[humanrebar]

The inability to enforce rights in nature is independent of the existence of those rights. You might need a shotgun to defend your life in a "libertarian utopia", but that doesn't mean you don't have a right to it.

In fact, your hypothetical correctly assumes that people need to protect their stuff. This need is evidence of self interest. The fact that there are universal norms that allow the use of force to protect things is evidence of a right to property.

In other words, a victim of theft is rightfully angry. This lets us conclude that he has a right to be free of theft. This indicates a right to property.

[foobarbazqux]

There's a difference between legal rights and natural / human rights. The latter are ideals, the former are what are brought into existence by the application of force.

Intellectual property corresponds (somewhat poorly) to the natural right of being allowed to profit from your ideas.

[betterunix]

There is no natural right to profit from your ideas. Your ability to even try to profit from your ideas is substantially dependent on external factors in your life -- your position in society, your ancestry, the availability of capital and your ability to acquire it, etc.

Do not confuse the right to think with the right to profit from your ideas. You do have a natural right to think about whatever you want, as well as a natural right to communicate your thoughts to others.

[foobarbazqux]

I believe that creative expression should be valued by society, i.e. I believe that people have a natural / human right to rewarded for this kind of work.

But sure, I don't believe in absolute natural rights, much as I don't believe in absolute morals.

Put more simply, I believe that authorship is a natural right, just like ownership. You might ask, why should the idea be mine just because I got to first? And I would answer, why should the tree be yours just because you got to it first?

[orclev]

It is impossible to own an idea. You might be given a monopoly on the application of that idea, but by merely speaking or documenting the idea you distribute it to any that hear or read it and therefore can no longer truly said to own or control it. It's the difference between data, and matter. One is copied infinitely without destruction or consumption (although it can be "lost" in entropy) and can travel at the speed of light. The other is a unique instance subject to the laws governing all matter and capable of being destroyed. In fact it's impossible to truly copy or distribute a physcial object, you can at best create a new arrangement of matter that mirrors some existing matter.

This is why property is a concept solely reserved for physical objects, not to information. They are fundamentally different categories of things. You cannot own an idea any more than you can own a frequency (regulation of the broadcasting of certain frequencies of RF waves should not be confused with "owning" the waves themselves).

[distant-uncle]

It seems to me that when you say that people have a natural right to profit, you actually mean a "right to exclude".

I think that's a whole nuther kettle of fish.

For one, the two are in contradiction. Suppose you believe that you have the right to exclude, presumably you also believe that all other humans have the same right, owing to its status as a natural right. By believing that you can exclude, and therefore profit by way of eliminating competition, you acknowledge that the competition can exclude you as well.

It boils down to whether or not by "profit", one implies complete domination of a resource. I tend to think that many parties can profit, without the necessity to exclude by brute force.

This is also the key difference between patents and copyrights. The former demands total domination of a resource, while the latter does not.

> And I would answer, why should the tree be yours just because you got to it first?

It's a good point, but there is a difference. It is possible for two parties to arrive at the same intellectual destination without being aware of one another. The same cannot be said for two parties arriving at the same tree, at the same time, but one not being aware of the existence of the other.

I suppose you can construct an argument in which both parties lack all physical sense of awareness. :)

[betterunix]

"You might ask, why should the idea be mine just because I got to first? And I would answer, why should the tree be yours just because you got to it first?"

The difference is this: share your tree with me, and there will be only one tree. Share your ideas with me and we can both think about them, utilize them, and benefit from them. This idea is self-evident; just as I am communicating it to anyone who reads this post, it was communicated to me by someone else:

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

It is true that creative expression should be valued and that people should be encouraged to be creative. I would add that society should set up a system where creative workers can derive an income from their work and that such a system will be vital as more and more things are automated. Property rights are orthogonal to this. I happen to be a creative worker, but there is no need for me or anyone else to "own" the products of my work; my research group's salaries are paid with grant money, because the government wants to encourage the work we do, and we want our work to reach as many eyes as possible.

[humanrebar]

I disagree with your definitions. Rights, though abstract, are real. This is why atrocities outside the reach of law (murder in international water, war crimes, genocide) are clearly wrong.

Laws are nothing but codified decisions from government. Sometimes they define the specifics of how natural rights are balanced against each other. However, laws sometimes violate rights, such as the now-repealed Jim Crow laws in the American South. Furthermore, the term "legal rights" can also be a misnomer for government-guaranteed privileges such as the "right" to government-provided benefits or (in my opinion) intellectual property "rights".

[foobarbazqux]

The difference legal and natural rights corresponds to the difference between laws and morals. That's all I mean. Natural rights are real things in as much as morals are real things.

[humanrebar]

Let me recap, because discussions become convoluted in forum format.

First ataggart makes the point that elevating patent and copyright privileges to the level of natural rights is wrong and implies (through Orwell) that confusing intellectual property rights and physical property rights leads to foolish thinking.

Then, you make the argument that it doesn't matter because, "Every legal concept is entirely the government's creation, including both physical and intellectual property...."

Then a bunch of people, myself included, disagree with that point by referencing Hobbes and Locke and providing examples of how ownership exists outside of government influence.

Now, I agree that "Natural rights are real things in as much as morals are real things." And since we are not amoral, we can presume that natural rights exist.

Remember, the original point is that labels matter here. Mislabeling things as "rights" causes people to both overvalue grants from their governments and (more importantly) to devalue natural rights as being decreed by government (which means they can be abolished or altered by the same powers).

When your "rights" are derived from government and they are taken away, you're on the losing side. When rights are inalienable and they are violated, you are being persecuted.

All that is to say, "intellectual property rights" is a dumb term.

[foobarbazqux]

The difference between legal rights and natural rights is that legal rights are guaranteed by force. As soon as you guarantee a natural right by force it becomes a legal right: you make the law.

[humanrebar]

You just reiterated your previous statement without addressing my point.

According to you, it is morally OK for government to decide what is a right and what isn't. In that case, is there anything morally wrong with government deciding to nationalize all retirement savings?