One thing that is striking about advocating intellectual property rights–rights in non-scarce things–is that one is inevitably bound up in a self-contradictory position. For although they want to say that non-scarce things (like ideas, inventions, etc.) are “just as much property” as are scarce things like physical resources, they always, when it comes down to it, want to enforce IP rights against scarce resources.In other words, to make IP rights “real”–you have to step down from the abstract realm and enter the real world. If you infringe someone’s patent–they get to take some of your money. Or they can get a court order to stop you from using your own tangible property in a certain way. But remedies against IP rights are never remedies only in the intangible realm. They are always made real, made concrete, by putting them in terms of real things.
But if non-scarce things are “just as good” and “just as much property” as are scarce things–why don’t they just “enforce” their IP rights against non-scarce things? After all, that should be good enough. But they never do this–implicitly acknowledging the insubstantiality of these imaginary things.
On the notions of of scarcity, aggression, property, norms, and justification, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Theory of Socialism & Capitalism, especially pp. 5-6 & 8-18; also related references here. Articles arguing against the legitimacy of intellectual property, namely copyright and patent, are here.
11:40 pm on October 9, 2003
