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Comment by sk11001 | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

I don't even know what my personal stance on piracy is but the subject is clearly more complex than saying that theft applies only to physical objects.

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The fact that some powerful organizations are trying to complicate a matter does not make it complicated per se.

In my country the law criminalizing theft begins thus:

> Stöld

> Stöld beskrivs i 8 kap. 1 §. Stöldbrottet förekommer i tre allvarlighetsvarianter:

> * Ringa stöld (tidigare snatteri): 8 kap 2 § > * Stöld: 8 kap 1 § > * Grov stöld: 8 kap 4 §

> Skyddsintresset vid stöld är äganderätten. Endast lösa saker samt del till fast egendom kan ägas.

The third sentence defines property as physical.

Reading texts on international property rights it’s always quite clear what everyone is talking about. “Intellectual property” is sometimes mentioned as an aside with an extra caveat that it is not widely recognized.

Yes, but people are allowed to express a strong opinion on a complex subject without also specifically mentioning all the caveats and possible counter-arguments to their position.

By all means argue back and add the nuance you think is missing, but it's intellectually dishonest and lazy to just say "ah, but it's more complicated than that".

Uh, surely "I know it is more complicated but I will not mention that" is the lazy stance?

Posting to HN is not like writing a finalized spec or publishing an academic paper. It’s ok to ignore complicated edge cases and speak in generalities. Nobody expects commenters to 100% cover every issue with every post.

You’re like 12 similes deep at this point. Please just call things what they are.

I remember one RMS lecture that made me think. He pointed out that the so-called "intellectual property" doesn't really exist. What exists are certain laws, such as patents, copyright, trademarks and so on. Each of these recognizes the benefit to society of temporary restriction of freedom of others to use the ideas that were invented/transmitted by others.

You can just drop "intellectual" and there will be no fundamental change to the argument, it's only the name of the laws defining "property" that change.

You seem to be missing that my laptop existing is an objective fact rather than a logical argument.

Yes, but the association of that laptop with yourself as an owner is an abstract idea. Many mammals do not have such ideas of ownership as an exclusive right, though many will defend territory, mates, and offspring.

It can not be understated how foundational exclusive property rights are to modern society and technological advancement. Since at least the Magna Carta it’s considered a human right. The US Declaration of Independence almost enumerated property as an inalienable right in place of the pursuit of happiness.

How could I have forgotten: the idea of personal property is also essential to Jewish law, predating the Magna Carta by another 2,000 years. That’s at least 3,000 years of at least a portion of humans placing value on private property.

Yes, but that's true of IP, too. And the importance of property laws in general doesn't make them less of an abstraction.

I updated my earlier comment to point out much earlier property laws. As best I can tell, copyright laws are around 500 years old, and about 230 in America. They were always written to give the creator a limited monopoly, unlike property, which is in perpetuity. Personal property is typically not considered to have the wide public value or cultural impact that ideas have.

There’s definitely a deep philosophical discussion to be had here about what value governments provide in return for your tax dollars on property that in reality they allow you to do certain things with, insofar as any human can claim to own any piece of this planet. In the end, it usually boils down to paying for them to defend it from invaders and anyone trying to take it from you, so think about the tax like a protection fee that entitles you to call up guys with guns to make whoever is trying to break that government’s rules about what you can and cannot do with that property you pay tax on stop. Consider US military strength (perceived and actual, as far as we can even measure that) vs rest of world, same with property values and wages in the US vs other places.

> Consider US military strength (perceived and actual, as far as we can even measure that) vs rest of world, same with property values and wages in the US vs other places.

While I agree with your comment, I think the last part is only partly true. The military strength of a country doesn't necessarily correlate with the property values and prices - it is enough to compare, say, Switzerland or the Netherlands with Russia or China. Rather, it is an intricate next of various factors that constantly change.

I’d highly recommend reading the 1840 banger * What Is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government* by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of Property is theft! fame.

No, you can't. Property exists. You can replace the word intellectual with "personal," "private," "public," etc. But removing it does not work. Property is not a legal fiction. Who the property belongs to is.

> Each of these recognizes the benefit to society of temporary restriction of freedom of others to use the ideas that were invented/transmitted by others.

I'd say that in the context of intellectual property the correct word would be 'postulates' not 'recognizes'.

Benefit to society is hard to proove or measure. It's implied. What's very easy to measure is a benefit to minority of rich people at the expense of the society.

If you want to know how bullshit intellectual "property" is, ask the simple question of who owns the personal information the ad company collected about me?

Of course, the ad company owns it, because of their hard intellectual work of collecting it.

Me? No, why would I own information about me? What logic of property is this?

If you come to my restaurant isn't in my info that you walked in my door, sat at my table, ordered my food? Why do you think it's your info? When two interact both sides get to remember the interaction.

The question is not if you can "remember" it. That is not what ownership in personal information is about.

The question is whether you can __sell__ the information that I had three double cheese burgers and extra greasy fries to my health insurance provider.

You still own the information. You can retain a lot of all your restaurant visits and order history and sell that if you want to.

The question is whether you own information about their food choices that you can sell to a third party without even telling the customer it was collected.

On the one hand, it seems obvious that you have a right to observe, collect data, and sell it. On the other hand, ick.

Just ask TV and car manufacturers who collect telemetry about absolutely everything you do with their products and probably everything that happens on your connected phone and/or wifi network too.

Such things would use up the customer's (electrical) power for the company's profit in ways that were not intended by the purchaser. That is in addition to spying, which it also is.

Yes, and it's "ick" because that's the actual definition of a spy [0]:

> 1 : one that spies: a : one who keeps secret watch on a person or thing to obtain information

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spy

“Ick”? “Actual definition”? I think we’ve got more intellectual integrity than this.

But if I walk into a franchise restaurant with a camera recording, they'll kick me out while happily recording and selling data with their own cameras.

I always thought the weirdest cases were in genetic fields. Where the ip in question is violated by every single living person.

You are confusing what they think is justice with what some people have decided is justice.

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