Some thoughts I felt the need to jot down on why ideas are not property…
1. Private property is a necessary monopoly* that can only be:
- exclusively first appropriated,
- voluntarily transferred or,
- usurped by force.
In other words, the stipulation of something as property is not a flippant thing. The standard for property is extremely high indeed. If I have property it means I necessarily have exclusive control and discretion over that resource.
Ideas are not a necessary monopoly since they can be:
- exclusively first appropriated,
- voluntarily transferred,
- usurped by force,
- independently thought, or
- copied.
An idea confers no necessary exclusive control or discretion over itself, due to points 4. and 5. above.
2. A property right is therefore the acknowledgement, either through fiat law or social norms, of someone’s necessary monopoly in something. If a monopoly is not a necessary monopoly (i.e cannot be guarantee or is not certain) then no recognition of a property right is required or indeed even possible.
Property rights in ideas are impossible.
3. Since it is impossible for ideas to be property, any attempt to recognise ideas as property through regulatory fiat, and therefore contrive a state of necessary monopoly where it does not actually exist, imposes artificial monopoly, results in artificial scarcity, and must ultimately fail.
4. The imposition of artificial scarcity is economically regressive. The goal of human action – the very essence of the economic problem and solution - is to eliminate scarcity and thereby satisfy more wants and needs easier. Disregarding the impossible notion that ideas are property is economically progressive.
5. A necessary monopoly can exist:
- without being economically exploited,
- without having an exchange value in the free market,
- without having contractual protection, or
- without having been created
Ideas can also exist without i-iii above, but they must necessarily have been created/thought. Whereas creation is a necessary condition for ideas to exist, it is neither a necessary not sufficient condition for property to exist**.
6.Ideas may be protected by any other peaceful means, such as in one’s brain, in complex code, using contracts, writing them down and physically hiding them or locking them in safes.
Forceful means would include state IP regulations (i.e trying to force 3rd parties to adhere to contracts they were not party to), scrambling/hacking/corrupting other people’s PCs, physically enslaving someone who obtains your idea etc.
6.Given the above, I remain convinced there is no such thing, nor can there be such a thing, as ‘intellectual property’ as codified in patent and copyright law.
*”necessary” here means guaranteed, impossible not to be, certain, and is NOT used in the sense of something ’needed or required by someone’.
**Creation is not a necessary condition to obtaining property since I can obtain property by voluntary transaction. Creation is an insufficient condition to obtaining property because if I steal someone’s resources to fashion something, the fashioned something is still stolen goods, not my property.
