Comment by hxa7241 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hxa7241 | Hacker News Reader

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> if you accept the premise that the author of a work is entitled to be remunerated for the production of said work

That is not the premise, that is the matter in question.

If it is simply assumed as the answer, nothing has been said.

As to the idea of harm here, it is not in the actions or materials themselves. It depends on assuming the particular law is the baseline, and then saying without that the person would be worse-off. That is effectively saying: people can make a living in a particular way because of the rule, and we have the rule because people can make a living in a particular way from it. This is a circular fallacy. It cannot be justified by itself.

Why is IP justified? -- as a rational argument, in terms more basic than the question itself . . . (having looked around a bit, there seems to be only one half-decent/plausible one: the standard economic one -- which is not really an ethical argument (and conspicuously lacks actual evidence anyway))

> Why is IP justified?

From an economic point of view, by trying to prevent something like the tragedy of the commons.

Since everyone can make copies if there is no ownership, the majority of authors have no incentive to make their works public. And since authors can figure this out before starting to work, there's less production of works than beneficial.

In other words: Nobody would have spend the money to make movies like Lords of the Rings, or whatever you fancy.

The free market argument applies in a world with ownership, too: Those who paid the price for a work are assumed to be better off, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to the bargain. If they would want works without ownership, they can always assemble, throw their money into one pot, and have works made for them.

Since they don't do this, an average, the incentive of having works with no ownership can't be that great.

You got to admit that every author is the possessor of his work, even in a world without ownership, since he possesses the first copy. So, the question is: How can you make him publish his copy?

> In other words: Nobody would have spend the money to make movies like Lords of the Rings, or whatever you fancy.

Sure. Like how nobody would write encyclopedia articles, operating systems, fiction, manuals, textbooks, etc, for free.

Ethically it simply comes down to giving credit where credit is due.

If you discuss a new idea that you have spent time formulating with a co-worker that is good for the company and the co-worker presents this idea to your common boss as their own and receive a promotion for it, is this ethically wrong?

Yes, that is wrong -- it seems covered by the ethics of lying/truth-telling (from Kant, it is contradictory: if lying were a universal rule, it would destroy the possibility of communication in general).

But IP is about more than just clear attribution. And clear attribution is not dependent on IP -- we can have it without the other IP features. So a justification of attribution is not sufficient to support IP too.

You haven't explained how they are different, what is the difference between a co-worker stealing your idea for personal gain and someone else in society doing the same?

In IP it's essentially about someone lying to society about the source of the idea.

The only difference I see is the organizational entities scope, but the ethic is the same.

IP is basically contractualized attribution.

Owning an idea as property is simply a societal contract that guarantee's you attribution for your idea.

you are pretending there is on difference between attribution of ideas and utilisation of ideas. I won't even explain why this is not true.

Where did I pretend there is no difference?

If in my example the company chooses not to implement the idea, I still deserve credit for the idea correct, not someone else?

Perhaps I would not receive a promotion because it was never implemented and proven to be beneficial to the company, but that does not make stealing an idea ethically fine does it, just because it was not utilized?

Not bothering to explain is just a cop out.

In IP it's essentially about someone lying to society about the source of the idea.

Right here. If I print a copy of Lord of the Rings and sell it, and there is no difference between my copy and the official copy. Then there has been no lying to society Tolkien's name is written on the cover an attributed as the author. Full credit for the idea has been given. In your example full credit for authorship was not given.

I think what he is proposing is to accept it as a premise because it makes intuitive sense, and stop making it so complicated. Really, where do all these ideas about liberty and harm come from? Our intuition, or rather, our conscience. If you want to go really fundamental, why does harm to human beings matter at all?

What was said below about IP ethically being about attribution was pretty close to the mark, in my opinion. It just makes sense for people to have a right to control what they make, physical or otherwise, and to go too far beyond that seems to me to be dangerously over-thinking the issue.

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