It's illegal only because it's based on the flawed assumption that intellectual property is analogous to physical property, but it isn't.
You aren't stealing anything when you copy copyrighted material or violate a patent.
In fact intellectual property owners are the ones doing the really wrong, albeit legally permitted thing, thing by preventing anybody else to use as they like what they think it's their, stifling innovation in the case of patents or creativity and maximum diffusion of ideas in the case of copyrighted works.
They are the one causing real economical and social damage, so it's their activity that should be made illegal.

It's illegal because there's a law against it; IP is not a legal term, it's a term for constructing laws, and persuading people they're good laws.

It's easy to lump all IP issues together, as indeed many people on both sides do; it's not really very helpful, though, when current law is very different for patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

While I am generally rather away from the IP side of things (WRT patents and copyrights, at least), it's crucial to make clear arguments on each issue, or you won't be as persuasive as you could be. It's clear you understand both the distinctions I mentioned above, but it seems you're not separating them in your argument effectively; as I'm an ally (though not a friend) in this fight, I wish you'd do better.

My arguments:

Patents are wrong, because an arbitrary restriction placed on me by the government forbidding me to make and sell something is an infringement of my property rights; I am not harming anyone else's property, and the only valid government intervention is to prevent infringement on another's property. (For the purpose patents serve, namely to allow the inventor a profit, trade secrets work out nicely; inventors can shift to those for protection, so I'm not advocating such a radical shakeup as it might at first appear, but this really doesn't matter...)

Copyright is even more clearly wrong, because it prevents the exercise of my own rights with pen and ink, without so much as involving a transaction with another person; it's transparently clear that I cannot be harming another's property, yet the government seeks to impose a restriction on it. (Again, for things worth protecting, protection is available; you can require people to sign a NDA before you give them your book, and then that is binding, preventing copying contrary to the terms of the NDA.)

I don't think economic and social damage have a thing to do with the laws that should be made; it's all about property rights and voluntary contracts. Moreover, what activity of theirs should be made illegal? Filing for the application of government force in their favor that is provided for by law? If you just shut (for example) the USPTO down, I don't think making the sending of patent filings to their old address a crime is necessary or useful... (This last paragraph, of course, is the place where I differ, making us mere allies...)

Cue replies stating that your post had them persuaded, but they ran away screaming when they saw mine...

I'm sorry Benson and luca, but none of what you say holds water.

I agree that the patent and copyright systems need serious reform (copyright terms are now FAR too long for example). But to argue patents and copyright should be abolished altogether is like arguing that governments shouldn't collect taxes because it infringes on your civil liberties.

First of all patents.

Trade secrets are NOT a viable alternative to patents, because the profits from patents ultimately come from sales of a product. If you sell a product, it's by definition available to the public and can be freely analysed and cloned by rival manufacturers. Once a product is available, the only thing keeping profits going to the inventor or licensee is a patent.

Of course some people sell their developments as trade secrets to another company under licence, so they never need to manufacture it themselves.

But if you take away patents, then licences become worthless, and if licences are worthless then researchers have no way of making any money from their inventions.

Even if researchers wanted to do research for its own sake, where will the money come from? Who will pay the researchers' rent and food? Who will buy the equipment? Who will buy the materials?


Secondly, copyright.

All of the above applies to copyright too, as soon as you put a book (or whatever) on sale it can be cloned by rival publishers. That means no one has any incentive to pay the content creator anything: bookshops don't, publishers don't, readers don't.

Again, some content creators could work for free, and some do, but a lot of content requires profits in order for it to exist at all. I know someone who spent three years researching and writing a book as a full time job, and there's no way that book could have existed if the author wasn't getting paid for it, and the publisher only paid them because they knew there would be a good chance of profits at the end of it.

It's annoying, but profits are what make many things possible. Take them away and there's simply no one willing to fund a lot of projects.

The alternative, of everything being funded through taxes, works for some things but not everything, and a completely centralised government generally works very badly.

You're right, it wasn't my intention to lump them all together, I targeted specifically copyright and patents. Trademarks and trade secrets are less evil.

It's actually your arguments that don't hold water, but it would too long here to explain the reasons.
Take a look at this essay Patents and Copyrights: do the benefits exceed the cost? (warning: it's a pdf).
Note that I cannot say that I agree with all the theories on that site (in fact I'd say I disagree with most of them), but I judge the essay by its content, not based on where it's from.
And you certainly cannot say they're proposing to fund everything through taxes or that everything should be state controlled

Wrong; because collecting taxes is necessary to prevent infringement on others property rights, which is precisely what government is established for. Arguing from a basis that specifically precludes that is not at all like arguing for that. It's when you start talking about "civil rights" rather than property rights that you no longer have such a clear basis; then it does becomes conceivable to make those arguments. But I didn't do that.

Once the product is available, profits don't need to go to the inventor; the whole rationalization of government-granted monopoly is to prevent someone else from stealing your work and taking it to market before you; it allows you to raise capital and begin production before you face competition. Once you're selling them, you've already got the (considerable) advantage of first-to-market; any further advantage is unjust according to principles.
Note that I didn't say there would be no change; merely that it doesn't take away all protections. It only removes the unjust (and incidentally, economically harmful) protections.

Well, suppose no one does. Then there will be no research; it's clear that, from that state, a corporation or individual would stand to profit for a while if they established an R&D lab, and (under secrecy) developed new products; they'd be the only ones on the market for a while with a new product.

So, since they come out better off for a while, and no worse after that, they'd fund research. In fact, there would be increased incentive for innovation, since you have to make an improvement every year to beat your old product (cloned by others) as well as the competition; there's no possibility of stagnation while there are innovations to be made.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Sells 8.3 Million Copies in First 24 Hours
Well, I suppose, if one works on the presumption that they can copy it instantly, or at least within 24 hours...

You know, it costs money to scan and print a book, too; not quite as much as getting a manuscript from an author and printing the book, but it's not free. And you don't know which book is gonna be a big seller until after sales have already peaked, in most cases. So it's not such a profitable proposition as you might think. And there's still licenses; require buyers to sign an agreement if you like, and sue those who reprint.

Profits will still be available; perhaps not as much profits. That would probably mean that some books would no longer be published that are now, because they're not worth publishing on their own value. If they're only profitable to publish because of the application of force by the government, then won't we be better off (as if it mattered) when the resources used to publish them are reallocated to uses that are actually profitable?

No, it's really not annoying.

What's annoying is argument on the basis that someone, somewhere (or a lot of people, a lot of places) will be worse off if we stop them from forcibly restricting the actions of others with their own property... It's no surprise people will be worse off if we change things; we could argue in favor of slavery, because slaveholders would have been better off without abolition.
(In fact, I assume you actually would claim that some (appropriately weighted) summation of all people is better off; you've made no effort to establish such a metric, though, and the weighting function is subject to no end of debate; with an appropriately selected weighting scheme, slavery would still be arguable as an overall good, even though it stomps on some people's rights.)

Heh, your understatement is really quite funny.

But I'm not advocating funding through taxes; that's a false dichotomy. As I've pointed out, profits would continue to motivate things; and without the use of force to prevent certain production, it's rather likely that greater economic efficiency would be obtained as a result.


You've said that my arguments don't hold water; that idiom means that they have "holes" or logic flaws in them; yet you fail to point out anything about them, and instead pursue an explanation of what the consequences are. I can only interpret this as an implicit rejection of my premises regarding property rights, and a very vague implicitaion that your premises are related to the best outcome.

While disagreements on principles of government are (to say the least) difficult to resolve objectively, I think it's clear that mine may be applied more reliably; in general, principles of government regarding valid actions and restrictions are superior to principles regarding outcomes, because they don't suffer from the law of unintended consequences with every application.

Quite frankly, I don't think it's worthwhile to have a policy discussion on the basis of outcomes; the socialist will say that if we abolish property, everything will be great, the anarchist will say if we abolish government, everything will be great, and so on. (The cynic may say that if we abolish political discussion, everything will be great.) While studying history is instructive in choosing a set of direct principles (by comparing outcomes of governments established close to those principles), it's not at all helpful for actual policy discussion.