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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

As others have pointed out, the natural rights argument is off-putting. It’s also unnecessary.

Don’t use the word “property” or “intellectual property” or any property based argument in discussing copyright. Even using the term concedes the point. Copyright is not property, it is a limited government-granted monopoly. Stick to that definition and don’t give any credence to “intellectual property is property “. It isn’t. You can discuss all other aspects of impact of copyright without agreeing that it is property.

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All property in my mind is a "government-granted monopoly", so it's confusing what distinction you're trying to draw.

This is absolutely true, but when you talk about government-granted monopolies you can discuss things in their specifics. Confounding the possession of physical objects with any sort of government-issued imposition of rules on other people's behavior usually clouds this issue rather than illuminating it.

Ownership of objects usually consists of restrictions on other people taking those objects from you or damaging those objects. When you remove the objects from this idea, it just becomes a restriction on other people.

"Property" is a natural concept since with physical objects you either have them or you don't. There may be many Teslas, but there is only one of your Tesla. On the other hand, digital content can be copied endlessly, without the original creator losing access to it.

> There may be many Teslas, but there is only one of your Tesla.

That isn’t a “natural” concept, it’s still a legal one.

NOT true at all. Consider (say) a particular banana, in the hand of a particular hungry gorilla. That banana is the property of that gorilla. This concept of property is quite natural, and baked into the instincts and behaviors of animals far, far more simple than even the bottom end of the primates.

Vs. even comprehending the concepts of copyright and intellectual property requires a very modern human education and worldview.

(But consider how many $millions are paid to a great many lawyers, contingent on their managing to convince a great many people that those two very different concepts of "property" are the same, and a certain famous quote by Upton Sinclair.)

I would say that banana is the property of the tree the gorilla "stole" it from.

And I don't think animals see this banana as "property of the gorilla" as you suggested.

I think they see it as "if I try to take this banana from that gorilla, I will get slapped"

The bananas weren’t stolen, they were sold to the gorilla in return for seed distribution services. The tree wants the gorilla to distribute the banana seed within a fertiliser package (poop) some distance away. And the gorilla wants calories, which the tree can endlessly produce using solar power. It’s a fair trade.

Didn't the banana plant (not a tree, technically) produce that banana using nutrients stolen from the soil, carbon dioxide stolen from the air, energy stolen from the sun, etc.?

Exactly: the whole system is based on theft, and should be stopped.

> That banana is the property of that gorilla.

is there a semantically relevant distinction between property and possession?

i might be inclined to have said "the gorilla is in possession of the banana" but im not sure about "property of"...?

"property" is a legal concept. I live in my apartment, but it isn't my property because i'm renting it. I can "have" food in a supermarket but that doesn't mean I can just walk out with it - it's only my property after I've paid for it. In both cases, property is only property when and how the law determines.

It means the right to benefit from the value of making copies.

It doesn't matter if those copies are made by pushing bits over the Internet or hewn into the side of a mountain by thousands of masons.

It's an access and use right, not a physical instantiation.

Copyleft, open source, CC-by-N etc don't change this or subvert the concept. They're simply ways of asserting that the benefit should be collective instead of individual.

This makes perfect sense for group efforts, but no sense at all for content creators who would derive no benefit at all if copyright didn't exist.

Either you believe in property and access/benefit rights or you don't. You can't believe in them selectively just because you want something and are terribly offended if you're asked to pay for it.

And if you don't believe in property rights - fine. Let's make everything collectively owned, including money. (Which is in fact just bits that can be pushed over the Internet.)

> Either you believe in property and access/benefit rights or you don't.

Information isn't property. Property is a concept we use to maintain order and peace around scarce resources. Information is not scarce anymore and never will be again, and applying notions of property to it has always been a misuse.

If you want to encourage the arts, then shorten the work week. People don't need to be incentivized to create art. You couldn't stop them if you tried. And we have more movies, music, books, television, photos, etc than anyone could ever hope to enjoy even in 10 lifetimes.

If you want to encourage basic research, give money to scientists and then get out of their way. People don't need to be incentivized to investigate the universe. You couldn't stop them if you tried.

If you want to encourage innovation, then make source code and blueprints for commercial products open source by law. People don't need to be incentivized to learn about and improve the tools they own. You couldn't stop them if you tried.

And artists wouldn't stop making money. Commissions don't depend on copyright. Neither do thank yous and more elaborate call outs to patrons. As long as an artist can make a decent living at some other job, they'll make art in the time left over that any would-be greatest free country in the world makes sure all its citizens have to actually be free in.

Assuming we want the world's best research by the world's best researchers for the public good, then we need to pay for their equipment, supplies, and workspace. And then when we want the worlds best trained graduates, we pay the researchers to teach them.

And as for innovation, that's not really something we need to incentivize at least right now. We have more technology available then we can keep up with. We don't need dishwashers with Bluetooth, we need dishwashers that you can pay the neighbor's kid 50 bucks under the table to repair, and you'll only be one of four people who paid them this week. Not to mention the gigantic leg up it will give to developing countries struggling to bootstrap their industries.

If you want to play around with patent law for businesses above a certain size (either by revenue, customer base, employee count, or whatever), then I think there's plenty we can do there to challenge big businesses to stay ahead of the curve while making sure small and maybe medium businesses keep nipping at their heels.

But at the end of the day, information is not scarce. So let's stop pretending that we need to manage it like it is.

What is preventing me from walking up to their Tesla and driving off with it?[1]

Yes, there are security mechanisms and social norms that would prevent most people from doing that sort of thing. Yet there are more than enough people out there who would gladly take exception to that sort of thing and gladly take the Tesla as their own. The whole notion of property rights is a social construct. We use governments to enforce that social construct. Until humanity can learn how to share things (rather than just take things), we are certainly better off for it.

Copyright is somewhat different in the sense that it is relatively easy to copy without depriving someone of their copy, yet it can still be viewed as depriving the creator of the potential value of their work.

[1] Don't worry. I don't drive.

> "Property" is a natural concept since with physical objects you either have them or you don't.

The word "have" is just a linguistic feature (in English, no less[1]), or (at most) a concept. It's not inherent in the physical world.[2]

The concept of ownership is ultimately a linguistic and/or social convention. (Some) humans choose to think in terms of ownership, but they need not do so.

[1] - which might not even be present in some other languages, or might not be as natural to talk about as in English

[2] - except to the extent that all thoughts might be argued to be physical, if they are considered to be in the brain and everything in the brain is physical

Other languages have words with equivalent meaning. Even animals have property they defend

in other words property doesn't exist because government grants it, government exists because everyone agrees its better than personally defending their property

> Other languages have words with equivalent meaning.

Some languages do. It doesn't mean that all languages do, and even in those that do the use of such language may not be as natural as it is in English.

> Even animals have property they defend

Animals do things that some humans may interpret as defense, and and that some humans may interpret as "property", but that doesn't mean that that's what animals are doing, much less that animals think of anything as "their property".

At a certain point, I can redefine your entire response as agreeing with me, hence obviating the need for a detailed reply.

> The concept of ownership is ultimately a linguistic and/or social convention.

Sure, but the GGP said they think of all kinds of property as a "government-granted monopoly". The linguistic and social conventions you refer to have nothing to do with government.

To some people property means something where we pour essence of our life. It takes a lot of effort to create digital content even though it can be copied endlessly.

At this point, no Tesla is truly your Tesla

Does property no exist in somalia?

Scarcity of tangible property exists in Somalia. The ability to have your property rights enforced may not.

Do you genuinely believe this or do you just approach property at large from a realist's perspective?

Governments can withdraw the right at any time, with or without compensation.

They usually don't without an exceptional reason.

But if they want to, they can.

Governments can say whatever they want. My question was rather that if the government ceases to provide protection to... my exclusive right to my wallet, are others free to take it? Would this be theft, liberation or recovery? What happens if I simply begin to assert this exclusive right? What would this phenomenon be called? Is it really the case individuals can not assert their rights without a governments backing?

  > Is it really the case individuals can not assert their rights without a governments backing?

doesn't the word "rights" itself presuppose a governing/arbitrating body?

No there exists natural/universal rights and legal/customary rights.

I should've left the quoted part out as its presumptuous, my bad.

Not really; physical property rights are a social construct. Sure, in many cases a government will help you enforce that construct with police and violence.

But in places of the world[0] where government doesn't have its hands (and eyes and ears) into everything, property rights are sometimes enforced on an individual level, if the social construct fails. You might point a gun at someone who tries to steal from you, and you might even pull the trigger if the threat of that gun doesn't deter them.

And conversely, there are communities (sadly not so many these days) where property rights don't need to be enforced by anyone, because the social construct is just that strong.

[0] Or times in the past.

This is not the US concept of property.

The United States views rights (including life, liberty, and property) as being natural, i.e. they exist in the absence of governments, and that government can only infringe on those rights to the minimum extent necessary to accomplish the tasks set out for it in the Constitution. Things have drifted quite a bit over time but that’s the foundational notion behind the US Constitution.

It’s really a remarkable document in that conceptually it makes the government subject to the citizens, not the citizens subjects of the government. If you read it carefully it says quite clearly “the government is allowed to do these X things, and nothing else, and by the way it is expressly forbidden from doing these other things that we didn’t give it authority to do but we know that they’ll try to do anyway so just no”.

This grant is given in exchange of publishing, in exchange to a fact that I made my work available to public.

I don't have to make my work publicly available. I could make it hidden forever or for long time, or to closely share it with a limited number of people.

I can compose a music piece, paint an art, or write a book, and never tell anyone about it. I can do it just out of a pure creativity interest, and without the need to make anything in exchange from the public.

In this case my creativity would be a property in it's very ultimate sense.

I believe that in it's very root the Copyright laws were established to offer something to creative people who truly don't need to be a part of the society, who make their creativity for themself out of a pure genius without the need to receive any reward for their labour. In exchange that they make their work available to public too, so the entire society would benefit from their creations.

This is the offer of the government that grants the author a personal monopoly to their creativity, but this creativity is a Property before it was published.

We can erase this offer, saying that one's work is not truly a property. Well, we can do so, but we can't enforce an author to give up of his property and make it publicly accessed whether we consider it a property or not.

"Natural rights" isn't being presented as an argument by Lemire.

"Natural rights" is being noted as a framing or validation that's used by defenders of copyright.

A limited time monopoly granted by government sounds like it should cost a lot more than it does.

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