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Aarostotleyesterday at 9:57 PM2 repliesview on HN

Physical property rights and intellectual property rights have the same root: That someone did work to produce a value, and by right, has ownership of it. This is even how homesteading laws worked when there was widespread wilderness. A person could go to empty land, cultivate it, and after a set time of productive use, gain a legal claim over it.

In the modern context, this is pretty easy to project.

Surely you agree that you have a property right to your computer. How did you get it? You purchased it from the manufacturer (or a retailer, who purchased it from them). The laptop itself was their property from the moment it was made.

What about the factory that made it? Surely, the factory is their property, too. It would be theft for you to get a gang to go and take it over, just as it would be theft for you to loot its machinery and supplies. A factory, though, isn't just a building. It's a set of processes, designs, and techniques that a company uses to build products. For the same reasons and in the same way, those ideas — that intellectual property — belong to the company.

Similarly, a book on your shelf is yours. The store bought it from the printer, who was contracted by a publisher, who paid the author to write it. The fact that _you don't like these middlemen_ doesn't give you the right to steal from all of them.

To those of you who rationalize your thieving behavior: It makes you an entitled child.

The ideas in the book are the author's intellectual property, and only because that exists, you can claim any right to own your copy of the book as physical property.

So, no, you cannot have strong property rights for physical goods while simultaneously having no intellectual property rights. That is a complete contradiction.


Replies

__MatrixMan__yesterday at 10:23 PM

> Physical property rights and intellectual property rights have the same root

Intellectual property rights came about when The Church wanted to use them to prevent people from using printing presses to distribute the wrong kind of bible. They have nothing to do with property in the sense of something that you lose access to when it gets stolen.

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Marsymarsyesterday at 10:10 PM

> For the same reasons and in the same way, those ideas — that intellectual property — belong to the company.

No, it's for fundamentally different reasons.

Physical property rights exist to protect people.

IP rights exist to benefit society other than the IP rights holders - either by a) incentivizing inventions (patents, that expire) or b) incentivizing creative works (copyright, that expire) or c) trademarks (that explicitly exist to prevent consumer confusion).

"Processes" and "techniques" that aren't patentable don't "belong" to a company with a factory in any legal or moral sense, and if they are patentable, they only belong to the company for the defined term of the patent, after which they belong to the public via public domain.

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