PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

Samizdata wants to know why true liberals have turned against intellectual property rights, and aims to get to the core of the matter. A taste from a long discussion:

Libertarians have an emotional commitment to property rights. They don't just believe in them as a reasoned, pragmatic response to certain identified problems, they - WE - feel in our gut that property is good. It is morally right that you should own stuff, and that when you own it you should be be able to do with it as you choose. If someone tries to interfere with your stuff or take it for themselves then it is not just morally justified for you to defend it, but we'll all have a sneaking admiration for you if you take the opportunity to convince the malefactor of the error of his ways while you're about it. All the rest - the empirical knowledge of the chaos of collectivism and the horrors of big-C Communism, the deep economic analysis of the price mechanism and the profit motive, the easily digestible stories of the "invisible hand" and the division of labour, and the highly indigestible praxeology of the Austrians and the intellectually respectable homegrown IEA -- all of that, it just goes to support and reinforce and justify an emotional commitment to the concept pf Property, which we know, in our gut, to be right anyway. Intellectual Property is qualitatively different to physical property (either land or chattels). If I take of your land or chattels then, to the extent that I have more, you have less. True property is a zero-sum game - not in value terms (when I have 2 cabbages, I have one more than I will eat before it goes mouldy, and exchanging my second cabbage for your second chicken probably creates new value), but certainly so in terms of my possessions: if you take my second cabbage, I cannot give it to my neighbour for his dinner. Free exchange adds to the sum of human happiness, but it doesn't break the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Misunderstanding what is and what is not a zero-sum gain when dealing in property (getting it precisely the wrong way around) is at the root of many failings of socialist economics. Intellectual Property works the other way around. If I upload my copy of The Matrix to you, it doesn't stop me then giving it to my neighbour, and his neighbour, and his neighbour, ad infinitum. Warner Bros doesn't lose anything it can sell, at least not in the same way that they do if I pinch the DVD from the counter at Woolworths.

And this wrap-up.

In conclusion, I believe that most people, and most libertarians, have decided in their hearts that they don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights. They are willing to accept them as a pragmatic implementation of an aspect of the moral position also protected by the law of contract (confidence), of fraudulent passing off (trademarks and design rights), and of libel (moral rights). They like the idea of the madcap inventor having some protection from Big Bad Manufacturer, and are scared that no patents equals no R&D; equally, people dislike corporate behemoth carving out large and incomprehensible monopolies, especially over things that sound like true necessities or simple facts of nature. But since patents really only feature in the world of business there is little that most individuals care or can do about them anyway. However copyright doesn't enjoy any of these defenses; there are no analogies with basic common law, and if ordinary citizens won't wear it then Copyright is doomed. To believe and choose to respect Copyright, personally, deeply, emotionally, you have to truly believe that an idea can indeed be Property. It is in the realm of Copyright where individuals, consumers, citizens are making their moral choice heard loud and clear. We can't even be bothered to be mad as hell; we're just not going to take it any more.

But the whole thing is worth reading.

Posted by Greg Ransom