08.27.09
Patents Roundup: Ludwig von Mises Institute Debunks “Intellectual Property”, ACTA “Unconstitutional”
Magna Carta monument, Runnymede
Summary: Breaking the law (constitution) to make new laws that illegalise Freedom
• The Fallacy of Intellectual Property
Intellectual property violates the libertarian principles of homesteading and exchange, and it makes no sense as a right at all without the assumption of an omniscient and omnipotent organization willing to enforce it. Unlike homesteading and exchange, intellectual property is not something that anyone can reasonably expect to be able to defend and control.
• Unconstitutional aspects of ACTA (also see [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14])
The controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement exceeds the European Union competence. National Constitutional Courts may invalidate aspects of ACTA.
• Patents: Horizontal vs Vertical Innovation
Patents promote horizontal innovation, but restrict vertical innovation. Without patents we will have more vertical innovation but less horizontal innovation. Even if Horizontal and Vertical Innovations are equally good in terms of their merits, one thing is clear, without patents, a lot more people will be able to use the technology, this is some place where a patent-less society will beat a pro-patent society hands down.
Just like if words were copyrighted, and you required a license to use the words, we would have had a LOT of innovation (horizontal) in terms of development of language and you required a license from John Locke’s estate to use the term ‘liberty’, there would have been billions of words in English (a lot of them doing the same thing what others do), but a lot less number of people would be educated, and most of our brain cells would have been wasted on keeping track of 15 different terms for ‘liberty’, and ‘passion’.
• Your genome isn’t that precious – give it away (genome too becomes someone’s private property and monopoly [1, 2, 3])
A more radical approach – and one likely to appal the privacy advocates – is to throw off the shackles of privacy protection altogether. This is the line followed by Harvard Medical School’s Personal Genome Project, which aims to make personal genome sequencing more affordable and accessible. The PGP obliges those who choose to participate to make their genetic data and other personal information available to researchers and the public.
aeshna23 said,
August 27, 2009 at 7:56 am
I read the von Mises article. The von Mises article was fairly typical: the stark moral absolutes which fails to distinguish between the evil of the North Korean government and the current US government. I’d like a vastly reduced government, but it’s fruitless to look to much libertarian thinking for practical arguments why. I can’t imagine trying to convince a normal human being (that is, one not already in the libertarian cult) with the von Mises argument based on the idea that all government is evil.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
August 27th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Libertarians are not a “cult”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarians
Jose_X Reply:
August 27th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I agree that arguments based on beliefs not shared by the majority will not help convince the majority.