As regards contracts, my original attempt was to show that intellectual property can not be justified as being a complex contract. However, this is not your view, or the general objectivist argument, so my point is rather moot. One point of note though, a lot of people don’t know if their downloading of music is permitted. This is especially true with youtube, where content appears to be coming from a legitimate source (google), and some, but not all of the tracks are there with permission from authors.

Copyrights are not applicable to every human creation. Not to paint on a wall, not to my saying the word “giraffe” or of the thousands of human products created by each person every day – they are applicable to new applications in art and science, which is in some way unique – an entity of process created by an identifiable individual which is unique and has marketable value. A word could be copyrighted, if it was your word and if it had been elevated to marketable value by your ideas – though it would properly be referred to as a trademark. The same goes for a phrase, if you actually gave it marketable value – such as a slogan for a product. Three brush strokes could not, because that would not create anything new. The person who did it (I do not use the term artist, because this would not constitute art) has not created anything original nor implemented an original technique, he has used existing concepts and techniques and implemented them without any original thought at all. This is decided by reality, what is a creation and what is not is quite easy to discover, armed with the proper principles – and is enforced by the proper branch of government, in this case the judicial.

NDAs are not the same as intellectual ownership. For example, if you left your briefcase on a bus and it contained a blueprint, the blueprint would not become the intellectual property of the first person to find it – neither would a stack of cash left in the briefcase.

Eternal ownership is not something any Objectivist or serious property theorist would advocate. This is because eventually, somebody would own the rights and receive wealth through no production of his own. Unearned income is impossible. For example, suppose a great tycoon made the sum of $50,000,000 in his lifetime – he might legitimately pass this money to his son, to a friend or to a charity when he died. Supposing the heir to the fortune invested wisely, he might live comfortably his entire life, but it would not be fair to say that he had lived his entire life as a moocher on the profits of the tycoon – investment adds value. Conversely, suppose the heir was a hedonist or a playboy, never bothering himself with the status of his money, adding no value to the world and simply spenidng money on lavish parties and bottles of champagne – the wealth would probably not even last his entire lifetime, it would be consumed. Material wealth cannot be held in perpetuity, wealthiness is not an act of stagnation. However, suppose Shakespeare left the rights to a play to a close friend. The friend can legitimately have been said to have earned the rights, by making himself of some personal value to Shakespeare during his lifetime (Though even if Shakespeare altruistically left the rights to a madman or a criminal, it would still be a legitimate gift) – however, hundreds of years later you could be on the list of heirs. Shakespeare did not know you, he could not have possibly conceived of you and he would have no way of knowing that you were someone who he wanted his work to go to. You could, through no mental effort at all, collect vast royalties on his works – which is the exact opposite of the purpose of property rights.
I fully understand this begs the question of the length of intellectual property, this is a question of legal science – and is certainly up for debate, but the lifetime of the creater and then some seems to be sensible.

The example of somebody inventing a great machine, such as a car, yet being hampered by a patent on a primitive component – a wheel – is not realistic, as intellectual property is not properly perpetual. It is entirely possible that some machines, or musical remixes, might not be released in a timely fashion due to a stubborn inventor or artist- but this is his prerogative. The idea is his to do with as he pleases. If I invented a power plant that could take atmospheric charges and convert them into enough cheap electricity to power the entire planet, but it required a lump of element X – which only you owned, I would not claim the right to steal it from you. It would certainly be a shame if you did not agree to sell it, and it would certainly be proper for you to demand enormous compensation considering the money my plant would make from it, then that’s just the way it has to be. Just like if I invented such a plant, and chose never to tell anyone or write it down – it would be a shame, but the choice of the person who created the idea. Of course, this isn’t a primary argument because the ends do not justify the means – which is the reason I didn’t invoke the “But nobody would write books/code/music if they weren’t allowed IP” argument.

As for the blurred line, do you not agree that the line between obvious and new idea is arbitrary, or is this again a lack of practical knowledge?

So somebody copies a music album to a CD and sells it to you. You own the CD. The CD with this particular album is however in a very slight, but important way different than a CD with some other album in that the microscopic (or nanoscopic?) laser cuts made upon it are made in different order. It is this order or arrangement which creates data, and this is so in every medium. Ideas in your brain are just orders of electrical signals and various frequencies. You own your brain and thus clearly by virtue of having control over what goes on in your mind (these signals and frequencies and processes) you have control over your ideas.

But I’m probably making this longer than it has to be. What I wanted to say though is that I think objectivists focus too much on the process of creating ideas and too little on the acts resulting from these ideas. I can sympathize with the argument that everything human beings do and create starts from ideas, since that’s true, but that in no way means that it is then primarily ideas that can be owned rather than the actual outcome of them that is tangible in objective reality.

You may have many ideas passing through your head, but all of them are gonna be worth nothing if you don’t put them into practice, make something out of them. It is this result that can be owned, not the ideas themselves. But ideas have certainly played a part in the creation process, they are a part of who you are and they are the ones which brought you into action which is why it makes so much sense that the results of this process are owned by you, since the processed happened as part of you.

Cheers

As for the origin of wealth, it is certainly ideas that lead to the creation of the wealth. However, ideas are very difficult to quantify and measure, and are very prevalent. Again, what is an idea that can be claimed ownership of? A word? A phrase? A name? Three brush strokes? And who decides this.

Also, I agree absolutely that those with ideas should be able to benefit from them, to make money from them. However, what is your basis for insisting it is an absolute that those ideas are owned, those who have good ideas become wealthy by being the first to have them (and inventors can use NDAs to keep hold of the ideas whilst the product is in production). Giving them eternal ownership (which presumeably carries on to their children for ever and ever) of an idea restricts new ideas. What use would ideas for a car be if using the idea of wheel had an extreme licensing fee?

My point with the creation of such a system, is surely that drawing a line between reasonable use and infringement of IP rights is surely inherently arbitrary. Where would you draw the line? Or do you go absolutist and suggest that any knew combination of words belongs to the person who uttered them, and anyone else who says them should be forced at gunpoint to pay royalties?

I am not sure what argument you are referring to by “creativity”, other than this blurred line. Part of my argument, is that you do not own copies on other people’s machines, because they are not the same entity. If someone does something with a creative work of mine, they are doing something to their copy, not vandalising mine.

In analogy, if you sold a rented car under the pretence that you owned it – the person you sold it to broke no contract, therefore the car is his.

The pages of a book, brush strokes of a painting or microscopic magnetic sequences on a hard disk that form software are not the valuable attributes of any of these products. The value lies in the conceptual, not the material – and this is true of non-intellectual property too. A car, for example, is not worth a similar amount if it is delivered to you as several containers of steel, rubber, etc. Oil in the ground is worthless to a technologically backwards tribe.

To claim it is an infringement of rights to be denied to put paint on a canvas in a way similar to a previous painting, or to arrange bits on a disk in a way similar to previous software is to ignore the fact that we do not accept the violation of individual rights with any property. A gun cannot be pointed from your back garden at the people in the next garden, even if you mean no harm. You cannot randomly throw bricks from your property and distance yourself from the consequences.

Intellectual property is, in short, recognition of the fact that physical labour is not the source of wealth.

And as for your “creativity” argument, I bet I could do some pretty creative things with your television does that mean I am allowed to steal it?