Thats actually been the status quo for much of human history. It can suck for the artist but lets face facts through out most of human history the artistic types get fucked.
AI/Automation Megathread
- Thread starter Bear Ribs
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Thats actually been the status quo for much of human history. It can suck for the artist but lets face facts through out most of human history the artistic types get fucked.
Wargamer08
Well-known member
It's not just artists. It's the engineering and design people. Invent a new way to make chemical fertilizer? Why you can't make any money of it unless you personally own a large chemical concern. Design a new way to generate power? For what reason? Ideas and creative designs are worthless see, it won't pay for dinner.
If you force someone to work for you, what has been stolen? Labor.
Tbc, the labor theory of value is bunk. But that doesn't mean labor is valueless, just that the amount of labor required for a good is not necessarily the sole or main indicator of its value. The value of labor comes instead from how much a person is willing to pay for the labor.
They very much are consistent with property rights, namely an implicit contract. You can sell someone an object under the condition that they cannot reproduce the object and that if they give the item away, they must include those same terms.
Again, Rothbard covers this in Man, Economy, and State:
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Doomsought
Well-known member
The entire theory is simply the result of a person being incapable of understanding the difference between value and cost. If the labor theory of value had any weight to it, the ultra-wealthy would be setting up particle accelerators to hoard exotic isotopes.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
You're starting from a flawed premise here. If you post something on the internet in 2015, you grant people the right to copy it. That's how the internet works, you can't actually view the original image, your computer sends a signal, downloads a copy from the website into your cache, and can then display it. There is absolutely nothing on the internet that doesn't involve directly copying.
Consequently, you need to make some kind of distinction between an AI using a dataset and a human using a dataset. The AI looks at thousands of pictures and then draws its own original from what it's learned. The human artist looks at thousands of pictures and then draws their own original using what they learned. You cannot put something up in the public square and then say "only certain people are allowed to look at and use this for inspiration."
To use a real-life example, I recall a lot of mockery on the Internet a few years ago over an artist named Akabur. He produced an extremely NSFW game about gaslighting Hermione Granger into becoming the school bicycle, which had some notoriety. Other people produced similar games and he proceeded to rage all over the internet about how they were "stealing his style" because he was sure they'd played his game before coming up with their own, and therefore owed him money for the inspiration they'd gained.
This was pretty soundly mocked of course, but it's what you're ultimately arguing for here.
No, you aren't granting people the right to copy it and store it off line though, unless you say you are. For just one example of this: Fanfiction.net tries (and fails) to make its text non-grabbable for copying/pasting, an indication they don't license people using it.
You can put something on a website behind a click through that says "only certain people are allowed to look at it." In fact, that's what a rtobots.txt is designed to do: exclude certain bots & spiders explicitly, while allowing people to view it.
And given how a data set is made (it's not just a bot scanning stuff on webpages, but using a dataset assembled by another program), that's a problem.
On top of that, it's literally a contract. A person can put a variety of claims on their contract, like "Don't use my stuff in datasets." And then you wouldn't have the right to do so.
I get that the process is incredibly similar. But a person can object to their stuff being seen/used by certain people and certain groups by denying them the license to see/use it. For example, if I create a new better excel, but don't want the IRS or ATF to have access to it, I could release it under some license that says "Anyone can use it but the IRS/ATF." It could even be useable online like sheets. Just because something is made physically available does not mean that one has the legal/moral right to use it.
Again, this would be humans who consumed the product in the manner allowed. I'm talking about bots.
Look, quite simply non-infringing AI can exist and do. IIRC, the AP gave OpenAI access to its database of articles. There are AI that take in a text/art piece to expand on it: these could require that the text/art supplied be allowed to be used to train the AI (and I'm pretty sure this already exists). I have a problem, however, when stuff was extracted from a rights holder without consent.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
This is one of the few times I've seen you grossly and completely wrong about something.
First off, as other people have pointed out, removing Intellectual Property Rights completely frees large companies to make profit on other people's work with no recourse. You and I might not like the RIAA, but if IPR was removed, they wouldn't have to pay music creators anything to sell their products. They'd just regularly sweep the net for any and every piece of music, and put it up for sale.
Music isn't the best example, because other people could relatively easily make free music archives as well, and in fact such things already exist for music old enough to not be under legal protection, such as old or explicitly-publicly-released performances of classical music.
Most entertainment media and creative artwork falls into this general category, though sale of physical merchandise would absolutely end up almost exclusively end up benefitting people who didn't pay the original creator one lick of royalties.
The real killer though, comes with development of advanced technology and machine design.
Company A spends 30 million dollars developing a new plastic that has valuable uses in industry. They do a production run, Companies B, C, and D buy samples, analyze it, reverse engineer it for a few hundred grand, and start producing it as well. Not only do they produce it, they produce it at reduced cost, because they don't have to pay the overhead of the research, so they quickly drive Company A out of business.
Company A's reward for sinking 30 million dollars into a new technology is financial ruin.
Company E develops a new design for a Chainsaw, which is safer and more fuel-efficient than others while costing nothing or almost nothing more to manufacture. It doesn't use any revolutionary new technology, but it is a very cleverly engineered design, and they spent 3 million dollars having their engineering team develop the design, test prototype, improve the design, test prototype, etc, etc. They put it into production, and companies F, G, and H buy them, reverse engineer them for a pittance, and then put them into mass production themselves. Given the smaller overhead, Company E might be able to reduce their price to match the other companies without going out of business, but they've not made the 3 million dollars back, and it has been made very clear that investing that type of money in R&D is for suckers, the real money is in copying others work.
IPR law can be, and is abused. Finding a balance of strict enough to protect the work of creators, researchers, and designers, without being overly-restrictive to others, is very difficult. This doesn't change the fact that if you strip it away, you remove all financial incentive for innovation.
And with some fields, like microchip design, companies are not going to spend billions to develop more advanced designs, and the tooling to make them, if every other company is allowed to just bootleg it without consequences.
To bring it back around to your statement about real vs imaginary property rights, the tangible effects of ideas are very real. If I as an author write a story, it exists as data, and possibly as a physical book. If I do not write that story, then it cannot exist as data or a story.
If an engineer designs a car, the physical existence of metals, plastics, rubber, ceramics, composites, etc, is physical proof of that idea's tangible existence. If someone else doesn't go over and study and copy that design, IE taking advantage of that Engineer's work without compensating them appropriately, there is no way in which they will be able to build an identical car.
Just because you have a lithographic printer, does not mean you are entitled to make use of hundreds of dollars of circuit design I've done, without paying me appropriately for my labor. If we can't agree on a price, you are perfectly free to make your own design, or contract someone else to do it for you. The fact remains that my design would not exist without my labor.
(And yes, if you go into extremely simple devices the argument breaks down. Nobody gets to patent the wheel, etc.)
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Now that's an interesting interpretation of "literally a contract." Did AI developers sign a document agreeing not to use that stuff in datasets that would constitute a contract? Because otherwise, you're basically arguing that a person should be able to impose contracts on others without the second party having any agreement with that. That has some interesting applications re:the NAP, such as making taxes perfectly legitimate, it's a contract that the government imposes on others without their agreeing to it, but still literally a contract.
The problem you're running into regarding copyright is that the AI isn't copying anything. Oh, the data was present in a dataset, but the AI isn't making copies, it's making original works after viewing the dataset for inspiration, just like a human may make an original work even though they've viewed things other people have seen. The fact that data was copied into the dataset doesn't trigger copyright anymore that Bob reading Lord of the Rings and thus copying it into his head before deciding he also wants to write an epic fantasy adventure story triggers copyright. Both use a previous work as inspiration but create something new.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I don't claim, to be sure, that IP laws cannot be used in a manner that would yield good results.
My argument is that they are an inherently immoral tool, and that therefore, even using them for good purposes is still wrong. "The road to hell", and all that.
The big corporations are the ones who most effectively employ IP laws now, and do the most harm, but I'd be opposed to IP regardless. My premise is simple: you can own something in the physical universe, because in physical reality, "stuff you can own" is defined by the ability to exercise full and exclusive control over it. I can own a specific house, and it is mine. Nothing else can occupy its exact location at the exact same time, which means: spatio-temporal scarcity.
Ideas aren't like that. They're not scarce. You can have an idea, and tell me... and not lose it yourself. They spread by multiplication.
Therefore, they cannot be stolen. And what cannot be stolen cannot be owned. For the possibility of stealing a thing is a function of its nature in being owned by another.
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That's a consequentialist approach. I'm not a consequentialist. If I was, I'd argue that big corporations overwhelmingly benefit from IP right now, and removing IP removes those benefits for them. Bit of an either-or, but my way doesn't violate property rights.
Morally speaking, mass producing something may in some cases be a dick move, but it doesn't actually violate anyone's rights. The question isn't "how do I, Skallagrim, prevent that". The question is "how do you, the artist who wants to prevent it... prevent it".
As soon as you put an idea into the world, anyone can use it. They can't steal your pencils, but they can use their own to write or draw a text or image identical to one that you created. They're free to do so, as all men were, for the vast majority of human history.
If I wanted to prevent this, I might urge my fans to buy from me alone. If I have something to offer that they like, there is no reason for them not to. (I personally buy local whenever possible: it's the equivalent of that.) This is a matter of choice. If you like a thing, it's up to you to support the artisan who created it.
Saying "I WANT the creators to get a reward that I feel is FAIR!" is perfectly reasonable. The way to do this is to actively support them, by buying from them.
That's the nature of a free market. Put your money where your mouth is.
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Who is being forced? That's a crazy assumption. Nobody is being forced. I'm not forcing someone to paint things. I'm saying that if you put anything out in public, it can bee seen, and what can be seen can also be replicated (perfectly or imperfectly, partially or entirely).
And people are -- or at least, ought to be -- allowed to replicate it.
Don't turn things around here. I'm not forcing anyone. You're trying to force people to refrain from using their own faculties and property in certain manners, because you claim that other people can have exclusive ownership of ideas.
But as I've argued above, wnership of ideas is impossible by nature, because ownership only pertains to that which you can bring under actual control. Non-scarce things cannot be owned. You can't fence them off or lock them up. Their very nature is non-local. To see them is to copy them into your mind. To copy is, by your logic... to steal.
Which means that the ultimate consequence of your logic is that thinking is a criminal act. I cannot support such a premise.
I strongly disagree on this, because that's not property. That's lease. "You give me money for this, and then you can use it under these conditions..."
No, fuck your conditions. Property is absolute. That is its nature. I consider such stipulations to be inherent violations of property, and therefore automatically invalid under all circumstances. If you own a thing, then you own it. Nobody else has any authority over it whatever. If you don't want to give me absolute and exclusive control over a thing, then don't sell me thing.
If you do, it becomes mine, and you lose all say over it. Which means, as anyone who isn't logically impaired can infer, that I can then take it apart, study it as I wish, and use materials that I own to replicate it-- if that is my desire.
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Your argumentation is mostly consequentialist, which position I've answered above, so I'll not repeat myself here (all of this being one post).
Your last paragraphs come to a more interesting notion, which I'll reply to in some more detail. You argue that the tangle effects of ideas are real. That is true. The problem is that you conflate the idea and the effect. I can't magically duplicate a car, but I can automatically duplicate an idea. One is physical, the other is not.
You argue that your car or circuit design wouldn't exist without your idea. I say that they wouldn't exist without your willingness to put your idea out into the world. And that willingness implies that anyone can then see it, and copy it. The only way to "own" an idea is to keep it in your mind.
Ideas can't be stolen, they can only be shared. If you share it with the world, it belongs to the world.
So, unlike what you say, I do very much believe that if you design a car or ciruit or whatever, it can thereafter be freely copied by anyone at all. They can't steal one from you. But they can look at it, learn from it, and make their own. They can do that, using materials they own in a way they see fit, which is their inalienable right.
IP is a violation of that right, and as such I want to see IP abolished.
Vergilius should not be called a criminal for blatantly writing (and selling!) a by-no-means-authorised Homeros sequel. And Dante, in turn, should not be sued for scandalously using the character of Vergilius himself in his also-unauthorised Vergilius rip-off. (Not to mention the fact that it's also a Bible rip-off. Speaking of which... do the Aposteles owe royalties to the Old Testament prophests? Do the Mormons owe money to the Apostles, for their million-copy bestseller fan-fic?)
Ideas aren't up for ownership.
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I'll add, as an aside, that we are dealing with the problem of the universals here. My position is that the particular instantiations (of an idea) can be owned, the underlying universals (the ideas themselves) cannot. You can own a chair. You cannot own "chairness", and thereby forbid all others from making chairs.
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They used the thing. That's the agreement. Though I'll give you that literally was hyperbole. It does literally originate from contracts though. When you are sold a book, you don't outright state you are not going to copy the book and resell those copies: that you don't have this right is an implied contract from the copyright page.
That's what copyright is, a government acknowledgement of what would otherwise be done by contract in the free market.
The dataset was the copying. And yes, it 100% does trigger copyright (morally speaking, not legally, idk the specifics there), just like taking a copy onto your own computer to view at your leisure, or printing out a copy so you can view it in your house.
See the memory thing you are trying to liken this to isn't the rule, or even relevant: it's not a physical copy. Yes, we don't control people's thoughts and minds, so a view constitutes enjoying it via memory, etc. If anything, given the general unreliability of memory, one could argue it falls into transformative use, and that it's no longer the original copyrighted work. And thus we get to the heart of copyright:
It's about the right to copy! The dataset making a copy without permission violates the right to copy. Just posting it online with an all rights reserved mark or the like provides a minimal right to copy implicit in the medium (i.e. a copy will be sent to your computer and displayed, and stored in your cache).
I'm not claiming people are being forced here: I'm claiming that labor is in fact a thing that can be stolen, even though we both acknowledge that the labor theory of value is BS.
But let's ditch the labor analogy, as you don't seem to like it. It's a violation of implicit contract. A copyrighted good is provided to the consumer on the condition that the good not be copied. If it is copied, that is then violating the original right. But since you object to this below, I'll get to my argument then too.
Here I'm going to partially agree, partially disagree. First, the idea that ownership pertains only to what one can control is wrong. A few examples are trusts, nonvoting shares, etc. But more on that below as well. Second, copying into one's mind could be considered as part of an implicit license to copy given by selling the book.
But the concept that an idea cannot be owned is correct. That's what's good about copyright and bad about patents. Copyright is about contract, patents are about ownership of an idea. Take 2 companies, A and B that have never heard of each other, each trying to get a novel solution for a problem. They both hit upon X as a solution. The company A patents X and then later hears that B is using X, and thus sues them. This is obviously wrong. The difference between patent and copyright is the lack of a contract in patents. So yes, you can't own an idea. You can agree to a contract that prevents you from copying down/sharing an idea.
And in fact, the workers for both A and B that developed X almost certainly agreed to a NDA concerning how X works. Otherwise why pay for their ideas if they can just walk over to company C?
And this is where I am going to say you have an insufficient conception of property rights. Rent purchases a property right. It's a time limited one, but it is still a right. The Landlord relinquishes some of their rights over the land to the lender, and can't just revoke it for no reason but must follow the contract.
Property rights are in fact much broader than you think. They encompass both owning the land, but not owning the mineral rights, easements for travel over another's land, etc.
And the forbidding of putting stipulations on property is in fact a violation of freedom of contract. I should be able to sell X to Y under condition Z. Conditions are attached all the time, from guarantees (Z states that "if Y doesn't like X, Y gets his money back") to warrantees, to liability, and to copyright. Intangible goods are real, and they exist.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I'm not sure that this is, technically speaking, correct. Either way, it's not relevant here, because it's not happening. But even in a supposed case of actual "stolen labour" (i.e. slavery), I think that phrase is not actually correct, and that "labour" isn't being "stolen", but rather one's freedom is being infriged upon, and coercion is being exerted. Both of which are rights violation, and in practice -- in such an instance -- amount to the same effect. But the underlying ontology is different, and to me, that's relevant.
But you're right, let's otherwise put that aside.
I agree that you can, but in that case, it cannot be a contract that involves the full transfer of ownership ("property"). It can be one that establishes or alters shared ownership, which is possible, or it can be a licensing arement, or a lease agreement... things of that nature.
I'm not saying those don't exist. I'm saying those aren't contracts that involve me purchasing the thing itself. Because when I do that, the thing becomes entirely, exclusively mine-- morally prohibiting any and all limitations upon my free exercise of my property right over the thing.
My conception of property rights differs from yours, but I wouldn't call it insufficient. Rather, I feel that you are too removed from what property actually is, and to enmeshed in the framing of current legalisms. In other words: you have a far too open and broad conception of "property", to the degree that you include things that aren't actually property at all.
Rent, for instance, is not a property right. It is a lease agreement. (I altered my phrasing in my earlier post in an edit, to clarify this notion, but you had already started your reply.) If I rent a videotape from you, it remains your property. You have lent it to me, under certain conditions. You are still, without question, the owner.
If you sell it to me, however, you are no longer the owner. And there's the crucial difference. Ownership is 'control absolute', and anything less is not ownership. Is not property.
Perhaps the proper alternative to so-called intellectual "property" is to only lease out things you don't want copied, with user agreements that have stipulations, while you remain the actual owner, and the user doesn't buy the thing at all. I don't think it'll stop so-called "piracy" one bit, so in practice it's just as dumb and useless as IP laws, but at least it's not based on the sickening notion that someone can own an idea.
mrttao
Well-known member
The issue is really that IP is an incredibly broad term. It encompasses ideas, but also things like "this book I wrote".
That said. Overall abolishing it entirely would be a huge plus.
Bassoe
Well-known member
It's simple, kill the big corporations.
If they can't monopolize franchises made generations ago by better writers with copyright laws and, as is apparently the case, can't write worth shit themselves, and if everyone has generative AIs which rival modern starpower and special effects budgets, they're not economically viable. Who'd buy tickets to Disney Wars when the likes of 4chan could turn out a faithful-to-the-books Thrawn Trilogy starring the original actors in their prime?
Okay, then think of a copyright as an unlimited single purchase lease of an item, conditioned by not copying the item. I get you come to a similarish
Really, though, what happens is X is yours, but you yourself permanently agreed (via implicit contract through the well understood copyright symbol and it's existence on X) to not make a copy of X. You can have an idea you like, just not exercise those ideas that copy X. Derivative/transformative ideas of X and where the boundary is there is obviously a little more loose, but if you transform it enough, it stops being X, at which point you could use it.
I mean insufficient in the sense that I don't think it's large enough (i.e. insufficient to fill up a space), didn't mean to attack you other than calling the idea wrong, if I'm making sense?
See, this I disagree with. There's some definite ownership when it comes to renting. For that time period, you have exclusive access to the space and the right to make use of that space, and others can't rent the same space during that time period. There's definitely an exchange of property rights, just not all the property rights. The exclusivity and rivalrous nature of renting is what makes renting a property right.
Also, if it's not a property right, then what is it? Usually property rights are an all encompassing term for private ownership etc, in contrast with common/public/state ownership.
There's usually not 10 different categories. So I'd toss renting, etc. square into property rights, as they work like property rights (they are tradeable, etc). You are right that the more I think of it, intellectual property isn't really a property right though, more of a contract.
So for purposes of this discussion, I'll give an example. Say A owns land, and plans on opening a landfill, which would annoy X who lives next door. X, being a libertarian, isn't going to go crying to government, but instead comes to an agreement with A such that X pays A a one time fee to sign a contract saying that A and future owners won't build a landfill on the land (this is done by attaching the restriction onto the deed). This seems completely fine to me. By my logic A still owns the property, but is contractually limited from things he can do with it. Who do you think owns the property now?
Now say B buys the land off of A, but is still bound by the contract which is attached to the land deed. I would say B owns the land. Now say X sells his own (X's) next door property to Y, notifying Y about the restriction re the neighboring property. I'd still say B owns the land originally held by A, and Y owns the land originally held by X.
If you have issue with the word sell, just substitute 'Irrevocable, permanent, exclusive right to use the land in anyway you see fit other than creating a landfill, including the right to sell, exchange, give, will, or abandon this right. If it is abandoned, neither A nor anyone else inherently gains it back.'
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Something's cut off from the above, I think, but I get the gist of it.
However, I don't think of copyright like that, and neither do the people defending it. They say that they're selling me something, and afterwards they presume to tell me what I can and cannot do with it. That's unacceptable to me.
If instead of selling, they do actually lease something out to me, that's a different thing. It requires no claim of owning an idea (which I will never recognise as valid). Rather, they retain ownership of the specific thing, and under the usage agreement, I'm forbidden from taking it apart and copying it.
For instance, instead of selling me a car, Volkswagen leases a car out to me for [x] years/moths/whatever, I pay for using it, I agree to the terms and conditions, and they remain the owners of the thing. I'm just the user who's renting it.
If they sell it to me, it's mine to do with as I please, with no limitations possible under any circumstance. That's my position.
That's what copyright claims, but I say that's a violation of my property rights, because I bought it. I agreed to no terms, I signed no "implicit contract" (which exists no more than the fucking "social contract" that people always jabber on about), and I consider the copyright symbol merely an immoral imposition that does not bind me in any way.
I bought a thing. The entirety of the agreement that I signed up for was: "I give you money, you give me the thing. The money is now yours, the thing is now mine. End of story."
Right to use =/= ownership. If I own a car and I let my brother drive it tomorrow, he doesn't suddenly own it. He's using it. That's not a property right.
Renting is just a formalised agreement of same. If I rent out a room, I still own the building. A renter is not an owner, but a user.
My position is that the contract cannot be enforced, except in relation to A. Simply put: A can only bind himself. He can bind no others. He lacks that power, for obvious reasons.
By agreeing to the contract, A has foolishly bound himself in a way that spells a world of trouble for him. You assume that if B buys the land off A, B is still bound by the contract. Not so! (At least not in a world where property rights are truly upheld.) The contract is between A and B. "Adding a restriction to the deed", in my world-view, is inherently impossible. Literally cannot ever be done, and is automatically void if attempted. Such a restriction can exist as long as A (who is party to the contract) owns the land-- but is nullified the instant he sells the land.
Contracts bind persons. The contract is bound to A, and not to the land.
This means that A is perfecly capable of selling the land to B, and subsequently B will not be bound by the contract between A and X.
Now, "adding a restriction to the deed" may be impossible in my view, but the contract between A and X is still there. So if A sells to B, without getting B to take over the contract as part of the deal, that means B is in no way bound. X has no recourse against B, who can put a landfill there if he so pleases. But A is still contractually bound to X, and has violated the contract. X does, therefore, have recourse against A-- and can sue A for the contract violation.
(A would do best not to sell unless he can get the buyer to agree to voluntarily(!) take over the contract. Better still: A would be wise not to agree to such a dumb fucking contract, and to instead only agree that he will not put a landfill there, for as long as he owns the land.)
See, I very much disagree with this. Implicit contracts differ from the social contract in that there clearly is agreement with them, and that agreement must be proven. One can't just argue 'an implicit contract exists'. You have to show that the implicit contract was agreed to.
Say you buy a pound of ground chuck (80/20) from the butcher every week for $5. This happens basically every week, so you start just handing the butcher a Fiver and he hands you the ground chuck. If one day you hand the butcher a fiver and he hands you something much different and cheaper, he's violated an implied contract.
But if you just accept a pound of ground meat arbitrarily from a butcher for $5, with no previous relationship, then nothing wrong has been done. Both you and he knew you were buying mystery meat (though why you paid $5 for it is beyond me).
This also works for more contractual stuff. If you commonly supply a good as needed for a certain fee per good to a certain person, and that person asks for 10 of the good, you can simply shake on it, supply the order, and expect to get paid 10x the fee per good. If you aren't paid, the other person violated the implied contract.
This is the essence of an implied contract: it's a common exchange so both sides know what they are acquiring, so you don't need to sign a complicated contract full of legalese or a EULA first. Note that it is actively consented to by both sides, but the details are left unspoken because both sides already know the well established details (this is called a meeting of the minds legally).
Stuff sold under copyright, using the well known symbol of the c in the circle, is similar. You might not know the particular sales person, but the idea of copyright is known to you and the sales person, and well established. By buying the book or artwork or music, you know somewhat what you are agreeing to. But given that different people have different definitions, US law formalizes and codifies what exactly that is (this doesn't have to be done by government, but I'll not get into that here). This creates a meeting of the minds: you both know what you are exchanging and agreeing to.
Obviously, in our society controlled by government, much of this has been bastardized, formalized, and changed from a contract into a property right, but that doesn't mean that the implicit contract thing is bunk.
See, I'm pretty confident property rights don't just include ownership. It includes other things as well. It's basically the collection of all rights people have in regards to private property.
Obviously, ownership is an important subset of property rights, and you are right that it isn't ownership to rent. But there is still some property right stuff going on here (i.e. rights in relation to property are being exchanged).
Basically I agree with your message here. A is bound to include the contract in an agreement with B if he wishes to sell. But inclusion on the deed is just a simple way to ensure that the agreement is stuck to: any contract with the deed inherently takes into consideration the stuff relative to landfills. It's more a method to ensure the contract is kept to (obviously this needs to be made clear at time of sale, not hidden. Fraud violates the NAP).
But while arguing this, I noticed a flaw in my argument: what about a person who chances upon the art/music without agreeing to anything? Are they bound? And intuitively, and for copyright to work, it would need to be yes, but it's not working in my model. So I'm going to have a think about this separate issue and see if I can resolve it one way or another. Thanks for chatting with me, things like this really help me figure out what is true and not true, and shore up my theoreticals (which I know are somewhat weak outside of pure economics, I came to be a libertarian not from theory, but from experience in the world).
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I get what you're saying here, and I don't really object to the above. I do think there's a categorical difference between the above and the stuff you subsequently compare it to (copyright), as I'll outline below.
In Dutch, the things referenced above are just called an "unwritten agreement". There can be an unwritten agreement of property transfer, obviously-- most often, stuff-for-money, i.e. "sale over the counter".
(These things do cause problems at times, though. There was a recent case where someone texted a contract for evaluation, and got a thumbs up. The sending party took this to mean agreement to the contrect, the receiving party later claimed he'd only meant to signal that he was going to evaluate, as the text asked him to do. The judge sided with the sending party. I disagree with that judgement, but that's neither here nor there. The point is: lack of clarity is dangerous.)
I don't agree that this is similar to an unwritten agreement at all, because this isn't some established custom of interaction between consenting parties. This is one party (or rather, group thereof) saying: "we own an idea, and if you buy a thing derived from that idea, you're forbidden from doing certain things with it, because we own that idea".
And that premise is inherently flawed, because you can't own a fucking idea. Their restriction is based on an inherently false claim, so that's void to begin with. Furthermore, it violates your property rights, so that makes it void twice over.
It's not an agreement. No more than the proclamations of a mobster who tells you that by owning a store in this part of town, you've "agreed" to pay him protection money. No more than the ramblings of a statist who tells you that by using the tax-funded roads, you've "agreed" to pay taxes.
The unwritten agreements you outlined above aren't like the social contract. The supposed "implicit contract" of the copyright racket very much is like that.
In Dutch (and in Dutch law), "property" and "ownership" are one word: eigendom. (Literally: "owndom".) Unquestionably one and the same concept, indivisible.
Property rights are derived from the ownership of a thing. Only the owner can have property rights. Renters have rights, too, but these derive from contractual relations, not from ownership/property-holding. They're different categories of rights, derived from different sources.
As far as I'm concerned, you can't affix a limitation to the deed, because "the deed" is just a written affirmation of (transfer of) ownership. If A enters into a contract with X, but later sells to B without ever even referencing the contract, that in no way invalidates the transfer of ownership from A to B (because A, as owner, intrinsically cannot be stopped from selling if he so wishes). B is then free to start a land-fill, on the off chance that he wants to.
And X can sue A, because A did promise not to do the thing that he very much did. While X cannot unmake the (completely valid) sale from A to B, he can sue A for violation of their contract.
Point being: the contract is between them. It doesn't concern B, and it doesn't actually stop A from doing anything. It makes A liable when A does certain things.
A is a dumb fucker, by the way, who deserves the legal trouble.
I see no way by which anyone could be bound by an agreement to which they are no party. But frankly, IP has far more fundamental contradictions. The very notion of "copyright terms" is very telling.
Terms... based on what? They're arbitrary. Which doesn't compute. Either copyright is valid, or it's not. If not, then away with it! If valid, then it's certainly valid as long as the creator lives. Can the right be inherited? If so, then it can be inherited forever, and copyright will never cease as long as a descendant of its orginator lives (or the company holding it, or its legal successor-entity, still exists).
Either way, a fabriated term of [x] years is the sure sign of legal positivism and blatant chicanery.
I heard about this thru Lehto's Law! It was an interesting case.
Again, maybe you disagree with the reason that is commonly given (owning the idea). But I'd say that the contract method bypasses this: It's implicit contract is "don't replicate this idea, and if you resell it (using my definition of sell, equivalent to your permanent, irrevocable, tradeable lease for a 1 time payment), it must be under the same terms."
Basically, you aren't selling the item to a third party, you are selling a lease to use the item to a third party, and that lease is limited.
Second, since it is so commonly done between people, there is an implicit understanding of what copyright is. When a c in a circle is spotted, both sides roughly know what that means (if you buy this, you also agree to a contract forbidding reproduction, etc.). Any issues are cleared up by having a common definition (sadly defined by government right now, but that's not necessary). This dodges any concept of 'ownership of an idea'.
Huh, it's interesting how philosophy can derive from language and how it shapes us! Figure we'll just agree to disagree there.
Yes, but while the sale is happening, X could sue A to stop the sale. But I get what you are saying. I have a response to this below.
Oh agreed about how long things last. They should be indefinite or linked to the death of the creator (I haven't looked much into this) or ended when the creator wishes to end them.
So upon further research, I realized how Rothbard extends property rights. For the below paragraph, please read "sold" as "Permanently and irrevocably leased with the leasee having the complete and exclusive right to all normal property rights other than the right to reproduce a copy of this, and forever agrees to not produce copies of this. This lease is tradeable."
Anyway, I did some analysis of this, and I realized how Rothbard extends. Basically, again, the item itself is sold (as I define it), but the right to reproduce was not. Given how the lease was designed, only the lease itself is tradeable, with the lease being traded/given away with the book. Now since those two are permanently linked, it is impossible for a future buyer of the book to argue that he can reproduce it because of a failure of the original owner, because the original owner never had the ability to sell the entire good without the copyright clause, as he never owned it.
Going to the example of A, B, and X above, using this alternate method, X could sue B, and B could sue A. A defrauded B by claiming the good was more than it was. And B violated the lease with X. Which is exactly how it would work
Now personally, I think it's easier to just encapsulate this as a reserved property right, but you can swap from one basis of property rights to the other interchangeably, it's just annoying complicated to do so.
There's no need for ownership of ideas and no need to leave total ownership residing with somebody.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I'm not opposed to a contractual lease agreement as you outline. I also agree that a lease of the physical thing itself, with conditions, can be used to impose prohibitions against copying the thing, without having to claim hypothetical ownership of any idea. I do disagree that this sort of conditions can ever be 'implicitly' imposed. I also object to the tendency to (somewhat hand-wavingly) equate such a lease to sale, and treat them as similar. To summarise:
1. I think you can lease things with conditions. Crucial is that you retain ownership, and the person leasing it is merely a user.
2. I stress (and I cannot stress this enough) that in my view, if ownership is transferred, conditions upon use thereafter are void. Transfer of ownership automatically terminates all limitations, since those can only be bound to the person who signed the contract, and never to the thing itself.
3. You can, of course, opt to only sell a thing to someone who agrees to also take over your contractual obligations. This still doesn't bind the obligations to the thing. Basically, it's two separate transfers (ownership and contract) happening at the same time.
4. Regardless of your contractual obligations, ownership is absolute, and you can always sell without transferring any other contract to the buyer. This does make you liable, but can't stop the sale. Nobody can sue to stop the sale; they have standing. They can only sue you for violating the contract.
5. As outlined under (2), attaching conditions of use to the thing itself is impossible. This refers to the example of trying to add limitations to the deed, so tha all future owners would automatically be bound by them. Can't be done, in my view. Contractual terms attempting it ought to be, in a moral frame-work, unenforcable and automatically void.
6. If, in an agreement of use by a non-owner, limitations are imposed, these must be explicit. Without a written contract, I hold the limitations to always be void. There can be no 'implicit' agreement to such conditions. (Of course, if a company has a website with 'terms of use' outlined, anyone can read those, and using the company's services means you agree to said terms. That's complely normal. But adding a copyright symbol as if that gives you power is just nonsense. Copyright shouldn't exist. Only natural rights and private-law contracts.)
So, bottom line: limitations upon use can exist, but only if the owner imposes them on non-owning users of the thing. Limitations imposed upon an owner by a non-owner are (or at any rate, ought to be, in a just world) impossible. And where limitations are legitimately imposed, they must be reasonably explicit in order to have force.
Per point (4) above, I disagree. X can sue A for violating the contract (which is between them), but can't stop the sale (to which X is no party). X literally has no power over the property, and only has a claim against the person A. X cannot stop the sale, and cannot prevent the landfill. X can only demand compensation from A (and will certainly receive it, because A is violating a contract).
In short, I'd happily return us to a very Germanic system of compensations. (Next step: bring back wergild.)
My objection to "the item itself is sold (as I define it), but the right to reproduce was not" i obvious from the above, but you're asking me to read "leased" for "sold" here. In a sense, that works. The problem is that you walk into a great confusion of terms, in thinking like this. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but allow me to parse and clarify a few points:
1. We must distinguish between "sale" and "lease". The statement I cite above, as written(!), presents a contradition in terms. That is: you can't sell a thing but somehow retain the right to reproduce it. To sell is to transfer all rights. To do anything less is not to sell. This is why I insist on never mixing certain concepts.
2. You can lease a thing and forbid reproduction in the terms of lease. Sure, no issue. You can have the lease give the user/leasee all rights that an owner would normally have, except the ormal property rights other than the right to reproduce a copy of the thing. Again, no issue. You can even make the lease transferable between users, without the involvement of the owner.
3. That last word, "owner", does lead to an problem. To lease a thing from someone is to hold it, but not to own it. You say "permanently and irrevocably leased", and that is (in my scheme of things) impossible. Because the one leasing it out remains the owner of the thing, and regardless of any contract, he can revindicate it, or sell it. This makes him liable for contract violation, so the user can sue him. But the user can't stop him. (To put this another way: ownership is a natural right, and always has precedence over a man-made right deriving from a contract.)
4. As such, if the owner seeks to have his property back, he can take it back. It's his, still. Regardless of any contract. The user can't stop this. The user can only note that the contract was violated, in which case the owner must fittingly compensate the user. But that's the limit of what a user can demand.
5. Likewise, if the owner sells the thing, despite having lesed it to a user, without transferring the lease agreement to the buyer (i.e. the new owner), then that new owner can just revindicate the thing. It's his now, and he has no lease agreement with the user. This means that the user has no recourse except to, once again, sue the previous owner, with whom he has a (now-violated) contract.
As you can see, my aproach to this will always prioritise a natural right (ownership) over a contractual right. That seems only fitting to me, since natural law is more fundamental than man-made law. The result is that I always rule in favour of the inalienable rights of owners. And I consider them literally inalienable: even they can't sign them away. (Except, of course, by selling or giving a thing away-- but then they cannot retain any right to the thing.) They can agree to a contract, but that doesn't actually stop them from exercising the rights of ownership: it only forces them to pay compensation if they do so in a way that violates the contract.
None of this, by the way, stops a kind of copy-forbidding lease agreement. It just puts certain limitations on how such things can be organised, because some kinds of schemes will just automatically be voided because they are at odds with natural law.
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Bear Ribs
Well-known member
So we need to unpack a few things here because, well, most of what you're saying is false. Firstly copyright doesn't trigger from making a copy onto your computer or printing out a copy to view at your leisure, that's totally legal and covered under personal or fair use depending on conditions.
You can legally download images all day long, you can also take any copyrighted material and copy it as you please, even if you don't own a legal copy, as long as it's being used for... research or study purposes. Such as... having an AI study the images as a dataset.
As for, "They used the thing, that means there's a contract" that's so outside of Libertarian ideals I'm genuinely mind-boggled you'd say it. You just fully justified taxes as not theft, there's no longer any force involved. You used the land or air, that's a contract to pay taxes in any way the government desires. This could be used to justify making it illegal to get up and use the bathroom during a TV commercial, you watched the show, this constitutes a legal contract to sit through the commercials. The idea that merely looking at something constitutes forming a legal contract is a can of worms of Arrakis proportions.
As noted, it doesn't violate the right to copy. Further, transformative works are also not copyright violations.
The main legal basis is from Campbell v. Acuff Rose Music, Inc. This case concluded that there's no copyright infringement "if looking at the works side-by-side, the secondary work has a different character, a new expression, and employs new aesthetics with creative and communicative results distinct from the original." An AI satisfies all these criteria, the images it generates are not the original, but have new aesthetics, character, expression, and are distinct from the original. This ruling is in part because of the way humans generate new ideas by riffing on what they've already seen, the same way AI does.
An Overview of Transformative Works and Fair Use
Learn more about the touchstone of cases involving fair use in the last 20 years.
So copying the data does not violate copyright and producing new works derived from but also distinct from observed data does not violate copyright. Really, there is no leg to stand on unless one takes ridiculous extensions of copyright law well past any legal precedent and even common sense.
On the subject of the nature of copyright, it's notable that artistic expression is a near-textbook example of a Public Good. That is to say, it's non-rivalrous (One person enjoying media does not prevent another person from doing so) and it's non-excludable (it's not really possible to prevent people from downloading and using it).
37 Public Goods Examples (A to Z List)
Public goods are things that we all share and consume. They cannot be taken away from anyone. They're things that are available, free at the point of use, to everybody. They can be both natural
helpfulprofessor.com
Now historically, this was not the case. Media were club goods (if you look them up, usually cinemas will be one of the textbook examples.) They weren't rivalrous (anybody enjoying a movie doesn't stop others from enjoying a movie) but were excludable, you could be kept from obtaining goods unless you paid first. The internet has fundamentally changed that, it's made it impossible to gatekeep intellectual property via tickets anymore. One of the reasons for the vicious lawsuits and ridiculous situations we've seen, such as the RIAA's reactions to Limewire, was because the law still treats media as a club good even though they've ceased to be such.
Public goods have their name because the free market cannot efficiently supply them and tends to just Amber Heard the bed if it's asked to, so they generally require government intervention through taxation and grants to keep them supplied to the public. This is already the case for things like patents, not only is there massive amounts of regulation in place, very little real research happens if there isn't a government grant somewhere in the supply chain. Science without a government grant tends to be worthless and automatically discovers whatever the sponsor wanted to be true.
I expect the laws to gradually shift to recognize that intellectual property is a public good over time. However, economic theory hasn't caught up to crowdfunding yet, which changes the game and is currently heavily in use to get voluntary donations that cover the shortfalls of the free market regarding public goods that are not yet government supported. We may see entirely new definitions and divisions of goods emerge over the coming decades to cover crowdfunded and AI-generated goods.