Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would call that a state; why is it not a state?
To clarify: you call territorialism in the animal kingdom a state?
Sure, why not? Humans are animals, after all.
New Zealand bans some software patents
111–120 of 230 posts
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a state of nature, there is no such thing as a "legal right", or law of any kind other than might-makes-right.
But legal rights are synonymous with might-makes-right. A natural or human right is something we would like to have but cannot guarantee until it is made into law. I am just asking whether laws about intellectual property correlate to natural rights in the same way that laws about physical property do, since the original claim was that they are 100% fabricated.
Whether they're synonymous is entirely a matter of your world view with respect to the origin of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is the defining feature of a state. Do individuals delegate their right to the use of force to the state, in the process giving them a monopoly on it? Or do states impose said monopoly on the individual, in effect overriding their natural rights? To avoid committing a fallacy here: or is there a third option?
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
While intellectual property is almost entirely a legal creation, government is not necessary for property to exist. Indeed, John Locke considered property to be a natural right along with life and liberty.
Sorry, if it's you in the forest with a shotgun defending your property in a libertarian utopia, you're the government.
You need a society for a government to make any sense. One person defending their property is neither a society nor a government.
Until you have the minimum viable population for our species (i.e. the smallest group of humans that can avoid extinction) you cannot really have a society.
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, if it's you in the forest with a shotgun defending your property in a libertarian utopia, you're the government.
You need a society for a government to make any sense. One person defending their property is neither a society nor a government. Until you have the minimum viable population for our species (i.e. the smallest group of humans that can avoid extinction) you cannot really have a society.
So Adam and Eve then?
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, if it's you in the forest with a shotgun defending your property in a libertarian utopia, you're the government.
Like most normal well adjusted people, I don't steal and I expect and find that those around me do the same. The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me. Clearly the concept of property, at least as it exists in my office, is not an artifact of some governing body. It exists despite that; it e…
"The reason my coworkers haven't stolen the keyboard off my desk when I go to get coffee isn't the government, it is just because they have some base-level respect for me."
- Do you really believe that? If someone wanted your keyboard their thought process - if conscious - probably follows the following: "If I take that and get caught then I'll likely be fired. So it's not worth me putting my monthly salary of $5000 at risk for a $50 keyboard" Well what if you do get caught? Just tell them they can't fire you! You won't leave the building!! Then they'll call the police and I'll be charged with a
I don't think it's good or bad. I just think it's entirely inaccurate to think that if someone covets what you have that they hold back due to a base level of respect for the other person. If that held true there'd just be no crime period in society because everyone would say "I'm not going to do that because I'd hate for that to be done to me as another human being"
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
But legal rights are synonymous with might-makes-right. A natural or human right is something we would like to have but cannot guarantee until it is made into law. I am just asking whether laws about intellectual property correlate to natural rights in the same way that laws about physical property do, since the original claim was that they are 100% fabricated.
Whether they're synonymous is entirely a matter of your world view with respect to the origin of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is the defining feature of a state. Do individuals delegate their right to the use of force to the state, in the process giving them a monopoly on it? Or do states impose said monopoly on the individual, in effect overriding their natural rights? To avoid committi…
The fallacy is that the choice is presented as either/or instead of both/and. Some of my natural rights are embodied in law, some of them aren't, that's how it goes.
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, sounds about right. I haven't read much anarchist literature at all, but that meshes pretty nicely with what I know of anarcho-syndicalists. Either way, I think it stems from the same basic human desire, probably hardwired, to not have things taken and to have some basic loyalty or respect to members of your 'tribe'. (After all, governments are made of people and those people must have thought the concept of 'pr…
So the reason I brought up physical property is because if that's not a complete fiction then it's bizarre for intellectual property to be a complete fiction. Governments don't create things out of whole cloth, the laws always correspond to something, even if they do it badly.
"the reason I brought up physical property is because if that's not a complete fiction then it's bizarre for intellectual property to be a complete fiction"
I am not following your logic here. The notion of physical property predates written records and codes of law, even if it has been approached differently by different cultures. The notion of intellectual property is a far more recent development that has nowhere near universal acceptance and requires a very particular kind of legal system to make any sense at all.
"Governments don't create things out of whole cloth, the laws always correspond to something, even if they do it badly."
No, laws are invented out of thin air with regularity and always have been. Governments create legal constructs for various reasons -- expediency, politics, religion, favoritism, etc. The history of copyright is a perfect example. Prior to the printing press there was no notion of copyright, and people made careers out of copying books. Alexandria had a law requiring anyone bringing a book into the city to give it to the library to be copied. Then the printing press was invented, and governments began to fear the mass dissemination of written material; copyright was invented to deal with that problem and the rest is history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...
(OK, to be fair, the first "true" copyright law was created after that law was repealed and a bunch of businessmen complained about their lost monopoly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_anne
Like I said, politics...)
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#118Software patents are an abomination. I could stomach copyright on software, because at least one is still permitted independent implementation and expression. I can't copy your code, but I can rewrite it. Software patents on the other hand put a fence around ideas themselves. You can't draw a cursor using XOR by implementing it yourself, period, for 20 years. The patent system is deeply broken, and it doesn't even st…
It is, as John Siracusa called it, "Sport of Kings". He elaborated a lot on the topic in episode 69 of Hypercritical: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/69
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, if it's you in the forest with a shotgun defending your property in a libertarian utopia, you're the government.
I get what you're aiming at but if you're holding the shotgun, that's not government. Government is when I cede the right to protect my forest with a shotgun in order that a government entity will do it for me. We give government a monopoly on force under the agreement that I generally should not be shooting people to protect my rights.
Government is when I cede the right to protect my forest
We give government a monopoly on force
No, that's just one incarnation of government.
Re: New Zealand bans some software patents
#120US has banned 'software patents' long time ago. However, you can still patent a software being performed by a processor or computer, which then becomes 'hardware'. NZ has now caught up with US. It is not what you think it is.
Merely being performed by a computer does not make software patentable in NZ under this new law. The inventive step has to involve the hardware to be eligible. They did just make a broad swath of software inventions non-patentable.