Reddit mentions of Against Intellectual Monopoly

Should read the book "Against Intellectual Monopoly". Very worthy read:

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521879280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254079179&sr=8-1

Patents do not encourage innovation. They are barriers to entry only and barriers to entry only restricts innovation, barriers to entry leads to less competition.

Big Pharma pays a high entry cost because of FDA regulations that require it do so. Another barrier to entry that restricts competition. R&D is the companies cost in any industry and pharma is no different. Competition in any industry has to reverse engineer their competitions goods and services if they want to compete with them. The selling factor of big pharma without the FDA and patents would be that they are a known brand and can be trusted. Just like people trust apple, people trust GSK to sell them a quality product.

If we accept every industry has the same type of incentives and risks and so on, then we can compare pharma to any industry.

Take for example mobile phone industry, my favourite example because it shows that even with patents, competition that copies a product can struggle to out compete the original product. Look at companies that try to emulate apple but have failed to achieve their success.

Read

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521879280

As soon as the FDA is included in the mix the generic drugs do not make sense because the big pharma have paid them for the right to have a monopoly. Due to the FDA over the top and expensive testing requirements, apparently. It could very well be the big pharma uses it as a way to socialise their R&D costs through subsidies. Generic competition will have to adhere to some level of competence at producing the drugs, compared to the cost requirements to research and develop the drugs. It is apparently cheaper to reverse engineer drugs and manufacture them, than it is to research and develop them. Due to this, the idea is that pharmaceutical industry needs patents. Every industry has the same problems, some how the pharma industry has convinced everyone that they are affected to the point where they would stop investing in R&D if it was not patents because people could just copy their drugs and sell them. This seems as unlikely to occur in the pharma industry than it does in any other industry.

Most libertarians hold that intellectual property would not exist (at least in its current form) in a voluntaryist society. Although IP has the word "property" in its name it's really not the same as real property, in the same way that the 'patriot act' is not actually patriotic.

Intellectual property--ideas--can be reproduced without the original holder of the idea losing the idea. Rather it is multiplied. Think of the difference between me stealing your Ferrari or me looking at your Ferrari then building my own identical model at home with my own equipment. The second example does not infringe on your property rights although some will argued it infringes on intellectual property rights.

Here is a short videon Russia Today that makes the case against IP:

• Case Against Intellectual Property
  
  For a much more in-depth, academic examination of this topic, the following book is well reviewed:
  
  
• Against Intellectual Monopoly free online version
  
  
• Against Intellectual Monopoly at Amazon
  
  An example of a libertarian not holding the typical view is the prolific Reddit poster JamesCarlin. He has written in defence of Intellectual Property in a voluntaryist society. You can read his arguments at his website here.

It's sophistry; it sounds plausible, but is not true. The evidence directly contradicts the argument.

If you're truly interested in this question, you should read Against Intellectual Monopoly, available for purchase here and reading for free online here. It's written by two professors from... Cambridge, I think? It's the most thorough discussion of intellectual property law I've ever read.

I'm one of those libertarians who doesn't believe in "intellectual property". Basically, property is something that is rivalrous, something that if I possess it you cant--for example, a car or a book, only one of us can have it at any given time.

Ideas, however, are not rivalrous. You and I can possess the exact same idea at the exact same time. And, even though we possess the same idea we can implement it differently. Thus, the reason for developing new ideas isn't the "idea" itself but rather it's implementation. There's lots of room for competition in implementation--something that doesn't exist if government grants a monopoly on the idea itself.

For a book length treatment, take a look at Against Intellectual Monopoly in pdf or in printed book form.

And who sets the price? The patent holder? Congress?

Just this month a pharmaceutical company hired former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, Linda Daschle (the current Senate Minority Leader's wife), four other former members of Congress, and more than a dozen other lobby and PR firms to try to extend drug patents that would otherwise be expiring soon. The cost for just one of the drugs, Claritin, for which the company would have its monopoly extended could cost Americans over 3 billion dollars. See Action Alert: Drug-Patent Bill Could Cost Patients $3 Billion+; Hearing July 1.

You might want to read Against Intellectual Monopoly, which presents an alternative viewpoint.

How about if in my example, I compared pirating music with using Wikipedia without ever donating money to them? That's the same then. Does the financial situation of wikipedia employees matter? Would it be worth documenting the wikipedia workers' lives? Could that be done without looking like a "donate to wikipedia!" ad?

The best comparison of music piracy is undoubtedly movie piracy; there's clearly no ethical difference. Is it worthwhile to look at how movie producers have been affected financially? Do you think that such a thing could be made without looking like it's pushing a political agenda for the MPAA?

I know that journalism without advocacy exists though, and sure, this information could be useful to people, but like I said in my original post, I just think it's writing the wrong narrative.

Lets say a Walmart moves into town, and runs the local Kmart out of business (not a comparison to music piracy, just an example of voluntarism). Is it appropriate to document the lives of those displaced Kmart workers? Should we make people feel bad about shopping at Walmart? I would say it doesn't matter because everything is completely voluntary, as long as Walmart doesn't purchase from slave owners and doesn't steal things from other people. Voluntary interactions are generally ethical and coercion is generally unethical. It's pretty easy to see what is voluntary and what is coercive when it comes to slavery vs labor, and theft vs trade of physical property. However, It's not clear that violations of intellectual property are unethical or coercive. It's wrong to steal someone's car, because if you do, they don't have a car. If you steal someone's recipe, they still have that recipe.

There are actually very strong arguments that protecting intellectual property causes a net loss for society. This is a very good book, if you're interested. This one is good too, and talks extensively about the philosophy of property rights. In short, IP protection can be very damaging to creative industries because it hampers derivative works, causes a chilling effect which stifles innovation even more, and increases barriers to enter those markets.

I read Jeffrey Tucker's Bourbon for Breakfast, and after destroying it, he points to Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David Levine.

They also host the full book on their website in PDF.