Does Intellectual Property Exist?

The following is a short essay I wrote for a class. You can find the assignment at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfg2w7wz_116djgxvnf4

Below is my essay:

Intellectual property is defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization to be industrial property (patents, trademarks, and trade secrets) and copyrights (“What is Intellectual Property”).  There have been several debates over whether to do away with some or all of “intellectual property” laws .  In the software industry, organizations such as the Free Software Foundation have launched campaigns against software patents to ensure innovation flourishes (Free Software Foundation, 2008).  Meanwhile, organizations such as the RIAA has pressured Congress to enact stricter copyright enforcement laws (Bangeman, 2008).  Several copyleft licenses have been created by those favoring less restrictive copyright policies. Two economics professors, Michele Boldrin and David Levine, have taken a step further arguing in their recently published book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, that “intellectual property” is neither property nor does it favor innovation (Boldrin & Levine, 2008).

Intellectual property advocates, such as the RIAA and the  have lobbied various governing bodies to protect their creative ideas from being “stolen”,  however intellectual property is not real property. Tangible property is scare in availability.  That is, the owner of tangible property loses his property when it is stolen from him.  Ideas do not possess this attribute and are not the subject of “interpersonal conflict” (Kinsella, 2001, p. 19-31).  Tangible property is acquired initially through a principle known homesteading, the acquisition of property by possessing it first.  Intellectual property introduces a new principle of homesteading in which the creator of an idea can restrict others from using his idea with their property (Kinsella, 2001, p. 31-33).  Enforcing intellectual property leads invading the privacy of others.  Organizations such as the RIAA have lobbied so they could spy on Internet packets to prevent piracy. Some software companies perform audits on their customer’s machines to ensure only no pirated software is installed (Boldrin & Levine).  Intellectual property restricts how one may use his own property effectively transferring partial rights of the tangible property to the copyright or patent holder (Boldrin & Levine).

Legislation in favor of intellectual property should be immediately repealed since copyrights and patents do not serve to protect real property, but to prevent competition against producers.  Additionally the U.S. Constitution should be amended so that Congress may no longer grant limited monopolies for creative works; Article 1 Clause 8 of the Constitution should be repealed.  This will promote more competition and innovation in the marketplace.

References:

Bangeman, Eric.  (2008, April 21).  RIAA spent $2 million lobbying for tougher IP laws in 2007.  Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/04/riaa-spent-2-million-lobbying-for-tougher-ip-laws-in-2007.ars
Boldrin, M., & Levine, D. K.  (2008, January 2).  Against Intellectual Monopoly.  Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
Boldrin, M., & Levine, D. K.  Property Rights and Intellectual Monopoly.  Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/coffee.htm
Free Software Foundation.  (2008, February 28).  End Software Patents (ESP) Project Formed to Eliminate Software Patents.  Retrieved from http://www.fsf.org/news/end-soft-patents
Kinsella, N.S.  (2001, Spring).  Against intellectual property.  Journal of Libertarian Studies, 15(2), 1-53.
Kinsella, N.S.  IP Sites and Resources.  Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
World Intellectual Property Organization.  What is Intellectual Property?. Retrieved February 15, 2009, from http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/

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You, too, can be a ‘terrorist’

How easy could it be to become branded as a “homegrown terrorist”? One proposed law from the last Congressional session would have made it VERY easy.

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Ron Paul introduces legislation: end The Federal Reserve

Feb 3, 2009. I rise to introduce legislation to restore financial stability to America’s economy by
abolishing the Federal Reserve.most Americans
have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Fed

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FED UP – The popular uprising against central banking

“The Fed simply does not care whether its actions are illegal or not. The Fed is operating under the principle that it
’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. And forgiveness is just another means to the desired power grab it is seeking.”

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Open Source Initiative Founder Eric S. Raymond is a Libertarian!

While reading through comments on the blog post Is the Open Source Movement Libertarian?, I found an intriguing comment from Open Source Initiative Founder Eric S. Raymond:

Tim Swanson says that “the level of code transparency and how it is distributed really boils down to a matter of [business] strategic management. He is so right, and so very wrong!

Excuse me for a moment while I lay out my credentials. I wrote the propaganda line that Tim has swallowed. I founded (or at least re-invented) the modern open-source movement when I taught the partisans of “free software” to use the language of free-market economics and rational-choice theory (in the papers collected as The Cathedral and the Bazaar). I am also a libertarian of long standing and of a somewhat harder-core variety than my esteemed friend Michel Tiemann, and was the co-founder and first president of the organization he now leads.

Like all the most effective propaganda, “open source is just a business decision” derives its effectiveness from being true. But it would be equally true to say that the open-source movement is run by a conspiracy of subversives who aim to show by example that a decentralist, open, and voluntarist system of software production is superior to a centralist, secretive, and coercive one — and that hell, yes that’s a libertarian demonstration bearing on deeper political questions.

As I tell my speaking audiences when the subject comes up: Yes, I’m an anarcho-capitalist. No, you don’t have to buy my politics to realize that open source is good for your business. But is what you learn from the method is that you don’t need all the heavy coercive apparatus of traditional management, that it in fact gets in the way of deriving the most efficient results from your production inputs — then that lesson is part of what I intended, too, and yes you should be thinking about how it applies elsewhere.

That’s one way in which Michael’s claim is valid. Another is that the theoretical roots of the modern open-source movement are deeply interwined with Austrian economics and libertarian political theory. One of the reasons I was able to explain the movement to itself in the late 1990s is because I had been prepared for that job by nearly twenty years of thinking about phenomena like Hayekian implicit knowledge and the conditions for emergence of stable cooperation in ungoverned populations of autonomous actors.

I can be even more specific than that and say that David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom and his style of consequentialist argument from efficiency considerations was directly ancestral to both the rhetoric and the conclusions of today’s open-source movement. The link was through me as one of the movement’s two principal theoreticians, and through many other senior open-source hackers (notably including Michael Tiemann) who saw where I was going and, being libertarians themselves, ran with it.

Raymond explains more of political views on his personal website:

I am an active Libertarian

If you are a U.S. citizen, and you think freedom is worth extending, both on and off the net, please consider joining the national Libertarian Party and your state affiliate.

Internet technology has huge libertarian implications. I believe broad availability of Internet access, and thorough exploitation of its function as an electronic spot market, may someday be a major factor in the obsolescence of government itself.

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Promoting Christianity Or Dabbling in Witchcraft

It has come to my attention that many so-called Christians are actually involved in witchcraft. It is sad to note that many of today’s proclaimed Christian leaders are actually Free Masons and members of the Illuminati. These church leaders advocate ecumenism in the name of unity, ignoring the clear warning of scripture concerning uniting in spite of sound doctrine (1 Chronicles 13-15).

I have encountered many of the so-called Christians who make a mock of God by claiming to be super-spiritual while using spirit mediums to know what people are thinking so they can use their words against them.

For a long time, I have withheld this information due to the fact it is somewhat difficult to document. But I believe I must expose this as it is a plague that seeks to destroy the body of Christ.

In an effort to disguise their activity, these pseudo-Christians rely on using esoterism and repetition as a way manipulating others (much like Freemasons). The following quote explains Free Masons’ belief on repetition:

Given the way Masons advance along an initiatory path, getting ever closer to their union with Lucifer, the Light-bearer, the names used to denote the Force and the Deity at the higher degrees become especially important. Such names or charged words evoke the power that Masons seek. Repetition of these names increases their occult influence. Masons of the 28th degree, known as Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept, are given the “Ineffable Name” of God. Evidence that Eckankar is a Covert Occult Organization and a Front for the Illuminati

I became aware of this activity when listening to an Alex Jones show when a particular guest made an esoteric reference to a particular even in my life. Since then I have taken notice of the use of occult mediums by my parents, acquaintances, so-called friends, and many others.

Texe Marrs adequately described the New World Order’s use of occult activities in an article titled The Illuminati Builds Tower of Infamy:

In his revealing book, Out of Control, distributed privately among the elite of the Bilderbergers, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and other groups, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Rockefeller operative and former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, declared that the New World Order cannot be built on a foundation of politics and economics alone. To truly establish ironclad global control over all peoples and nations, Brzezinski explained that the elite must also use the religious element.

Likewise, at his State of the World Forum in San Francisco, former Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, advocated the setting up of a United Nations of Religions organization. Indeed, the establishment of just such an antichrist, global religious order was the goal of the hundreds of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, African Tribalist, and other religious leaders who met a few years ago in Chicago for the World’s Parliament of Religions.

Since the end of World War II, the Illuminati have recognized that if their cherished aim of total dictatorial lordship over mankind is to be realized, the spiritual need in man must be channeled and directed. It is not enough to control a man’s body and to micro-manage his social and economic environments. Nor is it sufficient to be able to brainwash and hypnotize men’s minds. The very souls of men must be molded like some type of psychic clay.

Texe, in the same article, pointed out how the New World Order is involved in establishing fake Christian denominations:

Secret Societies and Elite Orders Fund Religious Corruption

Illuminati minions of Satan have founded many of the world’s largest and best known ministries and groups. The wealthy elite have given their religious puppets the funding and the means to crank up many new religious groups and get them going. In fact, entire new denominations and religions have been founded and are today huge in size, thanks to covert Illuminati assistance.

It is well known that wealthy Illuminati chieftains Henry Luce (Order of Skull & Bones patriarch and head of the Time Life empire) and William Randolph Hearst (Hearst newspapers) puffed up and made evangelist Billy Graham a “star.” Knights of Malta magnate, J. Peter Grace (W.R. Grace and Co. Chemicals) and his cronies, such as Ted Turner (CNN), were the prime movers behind Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network apparatus. Other Illuminati helped set up the Crouches and their Trinity Broadcasting Network.

The Rockefellers and the heirs to the Firestone and other fortunes funded Alcoholics Anonymous. An Orthodox Jewish billionaire from Canada and the corrupt but fabulously wealthy Riady family from Indonesia secretly funded both televangelist Morris Cerullo’s TV broadcast and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL Network. The Rockefellers also ponied up millions for the work of the apostate Jesus Seminar scholars and the heretical World Council of Churches organization.

The Vatican’s secret societies also were instrumental in furthering the charismatic movement. Rick Joyner, one of the popular charismatic “Kansas City Prophets,” was even initiated into the Vatican’s mysteriously evil order, the Knights of Malta. Meanwhile, CIA operative Reverend Sun Myung Moon has spread millions of bucks among his favorite evangelical Christian stooges, ranging from Tim and Bev La Haye (Left Behind) to the Crystal Cathedral’s positive-thinking guru Dr. Robert Schuller and Christian pop singer Pat Boone.

Schuller also was rewarded with big bucks by his Illuminati pal, the late Communist-puppet oilman, Armand Hammer (Occidental Oil Corp). Meanwhile, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family moved into a luxurious new Colorado facility a few years ago, paid for by a curiously secret Roman Catholic foundation. All this and more I explain and document in my explosive new video and DVD Tower of Infamy.

Zionists and Masons Help Build Tower of Infamy

Zionist sources tied to the Illuminati richly rewarded puppet Jerry Falwell with the gift of a multimillion dollar executive jet and set up crooked lawyer C.I. Scofield as a “Bible scholar,” a hoax of the century if there ever was one! Zionist Masons also helped organize the heretical Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith also organized that false religion on the basis of Freemasonry’s rituals and symbols.

In sum, the Christian establishment is not Christian at all. It and its leaders are bought and paid for by the Illuminati. It is an integral and inseparable part of the worldwide Luciferian network of evil: The Tower of Infamy. Now, do you understand why today we have hundreds of new false New Age Bible versions? Can you see why heresies and atrocities abound and proliferate within the so-called Christian world?

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The Obama Deception

Now that the establishment has anointed and installed Barack Obama as president and the corporate media has heaped effusive praise upon this banker vetted front man, it is time for a documentary to reveal the real agenda behind the man billed as our savior and messiah. Alex Jones’ The Obama Deception hits DVD on March 15.

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