Semantics and IP Antics

Education, IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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One of the reasons why IP-abolitionists oppose “intellectual property” is because IP monopolies in effect boil down to a restriction on existent ownership rights. To this charge, a common retort heard even from libertarians, is that all property rights are not absolute (i.e. “you can’t shoot your gun wherever you choose”, “the right to swing your fist ends by my nose”, etc.) and so too IP laws can morally and thus justly restrict people from using certain configurations or arrangements of their already owned property.

It occurred to me that this is a mere semantic quibble. If we substitute the word “to” for the word “with”, we no longer have an equivalence between IP and those examples. For argument’s sake, we can even agree with the gist of those examples and suppose that an owner may not always have the right to do certain actions with his property but this wouldn’t contradict a fundamental right to do certain actions to his property, which is more precisely what anti-IP arguers hold.
This retort focuses solely on the restrictionist view in that it’s [morally] just to have laws that restrict existent property rights. But those examples are a flawed comparison to begin with; we would never hold that property rights to a gun would allow the violation of another persons’ property.
This is because ownership isn’t a bundle of certain permissible actions or rights, but rather the totality of  a “negative” quality– a restriction upon others from violating the owner’s right to control. In any given context, violations of property rights is what determines the impermissibility for any given action, not a deficiency in the ownership rights of the hypothetical gun or swinging-fist.

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TLS Podcast Pick: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

History, Podcast Picks, Statism
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Recommended podcast:

  • The Last Day of the Soviet Union, KERA Think, Dec. 7, 2011 (“What events actually led to the 1991 dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and how did the bitter relationship between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin contribute to the superpower’s demise? We’ll talk this hour with journalist Conor O’Clery, author of the book Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union“). This podcast has become one of my favorites. I think Kris Boyd is the best interviewer I’ve ever heard. She is amazing. One riveting interview after another. Great voice, great tone, great questions, great topics, and very intelligent.

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LSU Football, Trademark, and “Honey Badger”

IP Law, Mercantilism, Protectionism
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Honey BadgerI received three very useful and taxpayer-subsidized degrees from LSU. But I’ve never given them a dime, and never will (I do donate to my private high school, Baton Rouge’s Catholic High School). Up till now, there were two reasons for this. First, it’s a state university. I think they should be abolished. Second, like most modern universities, it is infected with, and propagandizes its students with, a bunch of horrible socialist, leftist, and statist ideas (luckily my two engineering degrees were largely immune from this, since you don’t have time for normative nonsense when trying to figure out electromagnetic fields, digital logic, and semiconductor physics; and even my law studies were mostly practical).

But now I have a third reason. I’m a big LSU football fan, and of course and am enjoying the current season, with LSU at 13-0 and slated to play Alabama (second only to Michigan on the annoying fans index) for the national championship next month. One of LSU’s most impressive players this year is sophomore cornerback Tyrann Matthieu, truly an amazing athlete, who has garnered the nickname “Honey Badger” “for his tenacious ability to play extremely tough football against much larger opponents, as well as his knack for making big plays”. As the Wikipedia entry for Honey Badger notes, “The nickname became popular during the 2011 college football season, when it was often referenced in the national media. ‘He takes what he wants’ said CBS sportscaster Verne Lundquist of Mathieu.” Other expressions used for him are “Honey Badger don’t care”.

Well, according to the “LSU Compliance,” Honey Badger Does Care–if you use “honey badger” without LSU’s permission and paying them an appropriate fee! This claim is surely false, as any permission is granted by, and any fees paid go to, LSU, not Mathieu. Whose nickname is it, anyway?

As the entry specifies:

The LSU Compliance Office has issued several Cease & Desist notifications for products including the name, likeness and/or image of LSU football student-athlete Tyrann Mathieu.

Please be advised that the sale of any products and/or advertisements including the name, likeness or image of this individual or any other LSU student-athlete is in violation of NCAA Bylaw 12.5.2.2 and could have a negative impact on the involved student-athlete’s eligibility.

Apparel or paraphernalia including the phrase “Honey Badger” accompanied by the number 7 or the individual’s name or any other variation thereof (e.g., TM7, TM, HB7, etc.) is prohibited. Because it is a recognizable nickname, “Honey Badger” is considered a likeness of Tyrann Mathieu under NCAA regulations.

?Examples of Impermissible Products/Advertisements ?
The word “Honey Bader” or an image of a Honey Badger accompanied by?: The number 7?
? TM7 (or any other likeness)
? Name of individual
? Image of individual?
? ?LSU

LSU then “helpfully” provides examples of “impermissible items” for which they have issued “Cease & Desist notifications”–just to let you know they mean business.

Truly disgusting, but par for the course for our mercantilist, protectionist, IP-centric form of corporatism in which the powerful state helps big corporations (and socialist state universities) bully individuals and small competitors with pseudo-“property rights” like patent, trademark, and copyright.

I’m sure Alabama pulls the same stunts. Otherwise I might have to hold my nose and pull for them on Jan. 9.

(h/t Skip Oliva)

[c4sif]

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Creation and Labor as Sources of Property Rights and the Danger of Metaphors

(Austrian) Economics, IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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Canadian libertarian Michael McConkey has an interesting fictional exchange between himself and Socrates up at My Dinner with Socrates:

The other day I met this sandal-wearing, hipster dude who thought he had all the answers (and questions), but I set him straight when it came to the morality of the state. I thought you might enjoy reading a transcript of our dinner conversation.

Read more>>

Here is an edited version of a note I sent him about this piece.

Not bad, but I think you go astray by saying creation is a source of ownership. It’s not. This is the mistake people make that leads them to support intellectual property. In fact the only source of ownership is homesteading or original appropriation: finding some unowned thing and appropriating it. And, this implies that there is a second way to own something: by contractual transfer of title from a previous owner. That is it.

It is true that you can create wealth or value by production. But this just means to transform (with creativity and labor) something you already own. To produce you have to already own the thing you rearrange.

Creation is a source of wealth. Not of ownership or property rights.

Likewise, your comment here:

We don’t just use up our life – perhaps we do that when we go for a hike, say – but property is an enduring embodiment of our life. The tomato I grow in my back yard, the book I write, the money I am paid by an employer for the productive work I provide, are all embodiments of my life. My finite time, energy and attention are literally embodied in these things and stuff: tomatoes, books, money, etc.

is imprecise and overly metaphorical. The use of “literally” is wrong. I know what you are getting at but this is not rigorous argument. If I steal from you the loaf of bread you have baked, it is wrong becuase it is your property (or more precisely, you have a property right in the loaf of bread). It’s only a metaphorical way of looking at it to say that I have stolen your “labor”. It’s just literally not true. You don’t own your labor; it is not “in” the bread. Labor is just a type of action. You don’t own your labor any more than you own your actions or your memories or your tendency to procrastinate.

For more on the creation stuff, see my Against Intellectual Property; also Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and “Rearranging”; Libertarian Creationism; Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and “Rearrangement Rights”; Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value; this comment to “Trademark and Fraud”; Elaborations on Randian IP; Objectivists on IP.

For the danger of misuse of metaphors, see Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading and On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse.

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Free Book Chapter: Libertarianism Is Antiwar

The Basics, Uncategorized, War
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Another full chapter of Libertarianism Today is now online for free — this one on why libertarianism is antiwar. This is my favorite chapter of the book, so I’m especially glad I could make it available through Antiwar.com.

Other parts of the book you can read for free online:

And if you want to read the whole thing, it’s on sale at a special low price for a limited time.

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