| Re: Private Property & Natural Rights - and the Dilemma of Intellectual Property |
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Group: alt.philosophy · Group Profile
Author: George DanceGeorge Dance Date: Nov 26, 2006 07:13
> Ray Eston Smith Jr wrote:
>
>> If you invent the wheel, then I
>> independently re-invent the wheel, why should I have to pay you
>> royalties for permission to use an idea that was born in my own brain?
>
> In reality you can only own what you alone can control and protect and
> when, or if, that protection requires a third party to become involved,
> e.g. the use of police via the sanctity of government legislation,
> because in effect an accusation of theft is being made, then the burdon
> of proof rests upon he who asserts the wrong-doing, to objectively
> prove that the other person has initiated the wrong-doing by stealing
> his idea or invention. In fact this process already happens without too
> much of a problem, which doesn't mean that an odd unjustice wont or
> doesn't occur either way, shit happens.
>
> I believe Rand would have no opition but to agree with this, given her
> opposition of the initiation of force to obtain an unearned benefit and
> her support of a need of some sort of government run justice system to
> resolve such disputes.
>
Rand's counter-argument (which you'd know if you'd read as much Rand as
you pretend), was that it's exactly analogous to someone pulling into a
parking space the minute before you can. In a case like that, you
don't complain about the other guy beating you, if you're rational,
because you accept the principle that a car already in a parking space
is legally entitled to its exclusive use (and it's just a fact of
reality that the other car beat you to it).
It' the same situation when one inventor beats the other to the patent
office. The losing inventor also has no rational complaint, because
he's accepted the idea that inventors should have the legal right to
exclude others from some uses of their inventions (and it's just a fact
of reality that the other inventor beat him to thatt).
Rand's argument is criticizable, but that's no reason to ignore it.
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