Three rent seekers are suing Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, claiming he stole the idea from them. Here is the story .

From the article by Jason Pontin:

But in the absence of any formal contract, the twins are, in effect, arguing that they have rights to Mr. Zuckerberg's imagination and experiences. In my book, that would be a constraint on the free marketplace of ideas.

Bingo! And as John Perry Barlow pointed out, ideas (or imaginations) are experiences. They can no more be owned than someone's labor (an activity) can be. If they can't be owned, how can they be ripped off? (The labor angle is important in refuting so-called Lockean claims for IP.)

IP is just like material property.

1. I own my own ideas. I control access to them.
2. I own the fruits of my labour. I control access to them.
3. When my ideas and labour become embodied in physical objects, I own those objects, the ideas and material that embody them.
4. I can sell these objects, and I can buy such objects from others.
5. These objects, whether made by me or another, whether the ideas or the materials too, can be ripped off by unauthorised access, by others forcibly overriding my control.

Unfortunately, some pliable legislators were persuaded by lazy manufacturers that because IP was so easy to copy they should create statutory monopolies for those who laboured to produce it.

And commerce has been entrenching and enhancing their monopolies ever since.

Thankfully, if you believe IP shouldn't enjoy such monopolies you've come to the right place: AgainstMonopoly.

You own the fruits of your labour, insofar as it creates tangible property, but not your ideas, which are things you experience. Actually, you don't necessarily own the fruits of all your labor. If you work at a job, say making picture frames, and earn money, you own the money you are paid but not the frames, which are the property of your employer. If you carve a soap duck in your bathtub, you do own it.

You own the material in an object you make (subject to the legal and institutional constraint just mentioned), but not the idea(s) you use to make it.

Lysander Spooner thought that ideas were actual objects, which could be owned like any other object. That's why he accepted that IP was property.

Since you don't own your ideas, they can't be stolen, although the property you make with them can be.

Yesterday I reread Murray Rothbard's essay "Justice and Property Rights," trying to determine why he rejected patent but accepted copyright. A clue can be found in his loose talk about owning your labour. If you can own your labour, it's not such a stretch to think you can own your ideas (which you can't). Of course, you can't own your labour, which is an action or activity, just like you can't own your job, which is a contractual relationship between an employee and an employer.

A baseball pitcher can own a ball, but not his pitching. He has a contractual relationship with a team to pitch, which he doesn't own, and which can be sundered for a litany of legal transgressions.

If you are a professor (or teacher), what do you own by owning the frutis of your labor other than a paycheck? Do you own the income earned in the future by your students?

To continue the pitcher/baseball idea, a scientist can own a beaker or flask or other instrument, which he combines with other stuff and his ideas. But he owns neither his ideas nor their "intellectual product," but he can own a tangible product he produces with them. Or maybe his employer will own it. He can go to the store and buy a copy or maybe get one free if his boss is nice.

If I work for an employer I may contract with him that the realisation of my ideas in the process of working for him become his property.

That's nothing to do with copyright or patent, but it is everything to do with intellectual property.

Some people even agree not to realise indistinguishably similar ideas for themselves or any other employer. You will not find me among them, but that doesn't mean people don't have a right to make such agreements.

I have many ideas written down on paper, and embodied in prototypes. These are my ideas, and you have no right to them. They are my intellectual property.

My right to my intellectual property should be protected by law, but I need no commercial privilege in the form of a monopoly to enjoy the exclusive manufacture of goods that embody my IP.

I am against monopoly, but not intellectual property.

I have many ideas written down on paper, and embodied in prototypes. These are my ideas, and you have no right to them. They are my intellectual property.

What if I think of them independently? The prototypes I create are my property too. The ideas are not property, but the stuff they are embodied in are.

Do you distinguish intellectual and non-intellectual property? For example, when you show someone your computer, or your lawnmower, do you say, "that's my non-intellectual property"?

I am against monopoly, but not intellectual property.

To quote the story John Perry Barlow related, pretend I'm a stick up man with a gun.

"Give me all your ideas."

I had hoped you would realise that I couldn't possibly be proposing principles that would have me as supreme being. ;-)

The principles I write, where I use 'I' to put them in first person singular for dramatic effect, are just as valid whether you speak them or anyone else.

"You may have many ideas written down on paper, and embodied in prototypes. These are your ideas, and I have no right to them. They are your intellectual property."

See how easy it is?

I don't tell people my property is my property all the time because it is self-evident.

There is material product in my lawnmower (petrol, metal, etc.), labour product (assembly, manufacture, quality control, etc.) and there is intellectual product (design of carburettor, shape of blade, etc.).

The material, labour, and intellectual product within my lawnmower is my property.

If I catch you in my shed the middle of the night with torch and sketchbook, copying down the shape of the blade, then I do not expect that when the police arrive they will tell me "Don't worry sir, he's only stealing your intellectual property, which as we all know doesn't actually exist, so I'd just let him get on with it."

It's not a very good example, because everyone these days is brainwashed to believe that the shape of the blade is the property of the monopoly holder, so why could I care that anyone might want to steal it. Moreover, the intellectual property being widely distributed is pretty much public knowledge, so it's not particularly valuable.

However, if we rewound to an alternate universe without monopolies and pretended I was a friend of the inventor of the hover mower who'd given me a prototype to keep for a long term test, then it becomes a little clearer why such IP should be termed property and be protected. Remember, there's no monopoly. Once the inventor gets this hover mower into manufacturing, churns them out by the thousand, and you buy one, then you too own the mower, including its IP. And then you can start you own production line, producing hover mowers with mufflers, that sell even better than the original. But, until you buy the IP, or someone gives it to you, it's not your property.

As to your strange example of being held up at gunpoint. The gunman can clearly not know the extent of the victim's ideas. However, the victim will no doubt cooperate to reveal ideas for as long as this placates the gunman, and as well as they can given duress.

By way of comparison I suggest you check out Scheherezade for a pertinent parable.

There is material product in my lawnmower (petrol, metal, etc.), labour product (assembly, manufacture, quality control, etc.) and there is intellectual product (design of carburettor, shape of blade, etc.).

These are distinctions without a difference. The material product requires thinking minds to make, including management expertise. The so-called intellectual product requires material product to be created. A blade, a carburetor, etc. are probably designed on a computer and require materials even in their creation (as opposed to their manufacture).

While you can't make a material object without thought, you can't apply an idea to make something (an invention, book, etc.) without material stuff (metal, paper and ink, etc.)

These distinctions are operationally meaningless, as the philosophers would say.

Excellent, so we agree that intellectual work can be treated as property just as material work can be.

Does it really take Einstein to understand that matter and energy are the same? At the end of the day it's all information, that can be transformed and communicated within the natural constraints that we have come to expect.

I cannot control what you do with the design of the lawnmower once I've sold it to you and it is your property, but I can control your access to the design of the lawnmower before I've sold it to you and it remains my property.

That is the nature of property. That it behaves as property. Whether it is material and more amenable to relocation than reproduction, or information and more amenable to reproduction than relocation, doesn't define whether it is property or not. What matters is whether it can effectively be treated as property - not whether corporations would like the law to pretend it can be treated as property.

In previous discussions I posited that a single instance of intellectual work can be treated as a single property, but that the class of all indistinguishably similar works and their derivatives could not be treated as a single property. The latter is the outrageous claim of IP maximalists who pretend that a privilege should be recognised as a natural right to what is plainly not recognisable as property.

So, let us not conflate intellectual property with monopoly (legal pretensions of control over intellectual work by dint of similarity and provenance).

Monopoly is the privilege of registering the design of the lawnmower, and being able to prosecute you if you attempt to manufacture anything that has a similar design (if I find out and catch you) - irrespective of whether this actually constitutes effective control of the design.

When such a monopoly is transferable, some people also term it a property instead of a transferable privilege, a legal property relating to intellectual property. And then people start getting confused.

There is a case for the simplest law.

If really these are "operationally meaningless" distinctions - merely variants of a single concept, then why is it necessary to have intellectual property recognized by law? Is property not already recognized by law?

You can legally deny someone access to your lawnmower, and thus to its design, all without the need for "intellectual property."

There's a large difference between "intellectual work legally recognised as property" and "intellectual work not legally recognised as property".

So, I'm arguing that intellectual work should be treated as property, like any other form, because it observes the necessary attributes for property.

Others are arguing that precisely because it is intellectual work, and presumably, because it has an 'operationally meaningful distinction' from other forms, it does not deserve recognition as property.

Where the law needs to be involved is in arbitration and remedy against violations of the property owner's natural control.

Yes, I can take measures to deny access to my lawnmower, but if despite my best efforts, a burglar obtains access, manufactures a copy of its design, and then removes it, unless the law recognises intellectual work as property, the law will determine that no removal of property occurred.

If you say that there's no need for IP because material property always represents it, then there's still no removal, because the burglar brought their own materials with which to manufacture a copy.

Property is indeed recognised by the law, but the law needs to define property to include intellectual work as well as material work.

IP and material property is very distinct. Two people cannot own the same lawn mower at the same time. But two people can independantly come up with the same ideas. I have a problem with the fact that you can own an idea I have come up with by myself.

To deal with this issue some bureaucratic rules about first-to-file and first-to-invent has been made up but it doesn't really adress the issue. Another bureaucratic rule has been made up about prior art even if it is in some obscure publilication I have never heard about. Still, I have invented something by myself and i cannot use it for anything.

IP is nothing like ownership of property and the IP laws expropriates ideas I come up with. That is not fair. If you don't wan't to use your idea, then keep it secret. If I brak into your shed to learn of your idea, then punish me for breaking in.

By the way. Why is there a time limit on IP if it is like any other property.

Build a house for your family and lose it after 20 years!

Leclerc, I think you'll find that I agree with everything you say APART from your reception of the meaning of intellectual property.

Patents and copyright constitute monopolies over use of IP, and these are the iniquitous devices that have been conflated with IP in order to misappropriate the respectibility that accrues to property (as opposed to the iniquity of state granted monopoly).

There is a danger that because IP has been conflated with monopoly, people's rejection of the monopoly is mistermed a rejection of IP instead of a rejection of monopoly.

Crosbie Fitch, i'm not sure i understand your point but i like it if i do. I certainly do accept that IP is a monopoly on use. However most people, including commenters here and legislators think of IP as a question of property right pertinent to intellectual activities hence the name "intellectual property".

IP is really a bargain between states representing society and inventors/creators. The deal is a monopoly on use in exhange for publication of ideas. If viewed as such it is much easier to assess the whole institution of IP - or IM (intellectual monopoly).

You'll find copyrights and patents are the actual terms to describe the monopolies.

They certainly relate to intellectual property, but they do not correspond to our natural rights to it. So it is important not to unwittingly abolish our intellectual property rights at the same time as abolishing the unnatural monopolies of copyright and patent.

If there is no monopoly, but there is IP, then you can at least sell the words to a book you have written. You simply can't prosecute anyone for making copies of the words they buy from you.

However, if there is no IP either, then whilst you may be able to sell books, you can't can't sell the words at all, because the words already belong to everyone.

We're all agreed about how unethical the monopolies are, we're now arguing about whether an author owns the words they write, or whether they're automatically the property of everyone, i.e. not property at all.

For example, I'm a computer programmer. When I write a program I don't need a monopoly over it, but I'd like to be able sell it, and that means I'd like the law to recognise when my program was stolen and consider it a theft of my intellectual property - even if nothing tangible appeared to be lost.

Of course, once I sell it to someone, I don't care how many copies they make of it, or whether they modify it, because monopolies are unethical.

However, there are some that believe that all software should instantly belong to everyone the moment it's written, that to try and sell it is wrong. Or that the law shouldn't recognise it as property so that if someone does steal it, there's no legal redress available.

Crosbie,

There is a fuzzy continuum from an idea to working knowledge using it to a prototype embodying the working knowledge to a commercial product that has been refined by the material scientists and engineers, signed off on by the lawyers, and constructed by the plant managers and assembly line workers.

Every step in this process uses both ideas and material property, although the first step is more gray matter intensive. Each step becomes progressively less gray matter intensive and more materials intensive.

Where does an idea become IP? Recall that even most lawyers say that ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted, and that only their material or expressed forms can be. (I'm not sure about patents--David Friedman says patents are taken out on ideas, but I assume he means working knowledge, which is not exactly the same thing.)

Meanwhile, Willie of Occam has a disapproving frown on his face, and is sharpening up his razor...

If you deny him access to your lawnmower, and he obtains access anyway, then he has broken the law. Even if brings his own materials and doesn't "remove" anything from your possession.

I have found, though, that people seem more willing to get rid of copyright once they understand the concept of intellectual property, and how copyright does not behave like property would behave at all. Once it is understood, you may explain how ordinary property law already protects intellectual property.

Kid, let's imagine your argument applied if material property wasn't recognised by law either.

You could say that although a burglar's removal of the lawnmower is not a crime (because all lawnmowers are considered to belong to the community anyway) simply by dint of obtaining access to my shed he has committed a crime. Ipso facto lawnmowers don't need to recognised as property given illegitimate access to remove them constitutes an infraction of the law.

I think you'll find that in order to enjoy 'property', and commensurate restitution/reparation in the event of theft, the law has to recognise it in all its various forms.

So, are you just against monopoly, or are you also against property?

It seems I have a little trouble envisioning "intellectual property" protection.

Information is experienced. What is recorded in objects is not that experience, but a means by which someone could experience the information - he has learned to read, for example.

Of course, these objects are protected by property law. Nobody has a right to obtain access to them without your consent, whether a removal takes place or not.

So, aside from a modification to plagiarism law to help make sure that there is no false attribution without copyright, what should intellectual property law look like? More concretely.

Experience and thought are beyond the reach of the law.

Property is that which can naturally be controlled in the physical world, such as the setting down of thoughts and experiences on paper, along with rights of access, reproduction, derivation, and distribution.

The protection of the law is required for enforcement of our natural control and recognition of its violation along with recognition of that property which is illegitimately removed from our control.

The private/public boundary represents the natural perimeter of our control over our intellectual property.

As to what intellectual property law should look like, that's a good question, and I'd be happy to help you answer it.

It could take some time...

We agree that one is not to take by force the ideas of another. If making property out of ideas is the legal solution I am not sure.

Don't you already have a right to keep secret what you want to keep secret, and a right to seek damages if a secret is taken by force?

What would happen today if somebody broke into my home and searched it, uncovering some secret? If as a result of that I suffer severe losses, am I out of luck?