Replying to Avatar ᴄʏʙᴇʀɢᴜʏ 👽

What should I do with people who are not discussion partners?

How to treat in a cultured and civilized manner when someone refuses to admit that he is wrong, or even that he is stupid about something.

I admit if I don't know something:

e.g. I don't know how to program discrete mathematical functions or cryptographic algorithms.

But e.g. I didn't even know what the "fleshlight" was - that was made a meme about it. Although I didn't even want this knowledge, but: thanks for the info, now I know :-)

But if someone says that: there is no such thing as Intellectual Property, and he or she thinks that everything that is digital can be freely copied, and he/she can even makes money from what he/she copied from someone else without the author's permission. What should I do with this?

Tell this to artists who want to sell their own work on a webshop and advertise their artwork here in Nostr. Instead, someone else copies it, prints the photo, painting, and makes money out of it. Not for the artist, but for himself/herself.

Or say it to those who advertise their paid adult content websites here on Nostr. Instead, someone makes these contents available without any permission and even makes money from these contents for himself/herself.

It's all intellectual property, like it or not. And it is indeed a violation of copyright if this is not permitted (usually from the author).

But there are persons who do not consider it illegal to claim someone else's artwork, book, invention, or software as their own.

Tell that to Einstein, Picasso, Dali, Tolstoy, or e.g. to Linus Torvalds.

IMO there is no point in talking to such a person anymore.

Please correct me if

I'm wrong!
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An Capone 🌗 2y ago

Well, the preface is good, but the end here doesn't match.

Doubting the entire concept of intellectual property is perfectly valid, the only problem here is that not everybody has the right knowledge and debate skills to defend such a difficult position to defend as most people resist it more or less for the reasons you listed.

Before I go deeper into it, let me clarify what I am defending and what I am attacking. I am saying that:

- Intellectual property (IP further) is a misnomer, because it does not meet the criteria of a property

- IP itself is unenforcible without a monopoly on violence.

- IP is a suboptimal way of protecting bad business models and practices

- IP often hinders progress and leaves us poorer than we would be without it.

- Opposing IP is not objectively morally wrong, it may even be morally right.

It's funny you should mention Linus Thorvalds in defense of IP. The guy, who made his life's work free to access, use, modify, distribute and even sell for everybody and never, afaik, published anything under a copyright or similirly strict license.

Ok, this is already much too long, so let me do it this way: Please pick, which of the statements above you do not agree with or which need further explanation. I'll go over the argumentation of each of the selected statements. Or maybe I can recommend you works of Stephen Kinsella, who does the critique of IP way better thsn I do. You can find his argumentation on YouTube. (just look for "Stephen kinsella intellectual property")

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ᴄʏʙᴇʀɢᴜʏ 👽 2y ago

Completely agree with a part of your answer. (And thanks for your real arguments. My problem was that this type of reply: "IP doesn't exist. Period".

Fiest: the expression of "intellectual property" is not so lucky. The real definition should be cover much more complicated "thing". The materialization of IP is not a mandatory thing. Despite of this I'll use the IP.

(I'm sorry, my mother tongue is Hungarian so some of my expression will not so precise in English regarding mainly the technical words, but I think will be understandable in this way)

And I promise I'll see Stephen Kinsella's work

On the other hand I think without IP the human technology, culture would not have developed, so nowadays we would still be living at the level of primitive society. So I think IP does not hinder the development (except some special thing that often leads monopoly or oligopoly). And some parts treated as IP is not really an IP, that's a fact.

In my post I didn' touch many forms of the IP. Some forms are protected by law, some form are not. In spite of that the unprotected part of IP does exist.

And the law protected part is divided much part too, e.g. the invention (know-how or arrangement), industrial law protection, geographical origin protection, even "logo" protection). These part protected only when somebody applying for protection. In my previous post almost didn't touched these parts.

The other parts "naturally protected" without any asking for protection is the "copyright law". I dealt with this part.

The basic fundament of IP that some invented created thing belongs to a specific person tho is the creator and owner.

The protection of IP (regardless of the type of IP) is divided to to parts: 1) personal rights and 2) economic rights.

The personal rights are untransferable, not an object to trade with it. This is the right to everybody should accept and acknowledge that this IP created as the owner and belongs to the owner in any way. The other part is the IP right of the owner to put their name on the creation. And the owner's exclusive right to give any permission to anybody, to "dispose" any - mainly economic - rights of the IP. This does not mean that the owner must ask money for the creation.

Some parts of IP is not protected by economic rights for example the idea, theory. E.g. Einstein's E=mc2 has no economic rights. But definitely has personal rights. Nobody has any rights to claim that this mathematical and physical theory's owner someone other than Einstein.

So no one has the right to claim that Linus Torvalds did not write the Linux kernel. Because all of the personal rights belongs to the owner, to the creator, to the inventor. It is completely independent from the economical rights. Linus Thorvalds exclusive right to enable his work can be accessible completely free (for example under GPL license - so this is a license Linus gave to the whole world). Picasso, Dali, etc. have a same rights - the personal rights included that the exlusive rights to make money from their artworks. But Picasso, Dali transferred the physical artwork and in this manner gave the rights to the new owner to trade with their artwork (there many other rights that have not been transferred - I don't deal with them here).

The economic rights are transferable (can be traded, marketed) but these rights are exclusively belongs to the owner regardless he/she wants to make money about the copyright protected "creation". I emplashise: "copy" "right" (this comes from ancient era, when there was no e.g. software).

If the owner doesn1t give a permission to anybody else to use, copy, distribute, rework their work, creation, invention, and so on, even a part of it - this is a copyright infringement - because in this way someone else has taken away the author's exclusive right to dispose of his work.

So back to Linus: he exercised his exclusive right to make his work available to the world for free. This is his license that he gave to the world. But no one can dispute that he wrote the kernel. No one can claim it as their own - that's usurpation.

And at the end of my reply: do anybody think that "E=mc2", "Linux", painting titled "Guenica", titled "Sand of Tyme ar Sinking" etc. hindered the world for development?

Please give me a feedback if I'm wrong regarding some parts of my reply.

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ᴄʏʙᴇʀɢᴜʏ 👽 2y ago

Completely agree with a part of your answer. (And thanks for your real arguments. My problem was that this type of reply: "IP doesn't exist. Period".

Fiest: the expression of "intellectual property" is not so lucky. The real definition should be cover much more complicated "thing". The materialization of IP is not a mandatory thing. Despite of this I'll use the IP.

(I'm sorry, my mother tongue is Hungarian so some of my expression will not so precise in English regarding mainly the technical words, but I think will be understandable in this way)

And I promise I'll see Stephen Kinsella's work

On the other hand I think without IP the human technology, culture would not have developed, so nowadays we would still be living at the level of primitive society. So I think IP does not hinder the development (except some special thing that often leads monopoly or oligopoly). And some parts treated as IP is not really an IP, that's a fact.

In my post I didn' touch many forms of the IP. Some forms are protected by law, some form are not. In spite of that the unprotected part of IP does exist.

And the law protected part is divided much part too, e.g. the invention (know-how or arrangement), industrial law protection, geographical origin protection, even "logo" protection). These part protected only when somebody applying for protection. In my previous post almost didn't touched these parts.

The other parts "naturally protected" without any asking for protection is the "copyright law". I dealt with this part.

The basic fundament of IP that some invented created thing belongs to a specific person tho is the creator and owner.

The protection of IP (regardless of the type of IP) is divided to to parts: 1) personal rights and 2) economic rights.

The personal rights are untransferable, not an object to trade with it. This is the right to everybody should accept and acknowledge that this IP created as the owner and belongs to the owner in any way. The other part is the IP right of the owner to put their name on the creation. And the owner's exclusive right to give any permission to anybody, to "dispose" any - mainly economic - rights of the IP. This does not mean that the owner must ask money for the creation.

Some parts of IP is not protected by economic rights for example the idea, theory. E.g. Einstein's E=mc2 has no economic rights. But definitely has personal rights. Nobody has any rights to claim that this mathematical and physical theory's owner someone other than Einstein.

So no one has the right to claim that Linus Torvalds did not write the Linux kernel. Because all of the personal rights belongs to the owner, to the creator, to the inventor. It is completely independent from the economical rights. Linus Thorvalds exclusive right to enable his work can be accessible completely free (for example under GPL license - so this is a license Linus gave to the whole world). Picasso, Dali, etc. have a same rights - the personal rights included that the exlusive rights to make money from their artworks. But Picasso, Dali transferred the physical artwork and in this manner gave the rights to the new owner to trade with their artwork (there many other rights that have not been transferred - I don't deal with them here).

The economic rights are transferable (can be traded, marketed) but these rights are exclusively belongs to the owner regardless he/she wants to make money about the copyright protected "creation". I emplashise: "copy" "right" (this comes from ancient era, when there was no e.g. software).

If the owner doesn1t give a permission to anybody else to use, copy, distribute, rework their work, creation, invention, and so on, even a part of it - this is a copyright infringement - because in this way someone else has taken away the author's exclusive right to dispose of his work.

So back to Linus: he exercised his exclusive right to make his work available to the world for free. This is his license that he gave to the world. But no one can dispute that he wrote the kernel. No one can claim it as their own - that's usurpation.

And at the end of my reply: do anybody think that "E=mc2", "Linux", painting titled "Guenica", titled "Sand of Tyme ar Sinking" etc. hindered the world for development?

Please give me a feedback if I'm wrong regarding some parts of my reply.

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An Capone 🌗 2y ago

First of all, I would like to appreciate the amount of time and energy you have onvested into a polite and thorough reply. Let me respond in kind.

As much as I don't like the phrase "IP doesn't exist" as it is simplistic and inevitably prone to being misunderstood, I agree with it mostly. IP does kinda exist as a fiction created by governments. Without them, without the monopoly on violence which torces a kind of collective hallucination of IP. it does not exist.

Even though I did not say it directly one can derived it from what I said earlier.

The entire concept of property exists solely to adress issue of scarcity (limited availability of material things) and to allow us to share these limited resources in a non-conflicting manner. For instance, If I want to sit in a chair nobody else can sit in it while I am sitting in it, or if I want to use a piece of land to grow veggies there, it cannot be used for for example building a house. That is why we have the concept of property.

When it comes to IP however, this problem does not exist. Me having the same idea as someone else, does not infringe on him having the idea. Me singing a song somebody else wrote, does not take the song from him. Me making a copy of a movie does not destroy the previous instance of the movie. The sole problem property aims to solve does not exist when it comes to intellectual property.

Also while I am at the fundamental flaws of IP, I must mention, that it inherently and inevitably creates a problem of authorship and ownership that doesn't exist in the physical realm pnve again because of scarcity. If I take some wood and craft a chair out of it, I can prove that it is I who made it and that nobody else has created because nobody else has had thst wood that I crafted it out of. However I can think exactly the same thing as someone else without ever even knowing the other person exists. (as has been nicely illustrated by Jevons and Menger independently coming up with the concept of marginal utility) I can think I created a unique melody while it has been used a thoushand times before by thoushands of other people.

While I am at it, there is the problem of minimal unit of ownership with IP that once again does not exist in the physical realm. What is the smallest unit of information one can claim ownership of? A note? A 3 not melody? Ten words? A letter? Whatever solution you choose, it always creates unexpected artificial problems.

Now to adress your concerns. It is most certain. that current knowledge. progress and technology would have been different if the fiction of IP wasn't forced on us. I don't however think, that it would be worse. I do think. it would be better.

To be honest I do not care much about the current subcategories of IP as I reject the entire concept.

When it comes to the issue of authorship, you don't need IP. You don't need to own a thing to claim authorshipand you can have a system to punish lies. Lie about authorship is still a lie even without IP and can be treated as such. Even without IP and centralized justice/judicial system (decentralized judicatory system is a very hard concept to grasp, don't worry about it too much now) you still can sue people who falsely claim that they have created this or that. You still get to claim authorship without IP. What you cannot claim is ownership of the immaterial resources.

The crucial aspect of the entire IP problem is that enforcing it requires interfering with rights of third parties who never consented to it, who never made any agreements with you. Let me illustrate. I as a (former) musician can create a song. I am the author of the song. I can record it and distribute copies of the recording. I can pair those copy with a license that specifies what my customers can do with it. So far everything is fine and legitimate.

Now imagine, that as it often happens, somebody breaks the license agreement and publishes a copy of my work on Pirate Bay and millions of people download and enjoy my song. Do I have the right to sue the millions of people that downloaded it from Pirate bay? I say no. I don't know those people, we do not have any contract between us, they are a third party completely unrelated to me. Current IP implementstion says yes and I think that's wrong as it makes third parties responsible for things they haven't signed up for. I don't have any right to force unknown people that had no interaction with me or my property.(remember the IP is not property despite it's name)

There are many more problems and rabbit holes without even going into the flaws of contemporary implementation of IP. Let me cut it off here and let me know what you don't agree with and/or where you may need a more detailed explanation.

Also hello from almost neighboring tax farm. (to the northwest of your tax farm)