More explication and assessment of libertarian views on IP. I open this one with a quote from William Leggett, an editorialist active in the early part of the nineteenth century, and "the intellectual leader of the laissez faire wing of Jacksonian democracy." What was being debated at the time was a move to extend U.S. copyrights to English authors (or foreign generally, but usually English).

(I'm quoting economist Lawrence H. White from the foreword of his collection of Leggett essays, Democratick Editorials).

"Our position is that authors have no natural right of property in their published works, and that laws to create and guard such a right are adverse to the true interests of society... when we pass from corporeal to incorporeal property, we immediately enter a region beset with innumerable difficulties. . . The limits of corporeal property are exact, definite, and always ascertainable. Those of incorporeal property are vague and indefinite, and subject to continual dispute. The rights of corporeal property may be asserted, without the possibility of infringing any other individual's rights. Those of incorporeal property may obviously give rise to conflicting claims ..."

This seems to be a variant on another argument touching on enforcement difficulties I examined a bit ago. Here's why I don't buy it:

1) To recap last week, working the territory of an advanced economy, one way or another, we end up needing some ground rules for incorporeal yet valuable stuff. And we do want to maximize incentives to produce it. Yes, we need to keep an eye of administrative and enforcement costs.

2) Now for the natural law argument. I don't think natural law is bunk--if what one means by "natural law" is law that makes sense given the way economies work and the way people act. For example, if one is going to have a rule for taking resources out of a commons, for example, "first come first served" seems to make pretty good sense. (Let's see, how would "second come first served" do? Not well at all; it would cause fights). This is natural law verging on utilitarianism--but I don't see anything wrong with this.

So if people identify a set of rules that seems to work to encourage the formation of markets in goods that otherwise are problematic (because they are public goods as in the case of information, or whatever) ... well, why not give them a try? A free people ought to be able to do this.

Next week, IP and the "public choice argument." This is a more modern concern.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 12:28 PM | General, Liberty and IP, Physical Property

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