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Comment by simbolit | Hacker News Reader

i would love to hear from our libertarian friends on what they think about copyright and the public domain.

Copyright (patents/intellectual property) is one of Benjamin Tucker's Four Great Monopolies[1] that give rise to monopoly capitalism[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker#The_Four_Monopo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism

i thought that to be the one obvious position. the other (imho) equally obvious position seems to be the following:

copyright is protection of intellectual property, and securing property rights is the prime reason for goverment to exist.

according to the second position (and taking opposition to the estate/death tax into account) it seems consistent with a libertarian position to argue for infinite copyright terms.

am i wrong? i am not a libertarian, but i try to understand you folks.

There are some people who have argued for infinite copyright terms or perpetual ownership over every utterance they make. Rand argued for IP, saying (roughly) "a man has rights to the product of his mind."

In general though, I think the modern consensus in Libertarian circles has fallen on the side of opposing or greatly limiting IP in general. See http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Intellectual_property for a reasonable overview.

That would probably depend on whether they were minarchist or anarchist libertarians. Minarchists would likely defend copyright with more rational time limits, whereas anarchists would contend that copyright is not rational or enforceable, and that artistic patronage is the only viable business model.

In either case, "stealing" an artistic work would be interpreted as plagiarism rather than unauthorized copying.

Artists capable of doing live performances could also sell tickets, I suppose. Authors might be paid to attend conventions and book signings. Without copyright, the works are disseminated widely to generate a fan base, and the revenue is derived from the truly limited resource: the artist's time.

> plagiarism rather than unauthorized copying

Isn't that the definition of plagiarism?

Plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own. Unauthorized copying is just providing a work for others to consume without claiming credit for it, but without having a legal right to do so. Plagiarism doesn't really relate to authorization at all. If you have permission from someone to put your name on their work, that doesn't change the fact that you are lying, which can have consequences of its own (especially in an academic context).

I thought this was obvious, but maybe it isn't? I see disclaimers on Youtube all the time ("I don't own this") which seem to imply the person posting the video doesn't understand the difference.

Yep. The way I used to explain it to my students was this:

Distributing "Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare": not plagiarism or copyright violation.

Distributing "Romeo and Juliet by Turing Machine": plagiarism, but not copyright violation.

Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien": Copyright violation, but not plagiarism.

Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by Turing Machine": both plagiarism and copyright violation.

Distributing "The Lord of the Rings by George RR Martin": Boatloads of cash

I remember reading an article about this phenomenon, and arguing from that "plagiarism" as a concept will eat the "copyright" concept. unfortunately i cannot find it right now.

I think most would agree that plagiarism is characterized primarily by claiming the copied material (authorized or not) as original work.

No, plagiarism entails passing the work or idea off as your own.

You are mostly correct.

Bringing it back to the root discussion that once you remove the requirement for authorization to copy works, there aren't many ways left to steal IP other than intentionally stealing the authors reputation, which more or less is the full official definition of plagiarism. Which you can do perfectly well by miserably failing to properly document a source, not just claiming you authored it. If I claim I wrote your post, that isn't treated all that differently than if I claim PG wrote your post.

Also muddying the waters is most plagiarism definitions include some level of intentional act, not just Fing up. Negligence is a super fuzzy area. So accidentally citing you as Qubix because I've played the board game is more or less OK. Incompetent, true, but not plagiarism.

Note that SOME people insist on getting all wound up about self plagiarism which can be a fraudulent act, but is not exactly real plagiarism, they just kind of borrowed the name because it sounds evil. Much like the multiple and peculiar definitions of computer "hacker" which have very little to do with each other aside from sounding impressive. Self plagiarism has nothing at all to do with plagiarism, other than both coincidentally being more or less wrong.

"Government enforced monopolies are bad" is what particularly doctrinaire libertarians say, but libertarians aren't know for their ability to agree with each other.

I guess I am a PDL but I fail to see how any government-enforced monopoly could be a good thing ever. I genuinely see people who believe such things as backwards, primitive fucks.

Anyhow, among hardcore libertarian circles there is actually pretty wide agreement these days that IP laws are unjust. The work you want to look at for the sea change is Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property free online here: http://mises.org/document/3582

In my view, a copyright system could reach a middle ground between libertarians and the rest of us. Limiting the term of copyrights is such a middle ground.

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