Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

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Intellectual property laws steal and misappropriate property - not protect it! My use of "your" idea doesn't exclude your use of that idea. There is no conflict of property.

According to the reasoning behind IP, if I chop some wood I should have to ask the person who invented fire if I can make a fire. IP is the idea that you own my uses of that wood, and get to tell me whether I can build a fire or not. You can then have a bunch of thugs take my wood if I even dare try to build a fire with it. Or if I do build a fire and use it to cook food, then the thugs also demand food.

The important part is that building my fire doesn't exclude you from building fires. In no way does my knowledge of how to build a fire prevent you from using that knowledge to build fires.

> That we have good and effective Intellectual Property laws. It seems one of the big lessons of the Industrial revolution was the right property laws. The principles behind patents and copyright law make sense in this regard. Its the specifics that have problems.

No, the principles don't make sense. IP is not based on the same principles as property. It doesn't even share the same legal history. Copyright law originated from the church attempting to regulate and control the printing presses. Copyright shares more legal history with censorship than anything else. Early copyright laws in England were even referred to (correctly) as "monopolies."

> The analogy to physical property is worth following more deeply

There is no analogy. Ideas aren't physical things. My use of "your" idea doesn't exclude your use of that idea. There is no conflict of property.

> Software should be copyright.

No, I have the right to use information as long as that use does not exclude others from using it.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it simply hands power to those who already have other forms of monopoly or property.

Intellectual property increases freedom by creating a form of property that individuals can create without needing to own a scarce resource. People can become property owners simply through usefully employing power of their intellects.

If you dislike this form of property, then you must articulate an alternative way to divest power from those who hold other forms of property, otherwise you are merely a defender of landowners, governments, corporate monopolists and other vested interests.

> If you dislike this form of property, then you must articulate an alternative way to divest power from those who hold other forms of property

I don't follow. Why do my arguments against intellectual property depend on some your unstated arguments against owning any property at all?

I'm left to assume you support the decision in this court case, because it's perfectly consistent with the reasoning behind copyright and patents.

Your arguments against intellectual property don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in the world where other forms of property exist and give rise to power. An argument for or against intellectual property is an argument about who and what should be accorded power.

A corrupt court making a poor decision has nothing to do with the reasoning behind copyright and patents.

>My use of "your" idea doesn't exclude your use of that idea

It can and does exclude me from certain uses of that idea. For example, if my intended use of that idea involves profiting from selling a good/service incorporating that idea, but my target customers decide not to buy from me specifically because you are using that idea. Sure, I can still use the idea in many other ways, same as you can use your land for many other things even whilst my sheep are grazing on it, and what was your wood for other things even after if I've burnt it to ash, but your use of my idea has reduced its value to me. All property is monopoly rights over something, and yes, all forms of property rights can be abused; that in itself is not an argument for their elimination.

The greater violation of liberty is preventing many entities from using an idea rather than a single entity losing the opportunity to profit from an idea.

Especially because a fire inventor being deprived of profit is not what is happening. What is happening is someone uses a broken system to register their idea of cooking rabbits after watching other people cook different animals. He is then given exclusive rights to cook rabbits, and he goes directly to extort shells and shiny rocks from the guy two caves down who has been cooking and trading rabbits for years now.

If we cannot have patents without "scan-to-email" extortionists we should not have patents. Creating an incentive to do no B2C business because it is more profitable to sue other companies for using obvious ideas is contrary to the intended purpose of the patent system anyway. Either get patent examiners that can do it properly, make it dirt cheap to challenge a patent, or shut it all down.

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