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I believe I understand what you're saying, but I feel we're talking about different things, so I may have miscommunicated my point. I'm not talking about ownership as recognized or enforced by people (in fact, I never used the word "own" or "ownership"). All I mean is that if something is over here by me, it can't be over there by you, because things can't be in two places at once.

On the other hand, the exact same spatial arrangement can be in two places at once (e.g. the state of bits on a disk, or the idea of a shovel, i.e. the pattern of a shovel as exemplified by two distinct shovels).

All of that's obvious. I think what OP was trying to suggest is:

Despite the obvious difference between physical things and ideas, we often treat them similarly (specifically, we treat ideas like physical objects). And perhaps that would seem a bit strange if we weren't so used to it.

I am similar unclear on where this supposed bright line sites but to try and steal man your argument a bit is it possible you looking for the distinction between excludable and rivalrous goods?

Just reading through, the distinction seems pretty obvious to me. It doesn’t reinforce several of my ideological perspectives, even contradicts some, but the distinction is plain as day. Physical things are subject to the laws of physics (can’t be in two places at once), idea “things” are much more ephemeral and thus much less restricted by those same rules (an idea can propagate basically infinitely and be “had” by basically all who wish to have it, barring arbitrary rules to the contrary). The former has concrete, immutable scarcity, and the latter only has scarcity people assign to it.

As a general rule we don't enforce copyright at the point of having an idea, but rather at the point of putting that idea into some sort of medium that can be transmitted to others, and then we enforce copyright at the transmission point. The transmission has concrete, albeit somewhat mutable scarcity.

The characterization that IP law is only intended to spur creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to balance the interests of the creator with those of society. And that balance is off, IP regulation has become a tool for rent seeking.

>The characterization that IP law is only intended to spur creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to balance the interests of the creator with those of society.

I will just note that characterization is a very American one, and that different cultures have different characterizations.

You are actually incorrect here as far as the US goes.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US constitution states:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

The whole constitutional purpose of IP law is to spur creative activity. The interests of the creator are only a means to this end. This has, unfortunately, been perverted by regulatory capture.

The creative effort comprising time and attention that goes into bringing a work into existence is rivalrous. That's what IP law aims to protect/reward. People can insist on pretending not to understand this every time the argument comes up, but it's at their own peril; the world is not going to undergo IP reform as a result of anyone misconstruing or misrepresenting the issue as if it's really about whether or not person A is deprived of their copy of work Z when person B makes a copy of Z for themselves. It's not and never has been. It's about encouraging creators by offering protections in the hopes that doing so will lead to more people opting to create.

Speaking as to my own opinion now:

I'm skeptical that "encouraging creators by offering protections" is much more than a rationalization. (And I'm not sure whether it's historically accurate, although that's beside the point.) It doesn't seem like the concept of intellectual property and its protection under the law have been effective at encouraging people to create things; they seem to be more effective at encouraging rent seeking. If we want to enable and encourage people to create things, we should pay them to create – not pay them to share something after they've already created it.

For example, we can pay someone to perform the labor to create something we want (contracts), we can finance their endeavours or subsidize their living expenses if we like their work (the patron model), and so on. In fact, we already do these things, but their effectiveness is limited because our current laws favor other business models.

And there's a wonderful reciprocity: if I pay someone to create something, not only do I get what I want, but everyone else gets to benefit from it too. And the things that other people pay to have created I also get to enjoy (and there are a lot more "other people" than there are "me").

[This is the visualization of a goal (or at least an alternative way of going about things) and an argument for its possibility. Unfortunately I can't claim to know its feasibility, how to get there from here, or even which tactics would be effective, but I hope to have good answers some day.]

“Incentives don’t matter” is usually a bad take.

The idea that patronage isn’t dominant because… it can’t compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.

And there’s an astounding burst of human creativity in the last 300 years. There are several factors you can attribute that to but the correlation with ip laws means you’re not going to have evidence that they inhibit rather than incentivize progress in the useful arts and sciences.

If there’s any empty rationalization in play, it’s yours.

> "Incentives don’t matter" is usually a bad take.

I didn't say that I thought incentives don't matter. (I was trying to say that I thought IP law isn't an especially good way to incentivize creativity, and that there might be better ways.) So I might be misunderstanding what you mean by this.

> The idea that patronage isn't dominant because... it can't compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.

Could you explain why it's not-even-wrong? I can definitely accept that I'm wrong, but I don't see why it's so misguided that it can't even be discussed, affirmed, or denied.

Today, I can (usually) make more money as a software developer writing proprietary software than I can writing libre software. If software couldn't be copyrighted, it doesn't follow as a matter of course that demand for software would plummet. If the demand remains, in this alternate world I ought to still be able to make a living writing (libre) software.

In this alternate world, I would necessarily be paid for the labor I perform (writing code) rather than making money by selling licenses or copies. So, if the only difference between our world today and this alternate world is the existence of software copyright, and in our world today I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies but in the alternate world I'd be paid for my labor per se, it seems fair to say that the reason I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies – and the reason why e.g. patronage isn't more dominant – must be "because we recognize and protect copyright the way we do".

That was my line of reasoning.

Agreed that you're talking about physics, but how does that translate into society?

At some point you have to move away from physical requirements. The barter system simply doesn't scale.

The monopoly on violence is a fundamental concept of state theory. Formulaicly, the people constitute the state and exert power based on democratic principles.

Since intelectual property rights do not reflect a democratic process and were rather restricted because they threatened the power of the estate, their merrit is questionable.

>Despite the obvious difference between physical things and ideas, we often treat them similarly (specifically, we treat ideas like physical objects). And perhaps that would seem a bit strange if we weren't so used to it.

ok but they way that we treat them the same are both constructs, we don't treat them the same in that if A has the idea you can't have it (in the same way that if A takes the bite of bread you cannot have that bite of bread), we treat them the same that if A has the idea they have a right to profit from it by selling you the idea in the form of a book etc. just as if A has the bread they have a right to profit from it by selling you a bite. And you don't have the right to take the bread from A just because you can.

As noted while it is physically impossible for an object to exist in two places at the same time it is the social construct of ownership that we transfer from physical objects to non-physical objects.

Okay. If all ownership is arbitrary, then definitely we can limit IP when its not benefiting society. IP is arbitrary and made up, just like everything else.

Calling out all property ownership as arbitrary doesn't mean IP suddenly deserves more protection. If anything, it gives more permission to be skeptical about its value to society. An IP law that prevents digital libraries isn't an outcome we desire, so... case closed, let's change the law.

You're arguing about whether natural rights exist, but regardless of whether or not there is such a thing as a natural right -- intellectual property is not a natural right. And getting rid of the entire category of natural rights just makes IP even more obviously not a natural right. It's not something that people are universally entitled to regardless of the social impact.

> The idea of "having", of ownership, is not natural.

> In the natural world ownership is defended purely by force or guile

There is a third view which is that human law is a continuum ranging from things we are genetically predisposed to expect as members of a social species to constructs which are mostly cultural.

For example, almost every human civilization has some prohibition on killing and stealing from other members of the community. These are more foundational than laws about how to dress or speak. Even communities of non-human primates recognize stealing as a transgression and may collectively punish a thief. So the idea of personal property has deep roots and is not exclusively human.

"Property" which includes constructs like probhibitions on copying what someone else has done without paying them tribute is an abstraction of personal property, which is much closer to an innate human concept.