It seems that your argument is generalizable to the inherit-ability of wealth.
Ideas cannot be owned; they are like fire and can only be equally shared. We assign monopolies to make publishing feasible, not to ensure the wealth of two or three generations that live off of the creativity of their grandfathers without contributing anything themselves. If the grandfather wants this to happen, he can convert his copyright to real money while it lasts (and afterward too, though it's harder without the monopoly, of course) and then transfer that money to his children. He shouldn't be able to hold ideas hostage from the people that he shared them with, however.
Here's an alternative ethics. Nontrivial ideas are not natural resources but are created by an author; just as a physical object is the property of its creator, ideas are an intangible property owned by their author. The author can deny others access to his ideas, simply by not-disclosing them (keeping them secret); she has intrinsic control over them. IP ownership is not a monopoly "assigned" by some intangible collective; it is the natural property of its creator. Publishing rights are not an artificial benefit created by government to subsidize authors (out of benevolence); they are contracts between an author and publisher, transferring specific and limited rights (not ownership). Publishers can be forced to pay the author royalties, not out of utilitarian reasons, but because they voluntarily agreed to such terms (the author having natural leverage, e.g. she can refuse to disclose his ideas).
>Ideas are assigned owners
Did you have that thought, or did the social collective assign it to you?
This is not an alternative ethics (if indeed this is an ethics instead of a system of legal ownership), it is the _dominant_ ethics.
>they are contracts between an author and publisher, transferring specific and limited rights (not ownership). Publishers can be forced to pay the author royalties, not out of utilitarian reasons, but because they voluntarily agreed to such terms (the author having natural leverage, e.g. she can refuse to disclose his ideas).
Except in a market where ideas are not scarce and the publishing _is_ success, the creatives are exploited and their so-called property rights a joke.
We all understand the _theory_ behind your 'natural property,' the ownership of something you create. We just don't agree with it anymore, because in many cases it has failed and in the future it will not be relevant.
>Did you have that thought, or did the social collective assign it to you?
Missed it. He's pointing out the semi-fictional nature of idea ownership, not claiming originality for his ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good
For many things, creating artificial property is a good solution, but it is of course a compromise more than real property ever will be, due to its nature.
Can you name the algorithm used to distinguish "trivial ideas" from "nontrivial ideas"? I'm waiting... What about an algorithm for determining when "nontrivial idea A" is equivalent to "nontrivial idea B"? We're still foundering on the haltering problem here, I think... OK, now, what about an algorithm to determine when idea A is "useful"? Ah, you need... society for this one I think... Indeed, you "natural" idea contains an excess of unnatural contortions...
Even more. Let's suppose you really could determine all these not-algorithmically-determinable things and the criteria was simple. Any string X with length greater than N is "nontrivial".
What happens when every string of length N+1 is copyrighted/patented/etc? The 2^N+1 string then are contained in every possible further nontrivial idea and the owners of them can extract rent perpetually. Things are not quite at this level yet but we're getting closer (the state of video should give one pause).
The patent system only makes in a world in which you have a finite number of industries performing a finite number of useful tasks. Then the social context lets you distinguish useful and useless inventions. Even then, the GGP's point of nontrivial works naturally belonging to their inventors is balderdash. What you can say, all you can say, is, with physical inventions in a fairly static world, that society can somewhat coherently grant people monopolies on inventions for public policy purposes.
But in a world where every activity, including the modification of the physical world, is approach "information processing", the whole patent system is become logically unsupportable. In this information processing world, a patent is government granting people deeds to an ill-defined terrain. And it's fairly clear our world is getting closer to that, is it not?
And with a ill-defined terrain, common sense about what's useful, common usage, etc just go out the window. All patents approach the status of troll-patents.
At least that doesn't deny you the right to rediscover them.
Property isn't really property if you can't sell it or give it to someone else. Liquidity is very important to many people.
While undermining this will have little impact on the generation of a lof of crap, it will absolutely destroy the "long tail" for many valuable things that are receive little recognition when they are created.
I do recognize that we should only be handing out monopolies when it absolutely benefits society. These ridiculously long copyrights only exist because our legislators have put their own interests above the national interest.
Essentially, it's a little bit of the state's right to restrict other people which has been given to you for reasons that supposedly wise-people consider important.
One might argue that it is almost the opposite of private wealth.
The government doesn't grant the descendants of social security recipients the right to their forebears' pension either. By your earlier reaoning, the state is "depriving" the pensioners of ability to sell a perpetual income stream to a third party. (yes, this is sarcasm...)
That's what living is for.
The privileges afforded from wealth certainly give you a leg up. Take it, or get out of the way.