I'm glad you got into this lengthy discussion. I got to learn things I have never thought about. :)

Force is appropriate in self-defense, of course. That's where the private police service or hiring bodyguards comes in - or the DIY method of learning martial arts, and/or owning guns, weapons or guard dogs.

But your proposed scenario (which I addressed) was a property dispute between friends, not someone squatting in your house or raping and pillaging. In the type of situation you initially raised, it could be handled much more efficiently by private insurance and arbitration services, as opposed to the current monopolistic police and court system.

When force is used against me, who exactly has the right to self defense - strangers representing the State, or me? Of course, it's me. If I own the right, shouldn't I have the right to either exercise or delegate it as I wish, rather than the State monopoly usurping my right?

The police and courts today will not protect us from assault, rape, or real property theft; the most they will do is sometimes find the guilty party and arrange some type of compensation long afterward (and sometimes not). If you think the police exist "to protect and serve," read about Joe Lozito bring stabbed by a serial killer while the police watched from safety, and then read about the Supreme Court decision that specifically said police have no duty to protect citizens.

A private police or security force could have all of the powers of the current State police, if we the customers wanted that. The difference would be that the private police would actually have specific contractual and moral justification as a person's chosen agent for self defense.

Right. Robbie you are not interested in logic Kinsella is an anarchist. His idea of property rights is based on the flawed idea of scarcity. I know more about Kinsella's positions that you will know in a lifetime

No laws are not about consensus, they are about logic. All valid property rights are the result of the fact that you own yourself and therefore own those things you create.

Absolutely, Patents are part of natural rights. Natural Rights start with the fact that you own yourself and therefore you own those things you create. John Locke. Locke's ideas of Natural Rights were incorporated into US common law by Sir William Blackstones Commentaries on the Law. Blackstone is clear that both patents and copyrights are founded on this basis.

Patent attorneys are engineers. This one is a EE MS Physics. He does not litigate

I am simply responding to your statements. The number of years is procedural. I am in agreement it doesn 't make sense. I said the number is more in line with other countries. This is for copyrights which are treated differently than patents whose time period is significantly shorter. All property rights have a moral basis, including IP rights.

and, db... one point of view (mine) is that pretty much ALL of what we consider our Body of Laws has its roots in Consensus among members of the society or culture by enough of them getting together to agree to state the laws, abide by them and create legal and police frameworks in order to Enforce Them!!

Government can't 'stop' someone from stealing my corn or my invention, but the Legal System can, out of consensus, create process and mechanism to punish someone (or some organization/corporation) who/which has been proven in a court of law to have broken Those Rules (established by Consensus)!

Are you hinting that copyright and patent laws spring from some sort of Natural Law?!

Interesting....

Thanks, Robbie... I didn't know that. That explains a lot. I'm trained as an engineer... whole different thought process... :)

Thank you for assuming that I know nothing about IP rights. I'm not a patent or copyright attorney, but I've looked into and thought about some of the issues. Do I need a Degree in the subject or some other letters after my name in order to comment?

And as for your 'legal procedural' comment, do you recognize that most 'legal' decisions are rooted in 'moral arguments' on the self-same subjects?

As I've noted in my Laws and mentioned here many times, 'you can tell when someone has run out of logical arguments for their side of the discussion when they flip the issue into a "Moral" one.'

Same thing, if you can see it... And your point on corporate rights bears the same burden of proof... where is the "logic" of choosing '100 years' as the sunset time for corporate copyright? That's often called 'favorite number' effect. It is an arbitrary choice, though usually 'founded' on some kind of Consensus, which, in addition, is not == Truth.

And Happy New Year to All!
:)

this is for lesser remedies. If I come squat in your house while you are away and you come back to find me in your home-what is your remedy? That is force and your remedy is weak. What about assault? seriously-I show up and rape and pillage and take off. You shuffle insurance papers. this is fiefdom 101 stuff

If one party refused to abide by an arbitrator's decision, there are consequences short of force which can be applied. For instance, that person may find himself or herself dropped from arbitration insurance coverage, while the damages are paid by that individual's insurance company as a cost of doing business. The lack of insurance would then hurt the person in business and personal dealings.

If you wish to call privately paid arbiters and police "government," you are free to do so -- but there is a big difference. If you don't believe you have received valuable service from your private service provider, you can cancel your contract and choose another provider. You can't do that with government, and that monopoly leads to abuses of power, lack of accountability or innovation, and inefficiency. Hiring any type of private service is voluntary and respects the individual's rights, while funding the government is done by force.

Don't denigrate other people's work that you know nothing about.

This is an important point in defining the Role of the State. Whether you agree to privately contract security, mediation, courts, etc. the end result is always that there is the threat of force behind your rules. Two people , who are otherwise good friends, can disagree about property (any property). But if the mutually agreed upon arbiter sides with one person and the other refuses to acknowledge the decision-where are you? Even if the arbiters or police are privately paid for the threat of force if someone violates property rights (enforcement) is present. The society sanctions it and therefore, it acts as a government. Anarcho libertarians want to ignore this point, but it is pertinent to any discussion of intellectual property rights and capitalism.

you are anti-patent. It is not an Objectivist position and it's frustrating when we agree on much else. Your statement above about Disney is emoting and also incorrect. Copyrights do not go on forever. For an individual it is life plus 70 years I think. For a corporation it is 100 years. I would disagree with copyright law, because property rights should be constrained by one's life. Dead people can't own stuff. and Corporate assets change hands along the way as well. This is legal procedural stuff though, not a moral argument for intellectual property rights which is what you bound together in your statement above.

actually I wasn't even thinking about shipping. I was thinking about dissemination of technology. Societies generally don't prosper from trade secret. We went almost 2000 years to "re-discover" cement. I am also thinking about chinese inventions that the western world had to "re-discover." Re-inventing the wheel. In our modern world, those countries with the strongest patent systems have the most dissemination of technology. and the reverse is also true. Your first comment strikes me as odd. Most in here know I am a strong supporter of entrepreneurs.
To your last statement. copyrights vs patents. They are completely different standards. While I disagree how we changed our copyright laws, they were done in such a way to "harmonize" with the rest of the world. This is a concept I disagree with.

You said, "Today, communication and the ability to copy are so ubiquitous that IP protection is moot." I think you may be right, it's nearly an honor system today to buy the CD or DVD instead of getting it free online. I hadn't delved into the issue of IP in many years, but there are a lot of interesting ideas here for compensation without the need for government: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Without_Intel...

Well, that felt kind of rude...

But thanks for your constructive criticism, knowledge and information-sharing and willingness to help educate me...

(---not)
Oh, wait... your comment was an abject ad hominum, wasn't it?
Thanks, and Happy New Year to you, too.
:)

point taken

Which means he did not understand property rights The US and the industrial revolution were not built on Mises ideas but Locke's and Natural Rights

give two groups of engineers the same problem they come up with different solutions. second, your points have nothing to do with moral basis in intellectual property rights-it's a utilitarian argument. smells of anarcho here

That's true. All the more reason to learn a capitalism style free market economics system. I cannot imagine a socialistic economy coupled to the Constitution.

Ludwig von Mises agreed that property rights were necessary to invention, but apparently that didn't extend to IP: http://mises.org/library/liberty-and-pro...

A footnote at the following link quotes Ayn Rand as saying that perpetual IP would breed a class of parasites. http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Intellectual_...