Original Property


syrakusos

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Original property is newly invented or newly discovered. It had no previous owner. In fact, it did not exist – or its existence was not perceived – until the original inventor created it or the original discoverer found it. How do we recognize such property? What rights does the inventor or discoverer hold? Are some or all of those those objective, absolute, or conditional?
A sailor finds an uninhabited island. Can she claim the whole thing for herself? An astronaut lands on an asteroid, a moon, or a planet. Can she claim the whole thing for herself? A physicist discovers a new form of energy. Can she claim it all for herself? A radio hacker finds that 1100 KHz AM is owned by a broadcast company, can she use a chopper to parcel out nanoscopic slices of the wavelength for herself, given that her presence will never be detected and her presence will never interfere with their existing use of the wavelength?
It could be argued that the 1100 KHz frequency already belongs to someone. However, the property is actually the amplitude modulated (AM) use of that frequency. In theory, frequency modulated (FM) and phase modulated broadcasts are both possible on 1100 KHz without interference. They are just not technologically useful today. This is not new. (Actually, the property status is limited in space, as well. That, too, is a different problem, caused by a misperception of the potentials in technology. One of the nice features of 550 to 176 meter wavelengths is the way the waves bounce off the ionosphere. That was discovered as a by-product, entertaining teenagers who listened to far-away stations. It could have been commercially exploited.)
Thomas Edison was a telegraph hacker. He figured out how to multiplex and quadriplex messages on the same wire. Granted that the wire was someone’s property, it could, nonetheless have been leased out to different people using different blocks of time-passage on the same wire. Also, in theory, it could have evolved that the telegraph wires would have been the broadcast source for what we call radio.
When a direct current circuit is closed and opened, a magnetic field is created and collapsed. That is an alternating field. That field could have been used to transmit information, as in fact, the “ether” was used by actual radio (initially called “wireless”). So, you could have paid the telegraph company its tariff for sending messages, but have no concern for the literal transmission but been sending “open” and “close” signals to create a carrier wave for transmissions of your own. Who would have owned that ether?
Lasers can carry messages. It could have come that a network of lasers made of ruby crystals doped with chromium and pumped by xenon flash would have been a continental system, point to point, with relays and amplifiers every 20 miles or so. Then, someone with a YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) laser could have a network whose beams crossed those in space but without interference because the beams are of different frequencies. Thus, no violation of property rights would have occurred.
Original property brings a special challenge to the law because no previous legislation anticipated it. Ayn Rand attempted to delineate the proper role of government in her essay "Property Status of the Airwaves." Twenty years later, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was created to bring law and order to cyberspace. Rand did not stray far from the mainstream. Her essay never questioned the Federal Communications Commission - though she excoriated it in other writings - or the law that created it with power to rule by decree. The EFF has been fighting a war of attrition while bunkered within the First Amendment. The next new invention will leave them to defend an old technology without new ideas.

I believe that rather than looking to legislation or administration, these problems are best settled in courts. The English system of justice works because of what American conservative complain about as "judicial activism." The other way is the Continental theory of "civil law" in which the legislature spells out the law in detail and the courts only enforce it. In other words, in the English system, the court fits the law to the case, making case law, whereas in the Continental system, the court fits the case to the law. (In American today, the courts do both. The court of original jurisdiction applies the law. Appellate courts test the law.) The English system is better at protecting individual rights because those are the implicit foundation for judging the law and for making new rulings that create precedents.
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"Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values." -- Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"

Would your discovery of how to use gravitons allow you to prevent everyone else from occupying gravitic space?

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"Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values." -- Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"

Would your discovery of how to use gravitons allow you to prevent everyone else from occupying gravitic space?

The Law on copyrights and patents says no, no, no. Principles of nature are the common property of mankind. If you discover something and do not want to share it then keep silent. But to not prevent others from doing the same.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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You have the cart before the horse, Ba'al.



Principles of nature are not the common property of mankind. In the presentation of this essay on my own blog, I have a picture from the Library of Congress of a painting, Washington on His Farm. Washington knew nothing of the radio ether (electro-magnetic field). It was not his property or the shared property of anyone else.



The proper view is given by Rand in her discussion on copyrights versus patents: You cannot prevent someone from knowing what they know: you cannot take back knowledge. The point rests with the individual, not common mankind. (Similarly, with language. Social as it is, the primary purpose of language is to enable individual thought. Communication with others is secondary.)



Also, on that point, several considerations lead the law to require that you publish a patent before the law will protect it. Just logically, you cannot expect protection as property for something which is undefined or unidentified. Secondarily, the government requires that in return for a temporary protection of this new property, you must ("for the common good") later give up all claims to it. I am not sure that is valid.



In fact, I am pretty much persuaded that your property rights do not expire in your lifetime. Moreover, if property could not be inherited, then giving gifts would be impossible - and you would never be able to detach yourself from any possession: trade would cease.



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You have the cart before the horse, Ba'al.

Principles of nature are not the common property of mankind. In the presentation of this essay on my own blog, I have a picture from the Library of Congress of a painting, Washington on His Farm. Washington knew nothing of the radio ether (electro-magnetic field). It was not his property or the shared property of anyone else.

The proper view is given by Rand in her discussion on copyrights versus patents: You cannot prevent someone from knowing what they know: you cannot take back knowledge. The point rests with the individual, not common mankind. (Similarly, with language. Social as it is, the primary purpose of language is to enable individual thought. Communication with others is secondary.)

Also, on that point, several considerations lead the law to require that you publish a patent before the law will protect it. Just logically, you cannot expect protection as property for something which is undefined or unidentified. Secondarily, the government requires that in return for a temporary protection of this new property, you must ("for the common good") later give up all claims to it. I am not sure that is valid.

In fact, I am pretty much persuaded that your property rights do not expire in your lifetime. Moreover, if property could not be inherited, then giving gifts would be impossible - and you would never be able to detach yourself from any possession: trade would cease.

The Law is clear on this (and I agree with it) One cannot patent or copyright physical laws or mathematical theorems.

One can patent designs and devices. One can copyright works of literature and such like.

If theorems were patentable and capable of being owned in perpetuity we would still be back in the days of the abacus and Pythagorus' theorem.

If one person has published a proof of a theorem another person should not have to pay rent or royalty for publishing another proof. And a text book publisher should not have to pay rent or royalty for quoting the proof in a text book. That is fair usage.

In the extremist case, copyright or patent should not extend beyond the lifetime of the creator. The idea of keeping patent RIGHTS or copy RIGHTS beyond the lifetime of the creator is a mortmain and a millstone around the neck of people born long after the creator of an item has died.

The exercise of patent rights or copy rights by people who had NOTHING to do with the item created is just rent collection by parasites. It prevents useful stuff from being used or improved and is an impediment to progress.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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In the extremist case, copyright or patent should not extend beyond the lifetime of the creator. The idea of keeping patent RIGHTS or copy RIGHTS beyond the lifetime of the creator is a mortmain and a millstone around the neck of people born long after the creator of an item has died.

The exercise of patent rights or copy rights by people who had NOTHING to do with the item created is just rent collection by parasites. It prevents useful stuff from being used or improved and is an impediment to progress.

Ba'al Chatzaf

How does that not apply to all property? Would it be better for all property to be passed through a probate court with inheritance not allowed at all? In other words, while you are alive, you could sell your home, or give away your patent, or sell your common stocks, or put your krugerrands in the red kettle, but whatever you own when you die becomes unowned.

Why is a patent (or copyright) any different from any other property?

As for owning ideas such as the Pythagorean theorem, while I might agree with you, patents on software bring up serious questions. A computer program is just a number, a single, long, complicated number, which a machine reads. On other objectivish boards others have claimed that it is not the program, but the arrangements of switches and gates in the hardware that is patented. I disagree because it would mean that every instance of a program would need a separate patent. Not only does this program here now run on both my Macintosh and someone else's Dell and someone else's HP, but each time you load the program, it opens and closes a totally different set of switches and gates on the very same machine. So, you would need a patent each time you run the same program on the same computer unless you specifically mapped the memory to just one set of places.

As I have pointed out elsewhere (Penrose Tiles here), you can get a patent on a theorem if you just say that it could be used for something.

Patenting a mere design is allowed, but is not good law. The case of the Hydrino speaks to that. It was granted a patent until Robert L. Park wrote a public column against that. (Park writes about fraud and misconduct in science.) The patent office granted the license on the design. No working model was presented. Working models have not been needed since 1880.

All of these problems have a common source: the nature of original property. Legislation cannot keep pace with knowledge. Original property also calls into question Ayn Rand's claim that you can never own an "object" but only the consequences of acquiring or transferring it.

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"Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values." -- Ayn Rand, "Man's Rights"

Would your discovery of how to use gravitons allow you to prevent everyone else from occupying gravitic space?

e

no. But charging rent on people trying to do further measurements on gravitons would inhibit the progress of science.

Gravitons are objects in nature. Anyone who wish to study them and has the wits and equipment to do so, should not be stopped or impeded.

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There is property and there is property. You can rent a tool or a house to me. I pay the rent, I get to use the house and tool and while I do YOU don't. An idea is not a rentable object. You keep all ideas you think of. If you publish the idea and others use it they are not taking it away from you. That is why you shounal tld not be able to charge rent or royalties on ideas or principles. These abstract things are not objects such they they are in your possession at one time and in someone else's possession another time.

As they say in German -- Die Gedanken sind frei. Ideas are free. Once they are spread about anyone can use them. And the original thinkers have not lost a thing by that.

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This is a bit odd, but the mention of gravitons got me thinking about something. What the heck is StarTrek's photon torpedo? Could such a weapon actually be lethal? I know getting too close to the sun will give you a heat rash but that is from the nuclear reaction going on.

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This is a bit odd, but the mention of gravitons got me thinking about something. What the heck is StarTrek's photon torpedo? Could such a weapon actually be lethal? I know getting too close to the sun will give you a heat rash but that is from the nuclear reaction going on.

It is science fiction. You can't make a compact missile or a light sword from bosons. The best one can do with electromagnetic radiation is beam it narrowly and drill holes in solid stuff.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Since the Enterprise can travel in excess of the speed of light (Wirp Drive), protean torpedoes are no problem.

--Brant

the Enterprise is all that stands between us and The Barg, so stop knocking Star Trik!

Enterprise has to enter normal space and travel sub light to shoot it "photon torpedoes". Or maybe it can shoot them in warp by using launchers made from unobtanium.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Original property is newly invented or newly discovered. It had no previous owner. In fact, it did not exist – or its existence was not perceived – until the original inventor created it or the original discoverer found it. How do we recognize such property? What rights does the inventor or discoverer hold? Are some or all of those those objective, absolute, or conditional?
A sailor finds an uninhabited island. Can she claim the whole thing for herself? An astronaut lands on an asteroid, a moon, or a planet. Can she claim the whole thing for herself? A physicist discovers a new form of energy. Can she claim it all for herself? A radio hacker finds that 1100 KHz AM is owned by a broadcast company, can she use a chopper to parcel out nanoscopic slices of the wavelength for herself, given that her presence will never be detected and her presence will never interfere with their existing use of the wavelength?
It could be argued that the 1100 KHz frequency already belongs to someone. However, the property is actually the amplitude modulated (AM) use of that frequency. In theory, frequency modulated (FM) and phase modulated broadcasts are both possible on 1100 KHz without interference. They are just not technologically useful today. This is not new. (Actually, the property status is limited in space, as well. That, too, is a different problem, caused by a misperception of the potentials in technology. One of the nice features of 550 to 176 meter wavelengths is the way the waves bounce off the ionosphere. That was discovered as a by-product, entertaining teenagers who listened to far-away stations. It could have been commercially exploited.)
Thomas Edison was a telegraph hacker. He figured out how to multiplex and quadriplex messages on the same wire. Granted that the wire was someone’s property, it could, nonetheless have been leased out to different people using different blocks of time-passage on the same wire. Also, in theory, it could have evolved that the telegraph wires would have been the broadcast source for what we call radio.
When a direct current circuit is closed and opened, a magnetic field is created and collapsed. That is an alternating field. That field could have been used to transmit information, as in fact, the “ether” was used by actual radio (initially called “wireless”). So, you could have paid the telegraph company its tariff for sending messages, but have no concern for the literal transmission but been sending “open” and “close” signals to create a carrier wave for transmissions of your own. Who would have owned that ether?
Lasers can carry messages. It could have come that a network of lasers made of ruby crystals doped with chromium and pumped by xenon flash would have been a continental system, point to point, with relays and amplifiers every 20 miles or so. Then, someone with a YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) laser could have a network whose beams crossed those in space but without interference because the beams are of different frequencies. Thus, no violation of property rights would have occurred.
Original property brings a special challenge to the law because no previous legislation anticipated it. Ayn Rand attempted to delineate the proper role of government in her essay "Property Status of the Airwaves." Twenty years later, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was created to bring law and order to cyberspace. Rand did not stray far from the mainstream. Her essay never questioned the Federal Communications Commission - though she excoriated it in other writings - or the law that created it with power to rule by decree. The EFF has been fighting a war of attrition while bunkered within the First Amendment. The next new invention will leave them to defend an old technology without new ideas.

I believe that rather than looking to legislation or administration, these problems are best settled in courts. The English system of justice works because of what American conservative complain about as "judicial activism." The other way is the Continental theory of "civil law" in which the legislature spells out the law in detail and the courts only enforce it. In other words, in the English system, the court fits the law to the case, making case law, whereas in the Continental system, the court fits the case to the law. (In American today, the courts do both. The court of original jurisdiction applies the law. Appellate courts test the law.) The English system is better at protecting individual rights because those are the implicit foundation for judging the law and for making new rulings that create precedents.

"Can" is what one is able to do, and is limited only by physical universal laws. "May" is what one is permitted to do, and is determined by the local tribal laws of the moment., "Should" is what one ought to do, and is determined by the local tribal ethical edicts one subscribes to.

So in your example, a sailor 'can' claim an uninhibited island until a greater force not only asserts that she may not but enforces that she can not, whether it is based on the belief that she should not or not..

According to Labor Leader A. Philip Randolph: "At the Banquet Table of Nature, there are no reserved seats; you take what you can get; you keep what you can hold."

That is, until a greater force not only asserts that he may not, but enforces that he cannot, whether that is based on the belief that he should not or not.

The once rational arguments for licensing open spectrum change with new technology. Yet, will discrete frequency AM stations be able to broadcast in perpetuity?

Can, may, should?

Courts must rely on the may of legislation; relying on the courts isn't really answering the question of what our laws should be maying to restrict what the mob can enforce.

The "patent" deal is supposed to be a negotiated give away of possession of knowledge. In exchange for coughing up the why and how, the tribe will provide a kind of license -- not the enforcement of that license-- that is still up to the holder -- but a kind of right to claim possession for some negotiated limited amount of time to a uniquely patent-able idea. In reality, in today's world, the primary appeal of patents is as part of a defensive stable against the predatory claims of competitors. It's a strategy funded by deep pockets, necessitated by the honeypot fact of those deep pockets, a kind of catch-22.. There are alternate strategies that smaller companies use to live in the cracks and crevices of commerce.

One of the enabling features of a patent is to reduce the need to be nimble and reactive; patents enable stodgy behavior. The slow running of the wheels off a wagon. Paying a toll to cash in over some period of time. It's an odd area of human effort, mostly a legal exercise, not a technical exercise.

A software patent was once granted for the concept of a box around text.

As in, this control is in violation of that patent.

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He who lands on a new continent or world should only be able to claim what he can work or use.

As a matter of practicality no one party is able to prevent others from landing on a sizable continent or a sizable planet.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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@Michael Marota

Social as it is, the primary purpose of language is to enable individual thought. Communication with others is secondary.
How to lose all credibility with a single line.

That was from post 4.

I'd say the primary purpose of language is communication. With whom, self or others, is secondary. And of those I'd have to take others before self so the others can peaceably deal with you instead of kill you. It's been postulated that the Neanderthals lost out to Cro-Magnon man--us--because of greater felicity with language. You needed a tribe-way back then--or you died. Banishment was a death sentence.

--Brant

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@Michael Marota

Social as it is, the primary purpose of language is to enable individual thought. Communication with others is secondary.

How to lose all credibility with a single line.

Gary,

Credibility with whom?

MM happens to be standing on the shoulders of Rand (from ITOE) with that statement (as people familiar with her technical writing already know):

Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition—not of communication, as is usually assumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept-formation—a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication; the necessary precondition of communication is that one have something to communicate...

The primary purpose of concepts and of language is to provide man with a system of cognitive classification and organization, which enables him to acquire knowledge on an unlimited scale; this means: to keep order in man’s mind and enable him to think.

If Michael Marotta has lost all credibility with a single line, he's in pretty good company...

Isn't it easy to ask what someone means when you are not familiar with his stuff? I mean, all you gotta do is ask, "What do you mean?" Four little words and a question mark. It's almost over before you start typing.

You don't like asking questions? OK. You can say, "I didn't understand that." Four words again...

But who the hell wants to bother with that stuff anymore?

Better to judge immediately and tell everyone, then try to identify what we are judging, huh?

:smile:

Michael

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I'm still not convinced that the primary purpose of language is to allow people to think. By her own admission, Rand says that concepts precede communication, and I agree with that. But if we already have concepts and cognition, then we're already thinking. Language adds nothing to this except the ability to communicate our thoughts to others.

I think Rand is making some sort of mistake when she uses the world "primarily". Ordinarily, one would think that the primary purpose of something is the purpose it is usually used for or the purpose for which it was originally designed for or the thing it is best at doing, and in the case of language that would be communication. But the way Rand uses the word "primarily" here, it seems to me that she wants to say "cognition is a logical precondition for communication".

These two statements are very different. I agree with the second, but not with the first. In the first sense of the word "primary", communication with others is definitely the primary purpose of language. In the second sense, cognition is the primary purpose of language.

As MM equivocates the two, what bothers me is that he accepted the idea that the primary purpose (in the usual sense) of language is not communication while completely ignoring the most obvious definition of language. That is, that it is a means of communication between people.

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As MM equivocates the two...

Gary,

Could you give me a quote where he does that?

I don't see any equivocation at all in his actual words. Maybe you have others in mind?

btw - I'm not fully on board with Rand's view in this hierarchy. I believe this issue is a bit more complicated, meaning that sometimes language does thinking first and communicating second. But other times it is the contrary. A person steps on a man's sore foot and he, with eyes bulging, immediately yells, "Damn it!" I don't think conceptual organization is his priority at that moment. :)

Michael

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Consider 'visual spreadsheets.' (...and leave for a moment the question of whether they are just derivatives of electronic spreadsheets from the 60s.)

VisiCalc...Lotus 1,2,3.....Excel. Each with their own successive revisions and versions.

Derivative works? Did the early arrival first of VisiCalc in any way impede the march of Lotus 1,2,3 .... Excel?

An interesting read.

What you don't find in that story is much accruing to the actual originators of the ideas.

Can, may, should. And I think Labor Leader A. Philip Randolph accurately called how we deal with these issues.

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