I have noticed a general upswing in the amount of Libertarian bloggers (and Neo-Liberal ones too) who have decided to come out on the negative side of general IP rights and protections. While some of this is merely band-wagoning after the SOPA debacle, I think some of it comes from the general Libertarian concept that the enforcement of property (the tangible type) rights is the only reasonable use of governmental authority.
To avoid mis-quoting anyone, I will generally surmize the concept behind the Libertarnian objection to IP (as I understand it). This is going to be necessarily broad, so if you want to know what your favoriate Ron Paul Voter thinks, I suggest you look here, and here.
In general the Libertarian theory is more easily illustrated by the following theoretical.
Alice writes a piece of music and performs it to her own enjoyment in her yard. Rob, her next door neighbor, without trespassing, records the performance and uploads it to a file sharing site. Jim, a creative advertising executive, downloads the recording and uses it in a Super Bowl commercial. The commercial earns Jim wide acclaim, recognition and untold riches. Alice does not get any money or recognition.
According to Libertarian theories, this is a perfectly acceptable outcome (if not the preferable one). The argument underlying why this is O.K. is that Alice has never been deprived of her rights in the use and enjoyment of her property. All that has been "misappropriated" is Alice's potential future ownership in the profits that Jim would have had to pay her in a regime where the government mediates these sorts of transactions.
However, the Libertarian argument fails when you consider why you have a regime of Intellectual Property protection in the first place. Now, we could have a huge conversation on the dichotomy of the Moral vs. Economic Theory of Intellectual Property, but that is for another blog post. Safe to say that the Constitution (Libertarians love the Constitution) spells out a moral theory of Intellectual Property.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
By engaging in the "promotion" of Progress, Congress and the framers have set themselves a moral task that can not be easily superseded by claiming that the economics of "progress" are such that those rights should be limited to that which is tangible. The argument should never be focused on the "economic" rights of the IP holder, they are ancillary to the issue. The government is charged with "progress"; how we as an economic and political system allow for maximization of progress, is tangential to the original goal. For example, if as a society, we decided that all musicians should be put on government stipend, then the original framers intent could still be met. Arguing that "progress" is met by not "promoting" is a laughable on its face, and clearly not borne out in reality.
Libertarians run up against the fundamental problem that capitalism, practiced in the U.S. in the early 21st Century, requires that IP be priced in the market place. Destroying the pricing mechanism, without providing an alternative mechanism for "promoting" the arts and science yields only what Ayn Rand called "Moochers". A society of takers, who, because there is no way to feed themselves from the sweat of their intellectual labors, find themselves shelving the potential of great work, because they live in a society that doesn't value it. That society asks people to create for the pure enjoyment of it, while also having a day job. There is a reason why this system does not work well. In order to re-order a system, people should at least acknowledged why the system was erected in the first place. As GK Chesterton noted, "one should know why a fence has been erected before one tears it down."
Jordan Garner
