not sure if I understand your comment. I'm a patent attorney, and electrical engineer; but also a libertarian. I understand patent and copyright law, and understand why they are evil and should be abolished. I understand why failure to have a principled view on this leads to confused and murky analysis.
By the way I've written a great deal on this. www.c4sif.org. And I speak on this often. I have a podcast too. If you want to have a skype or phone call to discuss, which I could record for the edification of others, I"m happy to do so--for free. LEt me know if you want to do it. you can reach me at nskinsella@gmail.com or whatever.
But it's absurd to expect companies not to use legal rights available to them. And when they do, we should identify the real problem: not the fact that these enterprises used an existing law... but the law itself. I mean this is like saying that the problem with welfare is that if you offer free money to people, some people actually take it!
to invoke Edmund Burke: " In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!"
the problem is that the tech-libertarians are not real libertarians and have no consistent theory of rights or government or politics. So all they are left with is impotent mewling about how certain laws or policies are too much "abused" or a given usage is "insane" (whatever that means). They can't strike at the root because they have no solid principles. They have accepted the unprincipled utilitarian positivistic empiricism of our age, and thus are helpless to mount a coherent defense. So instead they whine about how some companies' use of IP is "insane". totally incoherent.
The problem is copyright, not "abuse" or "insane use"
"both Lucasfilm and Disney have shown themselves to be perfectly insane when it comes to IP protectionism. "
There is nothing "insane" about it. These are just companies using the legal rights given them by copyright. The problem is the tech-libertarians don't have a principled opposition to copyright (or patent, for that matter), so all they can do is mutter "abuse" when someone actually uses the rights the law gives them. If you want to criticize the rights-holders here, criticizing the state for giving them these rights in the first place. How they use them is irrelevant.
The state should never grant trademark protection in the first place, just as it should not grant patent or copyright, so the USPTO denying the Redskins' a trademark doesn't violate its rights. It doesn't prevent the Redskins from using the logo or the mark. It just means the Redskins would find it harder to sue people who also used the mark.
Ironically, denying the trademark would lead to MORE use of the "Redskins" mark--for example the Redskins would not be able to stop knock-off teeshirts, hats, and so on. So denying them a trademark would not prevent the team from using that mark, and many more third parties would also be able to use the mark.
The libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard demolished the trope decades ago, in The Ethics of Liberty (https://mises.org/library/human-rights-property-rights).
The arrogance of the US on this topic is amazing. It has millions of people rotting in jail for victimless drug crimes. The drug war is one of the worst holocausts of human rights violations in human history. It is rich for the US to pretend like it is some shining exemplar of human rights, when it has the drug war--among many other fascist/police state policies, from selective service/conscription, to confiscatory taxation, regulation of markets, minimum wage law, pro-union legislation, draconian and fascist patent and copyright law, antitrust law, extraterritorial application/bullying of IP and antitrust and drug and gambling law, and so on. THe US is a fascist police state. Saudi Arabia is also terrible, but that does not mean the US is "modern" or civilized.
"Bottom line, there are fixes in place. The author should stop complaining and call a small firm or solo patent lawyer and get some real advice."
This is horrible. Sometimes an innocent victim actually does lose, because of patent law. It does exist. And telling them to stop complaining is horrible--it is blaming the victim. As for advice--what if the lawyer says "Looks like the patent is valid, you infringe, and you will lose--might as well shut down your company." What then, jerk?
This poor guy is being devastated by patents. Yet, at 5:40, he admits he is not against the patent system, does not want to abolish it--only to "reform" the system that he admits is "totally broken." This is really sad. The patent trolls are just responding to the current legal system. And they are not the worst problem--they just want a little royalty. Software patents are not the problem--maybe they are for this guy, but not in general. It is high quality, good patents, practiced by practicing entities--Apple, etc.--that is the problem. The trolls are just responding to the legal system that guys like this are in favor of. Guys like this are a bigger problem than trolls are. It is because of people like this that we have a patent system at all--people who support the basic system and the state's right to impose these fascist laws on us.
Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
"As simpler system is harder to abuse."
Yes, and that is a bug not a feature. It's good that people are able to game the system, "abuse" it, evade or avoid taxes. If making it simpler makes it harder to evade, that is hardly an arguemnt in favor of simplification.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
taxes are high relative to some baseline. there are various reaosnable baselines. One is what taxes ought to be: zero. By that standard taxes are high. Another is what they were in times past. By that standard they are high--compared to what king george taxed us for examlpe or taxes even in late 1800s. another standard is the amount of taxes that would be needed to fund a state that restricted itself to the core functions enumerated in the constitution--that would be a state at least 95% smaller than today's. I.e. a budget of at most $200B a year. Not $4T. Taxes needed to fund that level of state would be trivial. Our taxes are high compared to that.
As for the comment that no one wants to cut spending--nonsense. We libertarians do.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
loopholes are good. anything to allow you to avoid taxes is good. this is one problem with tax "simplification".
I of course agree with other comments--that reducing the burden, ceteris paribus, is good. But the primary burden of taxes is not the complexity or record keeping: it's the amount. Focusing on "simplification" is giving in to their distraction.
Consider: suppose you are paying on average 33% taxes now, after all the bullshit. You have a choice: you can just pay 45% of gross income on a postcard. No records, no nothing. Simple! What would you choose? HELLOOOOO
This is slimy, but there is no reason to be in favor of tax simplification. THe problem with taxes is not that they are complicated. It is that they are high. When they are high they always become complicated. Arguing for simplification is just distracting people who are overburdened from paying high taxes, by making them think "something is being done"--it's just a shell game because these changes are always "revenue neutral" or even worse.
Meaningful tax reform is not simplification or changing from one type of tax to another. It is simply drastically lowering tax rates of whatever type of tax system is in place. And that is why the state does not propose this--it would lower their take--and instead keeps mooting cosmetic changes to keep the tax-sheeple docile. It's like the stupid marriage tax penalty. They've been promising for decades to get rid of it. Meanwhile, people keep paying it.
My sentence they quoted was perhaps a bit mangled -- "There are also a growing number of IP critics who are artists, philosophers, techies, or journalists, most of them at least libertarian leaning, including artist Nina Paley, philosopher David Koepsell, tech blogger Mike Masnick, and reporter Joe Mullin." I meant mainly here to imply that Masnick is one of the tech/journalist types who were IP critics.
I had just gotten done in the article talking about various types of libertarians (including Austrians and anarchists) who were increasingly against IP, and then I mentioned "a growing number of IP critics who are artists, philosophers, techies, or journalists" -- why? because most of the IP-critical ones I have seen do seem to be at least somewhat pro-free market, etc. David Koepsell is more or less an avowed libertarian but maybe not orthodox, Nina Paley is a lefty but anti-state and not opposed to profit and the free market.
I probably should have written the sentence a bit more clearly. That said, Masnick seems to be pro free market and pro-civil liberties, which is libertarian leaning, it seems to me.
Richard, this is surely true; content companies like Fox are notorious for using copyright to legally bully people. But I don't think that is Coulton's complaint.
Agree as usual with most of Masnick's take, but don't see why Fox is a "bad actor"--I don't see that they did anything immoral or wrong whatsoever. Absent copyright, I don't think there would be anything wrong even with failing to give attribution credit to someone you are copying. I don't even think it's bad form. It depends on the context. It's like dropping footnotes--sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's overkill.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Progressives are not against IP; libertarians are not "the right"
Suzanne: "The environmental movement is broader than simply what we will use for energy. Therefore boiling it down to being for or against nuclear power is simplistic."
Well, you have a point, but most greens yammer on about climate change, etc. solar etc. cannot solve this. Nor can geo or wind. Everyone knows this. The choice is simple: starve, or use some mass energy source: fossil fuels like oil, coal, or natural gas, or nuclear. A rational, non-malevolent person would choose to avoid humanity's energy-starvation; and among fossil fuels, if you think they really are leading to global warming etc. (I do not) you would be all for nuclear. But they are not. why?
"One of the big issues with nuclear power as it is currently being used is centralized energy generation. Some of us prefer finding ways for as many people as possible to generate their own energy off the grid. There are proposals for small nuclear generators which can power individual houses or neighborhoods, which could be a vastly different approach than we have now. So it is entirely possible to view the current nuclear power industry as antiquated but to still be open to future developments depending on what they are. "
But you do not hear greens talking about this. they are not even for exploring better nuclear. all they say is "maybe fusion" because they konw it's 50 or 70 years off. So they can hide their misanthropism and technophobia/illiteracy.
My point is: if someone tells me they are an environemntalist, but they hate nuclear or don't even explore it as an alternatively, I konw that they are either stupid, ignorant, or a misanthrope.
On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music
Re: Re: Re: Missing the point
By the way I've written a great deal on this. www.c4sif.org. And I speak on this often. I have a podcast too. If you want to have a skype or phone call to discuss, which I could record for the edification of others, I"m happy to do so--for free. LEt me know if you want to do it. you can reach me at nskinsella@gmail.com or whatever.
On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music
Re: Missing the point
But it's absurd to expect companies not to use legal rights available to them. And when they do, we should identify the real problem: not the fact that these enterprises used an existing law... but the law itself. I mean this is like saying that the problem with welfare is that if you offer free money to people, some people actually take it!
to invoke Edmund Burke: " In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!"
the problem is that the tech-libertarians are not real libertarians and have no consistent theory of rights or government or politics. So all they are left with is impotent mewling about how certain laws or policies are too much "abused" or a given usage is "insane" (whatever that means). They can't strike at the root because they have no solid principles. They have accepted the unprincipled utilitarian positivistic empiricism of our age, and thus are helpless to mount a coherent defense. So instead they whine about how some companies' use of IP is "insane". totally incoherent.
On the post: Lucasfilm Steps In After FanFilm That Tried To Follow The Rules Was Claimed By Disney Over Star Wars Music
The problem is copyright, not "abuse" or "insane use"
There is nothing "insane" about it. These are just companies using the legal rights given them by copyright. The problem is the tech-libertarians don't have a principled opposition to copyright (or patent, for that matter), so all they can do is mutter "abuse" when someone actually uses the rights the law gives them. If you want to criticize the rights-holders here, criticizing the state for giving them these rights in the first place. How they use them is irrelevant.
On the post: Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants
Denying a Trademark doesn't violate rights
Ironically, denying the trademark would lead to MORE use of the "Redskins" mark--for example the Redskins would not be able to stop knock-off teeshirts, hats, and so on. So denying them a trademark would not prevent the team from using that mark, and many more third parties would also be able to use the mark.
On the post: Finding And Responding To The Media's Favorite Ridiculous And Misleading Free Speech Tropes
Rothbard did this long ago
On the post: Let Freedom Ka-Ching! On The 50th Anniversary Of 'I Have A Dream,' AT&T Can Use The Speech To Sell Phones, But You Can't Post It
Who is "Dr." King?
On the post: Saudi Arabian Court Sentences Blogger To 7 Years, 600 Lashes Under Cybercrime Law
America is no exemplar
On the post: Vermont Declares War On Patent Trolls; Passes New Law And Sues Notorious Patent Troll
Preemption
On the post: PSA To Parents: Step 1 After Your Child Is Shot Is Not Checking WebMD
The state is always worse
On the post: When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working
Re: Facts, just the facts!
This is horrible. Sometimes an innocent victim actually does lose, because of patent law. It does exist. And telling them to stop complaining is horrible--it is blaming the victim. As for advice--what if the lawyer says "Looks like the patent is valid, you infringe, and you will lose--might as well shut down your company." What then, jerk?
On the post: When Startups Need More Lawyers Than Employees, The Patent System Isn't Working
Patent Stockholm Syndrome
On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
Yes, and that is a bug not a feature. It's good that people are able to game the system, "abuse" it, evade or avoid taxes. If making it simpler makes it harder to evade, that is hardly an arguemnt in favor of simplification.
On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
As for the comment that no one wants to cut spending--nonsense. We libertarians do.
On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated
Re: Re: Re: Re: Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
I of course agree with other comments--that reducing the burden, ceteris paribus, is good. But the primary burden of taxes is not the complexity or record keeping: it's the amount. Focusing on "simplification" is giving in to their distraction.
Consider: suppose you are paying on average 33% taxes now, after all the bullshit. You have a choice: you can just pay 45% of gross income on a postcard. No records, no nothing. Simple! What would you choose? HELLOOOOO
On the post: Intuit Continues To Make Sure Filing Taxes Is Complicated
Slimy, but tax simplification is not good
Meaningful tax reform is not simplification or changing from one type of tax to another. It is simply drastically lowering tax rates of whatever type of tax system is in place. And that is why the state does not propose this--it would lower their take--and instead keeps mooting cosmetic changes to keep the tax-sheeple docile. It's like the stupid marriage tax penalty. They've been promising for decades to get rid of it. Meanwhile, people keep paying it.
On the post: Ron Paul, UN Hater, Asks UN To Take RonPaul.com Forcefully From Ron Paul's Biggest Supporters
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Libertarianism
I had just gotten done in the article talking about various types of libertarians (including Austrians and anarchists) who were increasingly against IP, and then I mentioned "a growing number of IP critics who are artists, philosophers, techies, or journalists" -- why? because most of the IP-critical ones I have seen do seem to be at least somewhat pro-free market, etc. David Koepsell is more or less an avowed libertarian but maybe not orthodox, Nina Paley is a lefty but anti-state and not opposed to profit and the free market.
I probably should have written the sentence a bit more clearly. That said, Masnick seems to be pro free market and pro-civil liberties, which is libertarian leaning, it seems to me.
On the post: Jonathan Coulton Publicly Shames Fox For Copying His Arrangement In Glee
Re: Re: bad actor?
On the post: Jonathan Coulton Publicly Shames Fox For Copying His Arrangement In Glee
bad actor?
On the post: New Book Makes The Case For Why Copyright Needs To Be Reformed
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Progressives are not against IP; libertarians are not "the right"
Well, you have a point, but most greens yammer on about climate change, etc. solar etc. cannot solve this. Nor can geo or wind. Everyone knows this. The choice is simple: starve, or use some mass energy source: fossil fuels like oil, coal, or natural gas, or nuclear. A rational, non-malevolent person would choose to avoid humanity's energy-starvation; and among fossil fuels, if you think they really are leading to global warming etc. (I do not) you would be all for nuclear. But they are not. why?
"One of the big issues with nuclear power as it is currently being used is centralized energy generation. Some of us prefer finding ways for as many people as possible to generate their own energy off the grid. There are proposals for small nuclear generators which can power individual houses or neighborhoods, which could be a vastly different approach than we have now. So it is entirely possible to view the current nuclear power industry as antiquated but to still be open to future developments depending on what they are. "
But you do not hear greens talking about this. they are not even for exploring better nuclear. all they say is "maybe fusion" because they konw it's 50 or 70 years off. So they can hide their misanthropism and technophobia/illiteracy.
My point is: if someone tells me they are an environemntalist, but they hate nuclear or don't even explore it as an alternatively, I konw that they are either stupid, ignorant, or a misanthrope.
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