Intellectual Property

--Property-- Pro claims that my examples are of people "benefiting" from another's labor, but not *profiting*, so they don't count. There's actually no real difference between benefiting and profiting. What exactly is profit? It's not just gaining paper—that alone would be worthless. The reason people want that paper not because of the money itself, but because of what they can get for it. Paper isn't wealth—the value people gain from the things they buy is wealth. This subjective value people gain isn't inherent to things that are bought with money—there's no real difference between the value gained from the "benefits" Pro mentions and the value gained from buying things with monetary profits. Of course, even if there were some sort of moral difference between the subjective value gained from "benefits" and the subjective value gained from spending monetary profits—my examples are examples of people gaining monetary profits from another's labor. If I keep a nicely kept lawn, it doesn't only make my neighbors feel good in some vague way, there are also clear monetary gains. The value of their home is higher than it would be if I did nothing—this is a clear monetary profit. As for my examples being "voluntary"—they are exactly as voluntary as the benefits from copying someone else's creation. The initial action, inventing or fixing your lawn or whatever, is completely voluntary, and the benefits that others gain are involuntary. "My opponent suggests that because one's labor on it produces something useful, it therefore becomes property." "So far Con's response has been that only useful labor constitutes property." That is not what I suggest; in fact, I explicitly stated in my previous round that this is not how something becomes property. Saying something is "useful" or "useless" is completely subjective and arbitrary. What I did say is that property rights are determined by *use*, not "usefulness". That is, when you build a farm on un-owned land, you "own" the land in the same sense that you "own" your body—you have the exclusive right to use that particular thing. If someone steals your car, it is aggression because they have forcefully interfered with your ability to use that car. If someone copies your idea, they have not forcefully interfered with your ability to use your idea. Pro then claims that because labor belongs to the laborer, ideas rightfully belong to their creators. But she fails to show that the creators of ideas also have the right to every copy of their ideas. If I, using myself and my property, labor to copy another's idea, then that copy of the idea is my property. --Programmer Example-- Pro claims that the knowledge behind the original idea is scarce. This is blatantly false. I can use the idea of another without interfering with that person's ability to use their idea—thus ideas, by the definition of economic scarcity, are not scarce. It's the same reason air is not property—I can breathe as much as I want without interfering with anyone else's ability to use the air, because air isn't scarce. The original copy of the idea, whether it is on paper or in the programmer's head, is what the programmer owns. --Value of Labor I did not say that fairness is irrelevant—I said that what *seems* fair or unfair is irrelevant. Simply saying that something doesn't "feel" or "seem" right isn't enough to show that it is wrong. Property rights are grounded in reason, not feelings. --Economics— I didn't say that the laws of supply and demand would be completely ineffective; I said that because there is a monopoly, the supply will not increase to lower the price as it would in a free market. Obviously, there are still limits on how high a price can go—my point is that the intellectual monopoly raises the price much higher than it would be in a free market. "Second, Con first acknowledges that IP increases innovation and then says it doesn't." Again, Pro misstates my position. What I actually said was that IP increases revenues for innovators, but also increases costs, and so it is not clear that IP increases profits and therefore incentives for innovators. Thus, we should look at the empirical evidence to see which is stronger—the effects that decrease incentives for innovation and the effects that increase them. Pro says that she "completely reject[s] the idea that having to build on another's patented idea decreases profits and therefore incentives"—but this is absurd. If IP increases the revenues of innovators, it must, necessarily, increase the costs to the people that use those innovations. Since innovators (not always, of course, but often) build on the ideas of others, rather than coming up with something 100% new, IP must increase the cost of innovation. For example, look at Henry Ford. He's credited for inventing the assembly line and car. But he didn't invent those things from scratch—he built on the inventions of others for both of those things. [1] He was successful because he utilized those ideas better than others, not because he created brilliant ideas from nothing. If those earlier innovators had been able to patent those inventions, as they could have under today's laws, his success, which provided jobs for millions and cars for millions that never would have been able to afford them before, might never have happened. In my previous rounds, I have provided evidence showing that IP hurts innovation in practice, showing that the effects that reduce innovation must be greater than the ones that increase it. Finally, Pro notes that I didn't respond to her arguments that patents are temporary, and could be made more flexible. That was because these arguments don't really contradict anything I'm saying. Just because patents aren't as bad as they could be, or could be made less bad, doesn't contradict my claim that having no patents would be best of all. --re: Pro's Conclusion-- Pro claims that people that provide services, such as doctors and teachers, do deserve compensation for their work, even though there are no scarce goods involved. This is false—human beings are scarce goods, and self-ownership of these scarce goods is the foundation of property rights. When you pay a doctor for his or her services, you are paying for the use of that person's scarce resources and private property—that person's body. Just as one would pay rent to live in an apartment owned by another person, you have to pay people that provide services for the use of their bodies. This is also how musicians are compensated without IP. The copies of the songs are not scarce goods and are not private property, but the musicians themselves are. Fans pay for concert tickets, because the use of the musicians' bodies to perform shows live is the employment of scarce resources. --Conclusion-- I have shown that Pro's conception of property rights leads to absurdities and cannot be valid, and have offered an alternative justification. I claim that property is defined by first use—that is, if you farm on un-owned land, you gain the right to continue your use of that land, and if someone interferes with your use-rights without your permission, then that is a crime. Pro responded by misstating my justification for property rights, and then refuting that, rather than what I actually said. I have also shown that IP laws do not increase innovation, and Pro has not yet offered any evidence contradicting this, although she supposedly will in the next round. [1] Ford, Henry; with Crowther, Samuel (1922), My Life and Work, Garden City, New York, USA: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. 25.