Monday, May 14, 2012

How To Play "Intellectual Property Rights"

As we all know, the concept of intellectual property rights is a criminal activity, one of many, that the state engages in, by virtue of the fact that the practice is contrary to natural law.  Further, the regime is ultimately enforced by violence, which is in violation of revelation, "thou shalt not kill."

Now be that as it may, we in fact do labor under an intellectual property regime.  Truly no getting around it.   In Romans 13 St. Paul says obey your government.   Jesus said render unto Caesar...   Some evil preacher men say this means you should get with the program, and join the bad guys.  Nonsense!  Later the same St Paul says never use the government court systems.  So which is it?

Saint Paul explicitly says the way to overthrow the bad guys is to treat them well, which will heap burning coals on their heads, following Jesus who said love your enemies.  When Jesus was faced with a tax, which the bible teaches is odious to God,  Jesus' response was to pay it so as not to give offense to the evil power-mongers.  

And we have no enemy more lethal than the state.  Just ask Jesus.  And for that matter, St. Paul.  Both of whom were whacked by the state for teaching "love your enemies."  Jesus and Paul are not teaching "the state is evil, it is good to join them!  Intellectual property is wrong, let's join in!  The state kills people.  Let's join in killing Jesus and Paul!"  They are teaching the counter-intuitive means for working ones way out from under the evil of the state. Does heaping burning coals on someone's head strike you as cooperation? They are teaching how to free oneself from slavery.  The starting place is recognizing slavery exists.  Understanding is not agreement.  But understanding is fundamental to the process of liberation.

So we do want to understand how IPR works, but we do not want to participate in it.  How can we do that?

First understand how IPR harms the economy.  The best introductory book on the topic is Against Intellectual Monopoly.  You can read the whole thing for free online, compliments of the authors.

You can also buy it on amazon, which you will want to do, because the book is that good, you want it in your essential library...  either kindle or hardcover.

Hardcover:

Kindle:

The book is wrong on trademarks, but who cares?  It is 99.9 % right on.  Saint Paul said no one has the entire picture.

Once you've read the book you'll be able to begin to overthrow the system.  Here are the specifics.

1. Gain IPR on anything you can.

2.  Open source whatever you have granted as IPR.

Done.  The system falls apart.  No bloodshed in the face of implacable evil, just the free market.

IBM is the number one patentholder in the USA.  They have open sourced their patents.  How come?  Because when some 19 year old genius sees an cool new thing to do with IBM source code, the kid is free to do so.  The kid sells the idea to his uncle, who uses it, and saves money in his business.  The kid got $500 from his uncle, and is deliriously happy.   IBM sees it, and mature sober IBM people assess it for merchantability. IBM then, through its monster network of customers, makes money on the 19 yo kid's idea.  IBM makes tens of millions.  Each uses their labor mixed with natural resources to produce something valuable in the market.  Everyone is happy, peace and prosperity is justly distributed.  No Jesuit peace and justice committee necessary.

Even if the kid made ten million on his idea based on IBM code, IBM could care less.  The business the kid found was never IBMs business anyway, since they would never have thought it up.  What IBM gets is market on the scale that IBM is tied into, and that is the hundred of millions.  So what we see is the free market, in spite of being saddled with odious state violence-based economic rules, can still operate.  People can be free from the evil slavery of IPR.

Bezos claims he patented oneclick ordering to keep anyone from gaining IPR and forbidding one click ordering on Amazon.com.  Attaboy!

I maintain copyrights on my books, so that I am free to give my books away.  If I did not maintain the intellectual property rights, I could not give the book away for free on google or amazon, nor sell them on amazon, because IPR is positive law and to play we are obliged to make positive representations of our legal status.  If someone else owned the IPR, they could forbid me from giving the book away for free.  Giving my book away for free is critical to the success of the book, critical to the achievement of having it sell consistently on Amazon.com for ten years now.    Rarely do bestsellers last that long.  I am up there with Shakespeare for consistent sales.  My book sells well (ok, let's just say far in excess of what any promotional efforts would yield) because I give it away for free on googlebooks to anyone who wants it.   (It is also free for the reading on amazon, but google search engine actually drives people to the book. Amazon does not have that push.) Enough people who find the information in my book for free on googlebooks want to buy the book.  Therefore, giving it away makes it sell.  Finding the book finds me, and people contact me directly. It is the modern version of the book signing event. It is counterintuitive, it is paradoxical, but it is reality.

This is only possible because I know IPR is evil, and I know how to beat it.  By giving my book away for free on googlebooks, it is so widely accessed that I get sales otherwise not possible.  Yes, people "steal" my book on googlebooks.  But if they "steal" it, they were never my customers anyway.  How have I lost anything by not enforcing the violent provisions of IPR?

Now, if I did not "own" these evil IPRs, then someone else could, and forbid me to give the book away.  Under our system, if IBM did not own the IPR on their patents, they could not make them free.  We do not own the IPR so that we can benefit ourselves by visiting violence on our neighbors under the system,  we own the IPR so we can free our neighbors and ourselves from the system.  We recognize the system.  We overthrow the system, using the system.  This is the nonviolent, free market way.

Saint Paul was not saying slavery was a good thing, he was saying slavery needs to be overthrown. Killing government workers will not do the trick.  To free a slave may very well result in re-enslavement by someone else, manumission is always tricky business in states that constitutionally provide for slavery.  We see this in USA 2012, the only modern state whose constitution provides for slavery.   By "owning" a slave, one may protect a slave's human rights and freedom.

This thinking can be applied to any and every field in which IPR is doing its harm: medicine, movies, music, agriculture, automobiles, you name it, we can be free of it.  But the problem is so many people prefer to enlist state violence to ensure a sinecure, and prefer not to serve people or make an effort to meet other peoples needs.  They love the state.

When Michael Lewis wrote Liar's Poker to explain just how wicked the practices were on Wall Street and the utter abuse of the USA investor, he hoped to effect some change and improvement by his expose.  He was perplexed to get an overwhelming number of letters from the best and brightest at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Yale... Christians all, inquiring as to how they could get such jobs themselves ripping off their fellow man.

IPR lawyers, who are all state workers, know the system is dead, and know that smart people are moving away from the regime, so they are now in a death-struggle to rewrite the laws to make themselves relevant and to maintain the stream of what they mulct from the productive sector of society.  We all love a system that will feed us.   Most IPR lawyers love the IPR system.  Some patent attorneys are honest, and admit the system is evil and harmful, and advocate the system must be abolished, in fairness.

The trick is not find a way to change human nature, the trick is to withdraw the consent for the state to aggregate power.  As I pointed out 1 Samuel 8 is the first of many instances where people clamor for oppression for themselves.  Part of our work is to undue the damage done. We can take heart observing places like Switzerland, Hong Kong, Andorra, Singapore, San Marino, Iceland, the Vatican, etc, where the state is nearly non-existent and in that measure malefactors find little purchase from which to leverage their evil designs.

 AS the capitalist system continues to disintegrate, mustn't worry.  This is good.  Simply review reality, and understand that a better system is largely in place already, and the sooner the malefactors bring their system down upon themselves, the better for the rest of us.  Just be well versed in how the free market works, so you may thrive as those who have aggregated exceptional property find their world crashing down around them.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.


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