[colinsane]

is it common to group IP rights into "natural rights"? any argument i've heard for property rights emerging from "natural rights" has been reasoned from the resource in question being scarce (and hence, my taking of your property immediately deprives you of that resource). i've never heard the argument "my copying of your property deprives you of the benefits from some future interaction i would have otherwise voluntarily entered into" argued from a natural rights perspective.

[Terr_]

Just brainstorming a low-tech analogy to help sketch-out the problem space, let's imagine if a bronze-age scenario of:

1. Alice underwent great expense to transport a rare new fruit bush from another country, with a little selective-breeding to find a variety that would thrive in local soil.

2. Alice sells these fruits. Perhaps she makes buyers agree never to plant the seeds as a condition of purchase, but that doesn't matter since...

3. Carol finds one of the seeds, simply fallen on the street. (Therefore contracts aren't part of this scenario.)

4. Carol plants her own bush and starts selling the fruits too.

5. Alice complains that Carol has wronged her and that she has some kind of right to the sale of the fruit.

It's true that in this low-tech example Alice didn't construct the plant--certainly not same way as with a program or screenplay--but she did invest some similar kind of time/effort/resources in making it available.

So the question is whether that kind of "work" creates some kind of right, one which exists outside any kind of contractual agreement. If so, what are its differences or limitations from her other rights?

[ATsch]

I'm not sure about IP rights, but saying natural rights derive from property rights, which this sounds like, is pretty popular in right wing libertarian circles. The idea being that if you own yourself, all human rights become property rights. This is the basis of things like Ayn Rand's "objectivism", a philisophy effectively claiming to have solved morality once and for all.

It is, of course, clearly nonsense if you try to use it for anything more than justify unfettered capitalism or drug legalization. Most famously being unable to effectively condemn things like pedophilia, slave contracts or human trafficking. But this exact ability to come to counterintuitive conclusions about many things means it remains very popular among certain groups of people.

[eastbound]

> saying natural rights derive from property rights, which this sounds like, is pretty popular in right wing libertarian circles

But it’s a distorsion of free market!

Not versed into philosophical currents, but very-right-wing people would claim that it’s not the role of the state to protect one’s IP rights, much less at least than protecting their physical integrity (at least every citizen has a body, as opposed to patents); The sponsor of the state to protect patents or copyright is effectively a “bribe” of states towards some private citizen, for something which is incredibly costly and unfair to prevent (think “The state guarantees me against the harm of my ideas getting used by everybody”), and therefore constitutes a unfair advantage, a misuse of public power, and a distortion of free market in favor of IP owners. Frequently seen when large corporations alter governments to tilt the balance to their advantage.

In a ideally liberal state, Microsoft would keep its secrets for itself OR choose to publish, but if you succeed to decompile, then Windows becomes effectively open-source, and you wouldn’t have such monopolistic behaviors enforced with the help of public taxes. But then the USA wouldn’t be hegemonic.

[collaborative]

For creators - i.e. self employed - the creation is the scarce resource that allows them to make a living

Copying/stealing their creation is akin to making a worker work for free

Would making workers work for free be less moral the minute there is a worker surplus?

Theft is theft, it doesn't matter whether the stolen product is a scarce resource

[aloisdg]

But what if the creation was made on top of others ones?

[_0ffh]

You are correct, the word combination "intellectual property" does not make sense from a natural rights perspective.