YouTube is Glorious
YouTube is a glorious testament to the ability of creative, free people to produce an abundance of entertainment and education content. YouTube is huge, prosperous and still growing rapidly. And, YouTube enforces copyright. These facts are not unrelated. Libertarians understand that private property rights are an essential cornerstone of prosperity.Incentive? Calculation? Abolishing Property is Cruel
Sadly, history is replete with examples of tyrants abolishing property rights to producer goods, like farmland, with predictable, disastrous results: starvation. After all, why would a farmer do the hard work plowing, tilling, planting, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting if only to surrender the produce? This is, of course, the famous “incentive problem”, and it spells doom for the viability of socialism (unless we somehow engineer a “new socialist man”).Moreover, as Mises explained, socialism suffers an even worse defect – the “calculation problem”. If there are no property rights in producer goods, then they cannot be bought and sold. If producer goods are not bought and sold, then there are no meaningful prices for them. Accounting thus becomes impossible. Society is left with no possible way to learn which products are actually serving the needs of consumers, and which are a tragic waste of scarce resources.
Respect For Property Generates Prosperity
Post World War II Earth provided a convincing empirical study of libertarian property theory. Germany was divided into East and West, Korea divided into North and South, and Hong Kong was divided from mainland China. The relatively free market economies vastly out-performed the socialist economies. This did not surprise anyone familiar with Austrian economics.Similarly, the extraordinary success of YouTube is not surprising either, because (in case I forgot to mention it) YouTube enforces copyright. “Copyright” is a property right in a producer good, such as a video or a song. The content producer first makes a risky, expensive capital investment creating the original. Then copies can be mass-produced and delivered to consumers cheaply.
YouTube has adopted a business model essentially the same as broadcast television and radio. Copyright owners generate revenue by selling advertising, while viewers watch for free. It should be clear that copyright is an essential element in the viability of this model.
To get you to watch an advertisement on YouTube, you have to be interested in the video which follows. If you can watch the same video somewhere else without advertising, you probably will. So the copyright owner must have exclusive control over the distribution of the video. This is the very essence of what property means: property is the right to use, to control, and to exclude others.
YouTube without copyright would fail for the exact same two reasons that agriculture failed in Bangladesh, and manufacturing failed in North Korea: the incentive problem and the calculation problem.
Jeffrey Tucker, Libertarian Icon
And so it is with profound confusion that I read the YouTube-related passages of Jeffrey Tucker’s book “Liberty.Me – Freedom Is a Do-It-Yourself-Project”. Members of Liberty.me need no introduction to Mr. Tucker. But for anyone else who might be reading, and before I offer my criticism, let me briefly heap sincere praise.Jeffrey Albert Tucker is an icon of libertarianism, having for years been the editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and editor of Mises.org. He is currently the publisher of Laissez Faire Books, and CEO of Liberty.me. With signature bow tie and soft-spoken class and dignity, Jeffrey Tucker tirelessly advances the cause of freedom. I and all lovers of liberty owe a great debt of gratitude to Jeffrey Albert Tucker.
“Infringement Hysteria”
In “Liberty.me”, Tucker shares my enthusiasm at the brilliant, relatively anarchic phenomenon that is YouTube. He acknowledges “property rights as an essential guardian of freedom.” (p.58)But then Tucker dismisses YouTube’s decision, from its inception, to respect intangible property as a mere “presumption”. Tucker claims that “no one really benefited from [enforcing copyright]”, and that we endured a period of “infringement hysteria”. Says Tucker:
Clearly, the law had set up an untenable situation. It created a system too costly for everyone. It was unsustainable. But what would change it and how? This is where the creative forces of the market economy came to the rescue. (p.355)This is where Tucker plays fast and loose with facts and reason. He’s going to try to convince us that YouTube abandoned copyright in favor of “the creative forces of the market economy”, as if the market does not crucially require property. Or something. Let’s see.
Infringement is Trespass, YouTube Ads are Rent
Google bought YouTube in 2006. Whether “hysterical” or not, copyright owners had indeed already successfully prosecuted lawsuits (see e.g. RIAA v. Napster), and were threatening to enforce against YouTube. In response, YouTube developed an internal policy under which copyright owners can file disputes. Tucker explains:If a given video infringed, the owner would be notified and would then get a choice to either order a takedown or have an ad put up on the video from which the owner would derive the revenue. (p. 355)Obviously YouTube’s policy is upholding intellectual property rights. When there are trespassers, a property owner has two choices: kick them out, or charge rent. An infringer is a trespasser. Making an infringer take down a video is kicking them out. Accepting ad revenue is charging rent. This is pretty basic stuff.
But to hear Tucker tell it, the reader would think that YouTube was not enforcing copyright:
Almost everyone took the revenue solution, simply because it is more advantageous to the owner to gain than to slap the uploader around using the law.Good grief. Clearly Jeffrey Tucker is suggesting that YouTube’s advertising policy is something besides copyright enforcement. This is disingenuous in the extreme. In case I forgot to mention it, YouTube enforces copyright.
What the owners have learned in the process is something that has been obvious to many of us for a long time but, for some crazy reason, was often lost on the enforcers. They learned that what looks like a violation of the law and infringement on property rights can be re-rendered as a form of peaceful advertising. (p. 355)
The reason copyright infringement looks like a violation of property rights is because it is a violation of property rights. The only thing that is “re-rendered” about YouTube’s policy is that they are doing the work of upholding property rights themselves, privately. This is a beautiful example of how we could enforce the law in a free, stateless society.
Golden Anarchist Opportunity Missed
Instead of seizing the golden opportunity to point out private law in action, Tucker unwittingly fuels liberty’s detractors by pitting ad revenue against “the law”. It’s as if Tucker doesn’t understand that “the law” is exactly what YouTube is enforcing. And that’s a good thing. Do you see? Private institutions can do a great job of protecting property. We don’t need the state.But isn’t YouTube just enforcing copyright law because the state makes them? That appears to be Tucker’s position:
IP enforcement through . . . copyrights has slowed the pace of development of media [and] software. (p.224)Tucker doesn’t offer any evidence to support this alleged hindrance of development. In fact, the YouTube example seems to show quite the opposite, once we consider that YouTube enforces copyright.
Within our current statist system, content creators are free to release relinquish copyright altogether, or to release material under the Creative Commons, which is a license allowing unrestricted copying. If copyright really was a detriment to progress, one would think that a competitor could outperform YouTube by only accepting non-copyright material, and that users would flock to this competitor, happy to leave behind YouTube and its “antique institution of copyright”, as Tucker calls it.
Despite spending a large amount of ink canonizing YouTube, Tucker simply ignoring the “elephant in the room”, i.e. YouTube enforces copyright.
Black Friday
Earlier in the book, Tucker proclaims:I’m so proud of Rebecca Black I can hardly stand it. (p.55)In 2011, at age 13, Rebecca Black became famous with her YouTube video of the song “Friday”. I share Tucker’s admiration of Rebecca’s accomplishments. While her notoriety did stem from so many people allegedly disliking the song, music is, after all, the “entertainment” business. Entertaining people is difficult to do. Many have tried and failed. Rebecca Black succeeded.
[Rebecca Black] is among a growing number of young people who have become YouTube stars completely on their own. (p.55)Wait, not so fast. Rebecca Black most certainly did not succeed completely on her own. The song “Friday” was written by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson. Before they did so, young Rebecca didn’t have a song to sing. Then, Rebecca’s mom hired a production company called Ark Music Factory to produce the song with Rebecca singing, and to produce a music video.
There Really Was A Copyright Dispute
Reminiscent of socialists, who ignore wealth creation and merely seek to distribute it, Tucker ignores authorship completely. He focuses on the “worst song ever” hype that propelled Rebecca Black to fame, and writes:After some weeks, she pulled the [“Friday”] video down — and this decision seemed like a bow to defeat at the hands of the Internet lynch mob. In public, the given reason was a copyright dispute. But privately, she had to feel a sense of relief. No more hate. No more derision. No more sleepless nights of feeling inadequate. (p.57)Mr. Tucker, I understand that using hyperbole like “internet lynch mob” might be more inflammatory than plain facts about property rights. But the fact is, there really was a copyright dispute here. A few of them actually.
First, there is a copyright in the authorship, i.e. writing of the song. There is a different copyright in a sound recording of the song. This makes sense, because there can be many different recordings of the same one song. And, there is a copyright in a video. The same video could be synced to different audios, or the same audio could be synced to different videos. It is quite logical that there are separate rights of ownership to the different elements.
Jey and Wilson wrote “Friday”, so they own the authorship. Rebecca’s mom paid for the audio and video masters, so she owns those. These people had some temporary misunderstandings about who owned what, and that led to the temporary take-downs. They resolved their property disputes, peacefully, and the video was re-uploaded. All is well, Friday-wise.
Tucker cites some of the lyrics of the song, and offers his view that it conveys a libertarian theme of freedom, and rejecting prison-like public schools. But throughout the passage, Tucker steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the songwriters, speaking as if “Friday” was Rebecca Black’s song:
[“Friday”] was sung by Justin Bieber. It was performed on the television show Glee. It was covered by star Katy Perry in concert, and on Jimmy Fallon’s television show with Stephen Colbert and Taylor Hicks. (p.57)Yes, but you see, “Friday” is Jey and Wilson’s song, not Rebecca Black’s. Without copyright, Rebecca Black, and Justin Beiber, and Katy Perry, and Glee and the others would all be free to profit from the performance of “Friday”, without compensating the guys who actually brought that song into existence, i.e. homesteaded it.
Selective Enforcement – A Beautiful Thing
I exclude some people from my house. Others I invite in. As a property owner, this is my right. Indeed, this is the very essence of property. I have exclusive control over my house, and may set whatever peaceful standards I wish in judging whether to allow others access.In “Liberty.me”, Tucker chronicles what he claims is selective enforcement of copyright, as if that’s a bad thing. A YouTube video about making guns used a piece of music, and:
Apparently, the video infringed on the copyright of Warner/Chappell. What’s that? That’s a music distributor. So the wrath supposedly had nothing to do with the gun or the subject. It was removed because the background music was alleged to be under copyright.
But wait just one moment. There are dozens of different YouTube videos that use that song. It’s also used in the movie Tree of Life. If it’s copyright protected, isn’t it just a bit strange that Warner happened to pick Cody’s video to order a takedown? (p.121)I don’t know what song it even was in that gun video, nor whether Warner/Chappell’s copyright enforcement really was selective, as Tucker suggests. Perhaps the other videos which feature the same song licensed it properly.
But let’s assume the folks at Warner/Chappell are card-carrying left-wing Democrats, and purposely filed a copyright claim against the gun-making video to make a political point. So what? It is no different than selectively denying access to your house. If I own a song, and I only wish to allow it to be used in videos about global warming and feeding the homeless, and not about do-it-yourself gun manufacture, that is my right. This is the very essence of property.
Evidently Jeffrey Tucker and the other intellectual communists would prefer a world in which music owners were forced to allow access and use of their property by whoever and whenever. Take note: As with guns, I will give up my song when they pry my cold dead fingers from around it.
Conclusion
In the end, I am left to just scratch my head and wonder about the curious anti-copyright author and publisher Jeffrey Tucker. The version of his “Liberty.me” sold on Amazon contains an intriguing bit of language near the very beginning:Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey A. TuckerI know what I mean when I say “copyright”. I mean that I am staking my claim of ownership to a unique intellectual object, uniquely situated in intellectual space, with all the associated rights reserved. Although currently backed by the power of the state, I firmly believe that a free, stateless society will enforce copyright. YouTube provides a clear look at how it can work.
But what does Mr. Tucker mean by “copyright”? He places the “©” symbol in his own books, and many of those that he publishes by other authors. Tucker repeatedly refers to the “owners” of video content, presumably aware that only property can be owned. Liberty.me is a subscription-based online community, of which I and many others are paying members. At Laissez Faire Books, Tucker grants access to paying customers, excluding others. He clearly acts like a property owner over his intellectual property.
And yet, Tucker endorses Stephan Kinsella’s brand of intellectual communism: property rights are only legitimate in physical things, according to them. So, what do Tucker and Kinsella mean when they write “copyright” in their books? One can only wonder.
And by the way, YouTube enforces copyright.
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Of course Youtube enforces copyright. But as my article explains, the original view of copyright implies 100% ownership, and this had a huge impact on music in the 20th century. It locked down development in mainstream music. Almost every serious innovation in music from ragtime to jazz to rock has arisen as a reaction against intellectual monopoly — until the industry giants take it over and resort to copyright again. This is how government monopolists work: the winner wants to lock in the gains.
What’s been great about Youtube is how it has gradually added to the exceptions to the point that it has become functional, very much like the way the late medieval theologians added ever more exceptions to the rule against usury, if only to make the system function properly. This is what is going on with copyright on music today.
A popular song is today covered a thousand times in a week, completely contradicting the spirit of copyright but still narrowly adhering to the letter. This is how bad law dies and this is a wonderful thing.
For more on music and copyright and IP in general see http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm
great book.
You say “YouTube . . . gradually added to the [copyright] exceptions to the point that it has become functional.”
Stop. False. YouTube offers no exceptions to copyright. None. Zero. When you resort to blatant falsehoods, you disgrace yourself and libertarianism.
You say “Plagiarism is not even illegal now”.
Stop. False. Of course plagiarism (aka copyright infringement) is illegal now. Ex-Beatle George Harrison was civilly prosecuted for plagiarizing the song “He’s So Fine”, to cite just one famous example of many.
You demonize copyright by calling it a “monopoly”.
Stop. True. Copyright IS a monopoly over the use of a unique object. ALL property is a monopoly (if you want to use that word). You are making a decidedly Marxist argument, which is your right. But for heaven’s sake, stop calling yourself a libertarian. You are an intellectual communist, and your policies, if implemented, would result in intellectual starvation.
You say Boldrin & Levine’s “Against Intellectual Monopoly” is a great book.
Stop. False. These authors are (supposedly) economists, yet present the most hilariously inept economic analysis I have ever read. They purport to show how a book could be profitable in the absence of copyright. And yet they completely IGNORE the cost of producing the book, and cite only the revenue.
This is precisely the same dishonest tactic that socialists have been perpetrating for centuries – ignore the cost of creating producer goods, and argue over how the wealth is divvied up.
Here is a more in-depth deconstruction of Boldrin:
http://homesteadip.blogspot.com/2013/03/boldrin-and-levines-inept-anti-ip.html
I need some Tylenol.
But vacuous trolling such as your comment here, is far beneath you. Future such garbage will be trashed.
Can I opt out of paying for the system of force required to implement and enforce your beliefs in regards to intellectual property?
-Jaybird
Intellectual communist – a person who believes that individuals do not have the right to own intellectual property
So would you be against me repeating the arguments that you’ve detailed in this article to my friends – or would that be a violation of your intellectual property?
Ideas are not copyrightable. Finished works are.
This is the current legal doctrine. If I accept your arguments, shouldn’t I question current doctrine? Why not own a theorem or an idea?
I invite you to study my work, where these questions are addressed in some detail. I think these definitions will be helpful to you:
Intellectual matter – that which can be understood through language.
Intellectual object – an ascertainable, temporally stable and bounded pattern of intellectual matter which can condition the outcome of human events.
Rivalrous – a quality such that use by one interferes with use by another.
Intellectual property – a non-trivial, homesteaded rivalrous intellectual object that substantially functions as productive capacity
Are theorems goods? I can apply a known theorem as a particular step in a new theorem. Then it would act as a producer good as well.
What about ideas?
“I invite you to study my work, where these questions are addressed in some detail. I think these definitions will be helpful to you:”
Unfortunately not. Link?
One who denies the existence of intellectual matter would be an intellectual immaterialist. I address this as Mises did:
http://homesteadip.liberty.me/2014/05/26/the-mises-test-of-external-reality/
You just said that information exists, can be usable and can be stored in a physical form. (in which it can of cause be owned).
Not believing and denying are to different things.
Furthermore there are historical examples of regions with and without IP. Germany did not have IP until 1837 (country wide), while great Britain had since 1710. The is a book (German), which gives comparisons of income, productivity (measured in different books to be released) and prices of the books.
Incomes (for authors) were higher (on average), way more books were published and they were much cheaper, in Germany.
No proof for or against the existence of IP, but just as evidence to the contrary of you claim, that no one would produce because of lack of incentive.
Not believing and denying are two different things.
Furthermore there are historical examples of regions with and without IP rights. Germany did not have IP rights until 1837 (country wide), while great Britain had since 1710. The is a book (German), which gives comparisons of income, productivity (measured in different books to be released) and prices of the books.
Incomes (for authors) were higher (on average), way more books were published and they were much cheaper, in Germany.
No proof for or against the existence of IP, but just as evidence to the contrary of you claim, that no one would produce because of lack of incentive.
These words are now mine! I own them! They’ll always exist in my digital archive! You can’t have them back! Your work will live on through the centuries because you posted them online. You cannot reasonably expect to have any control whatever over how they’re disseminated now. That is because they are not a thing that can be contained or corralled or neatly accounted for, no matter what you do.
This is the fundamental difference between your ideas, even your finished prose, and physical thing. If I had taken your lawnmower out of your garage, you could come get it back and I wouldn’t have it anymore. Such is not the case with these words. They belong to the ages.
Make sure you select them well.
Don’t tell me it can’t be done. I do it.
The file has already automatically synced to my iCloud. Who knows how many servers its on now. Can you reclaim those files too? Where does your IP begin and my private property end?
Visualizing boundaries around intellectual objects has heretofore been difficult, thus necessitating the doctrine of Intellectual Space. I invite you to study my thesis, for one of its prime contributions is making easier the kinds of problems you pose.
As with any sort of property, a non-owner may use my IP as I allow. If this were an actual example of IP I wished to enforce, say e.g. my song, your download would be licensed with terms of use that specify how you may / may not use it.
This presumes that by “touch” you mean physically touch. Is that what you meant?
I’ve made more than a million dollars licensing music to film and television. The “so what’ about your book selling and my music selling is that you and I do what Danny Chadwick above said is impossible – i.e. track and receive compensation for intellectual goods.
haha. yeah, right.Anyway, irrelevant.
It’s not a boast if it’s true–and I brought it up because you and your kind often say things like the only reason people oppose copyrgiht is they have nothing of value worth selling, blah blah blah. Well, I’ve literally made millions selling intellectual product and being a patent lawyer. So… now what do they say? Nothing. They shut up and change the subject, like cockroaches when the kitchen lights come on.
and no, I don’t believe your claims. Feel free to “prove” them with “BMI” statements, though this makes you sound like the guy in the bar who claims he makes $10k a month with Amway and just “happens” to have a paystub in his wallet to prove it–you know, like most normal people do!
And even if you could prove your claims–so what? This does not show IP is justified, son.
“Can’t you see that by the mere act of posting these words online that you’ve lost all control of them?”
And then you said:
“I never said that it was impossible to make money by publishing content online. In fact, that’s how I make my living.”
Danny, if you had lost all control of your content, you could not monetize it. The fact that you monetize proves that you are successfully exerting control.
Has anyone ever made even $1 selling atmospheric air?
I do little shot films on the side, I upload them to YouTube and then they’re gone. I can still serve ads on them (I don’t but that’s a different subject) but anyone can download them from YouTube with a simple application or even a browser extension. I cannot stop that. I’m certain my films have been downloaded by others, there’s nothing I can do about that. Even if I knew who they were, I could not go to their house and demand my intellectual property back.
The truth of the matter is that nothing and no one can stop “piracy.” I spend a great deal of time with software whose primary purpose is to break down the barriers that IP puts up. Piracy is rampant and easy to accomplish. And yet Hollywood and the Music companies and everyone else that supposedly depends on as a keystone of their business model still make billions of dollars annually. They employ millions of people even though there’s a great deal of “intrusion” of their “intellectual property.”
In a world without IP, I imagine that these companies would still make a great deal of money. Just as they do now. IP is a gigantic hustle that keeps lawyers in rolling in dough that could otherwise be spent on creating more movies and music that people will pay for, because they value them. And people will “pirate” those goods, because that’s what pirates do.
But I ramble on. I hope this clears up my point. Sorry about the confusion.
Despite all our fences, door locks and security alarms, we will never eliminate trespass, theft and murder. Does this mean that property owners have no control over physical objects? No, it means they have imperfect control. Just because we cannot eliminate all property violations, despite our best efforts, does it follow that we abandon the notion of property rights?
It is NOT impossible for you to control your intellectual objects. You can encrypt them. You can watermark them. You can register them. You can track and observe their usage.
You can make contracts with others for their sale and delivery, as you acknowledge. It is strictly impossible for anyone to deliver anything without first controlling it.
If you wish to disagree with me, Danny, please cite for me a single example, in all human history, where anyone successfully transacted a sale for anything without first bringing it under control.
Alexander, maybe it would help if you would clarify your ideas about the ideal system. I frequently find myself tempted to interpret you as supporting the existing system, which, for instance, prohibits research on methods for defeating crypto, allows fairly arbitrary search and seizure of my PC, and monitoring of my communications. I hope my instinct is wrong?
But you did not show it.
You are using words, which I assume you yourself invented (“intellectual space”) to justify the concept.
Yet you give no reason, why the concept is justified.
You have written a whole article, in which you still believe to haven shown that the arguments against IP a flawed.
But you only showed that the same argument could not be applied to property, thus establishing that IP and PP are not the same.
So what again is the philosophical basis? It is not logic or reason, at least not, if you are an example of a “good” IP advocate.
Thank you, Alexander, for your excellent thinking in this area: I’ll follow up on read more of *your* work
For instance?
I don’t think he made a serious effort to respond to my question about the different treatment of songs and other ideas, such as mathematics, scientific principles, etc. (Note that elsewhere he admits that patents are invalid.) He ignored my question about how he can either justify the existing limits on research, chilling creativity, intrusive surveillance, search and seizure, and draconisn enforcement upon nonconsenting third parties supported by subsidies or implement his ideas without these mechanisms.
I did not pay a lot of attention to this article, because it is based on the same ideas Alexander used in other articles, adds nothing new, and I think he’s already been answered. What he says about Tucker or Youtube amounts to nothing if his basic theory fails. I think the best case he can make is something like “Wait and see which the market chooses, DROs that enforce copyright or DROs that don’t.” My bet is on the one that doesn’t hassle their customers about how they download media and how many copies they make.