[5/30] Free information
I finished reading "Against Intellectual Property" by Stephan Kinsella and in this post I want to share my thoughts on it. In case you want to read it yourself, just click on the link and get the PDF for FREE!
(Gotta hand it to Kinsella, he is consistent in his rejection of copy rights)
In order for something to be ownable - or homesteadable - the thing has to be scarce. Property Rights themselves are a concept to minimize human conflict, and if a commodity is abundant there is no conflict possible. Information, Kinsella continues, is not not scarce.
If you have an idea, and tell me about it, you still have the idea - only I have it too.
This is not at all comparable to a case where you steal my car and I am now deprived of owning my car.
Kinsella goes on to make the libertarian case against IP (Intellectual Property, namely copyrights and patents), and in my humble opinion, does so excellently. His work gave me a lot of ammo to argue against defenders of the arbitrarily sanctioned right to exclude others from using their property:
A patent gives me, the patent holder, the right to exclude you from using your own property in a certain manner. And, of course, is enforced by the violent arm of the state.
This is making an abundant resource (information) arbitrarily scarce. It has to be recognized that the state, once again is at the root of the problem here.
Jeffrey Tucker had an awesome talk on this a while ago:
It really grinds my gears, that we live in a digital age, where information can be copied at no cost whatsoever, but I am restricted from using my computer to do so.
The real problem is the payment model; its ancient and does not fit in our modern times.
Say, I want to make a movie and I want to get paid for it. In my world it would go something like this:
- Crowdfund that shit - set a goal and rally a market behind you to realize the project (the first time you do it, you will have no name in the industry, no reputation; the funding might be hard to do - but if you succeed in it:)
- Release the movie to the public. Blast it in the internet. Totally free for anybody to see, share, copy and redistributed. What do you care? You have already made your money through the crowdfunding.
- Want to shoot the next movie? Well, you already have a name in the business now. You can point people to the last successful project you made and say: I want to make something like this, but the crowdfunding goal is higher now. If people actually did like your earlier stuff, they will pay again.
- Drop the second project on the market, again for free.
And repeat the cycle as many times as you want. Every time you will be able to point to your prior successes and the earned reputation will manifest itself in higher funding goals.
Just image JK Rowling would have done that with Harry Potter. By the time the 6th or 7th book rolled around, she would have made millions or billions! People from all over the world would have read her stuff (since it is free to get).
All the Harry Potters would be available to anyone. The author would have made a ton of money. No copyright needed.
I hope in the future, we move towards something like this: a world where information is not arbitrarily limited by a state. A world without copyrights and a world in which property rights are applied consistently.
Anyway. I recommend you read the book yourself, it's a good read!