…for the “communist” and “socialist” accusations to start flying around in the Wenzel-Kinsella libertarian IP debate. Bob Wenzel, who continues his slide into the wrong side of this issue, posts this, presumably from one of his blog’s commenters [my emphasis]:
It has been a recent fashion by some libertarians to denounce the legitimacy of intellectual property rights on the free market. They believe and promote the idea that all information should be owned in common by all men, and that no man should exclusively profit from any information. This makes them, by any honest definition of the term, intellectual communists. Most anti-IP arguments stem from confusion over the nature of information and its physical manifestation, which is why property in information gets bundled with property in ideas. Some libertarians, whose opposition to IP comes from a communistic sensibility to the production of information, when not actively promoting communistic models of information production, make liberal use of the confusion between information and ideas to promote the abolition of IP entirely and thus destroy their competition…
The quote goes on, but I spare you. It is uncanny how often libertarian debates end in the “you’re a communist” quip, which evidently settles the matter!
What Wenzel and his IP ilk are getting all wrong is the anti-IP position itself. They’re errecting straw men delux.
The exact same accusation has been levelled at me by libertarians in IP debates – that I’m an ‘ideas communist’ who wants to rob all your clever thoughts from your clever, unique brain and feels entitled to your information for FREE!
This is missing it completely. We don’t want to steal your idea out of your brain. What we ARE saying is that once the idea BECOMES known it is able to be used without infringing upon the original’s property. It is this that makes ideas non-scarce, not the fact that we should all magically and automatically know everyone’s ideas in our brains or have a right to extract the knowledge into their heads.
An idea is fundamentally different from tangible property. Ideas are patterns of how we use tangible property more efficiently and to better meet our/consumers’ needs. If I use your car, you don’t have your car. I need to give it back to you before you can use it. If I use your idea, you still have your idea, and I can’t ‘give’ it back to you even if I wanted to.
To be crystal clear: us anti-IP libertarians are not out to force people to put their ideas for free out into some ‘ideas commons’ like a bunch of actual communists might. There are many legitimate ways to protect ideas that DON’T REQUIRE SPECIAL STATE-GRANTED IP PROTECTION. Keeping it in your head is one way. Coming up with very complex ideas is another. Storing ideas in highly encrypted code is another. Locking secret formulas on a page in a safe box is another.
If I copy your idea by sneaking into your house and looking at your recipe book, I am guilty of breaking your window and tresspassing, and you’d probably get away with shooting me for doing such, but I haven’t stolen your idea. You still have it. If I physically steal your recipe book, meaning you physically lose where your idea is stored, I am liable to return it back to you. If I learnt the idea in the interim, I cannot unlearn it. I know it. You have your idea back, and I also have it. I’ve made full restitution to you, but I now know your idea and can legitimately use it for my own personal gain since doing so would in no way infringe upon your rights, property or personal.
The fact that pro-IP libertarians must invoke state-granted rights to back their position would seem like THEY are erring toward socialism. When they then counter-argue that a contract-based anarchist society can enforce IP protection, they seems to ignore the fact that contracts cannot bind third parties. Moreover, an appeal to contracts implicitly admits that no patent and copyright law need exist – what can be covered in contracts must be covered in contracts. The anti-IP camp is in favour of contracts binding signing parties but not third parties.
