commit e1ef955f1bea8fbd9bec243dcaebed42497523cd
parent 76539f2eba41b8d7185ad554f19efe0db3f7df81
Author: Pollux <pollux@pollux.codes>
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2025 17:31:36 -0600
New blog post: IP blog post
Signed-off-by: Pollux <pollux@pollux.codes>
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+title = 'Creative Commons and Intellectual Property'
+date = 2025-03-17T21:22:16-05:00
+blogtags = ['philosophy', 'intellectual property', 'libertarianism']
++++
+
+Previously, the content on my site has been licensed under the Creative Commons
+CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, which permits redistribution as long as attribution is
+given, it isn't for commercial purposes, and any modifications are licensed
+under the same terms. At first, I thought this was a good license for my work,
+but after thinking about it more, trying to reconcile my gut instincts with
+my broader views about intellectual property, I realized that the two were in
+conflict and I needed to change the licenses of my work to reconcile the two.
+
+From now on, all work on this website will be licensed under the more permissive
+CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, and all past work will be relicensed under these terms as
+well (I won't keep the old terms, since they are contained in their entirety
+within the new terms). This post will outline my opinions on intellectual
+property, with a couple arguments to justify my position, as well as my
+rationale for choosing the license that I did.
+
+## Why Intellectual "Property" Is Illegitimate
+
+I will provide three reasons why I believe that intellectual property rights are
+illegitimate. The first two are more conceptual, principled arguments, and the
+last is based on considering how the manifestation of these rights in our
+society is hurting many people.
+
+### Intellectual "Property" Isn't Real Property
+
+In order to understand why intellectual property is not real property, we need
+to understand what property itself is and what conditions are required for its
+existence.
+
+I will be drawing much from the ideas of Hans H. Hoppe and the broader
+conservative wing of libertarian thought.[^hoppe2010] [^kinsella2008]
+
+[^hoppe2010]: Hoppe, Hans H. *A theory of Socialism and Capitalism*. Mises
+ Institute, 2010.
+
+[^kinsella2008]: Kinsella, N. Stephan. *Against Intellectual Property*. Mises
+ Institute, 2008.
+
+Property can broadly be defined as that which an agent has the right to
+exclusive control over the use (or lack thereof) of a scarce resource. For
+example, because I own the laptop I am writing this on (it is my property), I
+have the right to tell others that they can't use it, or to tell them that they
+may but only in a particular way. If they disregard my wishes, they are in the
+wrong for violating my property rights.
+
+Notice, however, the mention of scarcity in this definition. A scarce resource
+is one that, by it's nature or lack of abundance, requires that its use by one
+agent cause another agent to loose their ability to use it, this encompasses
+many resources, but not all. A good example of a resource that is not scarce is
+the air we breathe. There is so much of it that I can use as much of it as I
+want without impacting anyone's ability to use it. Even if I start a hundred
+bonfires to consume as much oxygen as I can manage, you will still be able to
+use it just as well. Since the air is not considered scarce, we also do not
+consider claims of ownership over it legitimate (imagine if your neighbor sued
+you for using the air from his property blown over to yours by the wind).
+Conversely, consider a scenario in the future where we are both colonists on
+Mars, which does not have an abundance of breathable oxygen. In this scenario,
+we would each likely have our own reserves of oxygen to breathe, and would
+certainly, and reasonably so, claim ownership oven our reserves of air. This
+highlights why resources must necessarily be scarce in order for people to
+legitimately claim ownership of them: Only scarce resources are able to create
+the conflict requisite for a moral framework, namely property rights, to be
+necessary.
+
+### Intellectual "Property" Rights Violate Real Property Rights
+
+Having argued that intellectual property ought to be striped of its false
+status of property, I would now like to argue that upholding ownership of
+intellectual property, rather than simply not being a right, also violates the
+property rights of others.
+
+Libertarian thinker Stephan Kinsella presents a good argument demonstrating how
+enforcing intellectual property rights violates others property rights, which I
+will paraphrase here.[^kinsella2008]
+
+By enforcing your intellectual property rights of an idea, by means of a
+patent, for example, you are not protecting your resources, per se, but rather
+a particular pattern that resources can be arranged in, including those that
+you do not own.[^resources] If we consider our above definition of property
+rights, we can see that you exercising your intellectual property rights
+violates my (and everyone else's) property rights, since it gives you control
+over what I am allowed to do with my property.
+
+[^resources]: In fact, intellectual property rights are *solely* required in
+ the case of resources that are not yours. Enforcing regular property rights
+ is sufficient to prevent someone from arranging the resources you own in a
+ particular way.
+
+### Intellectual "Property" Rights Are Easily Abused
+
+A more consequentialist argument against the concept of intellectual property
+comes from considering the negative consequences of copyright and patent laws,
+which serve as the concept's manifestation in our modern world. It is nothing
+new to point out that these laws are abused, but I would like to highlight that
+this is often, incorrectly, blamed on capitalism, or more specifically, real
+property rights. I will explain why those who do so are mistaken, and in fact
+these issues stem from our society's departure from the ideals of the free
+market.
+
+Insulin is a classic example of patent abuse. Although insulin itself is not
+patented, that would be ridiculous, the means of producing and administering it
+are. This makes it extremely difficult for competition to get set up. (There's
+also the issue with the mandatory red tape, but that is a completely separate
+issue.) The lack of competition results in the few producers available being
+able to increase their prices with impunity, and the patients suffer. While
+those who say that this is the result of "corporate greed," are technically
+correct, they fail to see the bigger picture, that these prices are the result
+in the government interfering in the market, and because of this failure, they
+suggest completely-to-mostly ineffective band-aids that don't really solve the
+problem, such as price controls, that also bring their own slew of problems.
+
+This issue can also be understood in the context of scarcity. By exercising
+intellectual property rights, you are taking an idea, which is infinitely
+replicable, and restricting the ways it can be used, thus introducing scarcity
+where there is none. Thus rather than being a mechanism to resolve disputes
+caused by scarcity, which is why typical property rights exist, intellectual
+property rights instead *create* scarcity. Given that scarcity is one of the
+fundamental ills in society, and is the principle fact of life responsible for
+poverty, starvation, poor medical care, and countless other ailments, we should
+avoid creating more of it.
+
+## How Should We License Our Work?
+
+Suppose that you were convinced by the above, and would like to help erode the
+legitimacy of the illegitimate intellectual property rights. Suppose as well
+that you are yourself a creative who writes, composes, paints, or engages in
+some sort of intellectual pursuit with a creative output. How should you
+license your work?
+
+### CC0 (or MIT No Attribution)
+
+Under the purest interpretation of the illegitimacy of intellectual property,
+the best way to license our work is the Creative Commons CC0 license (or the
+roughly equivalent software license: MIT No Attribution), which
+lets us dedicate our work to the public domain. This constitutes an honest
+admission that we do not have the right to restrain the way others may use or
+apply our ideas.
+
+### CC-BY-SA (or GPL-v3)
+
+Although the above licenses are fine ways to license work, and I have nothing
+but the utmost respect for those who use them, I think there is room for
+improvement. After all, we are granted the ability to restrict the ways our
+work can be used, why not use that ability to encourage the proliferation of
+permissive licenses, with the ultimate goal of rendering intellectual property
+rights irrelevant? If a work is licensed under CC0, then anyone who adapts that
+work can license it however they want, even under restrictive "All rights
+reserved" licenses.
+
+Because of this, I consider it to be beneficial to use our "right" to license
+our work to encourage others use more permissive licenses, with the ultimate
+result being more works being released under these permissive licenses. This is
+why I have chosen the CC-BY-SA 4.0, and similar "copyleft" licenses for my
+work, and encourage you to do
+the same. (Obviously, with more emphasis being placed on the "SA" part, rather
+than the "BY" part.) This license requires that any derivative works must be
+released under the same license, promoting the proliferation of this minimally
+restrictive license. For code, the equivalent license would be the Gnu GPL-v3.
