“…Finally, there is the almost incredible harassment of VCR owners. If I buy a VCR and a blank tape, I should be able to tape a movie or other program off my own TV set. If the TV or movie people don’t like it, they should jolly well have to lump it. It is grotesque that movie producers might get the Supreme Court to agree to outlaw use of the VCR. Worse yet is that the movie producers are harassing poor SONY, who only manufactures and doesn’t use VCRs. Obviously, SONY has the deep pockets to enjoin and sue, which most home owners do not. Obviously, too, the government would have a great deal of difficulty mobilizing an enormous Gestapo, armed to the teeth, to break in on and confiscate or destroy the VCRs in many million American homes. Defend your VCRs to the death, fellow Americans! In practice, then, the movie people are not going to outlaw VCRs. They will just force SONY and the other manufacturers to pay a tax to the movie people, a tax which will be passed on to every VCR buyer. But the unfortunate principle—and the higher cost—might well be enshrined in the books.
The problem in all these cases is not whether “property rights” should or should not be upheld. The problem in each of these cases is: Who should have the property right? The computer hacker to do what he wants with his own computer and his access to the telephone lines, or the other computer owner? The signal sender or the signal receiver in the latter’s own equipment? The VCR owner or movie producers? In all of these cases I believe that the concept of copyright has been illegitimately extended to become invasive, and that the fact that the common law cannot combat these “crimes” is already an indication that they are not crimes at all.
But I am in an odd position here. Of all the people in the libertarian movement, I probably know the least about computer technology. There are few movement people lower tech than myself. And yet among all the computer mavens in the movement, I have seen no discussion of these thorny issues. But it is important to apply libertarian property rights theory, i.e. judgments in various areas on who is a criminal and who is a victim, to advancing technology. So on these matters I still have a relatively open mind. Before the Iron Door closes, I cheerfully invite libertarian theorists and high-tech mavens to submit papers, on any or all sides of this problem, for possible publication in the Libertarian Forum. Is there computer crime? Are VCR and satellite dish owners criminals? Please send in your discussions, and help advance libertarian theory.”
— Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Forum, 1983.
The history of thought and ideas is a discourse carried on from generation to generation. The thinking of later ages grows out of the thinking of earlier ages. Without the aid of this stimulation intellectual progress would have been impossible. The continuity of human evolution, sowing for the offspring and harvesting on land cleared and tilled by the ancestors, manifests itself also in the history of science and ideas.
We have inherited from our forefathers not only a stock of products of various orders of goods which is the source of our material wealth; we have no less inherited ideas and thoughts, theories and technologies to which our thinking owes its productivity. But thinking is always a manifestation of individuals.
(Source: alpha.mises.org)
Kinsella on the Music Industry’s Business Model
Stephan Kinsella is interviewed on Houston’s Public Affairs Public Access Live program, with host David Hutzelman about Intellectual Property. Here he discusses the music industry’s business model, as well as artists, authors, musicians and publishers.
Protecting Value and Harry Potter
Stephan Kinsella is interviewed on Houston’s Public Affairs Public Access Live program, with host David Hutzelman about Intellectual Property. Here he discusses protecting “value”, entrepreneurs, free-riders, J.K. Rowling, copyright and different business models.
Everything is a Remix - Part 4
Our system of law doesn’t acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren’t so tidy. They’re layered, they’re interwoven, they’re tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality… the system starts to fail. The excellent previous episodes can be viewed here.
(Source: conza)
The state certainly has its priorities sorted out. A non-crime gets half a century or 600 months, while an employee of the largest criminal entity on earth embarks on a murder spree killing 24 individuals including woman and children, resulting in 3 months & acquittal.
- “We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely – those against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’être.” — Murray N. Rothbard, Anatomy of the State.
Recently broke 1,000,000 upload views & 500 sub’s! I’ve done quite a bit of editing.. some taking months, others minutes. I like to share stuff, so check out the playlists especially. I’ve been collecting videos for specific topics liberty related. If I’ve missed anything, let us know!
Everything is a Remix - Part 3.
Creativity isn’t magic. How innovations truly happen.
libertarians asked:
Hey, I was reading the IP posts between shecallsmeartemis and rhyeking, and I began to think about hacking. I looked back into the Mises forums and saw you’d responded to the thread so I figured I’d ask you.
1. Would hacking someone’s computer be ‘trespassing’ despite the intangibility of the information on the hard drive, or would manipulation of the hard drive (even by intangible means) be considered a breach of the NAP?
2. If so, how would someone be punished for trespassing since there isn’t any physical restitution to be had?
3. I forget my other questions, but hopefully I’ll remember them later haha.
- Trespass, because you’re accessing something that isn’t yours (someone else’s computer). And you’re on someone else’s network, which presumably has some sort of firewall which you’ve gotten around. And that’s analogous to picking a lock. IP doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
- Probably some monetary restitution. Same situation as normal criminal activity, i.e burglar. They might be able to be traced.
- All good and apologies for the delay in response been busy :).
Spam, Spyware and Trespass - Stephan Kinsella
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on copyright? Do you believe that intellectual property doesn’t exist as Kinsella has proposed?
Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I agree with my friend Kinsella, that the idea of intellectual property rights is not just wrong and confused but dangerous. And I have already touched upon why this is so. Ideas - recipes, formulas, statements, arguments, algorithms, theorems, melodies, patterns, rhythms, images, etc. - are certainly goods (insofar as they are good, not bad, recipes, etc.), but they are not scarce goods. Once thought and expressed, they are free, inexhaustible goods. I whistle a melody or write down a poem, you hear the melody or read the poem and reproduce or copy it. In doing so you have not taken anything away from me. I can whistle and write as before. In fact, the entire world can copy me and yet nothing is taken from me. (If I didn’t want anyone to copy my ideas I only have to keep them to myself and never express them.)
Now imagine I had been granted a property right in my melody or poem such that I could prohibit you from copying it or demanding a royalty from you if you do. First: Doesn’t that imply, absurdly, that I, in turn, must pay royalties to the person (or his heirs) who invented whistling and writing, and further on to those, who invented sound-making and language, and so on? Second: In preventing you from or making you pay for whistling my melody or reciting my poem, I am actually made a (partial) owner of you: of your physical body, your vocal chords, your paper, your pencil, etc. because you did not use anything but your own property when you copied me. If you can no longer copy me, then, this means that I, the intellectual property owner, have expropriated you and your “real” property. Which shows: intellectual property rights and real property rights are incompatible, and the promotion of intellectual property must be seen as a most dangerous attack on the idea of “real” property (in scarce goods).
Also here is a playlist of quality videos discussing the matter.
