Libertarian inconsistency in intellectual property.

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I would say nothing wrong with this, as they are freely available URLs. That is not hacking deep into their system - you are using your computer to request files on theirs using a standard protocol. If they hang files up on the internet, and they intend for you to listen to some of them but not others, they need to take some responsibility and implement a system of access control.

But that is just my opinion. It might be a serious offense in Singapore, and standard business practice in China.

In Singapore, everything is an offense, including chewing gum. Although that's not such a bad idea considering open-mouthed chewing, which is altogether too common, irritates the piss out of me. Maybe they should allow reserved gum chewing and impose fines and possibly prison sentences for open-mouth chewers.

And, yeah, that sounds like standard practice in China. For an authoritarian state, China can be pretty cool sometimes

Having just read Atlas Shrugged, I would naturally assume that the libertarian stance would be to protect copyrights and safeguard the creator's property, intellectual or otherwise.

Because items are usually sold by a retailer, and may be several transactions away from the true owner of the intellectual property, people forget one thing:

Let the buyer beware? Let the seller beware too. The retailer has a duty(and a contract) to the property owner to not sell to anyone that will abuse the terms of service. But its wholly impractical(and not really desirable) for the retailer to take these steps.

What responsible negotiator(the retailer) would enter a contract that they fully expected to not be upheld? Turns out, almost all of them.

That being said, I am for strong property laws. But they need to be rewrote to reflect modern times. GNU and other open source contracts go further to remedy this.

Actually, I think the discussion is using the notion of contract law in a different sense than that which the actual law must use it. It is assuming libertarian contractarianism. IP law, you are correct, is a different form of law, however, the argument is that libertarians because they tend to hold to contractarianism, would be implicitly violating that ethic if they violated the IP law.


Completely arguable, the issue is just that one cannot go about "losing discs". The libertarian stance would not see a contradiction in that, and I do not think that Orwell is necessarily trying to defend IP in all circumstances, just pointing to a possible contradiction in positions.


That could definitely be argued as the enforcement of IP can be overly stringent, and on some level, would likely never be enforced if it were natural.


Somewhat true, it could even be argued that IP as Orwell is looking at it, is somewhat like the social contract, which some libertarians tend to dislike as well. I think, however, Orwell is not defending IP 100% and just simply pointing to a peculiarity in people's ideas about copyrights as opposed to their ideology.

The libertarian stance is to protect property, there is some division over whether people can own ideas in that abstract sense. This means that some libertarians argue against IP as they view it as a destructive creation of government while others are staunch defenders of it.

It's not at all ridiculous if it's the term of the sale and that term is formalized in a contract.




We can find people who personally don't find anti-pedophilia laws binding, either.

Not all libertarians are rand cultists.

You will have to prove your ownership to the satisfaction of the courts in order to collect. Have you properly patented these ideas/methods?

Patent law would disagree. Patent covers "discoveries" as well as "inventions".

There are only two countries I know where software patents are observed: the USA and Japan.

And they're no less ret*d for that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but several people in this thread seem to be drawing no distinction between buying a copywritten work, and buying a copy of a copywritten work. It's like buying a copy of a book, you can sell the book, donate it, whatever when you are done, you cannot sell the screen rights or makes xeroxes and sell them. Because movies and music are so easily turned into digital form and transferred via the internet, they've short-circuited the system, why would anyone spend millions making great entertainment if no one pays for it? That being said, I do see file sharing as an effective tool to force the music industry to reform their business practices, since they, the middle man are so easily eliminated these days.

I'm a registered libertarian and i believe copyrights and patents should be legally respected. Perhaps you are generalizing?...

Here's an interesting article on the subject from one of my favorite magazines. This is of some interest to me because I make collages...
http://www.quiltingarts.com/cpsmag/extr ... right.html

One particularly obnoxious thing that's been happening in recent years is that large image banks have been buying up previously public domain imagery (such as pre-1900 historical photos) and copyrighting them themselves, thus typically putting them beyond the use of the average person who doesn't want to pay $200-300-plus for images that should, by rights, be free for everyone's use.

I have many other grouches on the way copyright is getting tighter and more beneficial to big coroporations - google Fremont Lenin Getty for one interesting twist, which, Fremont being Fremont, I have no doubt is an artist joke, but it makes you think...

If you invent something and you put it 'out there' without someone stealing it, in other words, you SELL it.. then it is not yours anymore.. it doesn't matter if you have the capablities to make more and mass produce them.. mass production is the cause of such immoral laws.. this is the age of communication where you can tell people what to think with the click of a button.
And I know about contracts, but to me a contract is something that you sign.. just because i sign a sheet saying i give my life to somebody that doesn't mean they have a right to own me.. contracts are just ways of getting around the risk factor.. there are reasons you need lawyers to write up contracts.. because you need to 'use all the right words' and say it exactly right or it is not liable.. it's a fact that poor persons don't see lawyers on a regular basis, unlike wealthy business men who own the country.. contracts were invented for those wealthy, lazy business men who dont want to work for their money anymore..

Geeks on Slashdot, who constitute the majority of libertarians, it seems, are usually the biggest supporters of free P2P sharing of copyrighted music, movies, computer games, and anime because these are their interests; therefore, they couldn't care less about their otherwise principles. Many of them are constantly downloading stuff—while they sleep, while they're in class, and while they're at work. It's just self-interest.

Also, they're mostly libertarians because libertarianism is considered to be cool in the computer geek community.