intellectual property rights

First, let it be known that, due to the nature of the subject, the opponent carries full burden of proof in this debate. The reason for this is that the notion of "Intellectual Property," by its very nature, restricts full natural individual freedom. We innately have full freedom, but some of the freedoms are taken away through law. And proponents of these laws carry the burden to justify the necessity to restrict natural freedom. --- Intellectual property is the ownership of rights to the intangible, such as expressed ideas (as in the case of copyright law) or ideas applied for practical purposes (as in the case of patent law.) Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute describes it like this: “Intellectual property rights are rights in ideal objects, which are distinguished from the material substrata in which they are instan-tiated.” [1] In our discussion I will be specifically addressing these primary aspects of IP: copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets. Ethical/Natural Rights Argument Some proponents of IP argue that certain ideas deserve protection as property rights because they are created. However, this sets an unjustified arbitrary standard. Philosophical or mathematical or scientific truths cannot be protected under current law, since commerce and social progress would be at a standstill if they were considered the exclusive property of its creator. So a patent can be applied to ideas that are "practically applicable," but not to an abstract or theoretical idea. It seems straightforward at first, but after a moment of thought, we begin to realize that the border between "practically applicable" and "abstract/theoretical" is extremely vague and arbitrary. British economist Arnold Plant rightfully stated, "[t]he task of distinguishing a scientific discovery from its practical application, which may be patentable [...] is often baffling to the most subtle lawyer." [2] Let us think about this example: an inventor who creates a new lawn mower is using laws and facts that have been discovered through scientific inquiry through the generations, and these laws are founded on the nature of the universe outside of the control of human creation. Thus, the inventor simply rearranged pre-created matter. Now consider the discovery of the law of relativity ("E = MC^2") by Albert Einstein. Both inventors (such as the lawn mower inventor) and theoretical scientists (such as Einstein) use critical scientifict thinking to create new, useful ideas that can ultimately be put into practice; nonetheless, only the former is rewarded under the intellectual property system. Recently, the inventor of a new way to calculate a number representing the shortest path between two points—an extremely valuable technique—was not given patent protection because this was “merely” a mathematical algorithm. [3] And we see this arbitrariness elsewhere in intellectual property law. Patents are upheld for 20 years after initially filing [4], while copyrights are upheld for 70 years after the author's death. [5] Is there any way to justify these exact numbers? Would 21 years or 19 years have any reasonable justification would being improper durations of time for patents? Of course not. If we are following basic ethics, property rights are justified as extensions of the right of individuals to possess control their own lives. Therefore, “property” ownership that infringes on the individual rights of others to control their lives, such as the ownership of slaves, is unjust, ethically. And IP certainly, by its very nature, conflicts this ethical standard. Information is universal. If I read a poem by contemporary poet Maya Angelou and memorized it, I have stored a “version” of the poem in my memory; does Maya Angelou have rights to the poem in my head? Furthermore, does she have rights to the contents of a book that I purchased? A book without its contents is not a book, but rather just a pile of blank pages; when I buy a book, I buy the information within it. Ownership of information and content is inherently the partial ownership of other people. Economics Some argue that IP rights are needed in order to give artists and inventors the financial incentive to create. The purpose of property rights is to prevent interpersonal conflict that arises over scarce resources by establishing a system of ownership. However, information is certainly not a “scarce” resource, by any means. If we were in the Garden of Eden, where all goods (such as land) were infinitely abundant, then there would be no need for property rights; if you stole my car, it wouldn’t matter because I could simply retrieve an identical one on the fly without any hassle. IP protects information as property, even though information is not scarce. Let us think about the nature of information. If you take my car, I cannot possibly have a car. However, if you take the “textual pattern” of a story I wrote, I will still have the original copy of it. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” [8] Thus, information is not consumable, and it has no natural scarcity. IP simply produces an artificial, unjustified scarcity and protects it. Utilitarianism Some people argue for IP for the sake of the “greater good.” However, there are three primary objections to this: The first is that the label of “greater good” is arbitrary. One could argue that net utility is enhanced by redistributing half of the wealth of society’s richest one percent to its poorest ten percent. [9] However, this would label the “greater good” as wealth maximization. However, if our definition of the “greater good” emphasized individual justice, then we would not be approaching at all through this redistribution of wealth. The second is that the means of making utilitarian calculations is not practical. Interpersonal utility comparisons do not work in public policy issues [10], and the matter of IP is not an exception. There is no absolute market value to the effects of IP policies or lack thereof; in fact, even the actual price of marketable goods (unlike those in contention in the context of this debate) do not reflect their true value. And the third is that it is not completely clear what sort of change, wealth-wise, IP brings to the table. Perhaps the absence of patent law would lead to more emphasis on research and innovation as a result of less money being spent on copyrights and patents. And perhaps companies would be more likely to advance technologies and discover new ones if they cannot hold on to and depend on 20-year monopolies on their current products through patent law. --- The theory and enforcement Intelligent Property is not ethically, legally, or practically valid and should be abolished within the United States. --- [1] Tom G. Palmer, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects,” in “Symposium: Intellectual Property,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 13, no. 3 (Summer 1990), p. 818. [2] Arnold Plant, "The Economic Theory Concerning Patents for Inventions." Economica, New Series. Volume 1, Issue 1, Feb., 1934, 30-51. [3] In re Trovato, 33 USPQ2d 1194 (Fed Cir 1994). [4] http://www.uspto.gov... [5] http://womeninbusiness.about.com... [6] http://freenation.org... [7] http://mises.org... (pg. 20) [8] Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, Monticello, August 13, 1813, letter, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 13, ed. [9] Ibid. 7, at 12 [10] Murray N. Rothbard, “Praxeology, Value Judgments, and Public Policy,” in The Logic of Action One (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997), esp. pp. 90–99 [11] “On the Measurement of Value,” in The Theory of Money and Credit, trans. Batson (1912; reprint, Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1980), p. 51.