

Paul Buchheit:  What does it mean to own a "right"? - abstractbill
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-does-it-mean-to-own-right-was.html

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Goladus
I'm behind you 100% on this one It's nice to see someone taking a stand on
this, it's been a pet peeve of mine for a long time.

On a whim, I did a search for posts that I've made on this subject and came up
with a bunch in just a few minutes, beginning in 2003 and the most recent
being here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823>

I put the rest on a page here: <http://www.goladus.com/copyright.html>
(Basically random greppings from various forum threads in the past 4 years,
They aren't proofread very well)

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palish
Don't you feel owning the rights to a piece of music is different than owning
rights to salt, though? No one has a monopoly on music, because anyone can
compose their own. The same goes with software. It's not artificial like
restricting goods; it really is your hard work.

When I said "Copying software is stealing", I was incorrect. What I meant to
express was "Copying software is wrong if you can afford to buy it". There's
something morally wrong about taking someone's hard work against their wishes
and giving it away for free. I don't know what to call it, but don't you at
least agree it _is_ wrong?

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paul
Infringing on people's legal rights is often wrong, but not everything that's
wrong (or illegal) should be called "theft".

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palish
Okay. Is your argument about semantics?

I'm fine with renaming the act, but I have no idea what to call it. Do you
have a suggestion? Just "illegal copying" perhaps?

Also, do you feel the law should punish the act as if someone had shoplifted
an item of equivalent value, or some other punishment? I'm worried that if the
punishment is a fine, people might risk it anyway because the chance of
getting caught seems so small in peer to peer networks.

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daniel-cussen
Copyright infringement is never treated the same as property theft. In any
jurisdiction.

In any case, copyright was not established to help companies like Warner or
Scholastic---in fact, it was originally designed to protect authors from
having large corporations distribute their stuff without paying authors
anything, as opposed to today's model, in which companies pay authors
relatively little.

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ntoshev
Copyright infringement is often publicly referred to as theft. So there is
obviously an overlap in people's minds.

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paul
It wouldn't be a popular misconception if a lot of people didn't believe it.

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Alex3917
Great post. I remember someone writing a short story based on that Gandhi
anecdote for Kuro5hin a few years ago. Sadly I can't link to it because it
never made it through the queue.

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mynameishere
The key feature of property is the determination of its use, rather than mere
possession. If you own something by law [1] then an infringement of that right
is stealing. As for India, well, it just goes to show you're better off
controlling the opium market than the salt market.

[1] There are two kinds of ownership: By law, and by adverse possession.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession>

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Goladus
Making an illegal copy isn't stealing the copyright, though.

If I copy paulgraham.com and post all his essays, claim they are my own, and
then try to sue him for infringement, I'm trying to steal his intellectual
property.

If I copy some of his essays without his permission, I've infringed.on some of
the exclusive rights granted by law. I'm not stealing.

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mynameishere
If you define "stealing" as "transfering property from one pocket to another,"
then you are right, since copying essays or whatever doesn't deprive the owner
of possession.

If you define "stealing" as "preventing another from determining the use of
his property", then you aren't right.

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paul
The dictionary doesn't seem to include your second definition, but regardless,
you would NOT be preventing him from determining the use of his property,
because his property is the copyright, and he can still use it any way he
likes.

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mynameishere
The dictionary is the wrong place to look for discussion on property. It's a
complicated subject, and I'm trying to squeeze it into as few words as
possible. If you want a citation:

 _In a private property system, property rules are organized around the idea
that various contested resources are assigned to the decisional authority of
particular individuals (or families or firms)_
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/>

...In short, it is a matter of "use" (decision) rather than possession. A
copyright indisputably is owned by all creators unless surrendered. But the
copyright itself codifies control over a work, and thus is not _that which is
lost_ but _that which proves loss_ in matters of IP violations.

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Goladus
Intellectual property is arbitrary relative to, say, a hammer. Everyone agrees
on what a hammer is, and that it is a "contested resource." The term
"Intellectual Property" is very recent and we are still trying to reach an
agreement on what it means.

"Stealing a portion of an owner's exclusive copyrights," isn't generally the
message being sent when someone talks about "stealing music" or "stealing
software."

I agree the dictionary is not the right place to look, however I disagree that
legal lexicons are much more helpful. I think the issue here is the general
metaphor used by regular people to communicate these ideas with each other.

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johnrob
I think this argument can be generalized. There are no real laws. Only
consequences. You can do whatever you want. Some actions will cause the cops
to throw you in jail, some wont. Timing is everything - what is illegal today
might be legal tomorrow. Any law can be changed, if you can convince enough
people.

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Tichy
Not sure I would express it like you, but perhaps we agree. I think to argue
about right and wrong as Paul did in the article is a slippery slope - people
might never agree. Wars go on forever because of reasoning like that, each
party believes to be in the right.

The "real" reality is that what is right is exactly what the people in power
say is right. If you believe something is right, but the people in power
believe differently, all you can do is gather the power to make it right. That
is what Ghandhi did, even though he did it without using weapons. But being
able to convince enough people to support your cause is a form of power, too.

There is no god given right to own intellectual property, or any other
property for that matter, people can own it only because society as a whole
allows them to. If there is no society/police to enforce your rights, all you
can do is sit tight in your house with the shotgun ready. You might still be
able to defend your property. But that is because you have a shotgun, not
because the property belongs to you.

People chose to organize in societies and accept property rights because they
think it benefits everybody. As soon as it does not benefit somebody, there is
no reason for that person to go on supporting property rights (but the
"benefits me" equation should factor in things like jail).

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euccastro
Why do you call it Imaginary instead of Intellectual?

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nickb
So your point is that all the patents and IP rights should not be allowed?

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brlewis
The point I read was that infringement is not theft.

He didn't rule out that there might be some situation where a government-
enforced exclusive right might be appropriate.

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paul
Exactly. IP can be good, but that's no reason mix up the language.

I've added an update clarifying this.

