The next interesting point to ponder is, will consumers buy more from artists who restrict their works, or from those who offer their ideas freely and ask those who appreciate them to contribute?

The CABAL and the FTL AMP program are shining examples of ways that creators of content can benefit from their ideas, and yet not forcibly restrict them.

I know what my choice as a consumer will be, and I think that with a less restrictive society, ie much smaller or no government, there would be more expendable wealth in the hands of the people, and many would choose to contribute to those who are sharing their work generously with all

John Locke proposed the Labor Theory of Property in his Second Treatise on Government, a natural law theory that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources.

Just as wood, water, clay and metal are natural resources pulled from the Earth to construct all manner of contraptions and edifices, so too are ideas pulled from the mindscape, that realm of conscious thought (viz. Alan Moore's Theory of Ideaspace and, perhaps, Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noosphere) that all self-aware beings are connected to.

Spreading virally from person to person (like their cousin memes), each of us can take the simple incorporeal matter called "ideas" that are floating around in our consciousness, string them together, add our personal zeitgeist to them, and forge them into unique, one-of-a-kind works of art that could only come from us at the time we crafted them and who we were at that time: Stories to capture the imagination, paintings to please the eye, music to soothe the savage beast within us all.

As Lysander Spooner proposed, this intellectual property, like physical property, can be owned by its creator and can only be transferred in its entirety to another by explicit consent, often through an instrument of transfer such as a contract and an exchange of value for value (mutually beneficial trade).

The creator can also choose to share the work by placing a copy of it (as is their right alone) into a medium such as a paper, a digital storage device, or canvas. The creator of the intellectual property can then sell the medium containing a copy of the content and either give it away for all to use as they wish or by granting only certain permissions to the content within.

Any usurpation of the creator's right to sole dominion over the property forged by their time and labor, just as with any owner of physical property, would thus be unjust and immoral.

Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote as his Third Law of Prediction that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". So it is with the introduction of the digital age, where unlike our physical universe, anything and everything in the realm of one's and zeroes can be perfectly cloned with the click of a button. This ability to "wave a magic wand" and create an infinite number of indistinguishable copies without any recompense for the labor expended by the original creator causes a serious and dire problem. The ease with which it can be done and the ubiquitousness of it in the modern age, places all creative works in peril. For without the right to control the duplication of one's creative efforts, there is little incentive to create works of the mind ever again.

Spooner wrote that it is "the natural right of each man to provide for his own subsistence", that "the right to live includes the right to accumulate the means of living", "the right to obtain happiness in general includes the right to accumulate such commodities as minister to one's happiness" and that that "without intellectual wealth… material wealth could neither be accumulated, nor fitted to contribute, nor made to contribute, to the sustenance or happiness of man."

Without the ability to control his or her intellectual inventions, a creator is deprived not just of his labor or some unknowable potential profit that could very well be naught but of an entire means of accumulating material wealth to provide for his own subsistence.

One might imagine (depending on your level of cynicism) that the remedy for such theft might be to begin with persuasion, for a creator to appeal to his fellow man's sense of morality, justice and ethics. Science-fiction author Larry Niven's Ninth Law, however, states that "Ethics change with technology", so there's certainly no guarantee that a creator's fellow man will even recognize that unauthorized copying is immoral. And, in fact, this is already the accepted meme among those who "pirate" the works of others, that it causes no harm or, if it does, its someone else's fault.

He or she might then resort to a proportionate amount of force in order to obtain restitution but this is financially feasible only with the most egregious violators. It does not and cannot prevent the continued use of this disruptive new technology. As the ferriers, blacksmiths, gas station attendants and elevator operators of yore learned first-hand, the tide of change is inevitable.

Attempting to change what cannot be changed is fruitless. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, would have referred to this as "grasping" or "clinging" (kamupadana) and that it would cause suffering without end because the desire (for pirating to end in this case) can never be fulfilled.

Einstein once said that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. We have seen this with the RIAA's endless attempts to sue people for sharing unauthorized copies of music. It has had unintended consequences and resolved nothing.

What can be done then, in the face of this realization? Must the creator suffer endlessly while their work is usurped and the means to livelihood stripped from them forever?

The answer, thankfully, is a resounding "No." The solution, of course, is for the market to adapt to this disruptive technology and provide a new means of protection against the massive casual theft it not only allows but encourages. Eventually companies will provide services not unlike Valve Software's STEAM which will reduce, if not eliminate, the negative consequences that now jeopardize creative works and their authors. While this process moves glacially slow, it's only a matter of time.

The question that remains, is how many will suffer — both creators and "pirates" — until then.

Zeus, while I agree with your assessment of Intellectual Property, I find your prescription for addressing violations of said property is extremely weak.

It's important to pursue persuasion before using force and if force is the last resort, it must be reasonable, appropriate and proportionate to the injustice inflicted. As I said before, pursuing $1.38 is a waste of time. Even in a voluntaryist society, it's going to cost more than that just to pay the fee for the arbitration court.

The intent behind using such a court is to provide dispute resolution and get the harmed party some proportionate restitution. Time is money. I can waste 5 minutes of someone's time to recoup the $1.38, no headbusting needed.

It seems like you are interpreting a century old quote to make it say what you want it to say.

The quote you're talking about isn't the one Chuckleberry and I are arguing about, LPV.

What this says to me is once you have sold or given away a book, CD, or other media form, if it is not blank, then you have sold or given away the content as well. Nowhere in Spooner’s quotes do I see this directly refuted. It feels like you’re going in circles here

In the quote you picked, Spooner's first sentence says “These are the principles of the law of nature, relative to all property."

Here, he's referring to the prior paragraphs where he lays that out for us.

"They are as applicable to intellectual, as to material, property." Here he's saying the principles he's been talking about cover both types of property.

"The consent, or will, of the owner alone, can transfer the right of property in either, or give to another the right to use either."

Here he's just saying that regardless whether its physical property or intellectual, it requires a conscious and explicit decision on the part of the owner to transfer ownership. This is usually done with a contract. No contract, no "sale".

Let's have Spooner expound a bit further:

<cite>The conclusions, that follow from the principles now established, obviously are, that a man has a natural and *absolute* right- and if a natural and absolute, then necessarily a *perpetual*, right- of property, in the ideas, of which he is the discoverer or creator; that his right of property, in ideas, is intrinsically the same as, and stands on identically the same grounds with his right of property in material things; that no distinction, of principle, exists between the two cases.</cite>

Again, he's all about ownership in intellectual property, he just doesn't realize that "ideas" are only the atoms of said IP rather than the IP itself.

I think that directly refutes any such claim that you sell the IP when you sell the container. No contract, no sale.

"As I said before, it’s often unfeasible to go after even a thousand pirates. And even then, it’s a civil dispute, not a criminal matter. What I propose is that they be notified of their license violation and receive a bill for whatever the market values the work at. If they ignore that, I expect that in a voluntaryist society, the dispute will have to be resolved using arbitration. If they refuse to participate, then the author wins a judgment by default and the reputation of the violator takes a ding so that other people who interact with them will know what kind of person they’re dealing with and be able to respond accordingly if they have a problem with it."

Zeus, while I agree with your assessment of Intellectual Property, I find your prescription for addressing violations of said property is extremely weak. Submit to arbitration? If I'm the violator, I say "buzz off, I don't choose to participate". Or say I choose to participate, and the ruling goes against me? I say "Sorry, the arbitrator's decision was BS, and I don't acknowledge its validity".

Now we are on to the second component you suggest: shame/loss of good reputation. In a world filled with scoundrels that not only survive and thrive, but indeed have all sorts of supporters and customers, I'm amazed that you think this would be effective in any sort of significant way. There are all sorts of businesses out there that provide truly crappy products and services who still seem to do just fine. Can you say M.I.C.R.O.S.O.F.T.?

It seems like you are interpreting a century old quote to make it say what you want it to say. What this says to me is once you have sold or given away a book, CD, or other media form, if it is not blank, then you have sold or given away the content as well. Nowhere in Spooner's quotes do I see this directly refuted. It feels like you're going in circles here

What validates such a license as you describe?

If you mean "How can I verify its for reals?", it's usually printed right on the container.

If you mean "What gives the license authority?", that'd be the whole "Author has sole dominion over the content" argument both I and Spooner make.

@ Charlemagne

because your big fallacious unveiling (argument by authority, obviously) includes your authority directly contradicting a point of which you stated in this thread, “I cannot stress this enough.”

that’s goddamned funny. most people stupid enough to waste their time playing proof text poker at least leave out the bits from their idols which had they been asserted by an opponent would’ve been treated as dung. in your case it’s you who’s wrong on that point and spooner correct. however, this does not make spooner the voice from heaven you appear to wish him.

Sorry, but you appear to be suffering from hallucinations. All he's saying is that intellectual property "has as deep a foundation in the nature and necessities of man" as traditional, physical property. Nothing here erases the rest of what he's saying or the many, many other statements and arguments you've evaded.

You're argument is now reduced to picking at scabs.

Because he didn’t recognize that ideas are only the atoms of intellectual property rather than the property itself?

because your big fallacious unveiling (argument by authority, obviously) includes your authority directly contradicting a point of which you stated in this thread, "I cannot stress this enough."

that's goddamned funny. most people stupid enough to waste their time playing proof text poker at least leave out the bits from their idols which had they been asserted by an opponent would've been treated as dung. in your case it's you who's wrong on that point and spooner correct. however, this does not make spooner the voice from heaven you appear to wish him.

but here's the best part:

Considering he’s not the only one to miss that distinction, wrote it in 1855 when there was no internet or digital media, has been dead for 122 years,

all points irrelevant to what you "cannot stress [...] enough".

spooner's schooled my ass before. not tonight. you're going to have to get straight with that.

and it appears you still have not caught your embarrassing syllogism fuckup. get on it, bitch. next stop, quoting krugman. yeehawwww!