(Intellectual) Property is Theft!

by Benny Mattis

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery?  and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once.  No extended argument would be required...Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!,  without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?

Propertarian and "right-libertarian" philosophy is generally based on one or both of two important principles.  The first of these, the principle of self-ownership, is the idea that an individual person has exclusive rights of control over their own body and the product of their labor.  John Locke, widely considered the father of classical liberalism and an undeniable influence in the American Revolution, is often credited with formalizing this theory of property.  He explains in his Second Treaty on Civil Government: "As much as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property."  Of course, there are multiple interpretations as to what what constitutes "improving" and "using the product," but the general ideas of self-ownership, and ownership of the fruits of one's labor, were and are incredibly important for any discussion of what property laws ought to be based on.

The second principle often employed in capitalist rhetoric, the principle of non-aggression, condemns all initiation of force or fraud against the person or property of another, even if such force is deemed "for the greater good."  From these two principles come the right-libertarian condemnation of the state, which is funded through taxation (i.e., the initiation of force against private citizens).  Usually, these principles go hand in hand--ownership is secured through the prevention of aggression/theft, and the prevention of aggression/theft in turn is justified through the principle of self-ownership.

However, patents (and copyrights) pose a problem for property.

Intellectual property introduces a contradiction into the nice interplay between the non-aggression principle and the principle of self-ownership, because it can only be secured through the initiation of force and the flagrant violation of physical property rights.  Think about the Apple-Samsung situation: viewed through the lens of physical property rights, Samsung has done nothing in aggression against Apple.  Apple, on the other hand, is violating Samsung's property rights by dictating how they can use their property ("don't cut your plastic in this special shape," etc.) as well as stealing from them outright. On the other hand, viewed through the lens of intellectual property, Samsung has violated Apple's self-ownership; ownership implies exclusivity to Apple.  Yet, this self-ownership can only be secured through coercive state intervention and forced re-distribution of Samsung's resources.  We have two types of property--physical and intellectual--that cannot coexist.

***

In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume considers whether property would be necessary or even justifiable in a world where material scarcity were not a problem:

It seems clear that in such a happy state every other social virtue would flourish and be increased tenfold; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of.  What point would there be in dividing up goods, when everyone already has more than enough?  Why institute property when there can't possibly be any harm in not doing so?  Why call this object 'mine' when just by stretching out my hand I could get another one that is like it and equally valuable?  In this state of affairs, justice would be totally useless; it would be an idle ceremonial, having no place in the list of virtues.

This seems to be the case with intellectual property; since it can be copied and re-copied indefinitely, "dividing up" information is an "idle ceremonial."

There is, however, a component of IP that cannot be shared through copying, and that is authorship.  Radiohead, one of my favorite bands, released their album In Rainbows for free on the internet, and information-copying made it available to everyone; Radiohead's authorship of the songs, however, could never be shared in such a way.  On the contrary, if everyone claimed authorship of the album, not even Radiohead would get the benefits of authorship (fame, pay for performances, etc.); sharing information multiplies wealth, but attempting to share a claim to authorship only renders such a title meaningless.  Sometimes, the claim to authorship ought to be meaningless; this might be the case with a community-driven project where nobody really put in any more work than anyone else.  But it is clear that, for better or worse, authorship is not unaffected by scarcity in the same way that authored information is.

This is why I think that intellectual property should be not abolished, but separated from physical property.  I think a sort of property dualism is appropriate:  physical property (a phone) traded with physical property (money), and intellectual property (a "stolen" design) traded with intellectual property (an acknowledgment on Samsung's part that they did, in fact, use Apple's ideas in their technology).  Likewise, intellectual theft (attempting to claim authorship of In Rainbows) might be punished through intellectual restitution (a public announcement that I am, in fact, a fraud, and that Radiohead are the true authors of the album).

"But wait!" cry the defenders of IP.  "That design took physical resources to make!"  But this objection misses the point: the design may have taken physical resources to discover, but, in using the design, other people are not in any way taking more physical resources than what has already been spent.  Thom Yorke, in writing songs for Radiohead, keeps the fruits of all the physical labor he put into writing his songs, including the neurological make-up that results from musical practice and songwriting. This physical and neurological being, as opposed to the information instantiated in it, is what required the consumption of physical resources to construct.

Of course, the value of this physical and neurological being is not to be underestimated or dismissed with a "You didn't build that."  A musical mind is necessary to understand, remix, and create music, and there is nothing wrong with paying an artist to use their talents in different ways (public performance, commissions, etc.).  This applies to all artists, including the professional engineers and researchers at Apple Inc.

Free Materials

by Benny Mattis

It is overwhelmingly evident that human beings are made entirely of physical material.  I think it's also safe to assume that physical material is made of molecules, which in turn are made of atoms, which in turn are made of subatomic particles, which operate in accordance with the laws of physics.  Consequently, reason leads one to believe that human beings operate according to the laws of physics.

Many people find this conclusion disturbing.  They notice that there's "no room" for something called "free will," and if they don't find evidence for this phantasm they may take personal issue with the way the world works.  If they've already boxed themselves into a naturalistic worldview, they might twist the usual meaning of "free will" in a sort of reverse-Wizard-of-Oz tactic: "Don't worry, everyone!  Despite what Newton told you, there's still a mind behind the curtain of deterministic interactions!"  But even Heisenberg's uncertainty principle doesn't save free will; as various commenters on Michio Kaku's YouTube opinion noted, mere uncertainty of action is clearly not the same as freedom of will.

What, then, is it that would really count as free will?  If any being had a will transcendent of material forces, it would be God.  The Catholic Encyclopedia, however, states that God is incapable of choosing evil.  This is further backed up by James 1:13 ("God cannot be tempted with evil" [NIV]) and Hebrews 6:18 ("It is impossible for God to lie" [NIV]), at least for Bible-believing theists.  So God would be bound by his perfect nature.  But how is this any different from the material human, who is free to do anything within his or her natural constraints?  A human is free to try whatever they want--that is, whatever actions to which their neurons are disposed.  They are not free to act contrary to their own neurologically-embodied desires, and they are not free to transcend the laws of physics.  It seems like the search for ideal freedom only leads back to some form of determinism; as Schopenhauer noted, "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

But does this mean that we are totally helpless passengers on a runaway train of atoms?  Does this mean that, as Sam Harris claims in The Moral Landscape, "Each one of us is like a phenomenological glockenspiel played by an invisible hand" (104)?  I don't think it's quite that simple, though I do appreciate Harris's use of funny words to illustrate his point.

I think Harris's incompatibilist view of determinism is incorrect precisely insofar as it is dualistic--and it actually is dualistic.  He compares the brain and the mind to the musician and their instrument respectively, but this analogy subtly separates the brain and the mind into two separate objects capable of existing independently.  If Harris's own monistic view is valid, it is nonsensical to claim that we are being played by our own neurons, because we are our neurons.  We are ourselves agents of change in the deterministic machine.  There is no glockenspiel.

Some Thoughts on Prometheus

by Benny Mattis

[SPOILER ALERT]

I saw Ridley Scott's amazing Prometheus today, and it was as thrilling as I expected.  There was, however, an unexpected theme--that of faith and its relationship with science.

Scott made sure we saw that the heroine, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, had faith.  She was one of the very few people on the expedition who weren't completely cynical in the beginning, and held an attachment to her cross necklace despite scorn from the android David and patronizing disbelief from her boyfriend Charlie.  But was this a message specifically endorsing Christianity?  Has Ridley Scott started taking cues from Focus on the Family?  I don't think so.  The faith that Dr. Shaw acted on in the movie had nothing to do with Jesus in particular, but was placed in the mission she was on.  I think her cross necklace was just a reminder that there is a faith shared by naturalists and supernaturalists alike--faith, that is, in the interpretability of reality.

Science itself is not justified by mere science.  As shown in the movie, it can lead to disastrous consequences, and there is no guarantee that answers will be obtained.  In fact, inductive reasoning--the cornerstone of a naturalistic worldview--would lead one to doubt the efficacy of any kind of scientific investigation.  Take DNA, for example:  Up until the structure of DNA was first discovered (presumably by Crick and Watson), nobody had ever before succeeded in doing such a thing.  Every discovery, every new invention of humanity, is a violation of the inductive premise that what has never happened in the past will continue not to happen in the future.  To put in so much work towards something that may not even be possible to achieve requires great faith in one's own ability to discover the truth.

Even more important than one's own ability to discover the truth is the discoverability of truth itself.  This is where science and religion share the faith that is missing from Nietzsche and others who say that "There is simply no true world."  "Not all perspectives are equally valid," say the scientists.  "We strive for objective truth."  And what is the religious call to compassion and love for all but a call to view things from God's eyes, being fully aware of the suffering of others around the world?  In a way, the scientist and theist (I know they aren't mutually exclusive categories) are both just trying to submit their own perspectives to a God's-eye view of the world.  The theist thinks that this perspective has been instantiated in at least one existing mind already; the atheistic scientist, on the other hand, in a way believes in God without believing that God exists.  It's the faith shared by these people--the belief without evidence in the potentiality of an obtainable "true" perspective--that separates Dr. Shaw from David the android, who doesn't understand why she keeps seeking answers in the face of unimaginable horror.

However, it was also faith which led the decrepit Peter Weyland to awaken the evil aliens in hopes that they would grant him eternal life.  Weyland, a perfect foil to young female Shaw, exemplified the dark side of faith.  He was not engaged in an analysis of evidence, but a flight from it--the whole mission is a result of his inability to accept death, and he ignores Shaw's warnings about the violent intentions of their newfound extraterrestrial Engineers.  Like the religious fanatic who 'wouldn't want to live in a world where [holy book X] was not true,' Weyland's insatiable lust for eternal life leads him to bring about the destruction of his ship and almost of the entire human species.  Living in what Jean-Paul Sartre called "Bad Faith," Weyland is continually in a state of lying to himself.

But where does Prometheus come into all of this?  Prometheus was the Titan who tried to bring fire from the gods to the humans, putting them on equal ground.  Is Dr. Shaw Prometheus in this story, saving Homo sapiens from its very creators and forever seeking forbidden truths with the faith she has in humanity's potential?  Or is Weyland the typical Prometheus, who tries to get fire from the gods but ends up being brutally punished by them (and rightly so)?  Maybe the two of them are supposed to be representative of Prometheus as a noble hero and Prometheus as an arrogant fool--two possible spins on the original story.  In any case, I thought the movie was worth a watch.

The Transportation Freedom Administration

by Benny Mattis

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  A popular right-libertarian propaganda pamphlet entitled Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit posits that "There are those inclined to liberty--freedom of the individual to live his or her life in any peaceful way.  And there are those who are inclined to mastery--permitting others to live their lives only as another sees fit."  In Star Wars Episode III: The Phantom Menace, the evil Emperor Palpatine justifies his reign by promising a "Sehf and secuah societeh;" the virtuous Senator Amidala responds in disappointment that "This is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."  American culture is teeming with heroic assertions of universal freedom such as these; if I were ever given a choice between the vital joy of freedom and the stagnant decay of mere security, I would hope to choose the former without hesitation.

Fortunately, I don't think I ever will have to make such a decision.  This is not because I plan to live in the wilderness, escaping pesky questions of politics and the other downers of civil society.  It's because the whole freedom-versus-security dichotomy is itself about as meaningful as that of the Quarter Pounder versus the Hamburger Royal.  In politics, freedom and security are the same thing.

Political freedom is the security to act in spite of those who would fight for you to do otherwise.  Freedom to own and trade property property is security from those who would take it by force; national security for the U.S. today is freedom from the rule of distant theocrats.  Freedom from oppression is security from a potential oppressor, and therefore a limitation on their freedom to oppress.  It seems like the will to freedom and the will to security could just be different names for what Nietzsche called the "Will to Power."

Does this mean that the overall increase of freedom, and consequently of security, is impossible on the whole?  Is the whole notion of "progress" actually just various reorganizations of equally oppressive political ideologies?  I don't think so.  The overall power (freedom/security) of a society is increased, for example, with breakthroughs in science and technology, mediated through various methods of education; knowledge is power, and it increases the freedom (to apply that knowledge in the right situation) and security (of knowing how the world works) of every individual in society with sufficient access to it.  A scientifically primitive society will on the whole be less free than an advanced one; a caveman is not free to construct an iPad, regardless of whether he has access to the raw materials necessary.  One could also argue, as Bakunin did, that one is "Truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free;" a somewhat egalitarian distribution of power might then be considered in a way to be more free than an unequal one.

Regardless of these abstract notions on liberty, the apparent similarity of freedom and security in politics raises the question of what it really is that people are defending when they promote one over the other.  It seems, for example, that people often view the movement from freedom to security as a movement from tolerance to totalitarianism.  On the contrary, totalitarianism is the very antithesis of security!  Giving up your right to Habeas Corpus isn't a simple exchange of freedom for security; it is an exchange of every 'normal' citizen's personal security for the increased freedom of certain state officials, in the hopes that they will use it decently.  The caped crusaders of capitalism cry foul at the mention of social safety nets, lamenting oppressive violations of property rights as the desire of the 'lazy' working class for security to be provided by a 'mommy government.'  But what freedom would really be lost?  The freedom to deny a fellow human the medical care they need to survive?  The freedom to beg for charitable donations in the event of an emergency?  These freedoms don't sound awfully different from slavery.

I think that the whole freedom-versus-security dichotomy is basically useless in any serious conversation about political power.  The perspective seems mainly to serve as  justification for authoritarian ideologies, even if the people invoking it are trying to promote liberty.  From now on, though, whenever I hear somebody talking about "freedom," I'm going to try replacing it with "security," and vice versa, seeing if any meaningful difference is made.

Legos and the Meaning of Life

by Benny Mattis

This is another blog from my time at Gordon College.

***

There are some kids who go to a preschool. "Good Bricks" are the new cool thing, and so these kids get some Good Bricks from their parents. The kids have difficulty deciphering and following the instructions for assembling these bricks, but they figure them out eventually. The kids who decipher the instructions make cool creations, and the kids who can't follow the directions correctly make crappy ones.

One of the kids wonders, "Hey, who made these instructions anyway?"

The rest of them reply, "The Good Bricks 'Master Builders' made these instructions, and they are obviously the source of all that is cool." The kids continue to follow the instructions, and get better and better sets to feed their imaginations.

Then, Good Bricks comes out with a new product line, called "Trionicle." Some of the kids say, "Wow, what will the Master Builders think of next? These toys are totally different!" But some kids say "No, the Good Bricks company has totally fleeced you with their advertising and feature films. These Trionicle toys are just shitty humanoid robot-looking things; they're not good bricks at all!" There is no longer a uniform view of what is "cool," and the kids split into two camps-- the Good Brickers and the Old Schoolers. The Old Schoolers no longer look to the instructions to determine what is cool; they differentiate between cool Good Bricks and uncool Good Bricks with their own sense of coolness. The Good Brickers say that all Good Bricks are cool, because Good Bricks epitomizes coolness.

Soon, the Old Schoolers become bored of the limited selection of cool Good Bricks. They say, hey, lets take our creations apart and try to make something ourselves. Some of their new creations are cool, and some of them are uncool.

The Good Brickers are astonished at this; if the Master Builders are the source of all coolness, how can these Old Schoolers make these cool new designs? The leader of the Good Brickers says that this is because the Old Schoolers are just copying what the Master Builders have already made. The Good Brickers breathe a sigh of relief, and continue to dissociate themselves from the Old Schoolers.

However, the Good Bricks company is going down the tubes. Its designs are becoming progressively more worthless, but the Old Schoolers are making creations more original and cool than anything the Masters ever built. Moreover, all the other students are getting GameStations, because the GameStation is advertised way more than Good Bricks. So, many of the Good Brickers join the Old Schoolers, admitting that the Master Builders are not the only source of coolness. Some Good Brickers hold their ground, but they can never find spots at the lunch tables.

Now, there is a solid group of Old Schoolers, and they realize that if there is not a major spike in demand for bricks, Good Bricks will go bankrupt, and they will never be able to buy more bricks. The rest of the school is convinced that GameStation is the sole source of coolness, and some kids are even saying things like "Nothing is cool, because it's all going to be in a landfill in 50 years anyway." The Old Schoolers, affected by this ignorance in their community and wishing to show how cool brick-assembly is, spread the coolness of Good Bricks until summer vacation.

----

Meanwhile, the Good Bricks Master Builders and advertisers are asking the million dollar question, "What is coolness?"

They realize that in different countries and different eras, what is "cool" changes depending on a product's place in time and space. In the 1990s, dinosaur sets were very cool. In the 80s, the advent of personal computing made futuristic brick sets cool. Different circumstances produced different standards for what is cool.

However, there are certain criteria for coolness that remained constant through all of their records. It is cool, for example, to include a protagonist and an antagonist in the backstories of their brick sets. It is cool to make a set that can really stimulate a kid's imagination. It is cool to include some sort of romantic interest for the hero, as well.

Good Bricks went out of business. The designers broke into GameStation game-design companies. The companies that made games in accordance with the general norms of coolness thrived, but the designers who ignored these guides went bankrupt. The Master Designers were bound by the nature of coolness; they could not succeed unless their designs were in accordance with it. And as their designs conformed more and more to "natural coolness," more and more people thought that the Designers were in fact the epitome of all that is cool. Even though coolness can come from places other than the minds of the Master Designers, the ideas of "cool" and "Master Designer" became increasingly intertwined.

Eventually, it became nearly impossible to differentiate between the two. Only by looking back at the history of diverse attempts at coolness were people able to see that coolness comes not from the Master Designers, but out of the nature of a relationship between gamer, game and environment; the Master Designers simply study this relationship and use it to their advantage (and, ultimately, to the advantage of someone who buys their game).