Saturday, September 20, 2014

Trashing Anti-Copyright Strawmen #1

Liberty.me member Joseph Fetz has chimed in trying to defend Intellectual Communism.
Fetz (quoted), is one of Kinsella’s favorite arguments, necessitating my responses (interspersed).
“Own” [a song] is begging the question. Sure, we can prove who owns a truck by regressing through property titles and transactions of that scarce resource. However, if I have a recording of a song, one that I found on the internet and downloaded, what criteria proves ownership?
Ownership of a song is proven by regressing through property titles and transactions of that scarce resource, just like a truck.
It would seem to me that ownership derives from first appropriation.
Absolutely correct. Rightful ownership accrues according to the homestead principle. Hence the URL of my thesis “Homestead IP”.
That you’re a musician, you necessarily use notes (especially those of diatonic music), so you’re creating a double-standard here. You want to lay claim to a certain combination of notes and back it up with the use of aggression towards others who use that same combination, yet you don’t want to be held liable to those who actually created the diatonic system of notes. This seems very hypocritical and should be your first instruction that *creation* and ability to sell (or influence) is not the criteria of ownership.
The diatonic scale is a series of sound wave frequencies, like 440 cycles per second. Nobody invented frequencies. Waves are a naturally occurring phenomenon, like aluminum sitting dormant in the hillside. There is an infinite supply of “notes” (particular frequencies) that anyone may use in building a musical composition, if one is willing and able to do the hard work necessary. Similarly, there is an infinite supply of aluminum in the hillside that anyone may use in building a bicycle, if one is willing and able to do the hard work necessary.

“Musical notes” pre-exist man, are non-scarce, thus non-ownable. A new song is created by an individual, from previously un-owned raw material, and transformed into a useful and unique new object.

“Aluminum” is not own-able. A bicycle made of aluminum is own-able. Why? It was homesteaded.

“The English Language” is not own-able. A unique original story made of English words is own-able. Why? It was homesteaded.

“The Diatonic Scale” is not own-able. A unique song made of diatonic notes is own-able. Why? It was homesteaded.
To take [Alexander Baker's pro-copyright] stance, you most assuredly owe many royalties to the descendants of Pythagorus, or at least if we were to follow your reasoning, you should not use diatonic music at all without his descendant’s permission. Have you secured that permission?
A pattern of information is own-able, the supply of raw material from which the pattern is constructed is not own-able. Please stop conflating the two. It’s a strawman argument.


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  1. Dave Burns September 1, 2014, 9:38 am Reply
    Saying that “the diatonic scale is a series of sound wave frequencies” is like saying that musical notation is a bunch of dots and lines on paper. The diatonic scale was definitely invented.
    If you can homestead a song, why couldn’t someone homestead English? All you need is a slightly more tyrannical mechanism than the current copyright regime.
    All this talk of homesteading and raw material is just metaphor. What you’re trying to say is, you compose a song and it takes effort and skill. And then you would like to sell use of the song. You wish to sell the means to copy the song, yet prevent people from copying it. And because copying technology has advanced so far, this is getting difficult. So you want the state (or a DRO) to give you a way to penalize people who make copies or samples or mashups or sing your song without your permission, whether or not they have entered an agreement with you.
    • Avatar of Alexander Baker
      Alexander Baker September 1, 2014, 1:55 pm Reply
      Yes, “talk of homesteading and raw material is just metaphor.” That’s true of the “physical ” universe just as much as the intangible universe. there is no such thing as a “car”, or a “machine” or any “object”. There are only disturbances in the quantuum field which somehow collapse waves into sub-atomic particles, as far as we are beginning to understand nature.
      Yes, composing a song (or building a factory) takes “effort and skill”. In other words, the consumption of scarce resources. It also requires the use of language (or sub-atomic “particles”), an infinite resource.
  2. Avatar of Alexander Baker
    Alexander Baker September 1, 2014, 2:03 pm Reply
    “So you want the state (or a DRO) to give you a way to penalize people who make copies or samples or mashups or sing your song without your permission, whether or not they have entered an agreement with you.”
    Yes, the law exists to resolve property disputes. If we have an agreement, property disputes are governed under contract law. If not, then tort law.
    A free society will certainly have a legal system. The understanding of legal principles that evolves from the decisions of courts over time is something we might call “Common Law”.
  3. Avatar of Dave Burns
    Dave Burns September 2, 2014, 12:22 am Reply
    Was any of that relevant? Why do you never answer when I ask about the difference between “homesteading” a song and “homesteading” language, math, industrial design, or science?
    The mechanism of law enforcement is sufficiently arbitrary. It seems to me that “homesteading” describes the ambition of the French government toward the French language pretty well. The problem is, it is immoral, absurd, and impractical, not impossible.
    • Avatar of Alexander Baker
      Alexander Baker September 2, 2014, 1:58 am Reply
      I did answer you Dave. In fact, I posted the answer as its own article.
      http://homesteadip.liberty.me/2014/08/31/when-is-a-pattern-property/
      A “poem” is an object, built by an individual. “Language” is the raw material from which the poem is built. A “bicycle” is an object, built by an individual. “Aluminum” is the raw material from which the the bicycle is built.
      “Language” is an infinite resource. “Aluminum” is an infinite resource.
      • Avatar of Dave Burns
        Dave Burns September 2, 2014, 2:29 am Reply
        A metaphor is not an argument.
      • Avatar of Dave Burns
        Dave Burns September 2, 2014, 4:27 am Reply
        Tweak the semantics and restate your claim as, a performance is an object, built by performers or by a machine. A song is then raw material.
  4. Avatar of Stephen Davis
    Stephen Davis September 8, 2014, 5:43 pm Reply
    Alexander, aren’t you into Mises and Rothbard? Human action involves using knowledge, patterns, information, etc. to guide action. These things are applied to scarce means.
    Why do you want to create artificial scarcity where it doesn’t exist? Why do you want to limit freedom unnecessarily?

Thoughts? Comments?

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