, because to do so requires restraint on both buyers and sellers, neither of which have consented to such restraints.

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So I’m entitled to your apples because I haven’t consented to be restricted?

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Huh? I think you're conflating about 12 different things here.

My decision to take flour, shape it into a cone, and put ice cream on top of it in no way aggresses against you.

My decision to take YOUR flour and put YOUR ice cream on top of it DOES aggress against you if I do it without your consent.

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The almighty arbitrary determiner has some seriously wide ranging powers at least they’re appropriately arbitrary.

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Huh?

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Wait, did I miss something? Is there some government agency passing out unclaimed land to anyone who wants some?

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No there is some private agency giving patent/land owners some recourse for those who infringe on their rights.

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No, I meant *right now, in the status quo*. Otherwise, what point are you making with your "OH NOES born too late, no land for you" scenario?

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Sorry but I don’t speak picture but I’ll try. Pythagoras invented what? Newton invented the telescope, he’s entitled to compensation from anyone who profits from his device without his permission for some arbitrary period of time (admittedly arbitrary, but no more or less arbitrary than the concept of property). Everyone is entitled to reproduce Salk’s vaccine because…? Einstein invented what? Maybe your confusing discovery with invention? How does one compensate Newton for discovering the third law of motion?

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How does one compensate him for discovering that putting lenses in a tube lets you see far away things? I don't know, that's for you and him to decide. It's not my problem.

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WTF? What patents are being bought in ACland? How are these patents used to prevent other people from doing stuff?

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The same way security firms apprehend other criminals?

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I have no idea what you're talking about. Selling glory? Market-sanctioned violence? Inventors wishing to compete will have to come up with their own ideas - that's part of competeing. Why is someone else required to do their homework for them?

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That in fact <u>is</u> my entire argument. Their OWN ideas my precious.

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If you agree that they can come up with their own ideas of how to compete, then they don't need coercive, pre-emptive, aggressive patents against others.

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What was he robbed of? He got $10 million??

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Thank you oh mighty arbitrary determiner of market value.

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What does market value have to do with anything?

What was he robbed of?

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It helps some people, at the expense of restraining others.

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Oh I get it now. The consumer is the most important half of the market equation. As long as he gets his bread and circuses, who cares by what manner those breads and circuses are provided.

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Wow you really like just making stuff up and stuffing it in other people's mouths. Looking at both sides of things rather than just your favored side is favoring your opposition?

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I mean after all, give any plebe a babillion dollars and sooner or later presto chango he instantly transmographies into Michael Dell, or Henry Ford.

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Interesting choice. Henry Ford didn't have a patent on the innovation that made him more money than any other - the use of interchangable parts and the assembly line. He massively increased productivity. And since he wasn't the only one able to use such ideas, the benefits to the rest of the population were magnified. Too bad we didn't deny the rest of the world the use of such techniques so old Henry could make a few more bucks.

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And of course sooner isn’t better than latter because there is no way to predict how soon is soon. Additionally: the rights of the producers of bread and circuses, meh screw them greedy CAPITALISTS bitches.

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This is good stuff. I'm not really sure where you're going, but it's certainly entertaining.

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Well, first of all, copyright doesn't place restraints on those who may come up with an idea independently. Patents do.

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Which is why “with my last breath, I spit at thee” – Kahn Noonian Singh. Is correct.

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More gems. Care to string these pearls together into something coherent? You've got these fine ingredients, I'm waiting to see what you're going to cook up.

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Apples are clearly scarce. If you take an apple from me, I no longer have it.

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By what manner of sorcery did you <u>have</u> this apple?

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I honestly do not understand the question.

It doesn't matter if I *steal* the apple or *buy* the apple, if I have it, you cannot have it. The apple is scarce, we can't both have it at the same time.

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Intermittent wiper: &lt;10 cents
your apple: priceless

Oh almighty arbitrary determiner of value please accept these burnt offerings I beseech thee…

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I haven't assigned any value to it at all. But don't let that stop you.

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And labor is also scarce. I only get one shot at laboring for a particular hour. If someone else appropriates that labor, I miss out on it.

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Your labor is scarce because it’s the labor of the almighty arbitrary determiner. Labor is not.

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No, labor in general is scarce. It's not rare.

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I wrote a great deal more than what you decided to cherry pick “rebut”. Again my argument is not that patents create innovation, but that patents provide an incentive to innovate, by those without capital.

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I haven't denied that. This isn't enough to justify aggressive behavior. And it ignores the disincentives it provides, too.

And if you feel I've neglected any of your brilliant insights, please bring them to my attention.

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Why would any investor compensate an inventor? Because they signed a contract? Contracts can protect the ownership of things that can’t be owned?

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I'm not sure what contract you're talking about. All the contract does is lay out the terms that the parties who sign it are agreeing to. We can write a contract that says I will pay you $10 every time you whistle Yankee Doodle. That doesn't say anything about who owns the song.

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So slavery exists in ACland if there is a market for slaves?

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Yes, exactly. And rich people eat poor people.

[AlexM]

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And labor is also scarce. I only get one shot at laboring for a particular hour. If someone else appropriates that labor, I miss out on it.

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IPS are the result of labor... you seem to be completely contradicting yourself here.

[pvn]

In a different thread, 2outerjitsu wrote:

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I'm a recent convert to AC, FWIW.... You cannot be both for liberty and an elite group (however selected) making decisions for others.... Tell me what entitles someone’s inability (liberty), to infringe on someone else’s ability (liberty). Don’t mistake freedom for the freedom to be right/succeed; it’s also the freedom to be wrong/fail. That is one of many reasons why any government is illegitimate, however small.

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this flies squarely in the face of what he has written in this thread.

So which is it?

[kniper]

pvn,

its very very difficult to discuss this with you. all you do is quote sections and troll. i implore you to write more than 20 words to someone's paragraph. answering everyones question with another question or silly one-liner conceived to try and make them look foolish is no way to debate. im sorry, but i dont even know wtf your argument is besides "patent is bad." try: "patent is bad because [enter reasoning here]"

[kniper]

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Being first to market is big advantage, true. It may be enough for big companies. What of the small guy? How does he create a distribution scheme to get his product out there?

That's his problem. You want to subsidize poor competitors?

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Who is subsidizing him? We are granting him a monopoly; the subsidy is so indirect i dont think you can call it that with a straight face. The point is patent helps avoid a situation where the only ones who benefit from an invention are those who can distribute it. incentive incentive incentive

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As soon as a big company saw it, it would be swept up with their version, marketed everywhere, done at low cost,

OH NOES LOW PRICES!

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stop [censored] trolling. you are taking this out of context. yes, while that product would be flooded in the markets at low cost, the point is that the development of another innovation like that might not come out because of lack of incentives. obv low prices are nice, but again, two words: incentive and freeriding.

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Im not saying you should be concerned about trade secrets. Im saying that patent helps facilitate free flow of technological information.



By placing restrictions on what people can do with that information? Where was the big problem with information sharing before patents?

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I dont think its accurate to say that patent lets someone sit on their invention.



Why not? It's verifibly true. Of course, one can sit on an invention without a patent, too. But with a patent, one can forcibly prevent someone else from implementing that idea even if the other party developed the idea independently.

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Ill deal with both these here because they are somewhat related.

As for the information sharing, i don't know for sure what the state of information sharing was before the implementation of patent law. I imagine very low; what incentive would one competitor have to share the inner workings of his invention with a competitor? However, I'm sure most inventions back then were not very difficult to reverse-engineer. For common household things information was probably easy to acquire, for big manufacturing type things, maybe more difficult but not impossible. Today, I think that information sharing would be very difficult to achieve in quite a few cases without patent. A competitor would have to reverse engineer some given product, and in the case of industrial machines, access to one in order to reverse engineer it might be very difficult indeed. This leads to the next point.

IN SUCH CASES the competitor may be forced to develop the product by themselves. Patent helps avoid what is a redundant use of resources in re-inventing something. Resources can then be put into technological ADVANCEMENT and not redundant R&amp;D. Granted it doesn't solve the problem where two companies simultaneously develop a product only to have one file for the patent first. But I don't think that this happens all that often.

I said that patent doesnt necessarily let you sit on an invention because of cases of compulsory licensing. However, even without that, it is inefficient to spend money securing a patent only to exclude all others from using it. You are going to at least want to license it. Even patent trolls license.

AGAIN, PLZ DONT TROLL. i would like to hear a longer, coherent argument from whoever

lol just thought pvn's title should be "patent troll"

[BCPVP]

I thought calling people trolls wasn't allowed anymore?

[pvn]

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pvn,

its very very difficult to discuss this with you. all you do is quote sections and troll. i implore you to write more than 20 words to someone's paragraph. answering everyones question with another question or silly one-liner conceived to try and make them look foolish is no way to debate. im sorry, but i dont even know wtf your argument is besides "patent is bad." try: "patent is bad because [enter reasoning here]"

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It's there. It's even in bold.

Patents are aggressive and non-voluntary. They place restraints on people without their consent. You can be restricted by a patent even if you develop the idea independently.

[pvn]

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pvn,

its very very difficult to discuss this with you.

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Thank you.

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all you do is quote sections and troll. i implore you to write more than 20 words to someone's paragraph. answering everyones question with another question or silly one-liner conceived to try and make them look foolish is no way to debate.

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Ignoring questions isn't helping your argument. If your argument can't withstand a few simple questions it's obviously problematic.

[pvn]

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Being first to market is big advantage, true. It may be enough for big companies. What of the small guy? How does he create a distribution scheme to get his product out there?

That's his problem. You want to subsidize poor competitors?

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Who is subsidizing him? We are granting him a monopoly; the subsidy is so indirect i dont think you can call it that with a straight face. The point is patent helps avoid a situation where the only ones who benefit from an invention are those who can distribute it. incentive incentive incentive

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Are you kidding? You're giving the patent holder free access to a *huge* force apparatus that keeps other people from competing with him. That's a gi-freaking-gantic subsidy.

The motivation is meaningless. Do you seriously think the ends justify the means?

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Quote:
As soon as a big company saw it, it would be swept up with their version, marketed everywhere, done at low cost,

OH NOES LOW PRICES!

[/ QUOTE ]

stop [censored] trolling. you are taking this out of context. yes, while that product would be flooded in the markets at low cost, the point is that the development of another innovation like that might not come out because of lack of incentives. obv low prices are nice, but again, two words: incentive and freeriding.

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If the product doesn't appear, oh well. That sucks, but assuming a conclusion (we need innovation XYZ) then micromanaging your way to it by coercing others is not a justifiable course of action. And while you rail against "freeriding" you advocate a system where patent-holders get to do exactly that.

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Quote:
Im not saying you should be concerned about trade secrets. Im saying that patent helps facilitate free flow of technological information.



By placing restrictions on what people can do with that information? Where was the big problem with information sharing before patents?

Quote:
I dont think its accurate to say that patent lets someone sit on their invention.



Why not? It's verifibly true. Of course, one can sit on an invention without a patent, too. But with a patent, one can forcibly prevent someone else from implementing that idea even if the other party developed the idea independently.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ill deal with both these here because they are somewhat related.

As for the information sharing, i don't know for sure what the state of information sharing was before the implementation of patent law. I imagine very low; what incentive would one competitor have to share the inner workings of his invention with a competitor? However, I'm sure most inventions back then were not very difficult to reverse-engineer. For common household things information was probably easy to acquire, for big manufacturing type things, maybe more difficult but not impossible. Today, I think that information sharing would be very difficult to achieve in quite a few cases without patent. A competitor would have to reverse engineer some given product, and in the case of industrial machines, access to one in order to reverse engineer it might be very difficult indeed.

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This directly contradicts your earlier argument:

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What of the small guy? How does he create a distribution scheme to get his product out there? As soon as a big company saw it, it would be swept up with their version, marketed everywhere, done at low cost, and the poor fool would be out of the market in no time.

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So which is it? Easy or hard?

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IN SUCH CASES the competitor may be forced to develop the product by themselves. Patent helps avoid what is a redundant use of resources in re-inventing something. Resources can then be put into technological ADVANCEMENT and not redundant R&amp;D.

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Oh wow. Not that. All sorts of competitive pursuits are "redundant". Should they all be forcibly eliminated? You're just a step away from a full-blown centrally-planned economy.

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Granted it doesn't solve the problem where two companies simultaneously develop a product only to have one file for the patent first. But I don't think that this happens all that often.

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Wait, I thought elimination of duplication was important. Now it's not?

And it does happen a LOT. Even for things that are huge leaps forward. Calculus was developed simultaneously and independently by both Newton and Liebnitz. And calculus is a lot more complicated than 99% of things that get patents. Cf. telephones.

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I said that patent doesnt necessarily let you sit on an invention because of cases of compulsory licensing. However, even without that, it is inefficient to spend money securing a patent only to exclude all others from using it. You are going to at least want to license it. Even patent trolls license.

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But they don't have to. And in fact, many don't. But if your argument really is about efficiency, then you're going to have to re-forumulate how you handle the two independent inventors scenario, since there's a huge amount of "wasted" effort there.

AGAIN, PLZ DONT TROLL. i would like to hear a longer, coherent argument from whoever

lol just thought pvn's title should be "patent troll"

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You sure throw that word around a lot. You should probably check the forum rules.